PagerDuty (YC S10) wakes the right person up for your tech emergencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/10/pagerduty-wakes-the-right-pers.php

<comment><USER2> We (Quora) have been using PagerDuty for a few weeks and so far, it is working pretty well.

<comment><USER3> Any gripes? (Wondering why you qualified "well".)

<comment><USER4> It's been completely reliable when there were actual problems. The web interface was pretty intuitive to us as well. I really like the login flow.

Our PagerDuty is integrated right now with Scout, Pingdom, and our own custom alerting system.

So far most complaints we've had while using the service for the first week were our own faults: for example, our monitoring was too sensitive, which was fixed by using the regexp filters, and by eliminating spurious errors from reporting on our side. One thing that PagerDuty did was that it basically forced us to fix these reporting issues so that we weren't woken up at 5AM unless it was a real emergency.

The SMS interface got a little confusing when we had two errors at once. For example, a frequent case is getting two pages at once, "Service X is DOWN" and "quora.com is DOWN". I think what I tried doing was:

1\. Receive the first report (site).

2\. Receive the second report (service).

3\. ACK both reports using the second report's code.

4\. Fix the service.

5\. Attempt to resolve the second report, receive a "code already used" error.

Resolving things via SMS is a little bit clumsy (it's what I usually default to). A link to the PagerDuty login would be cool, but I don't know if it would fit in the 160 character limit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Very good point, we should allow you to send multiple replies per SMS alert to ack and then resolve (currently, there's a limit of one reply per alert).

We'll look at fixing this soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a great tool for corporate IT departments too. From their website (<http://www.pagerduty.com>), I like how it works with any monitoring system _as long as the tool can send email_. That would make it easy to integrate.

<comment><USER6> Large scale engineering dept guy here, the problem there is that most companies like that won't accept a SaaS solution.

Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely brilliant. I think it's the first time I've ever given a thumbs up to a third level metasolution to a problem.

Pagerduty needs to push some use cases on their site. It might break the SaaS reluctance to steaks and strippers type corporate managers. "It can eat my rediclously complicated jasper report that I send straight to the trash bin on arrival so I don't have to read it and figure out what buttons on the phone I have to push with all the reluctance of a four year old kid with a plate of brussel sprouts and broccoli in front of them? Sign me up!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PagerDuty has been acting as my alarm clock for the last few weeks and has performed admirably. Good for them, bad for me and my servers.

<comment><USER8> It would be funny to set up a server that specifically crashes when you want to wake up, similar to those alarm clocks that require you to solve a puzzle to stop blaring

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering the kind of people who have engineers on call, I wonder if all prices aren't low by an order of magnitude or so.

</comment><comment><USER10> We integrated PagerDuty with scoutapp.com and pingdom.com. Works great.

</comment><comment><USER11> The pager duty guys are great. I had the pleasure of meeting them at the reception last week.

</comment><comment><USER12> Beyond their features, these guys are great - they're determined and helpful. And for a service like theirs these things are paramount. Congratulations PagerDuty!

</comment><comment><USER13> Do u have an API? I'd like to integrate your service with ours (<http://sleep.fm>)

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a simple integration API and we can also integrate with any system that can send email. Regarding the integration, just shoot us an email: firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER13> ok great will do. I was on iphone when i wrote question, yet now looking via old fashion computer Im not easily seeing it on your site.

<comment><USER14> Was looking for it too, found it: <http://www.pagerduty.com/docs/api/api- documentation> took a while, though -- in my opinion, a link to the API documentation is important enough to put in the footer, maybe next to or under "integration guides".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We've been using it as well. Works great!

</comment><comment><USER16> You reinvented Nagios?

<comment><USER17> Not really. It doesn't do any monitoring, it just turns an e-mail into a phone call, and decides who to call based on a schedule you maintain in the web app.

The fact that it doesn't do monitoring is pretty much my only major gripe with PagerDuty. I've been a customer for a few months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And this is better than widely adopted, open source Nagios how?

<comment><USER19> It is nothing like Nagios. PagerDuty handles alerting, not monitoring. Once your monitoring system discovers something is wrong, it tells PagerDuty. PagerDuty then gets ahold of the right person. It lets you set up on-call rotations. It does automatic escalation if the primary contact doesn't acknowledge the incident. If your monitoring system supports it, it will even automatically resolve the incident once you fix your servers.

<comment><USER18> In point of fact, Nagios (which I use extensively) handles alerting, notification, auto escalations, acknowledgements, on-call rotations, and resets itself post incident. <http://library.nagios.com/> Sounds like re- inventing the wheel for a well-solved problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Google bans porn on Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/03/tech/mobile/google-adult-glass/

<comment><USER2> Umm, it wasn't "porn" app they were banning, but rather an app that has a very serious potential for abuse -- in the form of non-consensual POV shots of unsuspecting subjects.

You know, like that old mirror-tied-to-the-front-of-your-shoe trick, but way, way creepier.</comment>


Ask HN: Python Enthusiast – How to get my foot through the door? - <AUTHOR> I am a Python enthusiast, picked up the language a year and a half ago by self tutoring and also took the Udacity Introduction to Data Science course with a keystone Project.I also picked up learning the Flask Web framework, in order to deliver web applications using Python. I am really struggling with getting my foot through the door, as there is the typical catch 22 scenario, "We can't take you on board as you do not have Production centric experience" Well i need to work on a real project, in order to gain Production experience. I'm even willing to work Pro bono, in order to gain experience under my belt. Are there any suggestions as to how to break through? anybody out there with a project needing help? <comment><USER4> In order to get a job as a fullstack python dev, at the minimum you need to know:

\- Python

\- JavaScript

\- jQuery (bonus for knowing Angular or something other framework)

\- Basic Git skills

\- SQL

\- HTML / CSS

\- Flask or Django

\- Basic Unix skills

\- Basic knowledge of algorithms and data structures

I cover how I personally approached this here:

[http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my- yea...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-year-of- code.html)

Once you have these skills, it's still going to take a couple months because every place you approach is going to ask you to do a code challenge, since presumably you don't have a well-developed GitHub profile.

The best strategy is to take a job as a consultant at a dev shop, even if it's at somewhat less than market rate. Then after a year or two you'll be extremely employable and your salary will basically double, assuming you've been using all your free time to teach yourself new skills and build a portfolio.

<comment><USER5> Alternatively, don't try and be a "fullstack" dev (at least right off the bat), and you only need to know Python, git, and Django/Flask.

In my opinion, places demanding "fullstack" devs are going to overwork you because they're too cheap or too small to hire real DBAs and front-end devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This may or may not be of interest to you personally, but this is probably a good time to remind everyone that:

1) OpenStack is written almost 100% in Python

and

2) Nobody involved heavily in OpenStack ever has to go looking for work - recruiters will come to you, whether you want them to or not.

As a bonus, it's an exciting project and a great community: [http://www.openstack.org/community/](http://www.openstack.org/community/)

<comment><USER7> Oh cool. This is extremely interesting to me personally, as a relatively new Python developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd recommend that you go to places and meet people in person with no expectations (eg. go hang out at local Python meetups, get to know people, discuss your current projects over a pint, etc.), contribute to as many open source projects as possible, and don't put too much emphasis on particular technologies (eg. lots of places won't care that you know Python in particular as much as they'll care that you understand general concepts: Learn your algorithms, distributed version control principles, and be able to talk intelligently about computer science in general)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, appreciate it

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is how I bootstrapped my way into a full-time engineering job (note, I also have my BS in Computer Science), I'm sure you could do something similar:

Find some businesses that need some simple, short-term coding work - <USER2> work or php work, whatever you know that people need - and, maybe by taking an initial pay hit, get the job and deliver. Do a few of these, charging a bit more each time, and you have a portfolio of professional work. Now you're a professional programmer, you can either continue doing freelance work or apply to full-time gigs with your portfolio of real-world work.

It's not glamorous, it's not quick, but it worked for me.

Some places to look for intitial jobs:

* [http://jobs.wordpress.net/](http://jobs.wordpress.net/)

* [http://www.djangodevelopers.net/](http://www.djangodevelopers.net/)

* [http://djangojobbers.com/](http://djangojobbers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I did open source, put everything up to GitHub, participated in public discussions and I never applied for a job (except for one), they found me.

You should build something biggish in a topic you love and make it open source. It doesn't matter what it is. I did this for example: [https://github.com/pokerregion/poker](https://github.com/pokerregion/poker)

Also, filling out your LinkedIn profile can help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, most appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're willing to work for free, it would be great if you could do that for a nonprofit that can't afford to pay or a social good open source project where everyone does it for free.

What's very hard is finding a good fit. There is no equivalent of OKCupid for matching nonprofits and coders. The ones I've found are like dating services that only ask "Do you like girls or boys?" and "How tall are you?"

So I've decide to build it myself. It will be called _GitGive_. You heard it here first!

It will be the ultimate bootstrap, because the very first nonprofit project on GitGive will be GitGive itself.

I'm going to build it in Python. If you want to help out, let me know!

<comment><USER12> I might be interested send me an email? firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got my first Python job by going to a user group meeting where there was an interesting presentation, and afterwards introducing myself to the speaker and handing him a resume.

As far as portfolio, I'm sure you can find someone in your friends or networks that would love for you to build a small website for them, or move their current site to Flask. If you don't know anyone looking for a site, approach local non-profits, your local library, or if you have kids or know anyone with kids, I can guarantee that the PTA at their school will have a bunch of projects that they'd love to build.

A quicker exercise that is good for portfolio is to look for web designers who have posted interesting mockups (e.g. on dribbble) and ask them for permission to build a working prototype of their mockup. This is good for both of you, and you might end up with someone you can call on to help with design work.

<comment><USER14> Mockups into prototypes is a solid suggestion

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Make a Django/Flask web application on github, find a open source project and start contributing to it, make sure you understand testing/continuous delivery, learn all the important data structures and algorithms. If you honestly understand everything on these websites you will have no problem passing a interview.

[https://github.com/wdi-sf- jan/notes/tree/master/ds_algorithm...](https://github.com/wdi-sf- jan/notes/tree/master/ds_algorithms) [http://bigocheatsheet.com/](http://bigocheatsheet.com/) [http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/](http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Are you looking for Python jobs exclusively? In learning python you've likely already developed the skills necessary to pick up other frameworks and languages, so consider broadening your search to include those jobs.

I'm personally more than willing to hire developers with experience outside of my companies primary stack. Also very open to junior developers without production experience.

No need to work for free (actually, I'd highly advise against that). Just keep looking for junior dev jobs. And, if you're main concern is getting better, make sure the company has other developers better than you.

</comment><comment><USER17> When i was just starting out (back in 1996) i simply built a website for myself, then one for a friend, then one for the company where i was working as a janitor to get some extra income to pay for my studies. Mostly for free, the company one in exchange for computer parts since they could then just write it off as tax deductible office equipment :) Basically you build up your portfolio on the low end until you find an entry level position somewhere or find that your good at selling yourself so you can start freelancing and then you roll from there.

</comment><comment><USER18> Make stuff relevant to the places you want to work. It's both a signal of competence and of drive and caring about that place.

For example, assuming a data science team in an e-commerce retailer is hiring a Python dev: crawl their site, grab the relevant attributes (category, gender, name, price, discount), then upload a graphical, interactive representation of their inventory and a short analysis of their price structure. Do so on a page hosted on your own server (like a free AWS micro instance + $5/year for domain), then stick the code on a private repo which you share with the person you get in touch with ($7/month for 5 on Github).

You've just demonstrated both technical competence over the whole ecosystem, and that you are at least aware of the "business side". You've also probably done more than 99% of candidates for the position.

Recent example: I recently had a chat with a friend who explained to me a problem he had been having for 6 months getting a simple web tool up and running for his business. My co-founder and I knocked out a working prototype in 2 hours and sent him the link. He signed us up immediately.

I think there's a lot of less technically literate folks out there who need some work done. Think your local tailor, restaurant, whatever. You can try ask them about it and present some solutions, and some might end up paying you. It's a start, allows you to say you put something in production.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so so much, for taking out of your busy time to give such insightful advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I disagree with some of the suggestions of "building up a github profile".

There is a catch-22 there, in that you will only get found "per-chance" or "if someone is actually looking".

You can build sites but you don't need to open-source them either.

Build up a portfolio of legitimate work by taking scraps is the best way and then advertise yourself far and wide with your portfolio of legitimate work.

 _Hiring a code-monkey is easy and plenty of $5 workers in India can probably churn out code. Being a professional and delivering high-quality work is how you will stand out and warrant a $40-$50 per-hour rate_

It looks like you're American, so finding work as a contractor won't be that tough for you.

I'd aim for mid-size non-tech companies that need processes automated. Do great work for them and referrals will become your prime marketing go-to.

[1] I did all that github bullshit myself and

</comment><comment><USER20> This question, and some of the responses give me the thought: Maybe there's room for a site that allows people to post the fact that they are at a stage in their career that they're willing to work for free.

They'd include useful information such as why they are prepared to contribute (such as 18 months studying python and Flask and building some personal projects), letters of reference from people who can attest to their character and smarts, etc.

Also, the site could perform such basics as a criminal check and make the results available to potential "employers" with the permission of the person who wants to get experience (he or she would OK the information dissemination for each potential one).

Just had this thought today and am wondering what people might think about it. (As it happens, I'm in the process of deciding on my next project...)

</comment><comment><USER21> Where are you located?

<comment><AUTHOR> A suburb of the city of Philadelphia Pa, called Plymouth Meeting

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What do you do currently? I went from a BA in Econ and an MBA to software development by bringing those technical skills and applying them to whatever job I was currently doing. Those companies had a need for automation and internal applications which I was able to step up and take on those tasks. After some time, I had built up enough experience to warrant a software engineer role.

Of course, this probably works better if you are a) in a small company and b) in an area or organization that doesn't have access to many developers.

<comment><USER23> Did you transition roles within the same company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm exactly in your position. Any help or advice would be great.

<comment><USER25> Contribute to open source, work on side-projects, do some professional work for friends/relatives pro-bono.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is another approach that you can try: you can get your foot into a medium sized company as a QA automation developer, you need to learn Selenium Webdriver with Python and you can practice a little bit of Python and get paid. As a Python enthusiast you probably know enough about QA anyways. Once you are in, it is possible for a dev opportunity to open and you'll be in a very good position to apply.

</comment><comment><USER27> Start talking to local dev shops and startups that heavily use Python and offer to work for free (as you mentioned).

Most will probably deny you due to lack of resources (onboarding volunteers still takes engineering hours), but one might take a chance.

Shoot me an email if you want to chat (address in my profile). I was in the exact same spot as you 18 months ago, and have been employed as an engineer since then.

</comment><comment><USER28> I work at a Python shop, and we find developers through Python meetups. As other people have already commented, go to any local Python meetup you can and become a familiar face there. Plus, use all the other fantastic advice here such as getting involvement in open source so you can put that on your resume as experience.

</comment><comment><USER29> Start a small consultancy building web applications for local businesses part- time. Now you have production experience.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've met a bunch of folks who changed careers and are doing full-time development now. A fair amount of them went through one of those devlopment bootcamps like Recurse Center (ex-Hacker School). The other folks basically got their foot in the door through networking.

So, I'd say those would be a couple of things to explore.

<comment><USER31> I know people who have done a Recurse Center batch, and people who have done bootcamp courses. I agree that each could potentially be a useful experience for someone changing careers, depending on the situation.

Clarification: The Recurse Center isn't a bootcamp in the sense that many people use the phrase. (There is no curriculum, it is free to attend, and many attendees were working as software engineers before their batch.)

[https://www.recurse.com/blog/77-hacker-school-is-now-the- rec...](https://www.recurse.com/blog/77-hacker-school-is-now-the-recurse- center)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you've been learning Flask take those sites that you use to learn with and host them up on Digital Ocean or the like. That way you'll have production and deployment experience. There are also a ton of open source products out there using Python. Reddit is one for example.

</comment><comment><USER33> \- go to local Python meetups and network

\- look on elance or other contracting sites and underbid everybody

\- contribute to open-source

</comment><comment><USER34> I might be able to refer you for a paid part-time python position...you can reach me at jamesalexanderlevy at g mail. If you do happen to have a github account its always a plus to link to it when you're asking around about jobs, as well.

</comment><comment><USER35> Have you tried some of the free lancing websites like oDesk? While it probably doesn't completely solve your problem, it will give you some real world production experience. You might have to low ball some offers though.

</comment><comment><USER36> Learn jpython. All Reel work gets done in American programming langaguges of JAVA/DALVIK/C#.

No open source software will go anywhere without support from AMERICAN companies Oracle, IBM and APPLE

</comment><comment><USER37> >I am really struggling with getting my foot through the door, as there is the typical catch 22 scenario, "We can't take you on board as you do not have Production centric experience"

How many applications and feelers are you sending out? The vast majority of companies are either unwilling to risk hiring a junior developer, or don't have the on-boarding and infrastructure to make use of them. With excellent set-up, you should still expect to see fewer than one in twenty companies get back to you. The application game sucks, but it's how you find the companies that can hire junior developers.

Where in the interviewing pipeline are you getting this? The best course of action is very dependent on where you're getting rejected.

My model of the pipeline: 1\. Initial contact 2\. Phone screen 3\. Technical or coding challenge 4\. On-site interview 5\. Offer & salary negotiations

So, there's five different pieces of advice:

1\. If you've sent out a hundred resumes and have gotten zero phone screens, I recommend working on your resume and on-paper skills. The good news is that a hundred applications like that takes 5-10 hours depending on skill and organization. Advice: make a couple small open-source web applications, and put them on the very top of your resume.

2\. If you've gotten five phone screens and no technical challenges or on- sites, I recommend brushing up on self-presentation skills. Figure out a quick, one-minute story to tell about who you are and why you're an awesome self-taught programmer. Also, you could check how you're talking about yourself, and try to find areas where you're convincing people to not hire you. Self deprecating talk about lack of production experience is playing defense, not offense. Your job is offense, not defense.

3\. Coding challenges are basically something you can cram for. There's programming competitions to get domain-specific expertise here. I don't have good advice since this is personally an area of natural strength. Project Euler is awesome and a great fit for Python. Challenges are a mix of live shared-editor with voice and offline ones. The shared-editor stuff is higher value since there's more commitment on their end.

4\. Expect to fail the first one to four on-site interviews. The good news is that getting the first on-site is the most difficult. Anxiety, comfort levels, and lots of 'soft' skills go into interviewing well. You improve at this best by interviewing badly. Cracking the Coding Interview is a good book to use to improve here. If you have or can form a social group for this, that's even better.

On-site interviews roughly look like "put candidate in room, have someone come in and give them a whiteboard problem like something from Cracking the Coding Interview, repeat three to five times." The more you can make your practice look like this, the better. I'm talking down to wearing interview clothes, keeping the practice-interviewees in the same room and rotating interviewers, etc.

5\. Don't worry about negotiation too much at this stage. If you must, I have some very general advice. First, ask for more time to make a decision - <USER3> for two weeks. Do not mention a number first. The only thing you need to say live is something like "that's a very interesting offer, let me think on it and get back to you." Do all negotiation over email or in rounds. Try to get multiple offers at the same time. Accepting an offer from the first company that gives you one is usually a mistake. (Why? Because someone who can get one offer can likely get three or more, there's a large variance in fit and compensation, and you want to accept the best offer so far. Plus, as long as you don't burn bridges, companies that have extended you an offer are willing to talk again later.)

tl;dr - Do you have projects and a good resume? If so, how many applications are you sending out?

<comment><AUTHOR> I must say first and foremast a BIG thank you to you, for taking the time to respond to my post, most appreciated. To answer your question, i will like to think i do have a good resume :) and sending out about a dozen a week maybe. No I presently do not have projects.

<comment><USER37> In your situation, I'd build a web app to show potential employees that I can actually code, and then send out closer to twelve applications a day than twelve a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> if you have a couple of bucks for a DO instance and a domain, develop and opensource many sample apps to create a portfolio.

Some ideas from the top of my head: blog, job board, chat client/server, HN/reddit clone, FB clone.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you're based in the Bay Area send me an email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER40> Email me. I might be of direct or indirect help.

</comment><comment><USER41> Look at the door and ask yourself "What would Kojack do?"

<comment><USER42> Or Chuck Norris. (Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding)

<comment><USER41> I dunno, I think at this point I get +2 to bash down doors.</comment></comment></comment>


Modification of Java HotSpot VM allowing unlimited class redefinition at runtime - <AUTHOR> http://ssw.jku.at/dcevm/

<comment><USER2> My company (<http://guidewire.com/>) sponsors that work, and our developers have been using the DCEVM for day-to-day work for a couple of months now. It seems pretty stable.</comment>


Sunglasses that train your brain by dimming when you daydream - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/wearable-reviews/narbis-hands-on/ <comment><USER2> This seems like a very bad thing to do. Daydreaming may have a very important factor in how our brain deal with overwhelming amount of information. By interfering with it, you're more likely to mess up your ability to retain information and other things.

If you're that easily distracted, this device ain't going to help, you have a bigger problem than daydreaming. Gotta change the environment around you, not the brain's fault that you keep feeding it too much.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. I think the idea is not to eliminate daydreaming, but to remedy those who do it excessively (I have been one of these when I was younger). Once you've got the problem under control, you should discontinue use.

As for your second point, sometimes it _is_ the brain's fault. It may not be severe enough to be a disorder, but individuals differ in their ability to concentrate.

But I understand what you mean -- there are a lot of distraction creators in the modern world (smartphones being on top, IMO). Using a device without addressing those is not the best way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can they be hacked to dim when they detect that you are perceiving danger?

<comment><USER5> Dimming the glasses while in danger doesn't seem like a sensible thing to do.

<comment><USER4> [http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Joo_Janta_200_Super- Chroma...](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Joo_Janta_200_Super- Chromatic_Peril_Sensitive_Sunglasses) It is, if you want to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hrmmm...I've only ever seen studies that claim daydreaming is an important part of creativity, learning, and mental health.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cute, but why not just shock yourself instead? Like an anti-barking collar Dimming the glasses doesn't seem very punishing, in fact it might help you sleep.

<comment><USER8> It's probably not easy to get electroshock devices approved for sale. Also, is "punishing" what they are going for? It seems like it's biofeedback, which isn't the same, it stimulates awareness.

<comment><USER9> No, he is being sarcastic. I believe that counts as _gratuitous negativity_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER10> >sarcasm is gratuitous negativity

I hope YOU'RE being sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Handicap eyeshades for daydreamers. I think Harrison Bergeron is about that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use stimulants myself. There is no way I'm daydreaming after three cups of coffee.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is beyond cool. Are there any known side-effects to the sensor?</comment>


Apple needs to figure out how the Internet works - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/11/22/buying-twitter-might-help-apple-figure-out-how-the-internet-works/ <comment><USER2> Apple knows what it should know and know that very well.</comment>


Random Generation of English Sentences (1961) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://mt-archive.info/NPL-1961-Yngve.pdf <comment><USER2> Can you imagine waking up one day in the near future and realizing that 96% of the tweets you have been reading for the past year have been generated by a computer?

The sheer thought of that just blew my mind a little.

It could drive the whole world mad.

<comment><USER3> Twitter is probably up to 30% already.

<comment><USER4> Although, at this point it's mostly just spam, porn, and political bots at really really low quality. Imagine the day when worthwhile content with journalistic, artistic, or intellectual value is posted by machines. There are already some great bots pumping out tweets with color palette, non-sensical invention patent ideas, and historical events.

<comment><USER5> They can increase 1000x the output of text, I can read only about as much as before.

<comment><USER6> Just wait until you have a tweet-reading bot that picks out the items most interesting to you. Arguably, we already have that in the form of Facebook's like-driven echo chamber algorithms. But it would be nice to have a version whose parameters are under your control rather than some large organization with questionable motives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some details you might miss just reading the paper:

Victor Yngve, the author, became the first president what would become the ACL not long after publishing this.

This paper is showing off the language COMIT he developed. While it may not look like much, it directly led to the development of SNOBOL and other string processing languages.

This paper was a warm up to working on machine translation; turns out that progress in the field was slow and led to what might be called the first AI Winter, back in 1966!

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

It seems that he moved away from Computational Linguistics to more theoretical work after that, but he was publishing books even after 2000. He passed away in 2012, and you can read his obituary from the ACL here: [http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/J12-3001](http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/J12-3001)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the state of the art text generation result from Google: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.02410](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.02410)

* < S > With even more new technologies coming onto the market quickly during the past three years , an increasing number of companies now must tackle the ever-changing and ever-changing environmental challenges online . < S > Check back for updates on this breaking news story . < S > About 800 people gathered at Hever Castle on Long Beach from noon to 2pm , three to four times that of the funeral cortege . ` < S > We are aware of written instructions from the copyright holder not to , in any way , mention Rosenberg 's negative comments if they are relevant as indicated in the documents , " eBay said in a statement . < S > It is now known that coffee and cacao products can do no harm on the body . < S > Yuri Zhirkov was in attendance at the Stamford Bridge at the start of the second half but neither Drogba nor Malouda was able to push on through the Barcelona defence . _

<comment><USER7> It is funny how google explores a mostly statistical approach. On the other hand we have Grammatical Framework ([https://www.grammaticalframework.org/](https://www.grammaticalframework.org/)) which is much more along the line of the article posted.</comment></comment>


World's No 1 bridge player suspended after failing a drugs test - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/01/world-no1-bridge-player-suspended-after-failing-a-drugs-test-geir-helgemo <comment><USER2> This is so... Silly. It's too bad this article is light on the details.

I wonder if this guy is just on testosterone replacement therapy, which is an increasingly common occurrence. Low testosterone can cause poor health and a number of other issues (some psychological) in men.

Regardless, saying that because someone tests positive for a non performance enhancing drug they should have their card playing medals stripped makes no sense at all. :/

<comment><USER3> > I wonder if this guy is just on testosterone replacement therapy

More likely he was trying to have kids.

<comment><USER4> WADA and most sports have exemptions. A so-called "Therapeutic Usage Exemption" or TUE. They are easy enough to get that team doctors for certain cycling teams have abused them.

The female drug is the interesting one. Typically testosterone is detected by measuring the ratios of different hormones, a lot of testosterone isn't even unusual in many people but it's balanced out by epi-testosterone. When you add testosterone via unnatural means the ratio skews. (Read about "the cream" that Barry Bonds used with "The Clear", it was used for masking) Hard to say what goes on in some of these folks' heads, they generally know the rules and they know the penalties and they know they'll be tested. I'd assume he took both to mask something. If you're really trying to have kids or on T-replacement, you have a doctor treating use, measuring things and that doctor can provide a TUE letter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > tested positive for synthetic testosterone and the female fertility drug > clomifene

Neither appear to be illegal (although require prescription in most countries) and neither are performance enhancing.

What is the purpose of these rules in this case?

<comment><USER6> I don't know what clomifene does, but testosterone improves stress response, in the sense that naturally-fluctuating levels may be a disadvantage in that regard.

It's not a nootropic as such, but it could legitimately be called out as a performance aid in any high-pressure competition whether athletic or mental.

<comment><USER7> The article says it isn't performance enhancing.

<comment><USER6> If the bridge association is blindly adopting rules meant to govern physical athletic performances -- or if the IOC is forcing them to do so -- then the people responsible are obviously a bunch of morons. That conclusion seems unlikely to be the right one, so I'll stand by my point until more information comes to light. I'm not professionally qualified to argue it either way.

<comment><USER7> "Kari-Anne Opsal, president of the Norwegian Bridge Federation, said the drugs were "not performance enhancing"."

So I don't think its reasonable to go looking to performance enhancement as a reason.

To me it does appear that they're following rules meant for actual athletes. How much choice they had I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So if I'm understanding this correctly, the IOC /WADA has one list of banned drugs regardless of sport and gender.

To me it seems obvious that performance enhancing varies from sport to sport. Why did this not occur to the IOC/WADA ???

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Most drugs on the list (maybe even all?) will increase physical performance across the board for all physical activity. Testosterone will bump up muscle production whether you're swimming, running, cycling, lifting, skiing, or whatever.

This is just more evidence that Bridge doesn't belong in the Olympics, IMO.

<comment><USER7> Example, there are banned drugs the open up the airways. Now if you're doing an endurance event then it is probably performance enhancing, if you're a curler or a diver, not so much.

Then there are in between sports (that rely on skill as much as or more than physical strength) do you want a blanket ban on a drug some people may legitimately use just to prevent some one gaining an advantage? I would say possibly, but it should be evidence based, it shouldn't be done lightly.

Further the drug testing regime isn't some casual, hand in a urine sample with your entry form. Its making yourself available at set times, just in case some one tests you, and then it's peeing in a cup in front of them.

<comment><USER9> There are drugs that are banned in some sports but not others, e.g. beta- blockers.

Source: built the UK drug database and peeing in a cup scheduling system around 2004.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any idea why Bridge would ban, what they admit is a non performance enhancing drug then?

Is it because of the IOC links?

<comment><USER9> Good question. I believe that whilst there are a few drugs that have different rules for different sports, in general it is easier to just have the same rules for all sports. It's possibly this doesn't make sense with regard to "mind-sports" like Bridge; there's probably some politics involved.

Back in 2004, I remember drugs were broken down into categories and almost all categories were either blanket banned, allowed out of competition but not in competition, or allowed. Very few categories (possibly only beta-blockers?) had a more complex classification. While that was 15 years ago, I think the system is still similar.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any special insights into the process?

Naively, I would hope that the Bridge governing body would get the stakeholders together with medical experts to come together to decide on a sensible list. That doesn't seem to be the case, I'm guessing it's (lack of) money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok this is getting ridiculous. Physical performance enhancing drugs I can understand, but there is no magic pill, no genius injection, and absolutely no definitive proof that a specific drug is going to give someone an advantage. There is simply too much bioindividuality...hence why I don't take adderall anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is proof that modafinil and methylphenidate (Provigil and Ritalin) improve chess performance: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924977X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924977X17300196)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The anti-doping stuff has gone too far. It's like the zero tolerance policies in schools where students are expelled for bringing a 1cm long lego gun to school.

In addition to the points that this is a legal drug, was probably prescribed for a legitimate use, and isn't performance enhancing for bridge, there's the issue where actual drugs that are performance enhancing for bridge, like caffeine, are not banned.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can't have Bezos Prime intimdating others at the bridge table.

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought it was going to be a stimulant like adderall, which probably would give a bridge player a significant advantage.

</comment><comment><USER14> related xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1173/](https://xkcd.com/1173/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, I guess he burned that bridge XD</comment>


Ask HN: Why do foreign CAs have the power to make .com SSLs? - <AUTHOR>

This is the second or third time in recent memory some foreign CA has been caught with a bad SSL. Why is a .nl organization able to produce .com SSLs? In the world of domains a .nl registrar can only make .nl domains, but in the CA world they can make whatever TLD they like? That seems like a fundamental problem here. Can this be fixed or addressed somehow? <comment><USER2> .com is not for the exclusive use of the USA!</comment>


RIM buys developer of the Iris browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/business/article/685880 <comment><USER2> Worth it since now the company can implement the browser immediately, instead off waiting to develop, test and launch it. Time is money, and in the long run, RIM may have just saved both. Look out IPhone. Now if RIM can just improve the Blackberry App World.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fantastic news. I have been developing a mobile version of a web site this week and WebKit has been a dream. The BlackBerry version... not so much. It seems like WebKit is becoming the standard for mobile these days.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm really surprised RIM had to buy a company to implement a WebKit based browser. Seems like they should have been able to do it in house. I guess if the pricetag was low enough it makes sense.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I think RIM has the engineering talent, but this move seems to be a time saver.

<comment><USER6> Having worked with java apps for blackberry, I fear that not everything is all right with their current organization. Making java apps for blackberry is even worse than making them for nokia or sonyericson. Poorly documented and broken in mysterious ways.</comment></comment></comment>


Airports are normalizing facial recognition in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/airports-are-normalizing-facial-recognition-in-the-united-states-dd4c9659945d <comment><USER2> There are a few different sides you could take from this article. 1) this could improve flight experiences and help find individuals who are on the run or could cause a threat but 2) like the article discusses, it is invasive and there are no rules with regards to storing and selling bio-metrics in 99% of the states.</comment>


Git 2.8 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2131-git-2-8-has-been-released <comment><AUTHOR> I've needed user.useconfigonly for years. I constantly forget to change email when I start working on projects in different contexts.

<comment> da-x Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'd love it if you could specify which PEM file to use on the command line. Is this included?</comment>


Angular 6 Email Builder - <AUTHOR> https://ngb.wlocalhost.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone! I would like to know your opinion and suggestion about this app. Would be great something about UI/UX! Thank you very much!</comment>


Wrestling Python into LLVM Intermediate Representation (2019) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99bqotoBKu4 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if it's an exact fit, but dropbox used to have pyston: [https://github.com/dropbox/pyston](https://github.com/dropbox/pyston)

The blog posts by Kevin Modzelewski went into the internals: [https://blog.pyston.org/](https://blog.pyston.org/)

Also by the same person, a good article on Python's performance: [http://blog.kevmod.com/2016/07/why-is-python- slow/](http://blog.kevmod.com/2016/07/why-is-python-slow/)

As a side comment: On the subject of type inference, I really come to like python's type hints. I don't use mypy itself yet, but already had a habit of adding types in docstrings, and like it when I can add a clue that a signature/return is dealing with a something that's _not_ a basic type.

There are some nice little things out there for advanced typing, being added now and then:

\- TypedDict and Literal: [https://github.com/python/typing/blob/master/typing_extensio...](https://github.com/python/typing/blob/master/typing_extensions/README.rst) (TypedDict was accepted in PEP 589[1])

\- NamedTuple had variable annotation added in Python 3.6: [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0526/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0526/)

I wonder if typings are added to a codebase, we could give LLVM one more shot. It'd be pretty crazy to build able to build a large graphql server and build it into a statically linked binary like golang.

[1] [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0589/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0589/)

<comment><USER3> It would already be nice if it was Julia LLVM JIT style.

Many of the "why Python is slow" articles usually hand wave the fact that other languages, just as dynamic, like Common Lisp and Smalltalk, have quite capable JIT compilers.

So it is a matter of having enough resources to throw at it.

Maybe PyPy and Numba are as good as it gets, unless some big corporation is willing to spend big bucks into improving Python's JITs.

<comment><USER4> Let me chip in here to clarify some things.

> other languages, just as dynamic, like Common Lisp and Smalltalk, have quite > capable JIT compilers.

Common Lisp implementations don't need a JIT compiler to be fast. In fact, most of them don't use JIT compilation at all.

What makes Common Lisp implementations (especially SBCL) so fast is a combination of sophisticated static analysis, optional type declarations, and the fact that Common Lisp has been carefully designed to allow for high performance. I cannot stress how important the last point is. The Common Lisp standard is a contract between the programmer and the compiler writer that allows the former to write portable programs, yet gives the latter enough freedom to optimize.

In contrast, the language "standard" of Python doesn't clarify what portable programs may rely on. Instead, programmers tend to rely on the specific behavior of CPython. And reproducing the exact behavior of CPython is much harder than implementing a carefully designed standard.

> So it is a matter of having enough resources to throw at it.

No amount of resources can heal the design decisions of Python. The only way to get Python fast is by going through a painful standardization effort and by breaking some existing code. And I don't see that happening anytime soon. (Python 4 anyone?)

<comment><USER3> Fair enough that relying in CPython specific behaviour might be an issue.

Although stuff like dictionary ordering, GC implementation, or GIL shouldn't impact JIT implementation.

However going back to Smalltalk, which you didn't mention, not only it is as dynamic as Python, at any given moment can the image change its contents, and via messages like _becomes:_ an object completely changes its internal structure.

<comment><USER5> > not only it is as dynamic as Python, at any given moment can the image > change its contents, and via messages like becomes: an object completely > changes its internal structure.

Another thing: in Smalltalk the idea of a "stack frame" is actually encapsulated in an object called Context, and you can always inspect the current context. It's just an object like everything else in the system. I don't think Python has something like that, but I could be mistaken.

<comment><USER6> You can walk and inspect the stack using sys._getframe() forever or the more friendly stack function in the inspect module.

* [https://docs.python.org/3/library/sys.html#sys._getframe](https://docs.python.org/3/library/sys.html#sys._getframe)

* [https://docs.python.org/3/library/inspect.html#the-interpret...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/inspect.html#the-interpreter-stack)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a python+LLVM talk last weekend as FOSDEM too (video is up)

[https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/llvm_python/](https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/llvm_python/)

"Python with LLVM has at least one decade of history. This session will be going to cover-up how python implementations tried to use LLVM such as CPython's Unladen Swallow branch (PEP 3146) or attempts from PyPy and why they failed. After that it will show what are the current python projects that use LLVM for speed, such as numba and python libraries for working with LLVM IR. In the end, it will mention about new ideas that would unite the powers of both LLVM and Python."

</comment><comment><USER8> Here are the slides from the talk: [https://ep2016.europython.eu/media/conference/slides/wrestli...](https://ep2016.europython.eu/media/conference/slides/wrestling- python-into-llvm-intermediate-representation.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is actually from PyCon Israel 2016 and was uploaded in 2019.

<comment><USER10> I think that's accurate. I think it's this repo: [https://github.com/aherlihy/PythonLLVM](https://github.com/aherlihy/PythonLLVM)

Which hasn't been updated in 5 yrs :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brutal editing</comment>


Flopstarter. A platform for bad ideas - <AUTHOR> http://flopstarter.oliandjosie.com <comment><USER2> NSFW images!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nicely done.

A different take (with community involvement): [http://www.halfbakery.com](http://www.halfbakery.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> This needs the Dogecoin community.</comment>


Show HN: Glomp Attack – Tackle hug your friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.glompattack.com/?utm_source=showhn&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=showhn <comment><AUTHOR> Took some heat on r/shutupandtakemymoney so I made a promo code 'reddit', it will work for the first 50 people. Use it to Glomp Attack your mom, your friends, your enemies!</comment>


Zuckerberg summoned to House Of Commons inquiry - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43474760 <comment><USER2> I think most Americans comments in this thread is displaying bias.

To put in perspective, if Alibaba's partners was caught collecting massive amounts of customer data through Alibaba and using it to spy (in part for Chinese govt) and perform experiments/tactics on the American people, would they first summon the highest American branch leader of Alibaba in hush-hush manner or the most notable founder himself/herself with the most voting power on changing and directing the organization?

UK isn't USA, if they feel that the liberties of their own people is being tampered with, they would want to talk directly to the big man, the UK-based CEO would rather be just a horn through which Zuckerberg and his team talks through so it would be more direct to talk to him.

Moreover whole situation is like a Catch-22, if Zuckerberg doesn't go, it would betray him more.

<comment><USER3> This analogy seems out-of-proportion, IMO.

With Cambridge Analytica, the customer data wasn't used by any government, but by a political party. To me, this really is the legitimate status quo of advertising. As a US citizen, it's not clear to me why this is wrong or bad, only that people "don't like it."

I for one am grateful that these services target me with _relevant_ adds. Is that something we want undo? What is the strategy here? Is the objective to be less informed and be directed to information that is non-relevant to our interests?

Now, I'm not saying that the ideal utopia wouldn't be a Facebook-less interlocking combination of privacy respecting, free open source software, decentralized networking, and federated identity. I just feel weird how it seems like "fears of election interference" and "muh democratic system" are being used to effect arbitrary changes in how Facebook does business.

<comment><USER4> > As a US citizen, it's not clear to me why this is wrong or bad, only that > people "don't like it."

Hacker News had various articles explaining that the EU soon will have something called the GDPR ([https://www.eugdpr.org/](https://www.eugdpr.org/)). UK is going to exit the EU, but it's not about that in particular. If EU citizens didn't give explicit permission for this data to be shared Facebook is not following this law. As UK is questioning this behaviour it seems they'll probably have something similar to GDPR after they leave the EU.

Further, this was NOT about providing ads, instead the data personal information was shared with a third party without this being explicitly consented to. People have been profiled without this been explicit, further no consent was given. That's what is not ok.

All the other questions seem like strawmans.

<comment><USER5> Didn't the third party collect data after users gave explicit permission to the third party app to use their data? From my understanding, users didn't read the short text explaining the information the third party would receive before pressing the "okay" button.

<comment><USER6> Users gave the app permission. The app also harvested the data of their Facebook Friends, who hadn't given permission.

<comment><USER7> They should take a lesson from the spotify API, friend listening feeds are out of reach for third party apps.

Since facebook apps request these fields so much, they could implement it as an opt-in/out checkbox "Do you want your data to be accessible by 3rd party apps without your consent through your friends?"

This way, if an app request friends access, they would get data only from the ones that allowed it.

It probably would remove a lot of value that can be extracted from their users, but facebook itself would still have all this data to use internally to target ads and they would limit the amount of data that can be exfiltrated to malicious 3rd parties without the consent of users.

<comment><USER8> Facebook already made this change; however, they changed these things _after_ the data was fetched and stored.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the info, I was not aware of that.

Good for them to make this change, bad for them because it was after the data was collected for abuse.

<comment><USER8> I think the takeaway is that these decisions are irreversible; it's very hard to recall data you've shared, so you need to err on the side of sharing _less_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'summoned' ◔_◔

For a moment, I feared we were treading the same path beaten by the US Congress with parliamentary extra-territorial over-reach, but it turns out it's just the BBC using the wrong words; the chairman of the select committee has merely requested that he give evidence before the committee: [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and- sport/180320%20Chair%20to%20Mark%20Zuckerberg%20re%20oral%20evidence.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I think it's a fair trade if you want to continue to run a business in a country, that country has a right to summon you to explain what your business is doing.

<comment><USER11> The right to summon the local corporate representative, legal team, etc.? Sure.

Does every country have the "right" to summon a multinational CEO? That'd get crazy really quick, and I doubt it'd benefit anybody (beyond politicians.)

I had the same reaction as the parent comment - to "request" his presence is perfectly fine, but a "summons" would be a bit much...

<comment><USER12> If you've compromised the details of millions of citizens, then summoning the CEO doesn't seem inappropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > How to protect your data on Facebook

...

> Use an ad blocker to limit advertising

Wow, this is awesome. I did not know the BBC was officially recommending the use of ad blockers.

<comment><USER14> Well the BBC does not advertise, so this isn't really unexpected.

<comment><USER15> The BBC worldwide service is funded by advertisements. If you browse their website from outside the UK, you get redirected to BBC.com which is plastered with ads.

<comment><USER6> It's almost as if the journalism is decoupled from the commercial arm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ongoing discussion at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626318)

</comment><comment><USER17> Curious about this scandal: is the bigger play here (by some unknown actors) to damage Zuckerberg's reputation in order to hinder him running for president in 2020? Or this is purely about violating privacy?

<comment><USER18> What about this situation makes you think there is a "bigger play" that requires a conspiracy?

<comment><USER19> In the other HN discussions, people have talked about how this type of Data Sharing has been known about in our community for years.

Hell, I've seen product demos from 2012 that showed big players offering private FB/Twitter post analytics for targeting ads/marketing. It's been going on for a long time.

So that does raise this serious concern: why are we making such a big deal of it now? One whistle blower?

A hundred other people groups _discovered_ the continents we call The Americas long before Columbus. His timing was right to gain the popularity he did.

So it could be coincidence, or it could be intentional. That 2nd thing should be thought of as a crazy conspiracy theory. Our media/TV is tightly manipulated and controlled. I mean if anything, this leak should make that more obvious than anything! So it's not so far out there as you might think.

<comment><USER18> > _this type of Data Sharing has been known about in our community for years._

> _why are we making such a big deal of it now? One whistle blower?_

The "we" who are making a "big deal of it now" is _not_ the HN community.

> _Our media /TV is tightly manipulated and controlled. I mean if anything, > this leak should make that more obvious than anything! So it's not so far > out there as you might think._

It is far out if you have a limited view of current events and how the world works. Zuckerberg is already eating shit from all sides in America, including questioning by Sen. Wyden [0]. So who are these "unknown actors" who have the power to control not just the U.S. Senate, but a totally separate governmental body? And why the hell would these "unknown actors" risk organizing that kind of conspiracy when it is completely _unneeded_? Don't you think that pulling strings at that level has some costs and baggage associated with it? But "unknown actors" are willing to risk it to add a little more bad PR to someone who is not even yet near the initial stages of a candidacy?

Why is that all more reasonable than the boring explanation that: most people don't know the details about Facebook's data hoarding/sharing, and now that high-profile investigations have come to light, people are more inclined to be pissed than complacent? That's how politics and public outrage work. It hasn't even been a week since another U.S. Senator proposed legislation and wrote a similarly angry letter to United Airlines because a dumbass flight attendant caused a puppy to die [1]. Where's the conspiracy behind that?

[0] [https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden- quest...](https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-questions- facebook-on-misuse-of-users-private-information)

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/politics/dog-death-united- ken...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/politics/dog-death-united-kennedy- letter/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Serious question no snark:

How does this work? How does UK know who Zuckerberg is? Shouldn't they be dealing with Facebook UK ceo? Zuckerberg is a private US citizen as far as UK is concerned, no?

Edit: stop being smartasses (to the no longer top voted replies). I am asking from a legal perspective. Facebook UK is the only entity UK law should know of (acc to my limited understanding)

<comment><USER21> Based on my admittedly limited understanding of the UK's particular brand of parliament, the House of Commons is essentially a panel of experts and advisors from various fields and they hold little direct legal authority in and of themselves, but they're supposed to be very influential to the people who do. I interpret this as trying to understand the problem better, not prosecute someone, in which case it's not who's-legally-responsible, but who- gets-Facebooks-DNA-and-vision-for-the-future.

<comment><USER22> The House of Commons is, in terms of authority, one of the most powerful parliamentary chambers in the world.

Most places there are constitutional limits on what parliament can decide and/or qualified majorities and other constraints needed to change constitutional law. In the UK, a central principle is that parliament is entirely sovereign. That is, parliament is not bound by any law decided by past parliaments, but can revoke or alter any of them (they are bound as long as they let a law stand, though) with a simple majority.

While your comment elsewhere that they need things to pass through House of Lords is sort of right, consider that the House of Commons powers are bootstrapped - e.g. the UK Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 severely curtailed the Lords powers, and both were passed as a direct response to the House of Lords being seen as obstructing the House of Commons. The Lords failed to stop both, because they knew in advance of the 1911 act that the government had threatened to simply stuff the Lords full of sympathetic new peers (lords).

As such, while the UK has a bicameral system, the Lords exceedingly rarely stop laws, it usually only delay them or cause negotiations over revisions, as if the Commons decide to push something through over the objections of the Lords, they generally get their will, and coupled with the lack of constitutional hindrances, they're more powerful than even most unicameral legislatives.

> I interpret this as trying to understand the problem better, not prosecute > someone, in which case it's not who's-legally-responsible, but who-gets- > Facebooks-DNA-and-vision-for-the-future.

This is true. It's not in any way a court proceeding. In this respect it's no different from being summoned to attend an inquiry in any other parliament.

<comment><USER23> What you've written is what UK constitutional lawyers would refer to as a "Dicey" or "Dicean" (named after the British legal scholar most associated with the principle of UK Parliamentary Sovereignty) view of how Parliamentary Sovereignty works.

The reality is somewhat more complex once you consider the UK's treaty obligations, many of which are hard to reconcile with "pure" Dicean sovereignty, but it's a good starting point. As a counter example, the UK can't practically legislate in a manner that breaches the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights - completely unrelated to the EU). Similarly, while still a member of the EU the UK, like all EU members, has to accept the primacy of EU legislation over domestic statutes in the areas in which the EU has the competence to make laws.

Studying the uneasy relationship between dicey style sovereignty and EU legislation (hello "Factortame" cases...) was a core component of a law degree in the UK for the past few decades, I assume this will change shortly given recent history!

<comment><USER22> The treaties do not change the underlying principle, though. They change the application of them, in that the only way for parliament to breach the ECHR for example would be to leave the treaty, but that is no different from other laws - the only things that is different is the complexity of the process of doing so.

So, yes, it's more complex. I don't think anyone would suggest parliament _would_ just rewrite arbitrary laws on a whim, because there are complex dependencies (hello Brexit). The point is there is no legal hindrance to it, and that is almost unique (I write "almost", but I don't know of a single other country where parliament has so unfettered power - I'd love examples).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review my project - TwitVance - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitvance.com

<comment><AUTHOR> TwitVance (<http://www.twitvance.com>) is an application to schedule tweets that I created using Rails in my spare time. Feedback and suggestions most welcome.

Prominent features: Ability to add multiple twitter accounts, integrated bit.ly URL shortening.

</comment><comment><USER2> I read every word of the landing page and still didn't know what TwitVance did.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I visit your startup in Berlin? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in Berlin to teach a course for General Assembly tomorrow (14th Jan) and Tuesday. I've the whole of Tuesday free, and would love to visit some startup/HN folks for a chat/code/whatever! <comment><USER2> Hey Tim, I'm one of the devs at testcloud, if you'd like to hang out, talk code, see our start up just chat, just drop me an email: firstname.lastname@example.com. Unfortunately, I got meetings after 4:30pm, otherwise, anytime works :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure, I'll be in Copenhagen but my cofounder will be in Berlin on the 14th. We're working on this: letsgeddit.com

Drop me a line via firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll set something up :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi Tim, I'd love to meet for a chat tomorrow. Drop me a line, to alex-at- limitedcraft.com. During the day I'm with Rocket in Mitte (Friedrichstraße).</comment>


Start a timer via the url - <AUTHOR> http://alrt.io/ <comment><USER2> The timeLeft -= 1000 approach is not the best one because setTimeout doesn't guarantee when the next tick is gonna happen.

Just open the JS console and type:

      for (var i = 0; i < 1e7; i++) {}

You will block the JS execution and your next tick will happen when the loop finishes. Using new Date().getTime() should do the job.

Edited for formatting.

<comment><USER3> Scrolling in iOS also stops setTimeout being called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using <http://e.ggtimer.com/> for a while, seems a bit more comprehensive.

<comment><USER5> thx to this comment, i created now a fluid-app for me with eggtimer.com! there is always a time when u need one (and ur too lazy to ask siri to do it ;) )

but now i would love to have a option on fluid, that ask me for parameter when it starts, so i can set the timeframe when i start the "app"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note: if you put in a time in hours higher than <http://alrt.io/80063993375h> (such as <http://alrt.io/80063993376h> ), your timer may go off a second early, as it skips the first :59 on Mac OS X Safari/Chrome, going straight from :00 to :58.

I don't imagine this bug would cause much misfortune, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple and cool. How about making the URLs more human readable:

        alrt.io/2minutes50seconds

or

        alrt.io/2m50s

instead of

        alrt.io/2%20minutes%2050%20seconds

The %20 makes it really hard to parse.

<comment><USER8> Not sure if it's updated since you wrote this, but you can do

        alrt.io/2m50s

Still %20s in long format URLs though

<comment><USER9> <http://alrt.io/2minutes50seconds> <\- works just fine, or at least it does now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool to see others doing this too!

We've (Sleep.fm) allowed users to set our online alarm clock by typing or clicking a URL(sets time & sound).

Examples...

<http://sleep.fm/7am> (sets alarm for 7am)

<http://sleep.fm/10pmRooster> (sets alarm for 10pm; sound is Rooster)

<http://sleep.fm/6amWeather> (sets alarm for 6am; sound is spoken weather report)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it needs to be able to flash the favicon, when you have several tabs open, you can't see the title change.

<comment><USER12> If you pin the tab, Firefox and Chrome should glow the favicon on title change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool I've been using <http://steep.it/> but this is more flexible

</comment><comment><USER14> Am I misunderstanding something? I tried starting it thusly: <http://alrt.io/3%20hours%2022%20minutes>

Is the point not that it can handle a variety of input?

<comment><USER15> If you change "minutes" to "minute", it seems to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now, on alert completion do this:

      window.location.href = 'nyan.cat';

Neat little app, nice to see a simple non-Flash version of <http://e.ggtimer.com>

<comment><USER17> This would be great. It could definitely use a fun alert or a way for a user to make their own alert via some url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool. I wrote something like this to alert me when its time to pick up my daughter from school. Though in my implementation it starts playing a very annoying alarm (I always have headphones on). Congrats on shipping!

</comment><comment><USER19> Great idea! Is the source anywhere? Would be cool too language processing for something like <http://alrt.io/three%20hours>

<comment><USER20> yes, see <https://github.com/juliangruber/alrt.io>

Patches are always welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is pretty neat. But I'm having a hard time understanding why should this be a _web_ app ? When are we getting seamless installation of things like that ?

<comment><USER22> if on a public computer it would probably be a pain to find an alarm to go off after a certain amount of time. i think it could be pretty handy. easier than getting phone out and setting one there

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of <http://www.timer-tab.com/> although I don't think timer-tab support url instantiation.

</comment><comment> nono-atwork would be nice to have window.focus() added to your notifyWindow() javascript function, that way it gets my attention. :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> Well there's one hour and three seconds I'll never get back.

Neat idea - will be great for timing board games.

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool, always good to have a countdown timer for monotonous things like stretching.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool.

</comment><comment><USER20> the code for this site is open source: <https://github.com/juliangruber/alrt.io>

</comment><comment><USER20> there is a progress indicator in the favicon now!

</comment><comment><USER27> what about milliseconds? no love there? :)</comment>


Setting up a Raspberry Pi, Nginx, DDNS and free SSL as a portal into your home - <AUTHOR> http://programmerstrouble.blogspot.nl/2012/10/a-secure-home-gateway-on-raspberry-pi.html

<comment><USER2> What is the advantage of using a Raspberry Pi as opposed to install Ngnix direct on you Tomato equipped router? Almost all routers can extend space with USB keys or similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, that would be good too! However, it's easier to store stuff on the Raspi than on the Tomato. I also like working on a full debian environment.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place for a professional to get a computer science degree? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working professionally for about 6 years in Ruby, iOS and UNIX but I never attained a degree.
Recently I've been wondering if anywhere does good ones online that I could do in my spare time or whether it's even a good idea?
Specifically being a UK resident I'd mainly like one to more easily attain a H-1B visa but also to perhaps go over some of the deeper concepts again. <comment><USER2> Well you could learn a lot of the underlying concepts yourself first. It would only help you professionally. If you want to get into some C++, I _strongly_ recommend Robert Sedgewick's[1] entire set of algorithmic books

Note: I've been doing 'nix/python/perl for about 7 years professionally and also don't have a degree. I've actually been using the Khan Academy to re- learn some of the more advanced Algebra and Calculus bits I forgot a little bit each night for the past few weeks. When I'm done, I'll likely find a college that will do night school CS. Not because I need it, but because I want to have a degree. Having used Linux as my primary operating system fulltime for the past 12 years, I can honestly say I could teach just about any of the Linux/Unix classes. But it is good to have accomplished something.

[1] [http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/) and [http://www.amazon.com/Robert- Sedgewick/e/B000AQ4JCO](http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Sedgewick/e/B000AQ4JCO)

</comment><comment><USER3> UK/EU citizen?

If so bite the bullet and go full time to a decent university. Many will take your professional experience in lieu of academic credentials.

Contact the admissions departments at your chosen institution to find out if you qualify before applying through UCAS.

Any STEM degree can lead to a H1-B visa provided you can find an employer.

</comment><comment><USER4> What specifically do you want to get out of a CS degree? Do you want to focus on general cs or have a specialization?

</comment><comment><USER5> CSUN has a good program.

Edit: That's California State University, Northridge (Los Angeles County, CA - USA).

Here's their Computer Science department website: [http://www.csun.edu/engineering-computer-science/computer- sc...](http://www.csun.edu/engineering-computer-science/computer-science)</comment>


UX Archive adds versioning for iPhone apps user flows - <AUTHOR> http://uxarchive.com/flows/feedly/searching

<comment><USER2> Hey I am Arthur and I designed UX Archive, please let me know if you have feedback, I would love to know about them!</comment>


Pocket for video: or how to bookmark videos for offline watching - <AUTHOR> http://oliviercorradi.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/3/

<comment><USER2> Nice post, was looking for this!</comment>


Linode Turns 7, Big RAM Increase - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram-increase/ <comment><USER2> I switched from Webfaction to Linode about six months ago, because the WF server I was on kept experiencing hard drive failures leading to an unacceptable amount of downtime. Once is tolerable, but they should have replaced the drive then. They didn't, and two months later it failed again. Again they tried to repair the filesystem. It failed two days later again. When I challenged them on this, they admitted they knew the drive was bad, and that it had no redundancy (seriously?!!!), but blamed the guys managing the hardware (which is evidently NOT Webfaction). Not to mention a ridiculously slow control panel at random times.

Linode has been a dream-come-true. I pay only a few bucks more a month than I did for my Tier-4 plan at Webfaction. Plus, I'm back to managing my own server and no longer have to deal with all the Apache port-forwarding weirdness, local profile software installs, etc.

I've used other VPS hosting companies in the past, but Linode blows them all out of the water. Their VPS infrastructure is very well engineered, and fast. Nobody can touch their price/performance ratio. EDIT: BTW - I am excluding OpenVZ-based VPS's which come with a number of issues that I don't care to deal with.

<comment><USER3> Same here; Linode has one my heart for three very important reasons, that will mean a lot to anybody looking for small-scale hosting:

1\. Proper provisioning. They aren't the cheapest option in the market, but they actually provide what you're paying for. I've never had CPU, disk, or memory contention issues on my Linode because they packed too many instances on a host.

2\. Great peering. Their network guys know what they're doing, and it shows in the low latency I've seen on my server hosted there, even coming from Japan.

3\. Great staff. I wanted to set up my DNS with a wildcard MX record for subdomains, so that I could route mail without having to manually add MX records for every new account. The RFC for DNS allows this, but the Linode DNS management interface didn't... until I contacted them and asked for it. Initially, they gave the 'sorry, but we don't support that' line, but after I pointed out the relevant bit in the RFC, the feature was added within two days. I have _never_ had a hosting provider respond like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a coincidence. I had a funny experience with Linode just today!

I´ve been in South America for a few months, and I found out that my bank card (visa) expired a little over a month ago.

"Hmm," I thought. "I sure hope that my linode is all right. But it´s been less than two months. They will turn it off, but that is all."

So I checked my email. Part of the joy of my style of travelling is not checking email for a month at a stretch.

They deleted my linode. It´s completely gone.

I feel a little sick ... it was just for personal use (for now), and I have all of the git repos on my local machine as well, but I´m not yet to the point where everything I do on the server is in a repo somewhere. Poof, hundreds of hours of server mangling, gone forever.

Literally, if you forget to check your email, they delete it in 20 days. If your bank card expires while you´re out of touch ... for some strange reason ... anyway, instead of warehousing your data for even a few months, they kill you.

I like linode. I just feel sick right now.

On the one hand, I´m an idiot.

On the other hand, 20 days?!?!?! When you know how precious a customers´data is in this context, and it´s purely a question of temporary storage, why?!?

I need a drink. Oh, yeah, Go Linode!

edit: okay, I´m over it now. Leaving the original, melodramatic writing because, darn it linode, someone from Slicehost posted that Slicehost did it differently, and my reaction is relevant to your business.

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr; Didn't back up data/config files, expected hosting company to store data for free

<comment><USER5> Actually, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a hosting company to store some data for free. Not in the sense that I'm entitled to it as a customer, but in the sense that it might be in their best interests: if the data is deleted, that's a pretty good guarantee that the client won't reactivate; if the data is saved and it's trivial to reactivate, some percentage of customers will do so.

<comment><USER6> It really depends on the number of people they get doing this. If there are loads of accounts that are just left to rot, then it might not be worth it doing this. If there are lots of cases like the original poster, then it might be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And the tumbleweeds continue to roll across SliceHost... which is stuck in 2008.

<comment><USER8> Price isn't everything.

<comment><USER9> That's true. On the other hand, Linode is competitive on price and service. Every ticket I've submitted has gotten a response within a couple hours. That's pretty good considering how much I'm paying. Honestly, I don't know why someone would get a vps from a different company.

<comment><USER10> I'm happy you are happy, and am not trying to convert you to Slicehost. That said, a bit on my thought process: I've been with them for years, switching costs are non-trivial in terms of my time (and switching could break stuff), and I have absolute and total confidence in them to treat me well.

I just checked my email. In the last year, I've had three incidents with Slicehost, all connected to issues experienced when migrating VPSes. All were resolved in minutes.

Not to knock Linode, or Rackspace Cloud, or EC2, or whatever, but none of them have ever been in the foxhole with me at 3 AM when the server was down and got it back up before customers noticed.

<comment><USER11> I think both have great support. They both have active and lively IRC channels where staff hang out. It's usually very quick to resolve issues with slicehost and linode.

The pain point for me at slicehost was bandwidth - they charge a lot, linode charge a little. Also far more options on linode etc etc once I moved that all added up to a better experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing I personally like about Linode is that they continue to contribute code, sponsor conferences, and otherwise support the open source community. Of course there is a certain amount of self interest involved, but not every VPS hosting company gives back like this.

<comment><USER13> I first found out about Linode by participating in Rails Rumble, which they were providing hosting for, and switched to them from Slicehost after last year's competition. They offered 3mo free to any competitors who wanted to sign up. I sent in a support ticket and it was dealt with in literally 15 minutes. I've been extremely happy with them ever since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My sole reason for picking Linode for hosting was RAM, as there was no one else out there who matched the RAM for the price. And now, WOW, I am a very happy customer. Thank You, Linode!!!

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been a happy Slicehost customer for a long time, but I've heard good things about Linode and liked using them well enough during Rails Rumble...

This price difference is pretty tempting. Does anyone that's made the switch from Slicehost to Linode care to tell us about their experience?

<comment><USER16> I wrote a fairly well-received article about my switch. Since I switched, I have been happy with Linode.

<comment><USER17> Link?

<comment><USER16> I actually avoided putting it because I don't want to spam it around too much, but hey, I'm happy to:

<http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a google cache of their homepage before, for quick comparison to what's up now, for anyone like me who didn't have their old prices memorized:

New prices: <http://www.linode.com> Old prices: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kVmwiN5...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kVmwiN52X3gJ:www.linode.com/+http://www.linode.com/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER19> The prices didn't change... you just get more RAM for the same money :).

<comment><USER20> It is the same thing, no? You could just downgrade back to your old ram, for less money.

<comment><USER21> Not if you were on their 360MB plan, which I guess probably more than 90% was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This may be the final kick in the pants to switch over from Slicehost.

</comment><comment><USER23> Linode has been fabulous, and this is great news. But I've never understood why their storage pricing is so high:

Additional 1 GB Disk Space - (add $2.00/mo)

Additional 2 GB Disk Space - (add $4.00/mo)

Additional 3 GB Disk Space - (add $6.00/mo)

Additional 4 GB Disk Space - (add $8.00/mo)

Additional 5 GB Disk Space - (add $10.00/mo)

Additional 6 GB Disk Space - (add $12.00/mo)

About 20 times higher than Amazon EBS.

</comment><comment><USER24> I believe I am going to switch from Slicehost now.

Anyone have a referral code they would want to me use?

<comment><USER25> [http://www.linode.com/?r=200d6bb341711532c638b475e536b0205ce...](http://www.linode.com/?r=200d6bb341711532c638b475e536b0205ce17f63)

Please and thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have a question about VPS, hope someone could help and not be much offtopic:

I have a dedicated server (in Softlayer) with Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3220 @ 2.40GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB (which I only use 5 or 6, so it's not an issue) and 2000Gb transfer. Price is 189$ a month.

Is it worth to switch to Linode's 4GB ram plan? I was thinking in getting a new server in softlayer with 12-16GB ram.

tl;dr: is it worth switching from a dedicated to a vps with similar specs?

<comment><USER27> That depends on what % of your cpu you're using, and how sensitive you are to disk bandwidth. Look at what fraction of the host machine you get ("How many Linodes share a host", <http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm> ), do you use more than that fraction of the resources that would be shared (disk I/O, CPU time)? How much is having a nice web interface for rebooting and such worth?

<comment><USER17> > Linodes of the same plan are grouped together onto a host. We adjust the > number of slots on each host according to its resources and hardware > specification. On average, a Linode 512 host has 40 Linodes on it. A Linode > 768 host has on average 30. Linode 1024 host: 20 Linodes; Linode 1536 host: > 15; Linode 2048 host: 10; Linode 4096: 5.

Does this mean that a 512 host has 40*512MB = 20GB of physical RAM? If it is less than that, then where does the 512 figure come from?

<comment><USER28> I believe they have 24GB of physical RAM (with the remainder going towards dom0 and the hypervisor).

<comment><USER29> I find that... unusual. the hypervisor eats 64MiB, and few people use more than 1GiB in the Dom0.

<comment><USER28> I believe the current Xen hypervisor uses about 128MB now, but yeah — I sincerely doubt it's out of strict necessity, but out of wanting to ensure not to overload each machine with too many nodes. They wouldn't bump down to 22GB because I assume their mobos are dual-channeled.

Or, they're fibbing a bit by using that "on average" language, and they actually have more like 42 or 44 nodes, but wanted the nice round numbers for the marketing copy.

Edit: Oh, I didn't check the username. I imagine you'd know better than I.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow, that's really great. Makes me feel better about the outages we've been dealing with at the Dallas center.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1392700>

<comment><USER31> Linode has 5 data centers. I've maintained a node in each of them the past six months with the following results:

Dallas: 99.959% Newark: 99.971% London: 99.986% Fremont: 99.992% Atlanta: 100%

I've heard from others here that Atlanta has been a very reliable LN data center for them as well.

<comment><USER32> Do you have any metrics for this? I have found issues with all the data- centers. NJ seems the most problematic from experience, followed closely by Dallas, which your data does confirm.

<comment><USER31> <http://uptime.cloudharmony.com>

If you click on any of the Linode links, you can see when outages occurred, how long they were, and usually an explanation of the outage (if Linode provided one to me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My favorite just got favoriter.

</comment><comment><USER34> I was on Slicehost, and I really struggled with whether to change to Linode. It's not that I was having any problems with Slicehost. I loved it. I just kept looking at that extra RAM on Linode, and all those data centers.

When they got the UK data center, that clinched it. I had been hoping to someday expand to UK, so when Linode did that, I changed over that day.

</comment><comment><USER35> Time to move my last few servers from Slicehost to Linode.

</comment><comment><USER36> Enough is enough. Moving to Linode tonight.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wow, a lot cheaper than Slicehost now. $20/month gets you 256 MB on Slicehost and 512 MB on Linode.

<comment><USER38> $15.20/month gets you 512MB on fivebean.com. I've been quite happy with them so far.

<comment><USER39> And $12 gets you 512MB on <http://prgmr.com/>.

<comment><USER40> The point is Linode has better service, e.g. 24x7 IRC, responsive ticket system, powerful admin interface.

<comment><USER29> This is true; But good support is a difficult (and thus expensive) problem; I'm providing a alternative where if you are willing to have slower ticket resolution, you get a discount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A stupid question: why are the bigger linodes relatively more expensive? You get 512MB for $19.95 and 1024MB for $39.95. If you buy 2x512MB, don't you get twice as much CPU too?

<comment><USER41> Linode is pretty much a pay-per-use service in the guise of a VPS host. You use twice as much resources, you pay twice as much. You stop using your VPS for a day, your account is credited back for that day. Overage charges are very similar to regular charges. And so on.

<comment><USER17> So you can compute roughly the same number of digits of pi on 2x512 machines as on one 1024 machine? i.e. you get the same number of execution threads/cycles?

<comment><USER41> No, CPU seems to be an exception. Even on the smallest plan, you can often burst all the way to 400% (4 cores). So it depends on what other customers are doing, and if everyone else were idle, you'd get the same CPU in both plans. But the host machine is at least an 8-core beast, so one person bursting to 400% doesn't affect other customers as much as it would in other hosting platforms. Also, the main bottleneck in a VPS setup is RAM and I/O. Personally, I've never had a CPU shortage in the two years I've been with Linode ;)

<comment><USER17> Hmm, so I should run my combinatorial search algorithms on 512 Linodes, although perhaps they wouldn't like that ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, there went my 191 day uptime. Which is incidentally the number of days ago they opened their London datacentre.

<comment><USER43> Same here. It was 400+ before moving to London DC from the one in US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Very nice, just more proof that linode rules :)

</comment><comment><USER45> In terms of iPhone apps, linode easily beats slicehost. Nice graphs for CPU, network, etc. And last i looked, slicehost required you to make a URL with you API key and mail it to yourself, which is a huge PITA.

<comment><USER46> I wrote the Slicehost app. Would love to add graphs, but that data's not available yet in the API. As for the email link, that's because the app came out before the iPhone had a copy/paste feature. You don't need that anymore with copy/paste.

<comment><USER45> Cut/paste that string is still quite fiddly.

Do you know why slicehost doesn't just make their private API key a link in the slice manager? I'm also curious what extra level of security the API key buys. If I lose my phone people can still mess with my slices.

I thought the iphone app was a slicehost product - but are you saying you just developed the app as a customer? That's mighty generous...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am with linode and pretty happy with the experience

</comment><comment><USER48> Linode is still second to Chunkhost in terms of value at the low-end, free- beta and beta tester discounts aside. Chunkhost has had 512mb for a year now, and still offers 20% more disk space. In my experience Linode's network speeds to be much less consistent and, at their peaks, considerably slower.

Yes, all this probably change when Chunkhost goes stable.

<comment><USER49> I like chunkhost and have a vps there, but the admin interface is still incredibly rudimentary. You can't really do anything other than reboot, create, destroy and reimage. Still, I'm a happy chunkhost customer, I think they have great potential and recommend them to anyone who is looking for a simple, cheap VPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How much is the extra traffic, again?

200GB of traffic included seemed good at the time, but it doesn't already. I'm seeing (and using) more offers lately that have much more traffic included.

<comment><USER50> They aren't very draconian about overages — they won't shut you down if you go over.

$0.10/GB if purchased in advance, $0.15 retrospectively.

Also, if you have multiple linodes your bandwidth is pooled.

[http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm#what-if-i-go-over-my- monthly-n...](http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm#what-if-i-go-over-my-monthly- network-data-transfer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish they would offer a "Linode 256" VPS for $10 a month, but I doubt that they will. Guess that would make them look cheap, which they're trying to avoid.

<comment><USER51> Me too.. I'd be happy with 128 mb at my current level of use. But I suspect they might lose money at that price point.

<comment><USER29> unless their costs are radically different from mine, (and if anything, their automation is better, so their costs should be lower) the small instances are quite profitable.

<comment><USER39> (None of this takes into account semiyearly/yearly pricing discounts.)

The difference is that they sell their boxes with prices proportional to memory so that doubling resources costs double (25.6MB RAM per dollar), whereas at prgmr, you charge a flat $4-per-guest fee and then charge linearly for space on top of that (64 MB per dollar).

Bonus fact: If you both were to offer a 173 MB size, the costs would be almost the same (~$6.70/mo).

<comment><USER29> It's funny, because my choice of pricing with my current support costs, and the fact that nearly all my advertising is fixed-cost 'brand building' vs. per-customer cost referrals or click ads, actually makes the smaller domains /much/ more profitable than the larger domains, which yes, probably means I've mispriced something. But the smaller domains do have a much larger 'margin for error' - if I sell a block of them to spammers, or to people expecting a full- time sysadmin, they can get expensive fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Switched from Slicehost to Linode for my own VPS and haven't looked back. Reliable, speedy, better pricing, and an awesome control panel.

</comment><comment><USER53> I was thinking '720 to 768? That's not such a big deal...' until I actually read the chart.

That's great! My 720 just went to a 1024. Thanks, Linode!

</comment><comment><USER54> Goodbye Slicehost

</comment><comment><USER55> Thank you! I am a happy customer.

</comment><comment><USER56> Good job!

</comment><comment><USER57> gotta love bday parties where the guests get the presents instead

\-- happy Linode customer</comment>


Pluto-bound probe faces its toughest task: finding Pluto - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-bound-probe-faces-its-toughest-task-finding-pluto-1.17811

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is the first ›real‹ telnet interface i saw in years:

telnet horizons.jpl.nasa.gov 6775

Thanks, NASA!

<comment><USER3> That is possibly one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I could spend hours looking through this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> JPL Ephemerides is one of the most complex equations: 1TB of polynoms and still growing :-)

<comment><USER5> The polynomials are an end result of thousands of complex calculations. For more details, see [http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-196/196C.pdf](http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-196/196C.pdf) . Many effects, including general relativity and the gravitational perturbations of the planets and several hundred asteroids, were included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The last part of this was my favorite:

"Calculations on where Voyager was headed were plotted each day on graph paper posted on the wall at JPL. Soon the dots left the centre of the paper and began to wander onto the wall and then overhead. "There were dots on the ceiling for years afterward," Owen says."

</comment><comment><USER7> > "You can't tell whether it's small and close or big and far," says Fran > Bagenal, a space physicist and mission co-investigator at the University of > Colorado Boulder. "It's a really interesting problem that we've never had at > any other planet."

AHA! So Pluto _is_ a planet after all.

Eat your heart out, Neil!</comment>


SF housing hunters asked to join a roommate-matching website - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/roomster-bay-area-rent-housing-craigslist-roommate-12428199.php <comment><USER2> Sort of interesting that this was posted a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13225053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13225053).

</comment><comment><USER3> So growth-hacking using craigslist. I thought CL had run out of steam for potential marketers, it seems that is not the case.

<comment><USER4> You mean fraud and deception?

<comment><USER5> is growth-hacking mean fraud or spam? I am not a 'millennial' so I am may not sure,</comment></comment></comment>


Whole Foods Market worker quits in 'epic' resignation email - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018504/Youre-faux-hippy-Wal-Mart-Whole-Foods-Market-worker-quits-epic-resignation-email.html

<comment><USER2> Any retail operation and its employees are doomed to a lowest common denominator existence. The paint costs the same, whether you paint yourself a Walmart or a Whole Foods.

"Forget about it Jake. It's retail."</comment>