Research Scientists to Use Network Much Faster Than Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/science/research-scientists-to-use-network-much-faster-than-internet.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> > $5 million dollar grant

For fiber? So I assume that they aren't going to be doing much digging, rather that they are going to string a few more lines alone already-existing paths.

>will make it possible to move data at speeds of 10 gigabits to 100 gigabits.

Wow.

In all seriousness: Kudos to whomever wrote the grant application. 5mil will keep people in work. But this project won't come anywhere near what is necessary to stream the data from 1% of the LHC's detectors. A private high- speed network is all well and good, but this isn't anything remarkable.

<comment><USER3> perhaps for optical equipment to connection and switch existing dark and lit fiber. that makes much more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is so bad you can't even tell which grant out of many similar ones it probably is. About fifteen years ago, it was a problem for researchers of moving large data stores, and whether it's faster to do it with a network or with suitcases full of tapes. Who pays for the storage, where it's kept, and who is allowed to access it. These grants are usually denied, and so each group of researchers scrapes up their own little partial datastore and ships graduate students and postdocs back and forth from the uni to the Cern/DeSy/Fermilab/SLAC/wherever, sometimes with suitcases full of tapes on the return trips. I'm a little surprised that it's still a problem for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> So are they talking about software or hardware?

They talk about LHC, but the innovation there was using a different file system: GPFS ([http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/219/7/072030](http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/219/7/072030)) which meant that data is sharded, managed by age and transparently cached intelligently

Are they instead talking about using replacing TCP with something more designed for bulk data transfer?

Or are they talking about lighting up fibre with different transmitter pairs? (think dwdm x 10 [http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DWDM.html](http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DWDM.html))

for 5 million, I'd assume its software, if that the case, its pretty much just copy and paste what everyone else has been doing:

[http://filecatalyst.com/](http://filecatalyst.com/) [http://asperasoft.com/](http://asperasoft.com/)

for opensource there is: [http://uftp-multicast.sourceforge.net/](http://uftp- multicast.sourceforge.net/) [http://tsunami- udp.sourceforge.net/](http://tsunami-udp.sourceforge.net/) [https://github.com/facebook/wdt](https://github.com/facebook/wdt)

And a myriad of others. Multi stream TCP is fairly simple as the application doesn't have to deal with rate limiting or error correction.

<comment><USER6> > So are they talking about software or hardware?

Well, if you read the very first sentence of the article:

A series of ultra-high-speed fiber-optic cables will weave a cluster of West Coast university laboratories and supercomputer centers into a network called the Pacific Research Platform as part of a five-year $5 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.

<comment><USER7> That sentence is not informative. The backbone of the regular internet is fiber optics as well (usually).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this related to Internet2?

[http://www.internet2.edu/](http://www.internet2.edu/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2)

Edit: Maybe they are parallel projects? TFA says they have invested at about 100 campuses, but about 250 were already part of Internet2 in 2013.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't sound that way to me. This network seems to be specifically for moving around research data among the institutions. Internet2 is essentially a playground to research and demonstrate ways to improve the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This really isn't that impressive in my eyes. LINX in the UK offers a 100gigE peering port for £6,000/month. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> TCP being awful at high bandwidth, and scientists not knowing how to use anything more efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really see why this is NYT-worthy. State paper, sure, but NYT? This isn't particularly groundbreaking.

There are existing regional sci/edu networks doing 100G as well as field- specific networks (e.g. ESnet).

<comment> vezzy-fnord As well as GEANT.

In fact, the list of such NRENs (national research and education networks) is quite extensive: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_research_and_educatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_research_and_education_network)

Earlier examples include MIT's Chaosnet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "FedEx is still faster than the Internet" [https://what- if.xkcd.com/31/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/)

Of course, the applications here are probably quite different -- this research grant may be more geared toward building a faster network to handle large amounts of streaming input.

</comment><comment><USER14> > The challenge in moving large amounts of scientific data is that the open > Internet is designed for transferring small amounts of data, like web pages

Isn't there FTP for large data transfers?

<comment><USER8> I'm sure the File Transfer Protocol can handle 20 petabyte file transfers. They're probably in 200GB tarballs or something most file systems can work with.

But even if you have 1 gigabyte per second upload and download, you might not want to wait the 2 years for the file transfer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is probably what this article is referring to.

NSF Gives Green Light to Pacific Research Platform- UC San Diego, UC Berkeley lead creation of West Coast big data freeway system.

[http://cenic.org/news/item/nsf-gives-green-light-to- pacific-...](http://cenic.org/news/item/nsf-gives-green-light-to-pacific- research-platform-uc-san-diego-uc-berkeley)

</comment><comment><USER16> don't see how this is any different from the educational backbone infrastructure in the UK like JANET.

JANET has been around since (and before) I was at school 15 years ago, and has kept with the pace, more info at [https://www.jisc.ac.uk/janet](https://www.jisc.ac.uk/janet)

</comment><comment><USER17> >100 gigabits

thats almost as fast as some parts of _ordinary internet backbone_ in Europe .... so much progress, truly world leader!

<comment><USER18> It's also shared between a small population of researchers, leading to far more bandwidth per capita.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like two tier internet doesn't matter any more. All hail the PR gods.

</comment><comment><USER20> Won't this make research data from universities even more harder to access? Hope this network becomes more accessible to the public.

<comment><USER8> I think this network might be to shuttle data between remote databases and computing farms. For instance, if you have 20 petabytes of data in Tulsa and an agreement with CalPoly to crunch the data for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately, due to net neutrality laws, this can not be connected to the Internet. If these laws did not exist, "super networks" such as this could be defined in software and spun up at a moment's notice like some aws boxes. I'm guessing that's why the price tag here seems so low. All the hardware is already installed and ready to go, this project is just to set up a network that uses it to its full capacity.</comment>


Satya Nadella Proves That Microsoft Hasn't Changed At All - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/07/10/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-productivity-work-life

<comment><USER2> > "You and I are not the customers he is thinking about."

No, the customers are the companies that you and I work for. And Microsoft main business is enabling the workforce of those companies with greater productivity. Microsoft's business related to entertainment and lifestyle (a.k.a. "your life") is still much smaller. Hence the message on productivity. I don't believe that implies that Microsoft doesn't "want" you to have a life outside of work.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, Microsoft is the new RIM? Sounds about right.</comment>


AVX-512: when and how to use these new instructions - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2018/09/07/avx-512-when-and-how-to-use-these-new-instructions/ <comment><USER2> I read a post yesterday on a generalized notion of compositionality [0]. It was neat and extolled the virtues of modularity and compositionality and being able to reason about system by reasoning about its parts.

If I'm understanding OP, this means that to use the AVX-512 instructions well, a compiler that has to think about instruction speed as a function of what other instructions are around it. It might be faster to write operation X with these instructions than without, but only if you don't also write operation Y with them, because then the CPU would get too hot.

That sounds so much harder! Hot damn! I know CPUs are complicated and 1 instruction = 1 cycle is wrong in many ways, but this just sounds especially difficult.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923075)

<comment><USER3> This situation gets absolutely awful when you consider that the Bronze and Silver Xeons do even more aggressive down throttling. Bronze speed plummets if only one core is doing AVX instructions.

Compilers can't hope to realistically handle this. JITs at least have a chance, but adding in handling for this behaviour surely requires a lot more complexity than I'd imagine most runtime developers would want to add to their code.

<comment><USER4> Since bronze and silver largely only have one AVX-512 FP unit, running AVX-512 in the L2 license is almost totally pointless: you'd often be better off running twice as many AVX/AVX2 instructions on the two 256-bit units since you run at a higher frequency and the FLOP/cycle is the same.

The exception would be if your kernel can make some good use of other wide instructions such as memory access or shuffles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That explains what I observed while optimizing convolution functions in OpenBLAS, adding support for AVX512 while AVX2 was already there. On a 36-core Xeon Platinum there was no measurable gain when moving to AVX512, maybe even a bit slower, when running intensive convolutions full of Fuse Multiply Add - FMLA. I was puzzled and thought it's due to hitting the memory bandwidth limit (but pre-caching more didn't help), or due to the pipeline - but again, unrolling the loop and reshuffling AVX512 instructions in between "lighter" instructions didn't seem to help either. I should have monitored the CPU clock changes. But I had no idea there was this kind of dependency. I now wonder what should be the average ratio of heavy 512-bit was AVX512 instructions vs lighter 256-bit instructions to avoid getting into permanent L2 mode and stay at L1. Maybe paralleling one 512bit loop unroll with several 256bit unrolls may still yield some gains in heavy avx usage... Thank you for the article!

<comment><USER6> _I now wonder what should be the average ratio of heavy 512-bit was AVX512 instructions vs lighter 256-bit instructions to avoid getting into permanent L2 mode and stay at L1._

One of the co-authors talks more about the exact limits here: [https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=179654&curpost...](https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=179654&curpostid=179654)

The quick answer is that on the W-2104 system he tested, you can sustain one FMA every 2 cycles while still remaining in the medium speed L1 state.

His avx-turbo tool ([https://github.com/travisdowns/avx- turbo](https://github.com/travisdowns/avx-turbo)) can be used to check the situation for your particular processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> These instructions will be around for a long time, but their performance attributes will change in 5 minutes when Intel releases the next wave of processors.

I think given the current state of things it would be irresponsible for compilers to generate heavy instructions unless asked. Forget trying to be smart about it ... we already fail to be smart about things that are much simpler and more visible.

More interestingly, this may be what all CPU behavior looks like in 10 years, because if Intel has to resort to this kind of design now, why would hat change any time soon? Instead of worrying about primarily keeping the execution units full, people trying to write fast code may be primarily concerned with keeping them NOT full so that the chip doesn't slow down. Which sounds crazy and hard to deal with.

<comment><USER8> Fwiw, autovectorizers tend to be pretty conservative about it.

So to use cutting edge instructions you generally have to hand code them (either in intrinsics like Lemire did there or in asm)

<comment><USER4> Especially for FP instructions, where compilers are heavily restricted by the standard and IEEE754 semantics. Vectorization often changes the order of operations and since FP math is generally not associative.

For integer operations, auto-vectorization is more prevalent since everything can be reordered more freely. clang especially auto-vectorizes a ton of stuff even at -O2.

<comment><USER9> But that's precisely why most language standards don't require strict IEEE754 semantics. And why people mostly compile with -ffast-math or equivalent when they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A modern CPU running an instruction set specifically designed for high- performance computing, working under proper operational conditions, and with aqueduct cooling, can still go overheat and trigger its internal throttling. And since Turbo Boost, throttling is explicitly used not only as a powersave or protective measure, but part of the normal operation.

So we have now being at the closest point to the CPU power wall in history ...

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm no CPU engineer, but this smells like some sort of chip-level macro function that cuts edges even more than the spectre/meltdown issue.

I remember joke opcodes back in the day. One was "Halt and catch fire". Is that seriously what this is doing?

<comment><USER12> > _cuts edges even more than the spectre /meltdown issue._

Indeed. If you have some piece of code in a different security context that conditionally executes a heavy instruction based on a decision made over some sensitive data, doesn't this provide a way to obtain information about that data?

<comment><USER13> > If you have some piece of code in a different security context that > conditionally executes a heavy instruction based on a decision made over > some sensitive data, doesn't this provide a way to obtain information about > that data?

Yes. [http://www.numberworld.org/blogs/2018_6_16_avx_spectre/](http://www.numberworld.org/blogs/2018_6_16_avx_spectre/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still upset about the permanent-until-vzeroupper "transition" penalty on nonVEX instructions on skylake after any VEX instruction.

<comment><USER15> Do you know anything about that? I know some ABIs have a vzeroupper at the end of every method - what is this for and do you know how expensive is is?

<comment><USER16> Looks to be a complicated issue, with very different performance profiles across different microarchitectures:

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-isa- extensions...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-isa- extensions/topic/704023)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _Intel cores can run in one of three modes: license 0 (L0) is the fastest > (and is associated with the turbo frequencies "written on the box"), license > 1 (L1) is slower and license 2 (L2) is the slowest._

Wow, let's give the word "license" semantics not related to software licensing, _and_ cause confusion between L1 meaning "L1 cache" and "license 1".

<comment><USER17> AIUI this is because the power scheduler gives the core the license to actually execute those instructions. Until it is granted the core must emulate them as multiple vector instructions of smaller stride size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This post cites sources that actively contradict the points it attempts to make. It provides a wealth of useful aggregation of information against the points it makes.

Let's us begin

        However, there are also deterministic frequency
        reductions based specifically on which instructions you
        use and on how many cores are active (downclocking).

As you are likely using AVX-512 in a cloud deployment you don't have access to any of the information, and are likely sharing that hardware who may not respect the same engineering rigor.

Also, nobody setting there CPU affinity to ensure the down-clocking stays on a single core. You have to pray the scheduler doesn't shuffle your workload around. This requires a lot of platform specific C and most people are writing Java/Go/Ruby/Python where doing bit twidling NUMA management is impossible, furthermore the information you have access to in a cloud environment (which is where you'll be using advanced AVX-512 unless you work for Amazon, Google, Intel, or Cloudflare) may just lie about core count, and NUMA architecture.

Also this is just false [1]. Running AVX-512 adjusts the BASE clock for the package. There are throttling attempts to ensure every other core on the package throttles back. This is a package wide effect, not a per-core effect.

        Light instructions include integer operations other than
        multiplication, logical operations, data shuffling
        (such as vpermw and vpermd) and so forth.

This is false according cloudflare [2] which you've linked. They test your "light" carry less adding, shifting, and xoring (these are the only operations in ChaCha20 [4]). It cost too much.

        We have chosen to only include two columns.

I'll include the whole thing [3]. Wow yeah the entire package's power curve is changing. The base clock, cores not effected, all their clocks are changing. Its almost like having 1 out of 24 cores still effects all 24 cores....

        For example, the openssl project used heavy AVX-512
        instructions to bring down the cost of a particular
        hashing algorithm (poly1305) from 0.51 cycles per byte
        (when using 256-bit AVX instructions) to 0.35 cycles
        per byte, a 30% gain on a per-cycle basis. They have
        since disabled this optimization.

The literal example to show AVX-512 is good at ends with statement that people using AVX-512 are now actively avoiding it.

This is less then content, do you have an agenda or are you just an idiot?

[1] [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_silver/4116](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_silver/4116)

[2] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/on-the-dangers-of-intels- frequen...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/on-the-dangers-of-intels-frequency- scaling/)

[3] [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_gold/5120](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_gold/5120)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa20)

<comment><USER19> Please don't break the HN guidelines by becoming uncivil.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER20> please stop blinding me by making downvoted comments one shade away from the background color

<comment><USER21> This is a reasonable criticism.

I'm not a fan of the delivery, but I absolutely agree with you.

<comment><USER22> Agreed as well. It's annoying because they think they're deprecating downvoted comments by fading them out when they're actually calling _more_ attention to them by requiring the reader to invest more effort to read them.

It's reminiscent of the infamous "disemvoweling" strategy used on a few other forums, where the reader is forced to decide whether they want to painstakingly reconstruct offensive and abusive comments or blindly trust someone else to restrict what they see.

Life would be so much easier if they just displayed the comment score like most other moderated forums and let the reader decide the merits of the comments based on visible information.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creating a CSV/Excel uploader - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/01/28/design-and-implementation-of-csvexcel-upload-for-saas/#

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8960280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8960280).

</comment><comment><USER3> Sheet JS is quite amazing, but another, simple approach to consider is based around the fact when you copy a range from Excel, it's plain-text clipboard format is tab-separated values. Get the users to copy their data and paste it into a text box with an on-paste handler that parses the data into a preview table with validation so they can see if they've got the columns right before hitting submit. Simple, 100-ish lines of JS, broad browser support.</comment>


Federation, Privacy, and User Experience - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dwdbah/federation-privacy-and-user-experience-c158547f07f5 <comment><USER2> Conversations is brilliant, but I have yet to see a decent XMPP client for iOS. There's Chat Secure, but when my friends used that it often wouldn't receive notifications, making it useless as a messenger.

I'm not sure if this was a limitation of iOS itself (probably) or just a poor implementation (Chat Secure definitely tries to do something with push notifications.)

It's difficult to use XMPP when most of my friends+family use iOS</comment>


Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/23/microsoft_windows_10_crisis/ <comment><USER2> I love the idea of having your actual users testing the software, rather a dedicated tester. A dedicated, employed, tester can never use the product like a normal user would. They have too much knowledge of how the system works and what it can and can't handle. In order to truly observe something, we must completely, or as much as is possible, remove ourself from that situation. A normal user however doesn't know that it's not possible to achieve task X within the system, and will try, and if enough users try to perform that task, it might be an indication that it is a task that should be implemented or looked over to see why they are trying to perform this. This is just an example, but I find the role of a tester pretty confusing and awkward. As a developer I build and test the code I'm writing. If something doesn't work within that code I want to know as quick as possible if something isn't right. So why should I hand over my code to someone else? And also, if a user doesn't find the bug, is it really a bug?

<comment><USER3> As a developer the simple fact is that if I knew something could happen I would have written the code to support it. Testers are about looking at the code from a different angle. It's not surprising quality has dropped dramatically since Microsoft embraced the idea that devs should also be testers.

Customers are the ultimate testers. But using them as guinea pigs has a cost to your reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We will see growth in the adoption of thin terminals and desktop running in the cloud.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't help, if the terminal is wonky.

<comment><USER6> Or the network is wonky. Which it so often is.</comment></comment></comment>


The end of ERP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/08/the_end_of_erp.php

<comment><USER2> Site is down. Is this the first YC.news effect?

Semi-related question: What do large companies use for accounting software? My day-job company seems to be outgrowing QuickBooks and I have no idea what to reccomend to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like someone is confusing "ERP" (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications, which are successfully running millions of businesses with "ERP", the gargantuan garbage thrust upon fortune 500 companies by SAP, Oracle, and other bandits. The end of the first "ERP" (accounting, inventory, sales, marketing,...)? Hardly. The end of the second "ERP"? It's inevitable. Clearly, Web 2.0 is the next generation for many types of applications, including business. This is an argument in semantics. Nothing new here. Move along.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an attention grabbing title, certainly, but he does talk about a different architecture for the applications. Not in detail, but it's worth a quick look.</comment></comment>


Online Porn Could Be the Next Big Privacy Scandal - <AUTHOR> http://brettpthomas.com/online-porn-could-be-the-next-big-privacy-scandal.html <comment><USER2> Honestly, as an employer, I really wouldn't care if my employees watched porn in his free time as long as he keeps it to himself. Our attraction to naked bodies of the opposite (or same) sex is as old as walking upright and is deeply and fundamentally a part of our humanity since our ancestors roamed the Serengeti. And while for the sake of social norms I'm more than willing to put aside my "dirty pastime" in a professional setting in today's modern age, if society is going to come around into my private life and "expose" that I look at porn in my off hours, I see no reason to feel ashamed or apologetic for it (unless it's my girlfriend who finds out, then all bets are off, and I will feel as much shame and apology as necessary).

<comment><USER3> I agree that's how people should feel about it, and if they did that it would solve two major issues we have in the society right now (hopefully):

1) "sex scandals" \- it seems politicians or others in power can't go to prison for stealing a lot of money or even murdering someone. But if they are involved in a sex scandal - well god may have mercy on their souls! Their careers are basically over then. It's also why intelligence agencies can have tremendous power over politicians, judges and so on, if they can "discredit them" through their porn or sex habits. That should stop happening. It should be a non-issue for everyone.

2) the more people are "okay" with porn or sexuality in general, the less likely it will be for some politicians one day to manage to pass a bill that criminalizes either porn in general, or specific kinds of porn or sexuality (like say gay porn).

<comment><USER4> _" sex scandals"_

That seems to be mostly an american thing.

Over here in Europe hardly anyone bats an eye when the latest sex-party involving Berlusconi, François Hollande/Sarkozy etc. is revealed.

People only get upset when truly dirty stuff comes out, such as the child abuse ring involving british government figures[1].

[1] [http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/18/uk-britain-abuse- id...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/18/uk-britain-abuse- idUKKBN0JW1SO20141218)

<comment><USER5> Didn't the UK recently require people to register to be able to view porn?

<comment><USER6> Not quite. Most of the big ISPs were required to add an 'adult content' filter, which yes, basically blocks porn among other things. When signing up for a new broadband connection, the box enabling this 'adult content' filter is ticked by default, meaning you have to actively untick it. ISPs are also required to contact all existing customers somehow and ask them whether or not they want the filter enabled.

No laws have been passed yet to enforce ISPs to do this, just pressure from David Cameron and campaigns by the Daily Mail and 'parent' groups and stuff, although David Cameron did say if the recently implemented system was not effective enough they would have to legislate (the problem now, is whether the 4-8% takeup on all but one isp is 'effective'.)

<comment><USER7> It's not always as simple as that unfortunately. I arrived in the UK recently and got a mobile sim card with a pay-as-you-go system.

When trying to view an adult content website using my mobile data connection, I arrived on that wonderful "blocked content" page. To get it removed, I could use a credit card. Oh, but not any credit card. The one I have from my country of origin wasn't valid, not even the one from my previous country of residence. I needed a UK credit card, which I didn't have yet. The only option was to go back in a store, with my passport, and say "Yes dear Sir/Madam I would like my internet with porn enabled please". It was (almost) faster to setup a vpn.

Also, note that I say _adult content_, not even porn, as some website that do not contain specifically porn are blocked as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everyone commenting seems to be very blase about this. I guess they are forgetting that there countries where it is still illegal/dangerous to be openly gay. Besides that, probably useful in targetted blackmail/extortion plots but not a huge threat to the common man.

</comment><comment><USER9> It always confused me of why this hasn't been fixed yet.

It seems like most of the uniqueness is from the list of fonts and plugins.

Couldn't browsers limit that by asking user permission before providing it? (Fair question and I'm waiting to be wrong)

<comment><USER10> You can test whether a font is installed with any number of tricks. For example, render white text on a white background with "sans". Then, change the font to the candidate font, with a fallback of sans. If the width of the text changes, the font must be installed.

<comment><USER9> Interesting.

Maybe browsers shouldn't have access to system fonts except a specific set. Websites can't assume fancy fonts are installed anyway, I don't think it would be a problem?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, all we'd have to do is convince every manufacturer of operating systems and/or browsers to agree on a common set of fonts, work out licensing/font rendering technology issues etc., then convince all web developers across the world (or at least a sizable portion) to redevelop their websites to work with this list, then enforce the font restriction, and then convince users that this is somehow a good idea because invariably a bunch of the websites they use are going to break. We also need to do it within a few years, otherwise it's too late, and our main argument is going to be 'but maybe websites can use fonts as part of a fingerprint to track what websites we are visiting'.

<comment><USER9> You couldn't be more wrong about this.

\- You need to convince only one browser. People that care about privacy will use that browser.

\- You don't need licensing, they still use the OS fonts. They just limit the fonts available.

\- You don't need to convince web developers because they already use these fonts and only these fonts. Who's using Papyrus?

\- 1997 websites are going to break. Again, new websites use only a set of system fonts or fancy web fonts.

<comment><USER12> You're both wrong; most people at the point of browsing don't care that much for privacy. Most users would hand out their passwords for a chocolate bar! [0] How much less would they care about their privacy let alone understand how one browser is better than another.

[0] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3639679.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3639679.stm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Browsers should improve incognito mode so websites won't be able to distinguish Chrome@OS X from Firefox@Windows. And may be allow easier integration with proxy services. Privacy is important.

<comment><USER8> I agree; I don't think there's any reason for a browser to be fingerprintable even when not in incognito mode. I'm curious if this is on the roadmap for a browser like firefox or one of the linux ones. You would think govt / infosec people might care about it too?

<comment><USER14> There are so many details in eg JavaScript that a website could probe, that it really doesn't seem feasible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the reader will suffer more from obtaining a list of my viewed porn than me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Write a script to continuously scrape and hit every porn video on every porn site. It's obviously impossible for you to watch all that porn and unlikely any hacker will try to intuit your exact history (which would be difficult and not worth the effort). Problem solved.

<comment><USER17> Unless the script perfectly emulates human browsing patterns, it wouldn't really be helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unless there is big money in this, I don't think this will be the next big privacy scandal, with the exception of politicians --they could get worried (people who have a big stake in maintaining an image). But your average Jurgen and Silvie, not so much.

[edit]That's to say, porn, for all practical purposes, is mainstream. It's an open secret. I don't think people are going to hyperventilate, freak out. I mean, 50 shades, the movie, is a marketing juggernaut in middle America --and beyond.

<comment><USER19> I would think a lot of people would pay to keep such information secret though. Maybe not enormous sums individually but given data that you can personally verify this would be a fairly effective threat.

I'm imagining the typical popup - 'Warning your browsing information is compromised - pay us to remove the offending data!'. Add to that page a list of actual viewing history and I think conversion ratios would increase.

<comment><USER20> I think this would tremendously backfire. It wouldn't be too difficult to figure out which companies have leaked customer data, which is now being used for extortion, and they'd likely lose more money than they could gain from the ad clicks.

Reputable porn sites tend to be more secure than your average company website specifically because they know that privacy is important to their viewers. Being known for leaking your viewer data would be suicide.

<comment><USER21> The sites themselves wouldn't likely leak these data, rather it could be compromised.

From the article: "All that's needed are two nominal data breaches and an enterprising teenager that wants to create havoc."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised the article doesn't mention an even bigger point - very few porn sites provide end to end TLS. Through, uh, research, redtube doesn't have ANY TLS available, and xhamster has a 'some content on this site is not delivered over TLS' warning.

</comment><comment><USER23> > _yet another reason that the tech community should take a more proactive > approach ensuring data privacy._

Or maybe yet another reason for people to get their shit together.

Seriously, this is not an issue of privacy - it's an issue of society potentially overreacting to things. So Jane Doe watches porn. Big deal. John Doe watches it too. Like 80% of country's population. It's an open secret, like going to shrink used to be. It only holds power over you if you expect people around you to behave like apes (which they often do - see being gay 30 years ago, or being not pro-gay now).

I know very well that it's easier to influence tech than society; hell, it's even easier to influence biological factors than social ones. But ultimately, we can't blame it on tech when it's lack of civility that's the problem. Maybe it's the very expectation of privacy that makes people such bigots?

Either way, it's another data point for "privacy vs. progress of mankind, pick one".

<comment><USER24> Here's a real issue. It's not the existence of porn, it's the _nature_ of the porn. If you've decided you want to attack someone, and if they have even remotely unusual tastes, you can certainly attack based on those.

If it's really a low status taste (e.g., furry, femdom, cuckold), the attacks write themselves. If it's more mainstream, it isn't hard to twist it into something deeply revealing about their character (e.g., "omfg look at how he objectifies asians").

Here is a real life example of this, albeit not based on privacy leaks but on something I chose to reveal: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7945286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7945286)

<comment><USER25> Without disagreeing with your observation, as a practical matter the biggest influence is how one responds to the allegations. I remember a few years ago it emerged that a US Senator not only patronized prostitutes, but that his preferred sexual fetish supposedly involved wearing diapers (which is a pretty fringe preference, to at least the same degree as those you mention). Embarrassing of course, especially as it was his second prostitution-related scandal in a decade, but he made the usual tearful public apology to his wife on TV followed by a reaffirmation of his religious faith and bingo, forgiven. His party didn't want to lose a Senate seat if he resigned, and he's since been re-elected and is this year planning to run for governor of his home state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I see a lot of people saying, essentially, "I don't care that anybody knows I view porn; that's totally mainstream". And, yeah, I feel the same way.

But on reflecting on it, I find there's more nuance to it:

I don't care that anybody knows I view porn; that's totally mainstream. But to have people know the specifics of my tastes in porn? Suddenly, I would begin to feel embarrassment; I'd worry I'd be thought a weirdo for getting off to X which is considered a fetish instead of Y which is considered standard stuff, etc.

<comment><USER3> Only at the last election there were some presidential candidates that toyed with the idea of banning porn. That would mean all the sudden you could be criminalized for watching porn, just like you are now for playing poker online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This may or may not be an issue for targeted attacks on high-profile individuals (which in turn likely have the means to avoid them). But I don't think crosslinking moderately-reliable browser identifiers across different websites, so as to be able to extort "average Joes", will really be that profitable.

Remeber that there's a lot of people watching porn and a lot of people on facebook-like sites, so those unique broswer identifiers won't be so unique any more in the end. Also there's a lot of money involved in both porn and facebook, so trying to meddle with them get you sued if you endager their profits.

The real issue I see however is credit card data and how easy it would be for corrupt authorities to abuse it. I looked into options for anonymous credit cards just because of this, but sadly that gets you into really shady money landering territory really quickly.

</comment><comment><USER28> The easiest way to mitigate this is to view your porn on a mobile device or tablet, if able.

Mobile browser fingerprints are far more uniform than their desktop counterparts.

Host address correlation would however remain fairly effective in most circumstances, so it would be prudent to conceal that as well.

<comment><USER29> Ask AT&T and Verizon, who put custom headers with tracking IDs in your browsing sessions.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/28/att- says-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/28/att-says-its- testing-unkillable-tracker-on-customers-smartphones/)

<comment><USER28> That's just evil.

Fortunately most people switch over to a non-carrier network via 802.11 when they're at home with their mobile devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is assuming that there is data to be breached though. Unless it was some realtime MITM attack, I don't think many porn websites are storing the browser footprints of all their visitors in a database. But, I could be naive.

<comment><USER24> Ad networks, probably including adult ad networks, regularly track browser footprints. You don't need an MITM attack, you merely need a porn site which runs ads. That consists of about 100% of the porn sites I browse.

The EFF has a nice demo of it: [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's an ongoing criminal case in Sweden where a website streamed their porn movies for "free". However, in the fine print it said that in order to watch this you need to pay X. So basically the company could bill you just for watching.

This wouldn't be any problem since people are anonymous. The twist is that the company behind it actually had a deal with some of the phone network operators where they sent the phone number as a header for mobile devices.

The result was that hundreds of people got invoices and were told that their personal details would be exposed if they didn't pay.

<comment><USER32> > The result was that hundreds of people got invoices and were told that their > personal details would be exposed if they didn't pay.

Sounds like fraud and extortion to me. Were criminal charges filed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There will be a small percentage of error that all of us will fall under.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think this should only be applicable to sites where you are logged in, as otherwise its going to be pretty difficult for them to identify using your name.

<comment><USER35> Wrong. All it takes is a browser fingerprint. If they can associate that with a name, whether or not you're logged into the porn site — e.g., through sites that you _are_ logged into — they can identify your browsing session on the former.

<comment><USER34> What is this browser fingerprint? If you are talking about some cookies and the user agent string. I wouldn't be concerned.

<comment><USER36> [https://panopticlick.eff.org](https://panopticlick.eff.org)

"Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 5,053,325 tested so far."

<comment><USER17> It seems like denying access to my plugins (and maybe non-standard fonts) would solve this. Why does a website need to know my plugins in the day and age of Flash being deprecated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Of course it's deniable, just say the person is clearly trying to blackmail you, or that you watched that one but not that truly terrible one. Also who cares. Now if they could hack into your camera while you watch and you happen to be a person in the public eye, that could turn into a short lived manufactured controversy that gossip sites and cable news live on.

</comment><comment><USER38> Most people would suffer much more from a leak of their email, photos, or code than their porn browsing habits.

<comment><USER39> I also think dating website data would be more important. Looking at ordinary porn is an inconsequential fact of life.

<comment><USER40> Depends on how conservative your country is.

<comment><USER41> Or what your coworkers/family/local officials consider "ordinary porn".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> When reading the headline I expected someone had done facerecognition over redtube, xvideos and the like and created a database with people in pornvideos, making it easy to lookup for future reference...

Just finding out that someone watches porn at work is really uninteresting from my european point of view...

</comment><comment><USER43> Porn websites, as it stands, are better secured than your average Bitcoin exchange. Nothing to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER44> Flabbergasted that the HN crowd harps on endlessly about privacy until it's about porn. Then it's all about get over your hangups, radical transparency.

Many people don't want their porn habits made public for all sorts of reasons and it is _not_ your place to judge.

</comment><comment><USER45> There is a huge privacy problem even without browser fingerprinting. Some porn sites use google analytics. I find this irresponsible, especially since most people have their real word ID bound to their google account.

</comment><comment><USER46> Well, it appears my browser fingerprint is rather unique. Guess I should install some new fonts now and then and thus change my fingerprint.

</comment><comment><USER47> isn't this what throwaway Linux VMs where invented for?

Elsewhere in this thread someone mentions a conspiracy of service provider and porn [alleged] criminal. So I guess Fapuntu-64 won't work for that, but for all else, it seems a good solution, so long as your desktop is not your telephone.

</comment><comment><USER48> does it mean if there is a browser just for browsing non-login sites and doing nothing else (do all browsing that requires a login or identification of any kind from a different browser), this problem can be prevented ?

<comment><USER6> I would love something in a browser that makes it easier to seperate the login sites I use, like webmail and facebook (occationally).

I use all the usual plugins, like Disconnect, uBlock, https everywhere, but recently I have been using a Firefox plugin called 'priv8' to sandbox the login sites I use the most (means I am not signed into google or facebook for my regular browsing). I honestly do not have that much of a in depth knowledge of browser tracking, so I am not exactly sure if this makes much of a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Guess I'll start buying burner phones for porn every 2 weeks.</comment>


'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/24/scientific-consensus-on-humans-causing-global-warming-passes-99 <comment><USER2> "The bad news is there is still a lot of work to do yet as climate deniers continue to persistently attack the scientific consensus."

The impact of climate change deniers who are simply rejecting the scientific consensus is vastly overblown IMO. Those who actually impact climate change on a large scale (executives at large corporations, policymakers across the globe, etc.) are choosing to ignore scientific consensus for financial and power related reasons.

It's a red herring to focus on the last 1-3% of true "non-believers". Everyone should be focusing on explicitly calling out nefarious actors.

<comment><USER3> > _It's a red herring to focus on the last 1-3% of true "non-believers"_

Your estimate of 1-3% is too low by an order of magnitude, at least in the US [0]:

> _Majorities of Americans overall say most scientists think global warming is > occurring (66%), it is caused by human activities (64%) and its effects have > begun (60%)._

[0] (2018) [https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming- concern-s...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern- steady-despite-partisan-shifts.aspx)

<comment><USER4> There's also the issue of what level of impact man has had, or can have moving forward. Of course, a lot of the actions suggested and proposed won't have meaningful impact or will overburden societies with even more minimal impact... Or a Socialism program named an environment program.

No air freight shipping. Work weeks limited to 4 days a week for employees, and stiff tax penalties for employers with employees with longer work weeks. Those two would be more of an impact than replacing all the straws and several other options being explored with minimal real impact. Forcing farmers to rotate the grazing lands for their livestock as well as addition grass seeding, watering and planting of trees. Fines for local power companies that effectively block home generated power. Higher taxes on regions using Fossil fuels for electricity generation. Makers/sellers of electrical equipment must be built to last at least 10 years under a full, no cost warranty. Makers of computing devices no longer receiving security updates within the first 10 years must release the source and appropriate keys for users to self-maintain their devices. All electrical devices with a battery must be user serviceable.

I'm not really a fan of raising taxes... but it wouldn't take much for significant impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> radford-neal The article is quite emphatic that there is "no doubt left", but is rather sketchy on what exactly the claim is that there is no longer doubt about.

Almost nobody thinks that CO2 has zero effect on climate. The debate is about the _magnitude_ of the effect. It is not a yes/no question.

<comment><USER5> Strange that there is no link to the three studies the article reports on. Here is the editorial that links to them:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0428-1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0428-1)</comment></comment>


Flask is awesome - <AUTHOR> http://poincare101.blogspot.com/2011/08/flask.html

<comment><USER2> Whenever I see Flask code, it just reminds me how unbelievably succinct Sinatra is.

I imagine it's a limitation of Ruby vs Python for creating DSLs, but a basic Flask app just seems so verbose. It's like seeing "Hello World" in Java vs "Hello World" in a dynamic language like python or ruby.

<comment><USER3> _Flask:_

      from flask import Flask
      app = Flask(__name__)

      @app.route("/")
      def hello():
          return "Hello World!"

      if __name__ == "__main__":
          app.run()

_Sinatra:_

      require 'sinatra'

      get '/hi' do
        "Hello World!"
      end

<comment><USER4> Note that there is no need for the conditional if you just want to serve this route (and there is no need for the conditional block at all if you're just defining view functions), and that this whole block exists once _per project_.

And that a Flask app is a proper WSGI application (as opposed to a self- running Sinatra handler which has to be quite significantly modified to be Rack-compatible)

As a result, the _actual_ verbosity difference comes down to:

        @app.route("/")
        def hello():
            return "Hello World!"

versus

        get '/hi' do
            "Hello World!"
        end

So, as usual, Python not having multiline anonymous functions: for this very case you could write

        app.route('/')(
            lambda: "Hello World!")

but that kind-of looks like shit and you're hosed if you want to add more stuff.

(one could argue that the Flask version lets you formally write docstrings which standard Python doc tools will understand)

(and if you're wondering, yes Flask could provide support for not needing to define an app or run it for this trivial example, leaving named functions as the only actual overhead over Sinatra. I don't think there's much value in it, but it wouldn't be very hard)

<comment><USER5> _as opposed to a self-running Sinatra handler which has to be quite significantly modified to be Rack-compatible_

Huh? Here's the `config.ru` that you need:

      $: << File.dirname(__FILE__)

      require 'app' #assuming app.rb
      run Sinatra::Application

Note that I have no stake in the verbosity claims, as it's not something I particularly care about. But I wouldn't consider this a significant modification.

<comment><USER4> > Huh? Here's the `config.ru` that you need:

Really? I remember it being significantly more work in the past, like having to change the `require` and create a class around all the routing methods

If that's all which is required to make a Sinatra app into a good Rack citizen, then consider my previous assertion wrong and rescinded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rather than quibbling over syntax, I'd like to comment on a real concern I have about blogs, particularly ones that engage in hagiographies on things they don't appear to rightly understand.

Nota bene: I am a user of Flask and have been one for quite some time. I am incredibly fond of it and it has replaced Django for most things I do in web dev. I am very familiar with it and its limitations/ugly corners. Familiarity breeding contempt and all that. That said, little contempt has arisen from my familiarity with Flask. It's that good.

Do we upvote these blog posts because we think they're constructive? This is somewhere on the order of a press release in depth. The farthest this post gets is in describing an app that uses hard-coded credentials to log an administrator in.

This doesn't demonstrate the strengths of Flask, nor the weaknesses, nor why it's necessarily better than Sinatra, Bottle, or any other micro web- framework.

Since this post has failed to do so, I'll fill in that gap as quickly as I can.

Flask is great because it _scales_ to your needs. It starts as painlessly as any other micro web-framework, but what makes it nice is that it's so _easy_ and _clean_ to graft disparate ways of doing a web-app.

In my particular case, I'm in the process of building a service on Flask and MongoDB. I'm in the process of making Flask, WTForms, and MongoEngine all play nice together and Flask has done a wonderful job of making this painless because it doesn't make any bizarre assumptions and it doesn't force any strange contortions in my code like Sinatra or raw Rack apps do.

Having hacked on some Rack and Sinatra code, I can tell you right now that the moment you want to make a "real" app with the typical complexity of a mature service, even the bare basics get _painful_ really fast.

Flask hasn't done this to me yet, it's already breezed well past where I've taken raw Rack and Sinatra+Rack apps before.

This blog post, however, does not come from experience. It does not attempt to explain why Flask is better than the alternatives, it doesn't even demonstrate any interesting aspects of Flask.

This is blogspam.

Please reconsider your upvotes, please reconsider promoting content like this again.

Popularity for popularity's sake in the absence of knowledge, experience, and data is simply "pop culture". (cf. Node.js)

Edit: Worse, the author even explicitly appeals to the quality of Flask on the basis of "branding".

Engineering decisions shouldn't be made on the basis of pop culture.

Choose Flask because you know it suits the problem you're solving well, or because you know it suits your style of programming.

Don't choose it because somebody showed you a "hello, world!" example.

<comment><USER7> I think this is a very valid point, and it comes up quite frequently in comparison of frameworks and libraries.

One example that was annoying me recently was in trying to select a Javascript client-side MVC (MVVM, etc.) framework for a single-page application.

The internet is _full_ of people busily comparing, contrasting, arguing about, and recommending JS frameworks. Problem: 95% of them are doing so based on a < 100 line demo app, usually implementing a todo list, often which makes implausible simplifying assumptions. "Hm, that's nice, but check out the demo todo list app for MagicJS! It's 57 characters shorter, and the code forms the shape of a flower, and it would be quite easy to extend it to let you create new items!""

No real world app is going to be solved in < 100 lines[1], and while it's awesome to know that you've chosen a framework which can be used to create incredibly elegant < 100 line demo apps, what I really care about is how the framework works for large apps. Scale (in the sense of scaling up from the example code on the frameworks homepage to a real app that actually handles all the corner cases) matters _HUGELY_. And I don't think that gets nearly enough recognition.

(In fact, on this very thread, I see someone comparing a "hello world" app in Flask and Sinatra, and complaining about Flask's relative "verbosity". This is utter nonsense of the precise kind you've identified. Implement a calendar app in both that syncs with Google Calendar, and THEN compare line counts, and NOW you have a some feel for verbosity. Sinatra might win handily, but you can't tell that from a hello world app. Then again, off the top of my head, I can't think of one actually useful thing a hello world app can tell you about a framework.)

[1]: I'm speaking figuratively, obviously. Some of my proudest moments as a programmer have involved solving problems in just a couple. Sadly, this does not happen often. :)

<comment><USER6> You'd hit what I was talking about precisely on the head.

I feel your pain on figuring out which JavaScript SPA framework to use. I don't think I've seen any particularly compelling examples in public of even Backbone.js, which is currently the most popular one to use. The templating and sync semantics aren't appealing.

And yes, some of my proudest moments, too, have been making a <100 line solution to a problem. That having been said those are never the truly hairy problems.

The hairy problems are when the rubber meets the road and whether or not the solution I've built on is going to be appropriate or not. Those are going to be >100 line of code problems.

I have to be able to build things of at least moderate complexity with a framework without blood gushing my eyes and ears.

<100 line examples don't tell me if that's going to be the case or not.

The superficiality of this non-content makes my spleen rupture.</comment></comment></comment>


Will human sexuality ever be free from stone age, evolutionary impulses? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/will-human-sexuality-ever-be-free-from-stone-age-impulses <comment><USER2> The major events in the world and in the US are driven by religious fanaticism and tribal behavior. Why would anyone ever think that _any_ aspect of human behavior will be free from stone age impulses?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you remove "stone age, evolutionary impulses" from human sexuality, what's left?

</comment><comment><USER4> who was that rule named after, that is about questioning headlines never beeing followed by an answer? Rhethoric question ... didn't read.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a graphics framework recommendation - <AUTHOR> Dear HN,
I've been working on some 2d visualizations in my free time, just for fun, things like cellular automata, chaotic iterated maps, fractals, etc. I've been using OCaml and its Graphics package, and sometimes Python with Cairo to do this -- I really just need a canvas where I can draw pixels.
So far, I've been running all computations on the CPU, but I'd like to start playing with the GPU, since my frame rates are getting slow. I'm looking for some kind of GPGPU framework that's somehow integrated with a GUI library so that I can draw to the screen without shuffling memory CPU<->GPU too much (is this as big of an issue as I have convinced myself it is?). I know I can do this just writing shaders, but I'd rather not do that if possible.
So far, I've looked at:
- [SPOC][spoc] - seems ideal, but unstable
- Tensorflow - I use it a lot, but can't find a way to draw to the screen without evaling to numpy array and drawing that
- [Futhark][fh] - seems tough to draw to screen here too...
Any tips would be appreciated!
[spoc]: http://mathiasbourgoin.github.io/SPOC/
[fh]: https://futhark-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> I don't have a framework in mind. If I were to do this, I would write raw cuda with opengl introp.

the output of cuda will be in a texture map memory and given to opengl for rendering.

although I have not done anything with visualization using this approach, I have, however, did video processing with this approach. A video frame is first processed by cuda and then passed to opengl for rendering.</comment>


Upload your nudes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/facebook-revenge-porn-strategy-involes-sending-nudes-to-self/ <comment><USER2> I think hashing pictures and storing the results to compare with future uploads is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. This is the same thing that is done with CP pictures and for much the same reason.

The only thing that makes me nervous is the actual uploading of pictures in order to be scanned. It should be possible to create a client-side image processor that generates the appropriate hash but doesn't involve uploading your pictures to a server somewhere. Perhaps a Javascript processor in-browser or even a native desktop app.

</comment><comment><USER2> @dang, can we get the title changed for this story? The original was "Facebook's testing a new method to prevent revenge porn that requires uploading your nudes" which seems more descriptive and helpful.</comment>


Digital colonization: The future wars will be digital wars - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconafrica.com/technews/digital-colonization/

<comment><AUTHOR> the main point of the article is that "weak countries will be digitally colonized"</comment>


A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_World_in_100_Objects <comment><USER2> I listened to the entire series and it's absolutely fantastic; one of my favorite things ever. It's interesting on two levels.

One, the history itself is fascinating, even for somebody like me that's generally not a big history buff. (Perhaps it helps that the episodes are short!)

Two, the central conceit -- snapshots of history as told via examinations of various historical artifacts -- actually changed the way I look at things around me. Every single object we hold, mundane or otherwise, holds so much information and is shaped by so many things.

Here's one example I remember well: the famous "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" print. We tend to think of it as the most quintessential Japanese print. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa)

But it's more complex and interesting than that. It actually marks a big turning point in Japanese culture, as it actually incorporates major European influences: the rich blue inks and a European use of perspective to depict the mountain in the distance. So this unmistakably Japanese print represents a crossroads...

<comment><USER3> I love the way that this series shows how much can be revealed by the simplest of objects. For example, the Oxus chariot - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/sbCfsq5kSFak...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/sbCfsq5kSFaknMhxuK9zow) \- transcript: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/ep...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode26/)

It's a tiny (but intricate) model of a chariot, rider and passenger, and yet through this, the program explains how it reveals the vast orderly road network of an empire, the functioning of a state and the diversity of its religions and regions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can get all the audio episodes for free at [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrtd2/episodes/downloads....](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrtd2/episodes/downloads.rss)

        wget  -i <(curl -s http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrtd2/episodes/downloads.rss | grep -Po 'http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/.*?mp3' | sort | uniq)

<comment><USER5> Is there a way to get the results "sorted" ? The filenames don't help much

<comment><USER4> They are tagged so you can use something like easytag to rename them based on that. Alternatively just use a proper podcast client to download them all, I like gpodder 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a very great list for the history of the world in 100 objects in my opinion. Neil could have picked anything but nope. Take the last 5 items representing the past 100 years. No objects representing WW1, WW2 and the computer revolution probably three of the most seminal moments in human history are left out. In its stead is the painting "In the dull village" and a Sharia compliant credit card. The whole list seems painfully diverse and mundane.

<comment><USER7> He picked objects _in the British Museum_.

Wars have their own museum in London - the Imperial War Museum - and the computer revolution is somewhat represented in the Science Museum.

<comment><USER8> The Credit Card probably contains a 8051 core, anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The entire story of the HMS Beagle's chronometers is fascinating. She carried 22 where most vessels of time only one or three.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship's_chronometer_from_HMS_Be...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship's_chronometer_from_HMS_Beagle)

</comment><comment><USER10> Skip Wikipedia - it doesn't add anything. Go straight to [http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/)</comment>


Apache Spot (Incubating): packet and flow analytics on Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://spot.incubator.apache.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> [http://incubator.apache.org/projects/spot.html](http://incubator.apache.org/projects/spot.html)

[http://open-network-insight.org/](http://open-network-insight.org/)

[https://github.com/Open-Network-Insight/open-network- insight...](https://github.com/Open-Network-Insight/open-network-insight/wiki)</comment>


Test-driving your Javascript for fun and profit - <AUTHOR> http://eng.wealthfront.com/2011/01/test-driving-your-javascript-for-fun.html

<comment><USER2> _The first thing you'll notice is that magical comment at the top of our test. jsTestDriver takes a comment beginning with ":DOC +=" and adds the contents of the comment as a DOM fragment to the page, allowing us to test against it. It's a simple and effective way of providing DOM fixtures to test any code that does DOM manipulation._

OK, that is just gratuitous "magic". Nobody picking up that code to look at is going to realise that the _comment_ is meaningful and necessary for the test. What is the advantage of doing that instead of calling a function to do the work, passing the DOM fragment as a parameter. Even if the parser that currently uses the comment has to identify the function call and treat it in the same way as the comment, at least by doing it as a function call, you have signalled to any user that the comment is _significant_.

/rant

<comment><USER3> I agree. If you can change or delete comments the code stops working, there's something wrong. It's totally unexpected.</comment></comment>


My current project, a collaborative local atlas - <AUTHOR> http://www.lokusapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Lokus is my first attempt at a webapp, there's an app on the Android Market that is still in its early stages, but I decided to launch regardless. It is hosted on Google App Engine and uses Django.

Any feedback is appreciated, my email is email@example.com.</comment>


Another Google easter egg - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=askew

<comment><USER2> I am embarrassed how long it took me to notice. Nice.

Sadly, Ajar returns mundane results.</comment>


Review my app: Head Hunting lets you post jobs to your facebook profile - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
My (UK) Cambridge-based startup has just launched its first app into public beta.
It's called Head Hunting and its main purpose is to let managers, startups, and small business owners post job vacancies to their facebook profile and share those listings with their "friends".
Check it out at: http://apps.facebook.com/headhunting/pages/recruiter [you don't need to "install" the app until you post a vacancy]
Shorter version: http://tinyurl.com/bpoq9p
I'd love to get your feedback. There are a few bits and bobs I know aren't quite perfect yet but hopefully its usability is good and the concept is strong enough for people to find it useful.
The tricky part with launching a venture like this is getting enough content to hit critical mass. If you're willing to twitter or blog about the app I'd be eternally grateful - hopefully it will prove to be a great new way to find employees!
Thanks,
Lee. Crossbone Systems <comment><USER2> I've been job-spammed a few times by recruiters on Facebook, ie:

"I am also in the Scottish Developers group, I work for 9-20 recruitment, an IT specialist recruitment consultancy based in Glasgow. One of my clients in Edinburgh is looking for a .NET developer for an urgent start - just wondering if you are available or know anybody who is?"

I've sent them a link to your app and a polite request not to message me again.

</comment><comment><USER3> another Cambridge hacker - axod and I will be proud :D

I really love the usability of this, I love the form fields and the javascript usage to make all the subtle changes (eg, your location changes the currency) -- its great.

I also love the large form labels "1" "2" "3" telling the user what to do - very nice touch.

I think the toughest part will be getting eyeballs - you need jobs to get users to get them to add their job positions.

I'll blog/twitter about it - are you on twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

I'm an occasional twitterer: guybrush0.

I'm really hoping that by appealing to the startups to list their jobs, they'll share the job listings on their own facebook profile and that'll attract job seekers as well, building the momentum...

Lee.

<comment><USER3> awesome. :)

convinced @vero and @taptu to use your app, I think :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to effectively start in a new (software engineering) role? - <AUTHOR> I've just finished a job search and going to be starting in ~4 weeks.<p>I thought it would be good to get some general advice from the community about people's strategies for the first few days/weeks at a new company, as a software engineer in a non-leadership position. <comment><USER2> Here's my checklist (originally included in an email sent out to my mailing list - [https://softwareclown.com](https://softwareclown.com)):

Understand the big picture direction of the organization, team, and product I'm working on: management, marketing, sales, and engineering.

* Talk to relevant managers about where we're going, and what they'd consider success or failure. Also a chance to meet managers I didn't talk to during interview process.

* See if anyone's done a pre-mortem, or if not try to informally or formally do one: "it's one year in the future and the project has failed. What did we do wrong?" Usally I've started mentally creating a list of big picture risks, but many of those are probably irrelevant, and I'm probably missing quite a few.

* Learn meeting schedule, start forming opinions about existing ones (useful/needs improvement/useless) and what meetings might be missing.

* Get to know co-workers: names, roles, who knows what.

* Wander around introducing myself, and asking people what they are working on.

* Figure out lunch and snack culture.

* Join social chat rooms / email lists.

Set up work environment.

* Standing desk, with keyboard and monitor correct height.

* Kinesis Advantage keyboard.

* Mat for standing desk.

* Install Linux on laptop.

* Editor configuration (using my dotfiles repo). * Setup email, chat, other communication methods.

Start learning the development process, code base, tool chain, and relevant technologies.

* Get code checked out, figure out how to build and run it.

* Figure out how to file tickets.

* Get smallest possible commit merged (fixing a typo, say).

* Improve or write documentation for the above three, for the benefit of future developers.

* Next smallest code change: improve code quality by adding a linter, or setup EditorConfig.

* Start work on a small, real feature or bug fix.

* Order (and expense!) books covering topics I don't know enough about.

Logistics.

* Health and dental insurance.

* Retirement account.

* Bring relevant legal documentation first day (passport / birth certificate).

* Figure out best time to leave for work.

* Figure out bike parking.</comment>


Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/juliagalef/status/1184270907964944384 <comment><AUTHOR> The Stanford Prison Experiment is one of the most famous psychology experiments in history. For decades, we've been told that it proves how regular people easily turn sadistic when they are asked to role play as prison guards. But the story now appears to be mostly fraudulent. Thibault Le Texier is a researcher who dug into the Stanford archives and learned that the "prison guards" were actually told how to behave in order to support the experimenters' thesis. On this episode, Thibault and Julia discuss his findings, how the experimenters got away with such a significant misrepresentation for so long, and what this whole affair says about the field of psychology.

Direct PDF link to the Journal paper: [https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/mjhnp/providers/osfstorage...](https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/mjhnp/providers/osfstorage/5d4bd52522a88600184ed20c?action=download&version=1&direct)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good resources for re-learning the basics of programming - jj-abram

I have been programming for a while now, but not in a traditional way. I have done some Objective-C, Java, HTML, etc., but I never really started with a good book on C.<p>Can you recommend any books or resources that start from the basics of C, to good core concepts that an experienced programmer should know? <comment><AUTHOR> C is not the place to look for good core concepts. I recommend [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/) instead.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is excellent:

[http://www.neebo.com/Textbook/the-c-programming- languageb978...](http://www.neebo.com/Textbook/the-c-programming- languageb9780131103627/ISBN-9780131103627?kpid=0-13-110362-8&gclid=CNzslND_v8MCFalj7AodKBQA7Q)</comment>


Volkswagen Reaches Deal in U.S. Over Emissions Scandal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/business/international/volkswagen-emissions-settlement.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> When the news of VW emissions fraud first broke, I thought, "corporate death penalty!" That'll teach 'em. Not playing by the rules on an industrial scale has the consequence that you don't get to participate in our economy at all.

Of course, the corporate death penalty would only amplify and accelerate the hardship of hundreds of thousands of "innocent" employees and others in the VW ecosystem.

Punishment doesn't work. We already know VW management doesn't feel responsible; they blame it on 'low-level' people. Does anybody seriously think VW or GM won't do this kind of thing again?

As a society, we can't allow crimes of this magnitude to occur in the first place. What do we need to change so things like this don't happen?

<comment><USER3> Transparency. Transparent accounting makes sure financial problems are caught before they snowball. Transparent engineering -- including code -- will prevent this kind of engineering fraud.

(That doesn't necessarily mean Free Software, but certainly auditable by the public and regulators.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how much they will be offering people? I own a 2011 Golf TDI, and NADA is showing suggested retail as like 11.5k, which is 2k less than I purchased it for used from a private seller about a year ago, and at the time, nada private sale was at like 14k. If VW wants to give people full retail as of the current market value (ie: after the emissions scandal came to light and value decreased), then this will be quite the ripoff. I would rather take the initial 5k offered to owners in the first proposal for compensation.

<comment><USER5> My guess is that there will be large lookup charts with prices for every year/car/mileage combination designed to make people like yourself carefully consider weather they want the 5 grand or the buyout.

<comment><USER6> If it were me I'd keep the car as it came and enjoy the better performance.

<comment><USER7> If your state performs emissions testing, they could deny you a tag renewal if the vehicle fails. You'd need the "fixed" ECU firmware to drive the vehicle on public roads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Owners will have the option to get the cars fixed or have VW buy them back.

The article says that the estimated cost of buybacks is $7 billion. With 480,000 cars in play, that's an average of $14,000. Clearly they're accounting for depreciation here. I wonder if they're accounting for the dive in price I'm sure these cars have had in the secondary market since the scandal broke.

From what's said here, it's hard to tell if the owners will be screwed over or not.

<comment><USER9> I'm an owner, and while the info is not complete yet, I like where its heading. Honestly, I just want a different car, and not to be punished financially for their behavior. I'll take a buyout and if there's cash above the BB value, I'll be happier still.

<comment><USER7> What vehicle would you replace your VW with? (simply curious)

<comment><USER9> This is the conundrum. I'm used to the sight of 45mpg on my dashboard. Passat TDI was kind of my perfect car, so I really don't know what I'll go for next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> VW screwed up- BADLY. But I lost interest as soon as I saw the picture of Joyce the protestor. Good grief, a TDI still gets way better gas mileage and is probably still cleaner than an equivalent gasoline car. I would totally buy one with cash on the hood today. I think that some perspective is needed here. Let existing cars carry on, make VW fix as well as possible and give them greater scrutiny until trust is earned back.

<comment><USER3> Why do you say it's cleaner than a gasoline car?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> the engine software update, applied in the recall last year, by itself made the cars pass emission thresholds in other countries, which had a lower bar than US. I wonder if VW's plan will be to buy back the cars and resell them in Europe or Latin America.

<comment><USER12> I read yesterday, caveat: while most news was still rumored, that VW would not be permitted to resell the vehicles.

<comment><USER13> Surely they can resell them outside the EPAs jurisdiction.

<comment><USER14> VW won't be doing a buyback because they simply decided on their own to do so. It will be part of a deal with the US to settle the case. If the terms include a resale prohibition, VW will have to honor that if they want to keep the case settled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a survey that went out to VW owners a while ago trying to gauge interest on different deals. The options presented were, in exchange for surrendering your car at a dealership, you'd get:

a) value of the car in Sept 2015 + 20%

b) value of the car in Sept 2015 + 30%

c) a replacement of your car - same model, same specs, same features, same color, but the 2016 model. Lease/loan payments would stay the same and you'd basically just get a newer replacement.

They specifically noted that the value would be determined by using a reputable car value estimation reference, so it won't just be some random lookup table that they've pulled out of thin air. Unfortunately, I don't see an easy way to look up historical values from KBB (haven't checked NADA), so I really don't know what the value of my Jetta was in Sept.

None of those things were officially from VW, but the survey was supposed to be somewhat confidential, so I can only imagine that the survey was contracted by VW.

Again: THIS IS UNOFFICIAL INFORMATION AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED ON.

<comment><USER16> Odd. I, owner of a 2014 Passat TDI, never received any such survey.

<comment><USER17> I have a 2013, and I didn't see one either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> VW should be sending a check to everyone who lived or worked near a freeway during the time these cars were on the road.

</comment><comment><USER19> While I am all for a substantial fine I will be very disappointed if the fine exceeds that given GM for their ignition key recall. There were thirty million plus cars in that recall for an issue known over decade, an issue which directly lead to death, and they got off for less than a billion.

While some might claim "pollution" from the TDIs is killing people the link is not direct and negligible in the big picture when you look at volumes. Frankly I think VW should be blocked from selling any TDI they have in stock, new or used and buy back them all. But a separate fine beyond that? Again, not if exceeds the fine giving GM which by the way also topped Toyota's fine for unintended acceleration which could not even be proven.

<comment><USER20> How is vehicle pollution "negligible"? The effects of pollution are quite measurable and we have pretty good estimates of how many people it kills in aggregate. It's entirely possible for pollution to kill vastly more people than a mechanical fault, albeit it's harder to point at them individually.

<comment><USER21> Well that's a big problem for any lawsuit, the uncertainty inherent in estimating this kind of hazard makes it much harder to prove that someone has been harmed in a legally sound manner. Each side can can get pretty much whatever conclusions they want by paying the right experts.

And in the absence of proof our court system is biased in favor of defendants (that's not exactly relevant to negotiations over this fine however since the EPA only has to prove that they broke regulations).

I'd guess that NOx can be a meaningful hazard in certain places with lots of cars and/or special geography (LA County for example) but almost nowhere else. I can't prove that hypothesis of course.

<comment><USER22> Just a quick note, but picking LA County to minimize the impact of something isn't very useful.. LA County has a higher population than 43 _states_.

<comment><USER21> What I'm saying is that any analysis is subject to a great deal of uncertainty, not that the impact is minimal.

The guess is just for fun. Do you disagree that the effect of NOx probably varies greatly between LA County and any place without the same amount of traffic or special geography? You're welcome to make your own guess for the purpose of discussion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do we democratize bandwidth? - <AUTHOR>

A recurring theme these days, especially in the US, surrounds the growing mediocrity of the malevolent oligopolies who provide bandwidth to businesses and end users.
Patton Oswalt give a talk last night, mentioned the internet, and explained that most people in the room have better filmmaking technology (on their cellphones!) than did Orson Welles when he made Citizen Kane. His point about democratization is true in so many creative fields, from filmmaking to software development to comedy writing. Individuals and small groups have unprecedented power to create great work, and the disruptive effects of this are being felt in so many industries.
As we watch the sagas of WikiLeaks, MetroPCS and AT&T's marketing-only 4G network, it's apparent that distribution and bandwidth are only as democratized as corporate interests will allow, which threatens all the advances we've enjoyed in these lowered barriers to entry.
So how do we disrupt that? What application of people and technology will let us side-step the massive capital investments and central control that have historically been requisites for high-bandwidth networks? Is there anything on the horizon? Is anyone working on neutering these telecom scumbags in a meaningful, sustainable way? Give me some hope, here. <comment><USER2> Customer-owned fiber takes back the last mile at least. [http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/07/customer-owned- fi...](http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/07/customer-owned-fiber.ars) <http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/homes_tails>

Unfortunately, there's no way to convince most people that this benefits them.</comment>


The Monty Hall Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.montyhallproblem.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I like the argument from intuition at the very end:

> Imagine that there were a million doors. After you have chosen your door, > Monty opens all but one of the remaining doors, showing you that they are > "losers." It's obvious that your first choice is wildly unlikely to have > been right. And isn't it obvious that of the other 999,999 doors that you > didn't choose, the one door he avoided opening is wildly likely to be the > one with the prize?</comment>


Tracking down the person who tried to impersonate me - <AUTHOR> http://kevinzhang.org/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who-tried-to-impersonate-me.html

<comment><USER2> I assume these names are real names? If you'll ever have a case in front of a judge, public naming of (possible) suspects will only harm your case, I recommend you remove the names or at least replace them.</comment>


Why WebAssembly is a web game changer and source of pride for Mozilla/Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/why-webassembly-is-a-game-changer-for-the-web-and-a-source-of-pride-for-mozilla-and-firefox-dda80e4c43cb <comment><USER2> Mildly relevant and amusing : [http://devhumor.com/content/uploads/images/February2016/asse...](http://devhumor.com/content/uploads/images/February2016/assembly- web-dev.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> How does WebAssembly become x86?</comment>


The Minecraft Test: How to Tell if Your Console Is Screwed - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/02/the-minecraft-test/?cid=co5845234 <comment><USER2> Totally, this is why I've started churning out game ideas and concepts ever since I found Cocos2D for iOS _. Constantly throwing them away, but the point is I can easily try without a lot of knowledge and financial investment. If Apply TV wasn't a bit laggy for mirroring, that would be my perfect console.

_ Android, etc equivalents are, of course, available...</comment>


Show HN: Vertical news aggregator (LGT "tech" vertical) - <AUTHOR> http://techwatching.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the same system doing an automotive vertical: [http://wheelscore.com/](http://wheelscore.com/)

System is still under development - big thing outstanding is solving back- button behaviour on the infinite scroll.

I would really value folks feedback re: the "trending tags" and whether this is a valuable means of calling attention to notable news.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can you explain what makes your news aggregator better/different than all the other options out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure - thank-you for asking!

TW provides a stream of unfiltered content focused on the technology vertical, allowing for easy browsing and serendipitous discovery.

TW also automatically tags every story and surfaces "trending" tags to highlight the notable news buried in the stream.

So - the goal is to provide a degree of the "here's what you should know today" view, but still provide a fun to scan, unfiltered view of technology news.

Lots of action today - tags that bubbled up today (July 15, 2014) included...

Net Neutrality [http://techwatching.com/tag/neutrality](http://techwatching.com/tag/neutrality) Yahoo! [http://techwatching.com/tag/yahoo](http://techwatching.com/tag/yahoo) IBM [http://techwatching.com/tag/ibm](http://techwatching.com/tag/ibm)

...and a bunch of others.</comment></comment>


Rebuilding Civilization from Scratch? - <AUTHOR> A long time ago, I came across a set of resources intended for use in the event of collapse of civilization. It consisted of farming, engineering, blacksmithing, construction technique, etc.<p>Is there such a guide for the bootstrapping of computation from first principles? <comment><USER2> To have computers that are anything close to what you'd recognize as a computer today, you'd need to have an electronics industry that's capable of manufacturing semiconductors, disk drives, CRTs, etc. These rely on many different raw materials which take complex industrial processes to produce. You will probably have to rebuild most of modern civilization (power plants, mines, factories, vehicles, roads, etc.) before you can even think of building computers.

Yes, you could build computers out of relays or vacuum tubes, but their computational power would be very limited. You're not going to be able to run Unix on hardware like that. That technology was very slow and had to be repaired frequently (if you have thousands of vacuum tubes, one would burn out every few hours).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting question. As another poster said, to do this we would probably have to rebuild most of modern civilization. Leaving instructions to do that seem almost impossible.

I honestly think though that leaving behind a detailed record of what is possible and how things used to be would be very valuable in this situation though. Just letting people know computers did exist and did require electricity and what electricity was and that we used to burn something called coal to make it would for sure speed up a future civilizations research dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in what anyone else finds. These are projects i'm aware of that are periphery to your request and valuable in their own right.

[https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/](https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/) [http://digitarworld.uw.hu/ttlcpu.html](http://digitarworld.uw.hu/ttlcpu.html) [https://monster6502.com/](https://monster6502.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the difference between anxiety and depression? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Depression is when you've been under enough stress for enough time (which for many people takes the form of anxiety) that your body starts pressing "snooze" on those emotional signals that are trying to spur it into action. It feels hopeless that it can satisfy what they're asking of it, so it starts to suppress them.

While the two are different - opposites, in some ways - they very frequently coincide and feed into each other circularly. They're also extremely common and can be overcome through therapy, possibly combined with medication. If you're dealing with them, know that it's okay and normal, and see if you can find a therapist to talk with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anxiety is the constant, horrible, burning feeling I have when I know I have to do something I don't want to do, like fly on a plane. It raises my heart rate, I get very tense, and the slightest problem will make me very angry. It is an irrational response driven by certain biochemicals inside of you.

Depression is when I don't want to get out of bed because I feel everything is pointless and hopeless. You are waiting to die because you are not motivated to do anything. Instead of being over-stimulated, you are under-stimulated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly enough, they seem to be related at a genetic level. [1]

For me, anxiety can trigger depressive episodes, but not vice versa.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1514877](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1514877)

</comment><comment><USER5> anxiety means you are helpless, but still have some energy to react. but depression means you don't have any energy at all.</comment>


The Return of Paganism - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/opinion/christianity-paganism-america.html <comment><USER2> Pagan is the Greek word for Peasant. It was used by Christians as a pejorative for anyone that had not yet converted and applied to a myriad of religions. I don't have any references handy. Perhaps some day I will blog about this.</comment>


Why Sysadmin Certifications Have Worked So Far - <AUTHOR> http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/WhyCertificationsWork

<comment><USER2> Above all else, certifications have been a big business for these tech companies.</comment>


Ask HN: What do the new profile options mean? - <AUTHOR> A number of new profile options seem to have been added. They include "notifo", "showdead:	 "noprocrast", "maxvisit", and "minaway". What do they mean? <comment><USER2> "Showdead: "noprocrast", "maxvisit", and "minaway" are not new.

Showdead shows killed threads and hellbanned comments.

Noprocrast locks you out of HN for minaway minutes once you have been logged in for maxvisit minutes.

See: <http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

Notifo is new to me. Maybe a public email address?

Delay is new to me as well.

<comment><USER3> I tried delay once. I think it renders your comments to you alone until $delay minutes elapse. Probably helps avoid flamewars and other procrastination because you won't be getting quick replies.

Edit: Notifo is a push notifications service from a YC company. I'm guessing you paste in an API key and then get pings when your comments receive replies.

<comment><USER4> > I think it renders your comments to you alone until $delay minutes elapse.

Yes, that's correct.

I think the main purpose of 'delay' is to allow you to edit your comments before the rest of HN sees it. A lot of us read through our comments and edit them after we submit (to cut out snark, clarify a point, make it more concise).

> Notifo is new to me. Maybe a public email address?

Notifo is a YC company: <http://notifo.com/>. They used to email you when people replied to your post on HN: <http://notifo.com/hackernews>. I'm not really sure if it's still working anymore, since they said they were shutting down a while back: <http://blog.notifo.com/notifo>.</comment></comment></comment>


A bit of font generation: a brief excursion into OpenType - <AUTHOR> https://pomax.github.io/CFF-glyphlet-fonts/ <comment><USER2> Sadly, the custom ligature does not work in iOS.

<comment><USER2> … or OS X, though it takes space in OS X. So much for my ill conceived scheme to make custom glyphs for programming language digraphs and keywords.

<comment><USER3> However, it does show up in Chrome on OS X.

I assume that was a joke, but if you want custom glyphs for programming language digraphs and keywords, you might be able to do it with "sym-lock.el" for emacs. (I haven't used it in a very long time, but I remember it could be used to replace TeX backslash sequences with the corresponding symbol.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Now, because this is essentially just in-font magic, copy-pasting the first > rectangle should lead to you pasting the plain string "~", and copy-pasting > the second rectangle should lead to you pasting the plain string "custom".

Made me think of hunter2...

<comment><USER5> Made you think of stars? I don't get it.

<comment><USER6> [http://bash.org/?244321](http://bash.org/?244321)</comment></comment></comment>