OpenBSD on PC Engines APU2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/elad/openbsd-apu2 <comment><USER2> Author here... Surprised to see this made it to HN. :)

The reason I installed OpenBSD on this device rather than a ready-made firewall solution is that I had some ideas for a router that would protect networks with a lot of untrusted IoT devices. Some of them required changes to the network stack, and OpenBSD's proved to be very elegant and clean for this purpose. Not to mention the proactively-security approach etc.

<comment><USER3> On the Github page you could mention that the APU is quite often used to install pfsense on, which in turn runs on FreeBSD. A short explanation why OpenBSD is better than FreeBSD can do no harm. Maybe the people who're going to do this need no such explanation, but the occasional visitor may appreciate a bit more story.

<comment><USER4> Is there's a comparison between FreeBSD vs. OpenBSD in packets filtering, routing performance et al?

<comment><USER5> Well, to the best of my understanding. FreeBSD will generally have better performance while OpenBSD has the latest pf syntax and features. This is a source of animosity between the two projects that I don't fully understand.

FreeBSD has done a lot of work to enable SMP for their pf so that gives it the edge on modern multicore systems. This work wasn't able to be used in OpenBSD so that was unique to FreeBSD for a long time. Right now OpenBSD is in the middle of doing the same for pf and their network stack. So the performance difference shrinks on every release. The newer pf syntax and features make writing rulesets easier, like replacing ALTQ with prio for traffic shaping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> APU's are amazingly good replacements for proprietary firewalls.

I have a few original APU's running OpenBSD and they've been rock solid, save for one that got knackered hard enough to pop the mSATA SSD out of it's socket.

It'll be really nice when the BIOS bits to turn on the 4GB APU2's ECC RAM support end up in coreboot.

<comment><USER7> Other highlights:

* High quality Intel NICs (3x i210AT)

* AES-NI instructions

* SIM socket (for 3G cellular modem in PCIe slot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was about running OpenBSD on the PC Engine video games console (Turbografx).

<comment><USER9> That would have been quite the challenge, with only 8kB of ram!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Out of curiosity, have you measured the power draw from the wall socket with your configuration?

Kind of wondering what "real world" measurements indicate. :)

<comment><USER11> I'm a heavy APU2 user. They mostly sit around 7W. Which is a lot more than most off the shelf wifi routers and the like.

<comment><USER12> The DTAG VDSL2+Vectoring standard modem ("Speedport W 724V", I and some other people tend to call them shitport) pulls about this much in idle. The DrayTek VDSL2+Vectoring modem also pulls about this much.

Both without WLAN (enabled).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So what's the realistic throughput for an APU2 in a firewall configuration? (one port for LAN, one for WAN, forwarding traffic, no firewall rules)

<comment><USER14> In my tests I was getting around 70MB/s routing with a few dozen firewall rules. However I'm not sure if this was a limit of the APU2, or the devices I was using to generate the traffic.

It also has accelerated crypto, so ipsec/openvpn shouldn't be much slower than routing.

<comment><USER5> This summer I had a router running OpenBSD on the older apu1d and was seeing nearly 700mbps on iperf with a basic rule set. But I don't know how iperf relates to real world performance.

<comment><USER12> iperf has been, at least for me, a good benchmark for how fast file transfer _might_ be, if everything goes well. Usually they are a bit [say, NFS] (or much [say, NFS on Windows]) slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why do you need Linux to install OpenBSD?

<comment><USER16> You don't, but you can only flash the BIOS from Linux.

<comment><USER17> You can flash the BIOS on the APU from OpenBSD. Just `pkg_add flashrom`.

<comment><USER16> Sweet! Hopefully the author sees this: his site mentions using Linux for flashing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Or just install pfsense!

<comment><USER2> See my other comment - I'm using it as a foundation for further development.</comment></comment>


I thought I wasn't the "programmer type" - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/i-thought-i-wasnt-the-programmer-type-d4f7ee30cc36 <comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a better way to watch music videos - <AUTHOR> http://chartbrain.com

<comment><USER2> nice job. nice mashup idea. i could see myself using this for various reasons ("what is that song i've never heard that i keep hearing people talk about because i only listen to NPR?")

sole nitpick - (on chrome) while a video is playing, the 'All Charts' dropdown falls behind the video. when the video is paused, it works as expected.</comment>


The most detailed map yet of our place in the universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/9/4/6105631/map-galaxy-supercluster-laniakea-milky-way

<comment><USER2> Absolutely beautiful science.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks amazing!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize the online "content" you consume? - <AUTHOR> I'm re-constructing my process for collecting, sorting, using and archiving content from the numerous feeds, websites and links I go through during a day.
The amount of things that I have coming in can be overwhelming and I'm trying to find that balance point where I sort and retain useful things, without spending a huge amount of time on it.
How do you do it? Any tips you can share? <comment><AUTHOR> The best process for me at the moment seems to be using 3 tools in the following way. The 3 tools are: Google Reader (through a mac app - Gruml), Instapaper (a bookmarking service thats great for text) and Diigo (a bookmarking service).

\- I go through Google Reader once a day scanning for useful things. Anything that I can't go process in a few minutes or don't want to deal with immediately I save.

\- Anything I come across during the day (from emails, friends, colleagues, etc) that I want to look at later also gets saved.

\- I save things in two ways: articles/text to Instapaper, and everything else to a 'temporary' bookmark folder on my browser.

\- When I have some time, 3 to 5 times a week, I'll read through the articles on Instapaper. I'll archive the articles after I read them on Instapaper, deleting any that weren't useful.

\- 2 to 4 times a month I'll go through the 'temporary folder'. Deleting anything that isn't useful and and using diigo to archive everything that is.

\- The key thing so far for me is to make sure I relentlessly remove anything that I am reasonably sure isn't useful especially from my RSS reader.

Its not as simple as I'd like it to be, mostly because I'm using two archiving services. I like instapaper's ability to easily convert articles into a readable format. At the same time for organizing and archiving everything else diigo works great.

</comment><comment><USER2> I mostly use Google Reader. I use the shareaholic firefox extension to add non-RSS sites to my Google Reader shared items, so I can search for them later - I don't share publically.

To a lesser extent: evernote, readitlater, and firefox bookmark folders.

My mantra: don't archive what will still be there tomorrow, and don't sort what you can search for.

<comment><USER3> > _don't archive what will still be there tomorrow_

Websites (or just specific content on a site) are not guaranteed to be there tomorrow. They just _probably_ will be there tomorrow.

<comment><USER2> _Websites (or just specific content on a site) are not guaranteed to be there tomorrow_

Agreed - it's your time downloading and organising stuff versus the possibility that it might one day go away; for me, it's rarely a contest. I can imagine certain situations (eg. you are a publicity agent saving public mentions of your client) where it really is your business to preserve such things, but I don't fall in that category and I doubt most people do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug - but worth checking out to solve your problem - we've built a website called Thinkpanda which lets you save notes, links, files, rss feeds and even etherpads in "collections". All your collections are a click away and we even aggregate content from all your collections (and those you are following) into one meta-feed.

We're starting off targeting the academic market (students, researchers) but have found it pretty useful for organizing interest-based links and having general discussions as well.

Check it out <http://thinkpanda.com> and any feedback is appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER5> To organise my music and video collections and save information from surfing the web and the 77 RSS feeds and 160 podcasts I subscribe to, I use a partition which is structured as follows:

      multimedia
        downloads
          torrents
        ebooks
          to read
          to keep
        music
          to select
          to keep
        speech
          to hear
          to keep
        text
        video
          to see
          to keep

The "to keep" directories have subdirectories named after authors, bands, genres, movies and podcasts. The "text" directory is for saved web pages as well as normal text files.

</comment><comment><USER6> Evernote. I heard the hype and ignored it for a while. I tried it a few months ago on a whim and have been hooked ever since.

We come across a lot of data. Lots of it is interesting, but we don't need it right now. I save dozens of articles a day in Evernote and search it first when researching a topic I'm interested in. It's likely I've saved some great posts on the subject, but haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

</comment><comment><USER7> Synced Bookmarks with Google Chrome

Synced Notes with Evernote

Synced Docs/Files with Dropbox</comment>


Tim O'Reilly: The Biggest Ponzi Scheme of Them All - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/the-biggest-ponzi-scheme-of-all.html

<comment><USER2> Oh come on now.

It's like they said in an article I read recently... the world has learned about Ponzi schemes, and now _everything_ is a Ponzi scheme.

At these macro-economic levels, there can be no talk of "Ponzi schemes".

The economy is not an investment vehicle, it's a huge, loose, and fantastic agreement that enables all of us to get far more (in terms of technology, resources, comfort, life expectancy, health, happiness, etc) than we would if we didn't have it. It doesn't exist for its own sake, and it certainly has no need to be a mathematically correct, long-term sustainable, rigorous system designed by a computer scientist.

The capitalist system, with all its problems, is the best system that we have. Who cares that it's not sustainable indefinitely into the future? By the time we get there, things may well have changed so drastically that it becomes completely irrelevant.

A human being is not a sustainable thing either. It overspends its resources instead of maintaining itself in good working condition and eventually dies. Oh shit. We better cancel humanity. It's a Ponzi scheme!

This Ponzi trend is really, _really_ getting ridiculous. Enough with all that crap already! This article is a fancy label placed on a collection of dodgy conclusions drawn from dubious axioms.

<comment><USER3> This is a straw man argument. Saying "now everything is a Ponzi scheme" doesn't address his point that we're going to have to start looking at how a global steady state economy will work.

He isn't saying Capitalism isn't the best system, he's saying (precisely as you have said) that it won't last forever in it's current form. That we should start thinking about the repercussions of our current model so when this model becomes unsustainable, we'll already be transitioned into the new.

I certainly see no problem in thinking about our future instead of refusing to look ahead because... well it's going so well right now we shouldn't rock the boat.

<comment><USER4> Capitalism works just fine in a steady state economy because things break down. Buildings need to be repaired, styles change etc. Just look look at the plumbing industry it can grow or shrink but when your sink is broken and you don't know how to fix it you call someone.

Unless you're suggesting some form of utopia where people don't need to eat and nothing ever breaks. But even then someone is going to setup an MMO and the cycle of pretend money can start all over again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You don't have to be a full-blown singulatarian to see that technology still has a number of game-changing tricks up its sleeve. Robotics is getting to the point that I think we could see a fully robotic factory of some significance in the next five to ten years, where "significance" means something like a car factory or something, not just a demo product.

Computer AI doesn't seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough on the strong-AI front, but there really seems to have been a qualitative change in the past few years in computer vision, brought on by having more computer power available.

Nanotechnology is continuing to advance, primarily in materials science right now, but it will also continue to make progress in other areas. Even without full-on molecular nano-constructors (which there is no obvious physical reason we can't build, but let's leave that to the "full-on singulatarians"), we will continue to improve our abilities to manipulate matter on a fine scale in a large way (no contradiction), much like life does. Look for garbage dumps to go from a blight upon the environment to awesome materials resource sometime in the next 10 to 15 years. (Future investment opportunity! There will be a period of time when it becomes obvious that this will be true, but it is not generally recognized, and an interested individual will be able to pick up old dumps for a song, relative to what they will be worth.)

(As a side-note, any actually indefinitely-sustainable economy will _require_ this technology, be it biologically derived or otherwise. Any proposal that involves freezing our current tech level in a mis-guided attempt to be "sustainable" is simply a death sentence.)

The primary reason we can't go strolling through space isn't material or technological, it's energy, and if any of the fusion proposals go through (ITER, Polywell, any of them at all), the energy problem is significantly mitigated. Especially if it's not ITER; I don't know if we could practically loft an ITER into space, but a Polywell fusion device certainly could be, and a fusion-powered space ship would be quite capable, unlike today's models. Even just growing a pair and getting into fission could significantly mitigate our energy problems for a very long time. (I wonder when the fear of nuclear will be exceeded by the fear of not having energy. My guess is one big blackout in the US and you can kiss anti-power-plant sentiment goodbye.)

And there's more stuff coming up.

Yes. We're in a recession. We may even be in a depression. Fucking stop _crying_ about it. Sheesh. It is not the end of humanity just because you're not as rich as you think you should be. (What a selfish model of the future!)

</comment><comment><USER6> >It is a crisis of overgrowth of financial assets relative to growth of real wealth /.../paper exchanging for paper is now 20 times greater than exchanges of paper for real commodities.

Unfortunately, even former World Bank economists could have dismal understanding of modern finance. But everybody nowadays likes to sing a populist tune.

A financial transaction is simply passing of legal title of a real asset from one person to another. Think of a pension fund who wants to makes sure it will be able to pay future pensions to the widows and orphans and buys a corporate bond portfolio.

Of course, a pension fund will not want to manage each corporation in its portfolio. So it will buy securities rather than do direct lending, sit on company boards etc. The fund will try to diversify its risk among many bonds. This is the first step of separation of 'real wealth' from 'financial assets'.

When you have many pension funds doing the same thing -- buying corporate bonds diversified enough and be representative of US economy -- they are likely to outsource this task to a specialist. An 'index fund' will be creating a 'collection of corporate bonds' with desired characteristics (credit quality, size etc.), and all other investors will buy a piece of this index fund as large as they want.

Now we have removed 'financial assets' two steps from the 'real business'. Buying a share in an index fund is obviously not the same as making a direct loan to the corporation and a having dinner with the CEO. It is much cheaper, so more money is left for widows and orphans.

Here comes the last step. When large players (pension funds) buy or sell these baskets of securities, they don't want their brokers (investment banks) to get rich from all those commission on trading individual securities in it. So they pass the ownership to each other through so called swaps. A swap between two funds would look like this: 'Fund A to Fund B (current owner of the portfolio): I will take the risk of owning these bonds for a year. If they drop in price comparing to today, I'll pay you the difference. If they rise - you'll pay me. It's as good as if I owned the thing for a year. But you'll remain the formal owner'.

And these two would record the transaction based on the total value of the bonds, even though they are only risking the price difference between two set dates. And then the swap buyer may change his mind in a week's time and enter in another swap with another fund. So value of the swaps outstanding will grow larger and larger until it looks really scary to journalists and other clueless people. There has been $596 trillion of derivatives outstanding (as of December 2007). So what? It's a backlog of the transactions, more or less. If you off-set them against each other, you'll arrive back to underlying securities' value, and eventually trace it all back to the balance sheet of individual companies.

So there is no such thing as 'financial assets'. Each title associated with a financial paper can be traced back to a 'real thing', a real asset somewhere.

One should not forget that derivatives (financial assets etc. whatever) have made capital transaction costs very low. Low costs have led to more efficient allocation of capital and to great benefits to the society.

That's why a backlash against financial innovation is dangerous. I don't think we'll be better off by destroying the financial markets and moving back to barter.

Finally, if you want to find a real Ponzi scheme mastermind, this is Mr Greenspan and the US government in general. They were trying to prevent a bit of an economic pain -- a post 2000 dot-com slowdown -- by artificially lowering interest rates which had led to unrealistic pricing of capital everywhere, not only in the US. Which has led to property bubble growing and bursting (soon to be followed by US government debt bubble) and now we all face much bigger pain. But this should not be blamed on derivatives and financial markets. The easier it is to pass an ownership title on a real asset to another person - the better.

</comment><comment><USER7> He's wrong, there is no Ponzi scheme at all. Let me explain...

First of all, we have limited resources. The resources we absolutely need, for example, food and water, however, exist in enough quantity for all the people that currently exist (otherwise they would die).

The second layer of resources, for example, metal to build cars, crude oil for energy, also exist in enough quantity _for now_.

The exchange between basic needs and not-so-basic needs is irrelevant of the price that we are actually paying for them, because there is enough for everyone.

So the economy is built on the most important part of all - human labour. When I program, I expend labour, and though nothing gets added or removed from the world, I can still exchange the time I spent for a basic need like food.

This debt he is talking about is debt of human labour, and even if you wipe it out completely, the worst that has happened is that people wasted their time, and they will not get paid for it. There is no real destruction of the most basic needs.

If for example, we were destroying farmland to produce in excess right now, and we know this will make the farmland completely useless in the future, then this is a scheme that will collapse. But we're not doing that in any significant quantity.

Furthemore, we don't need to conserve things that are not finished yet. For example, let's imagine that we are going to run out of iron in 100 years. Obviously, this will be problematic, but 10 years before it happens, the price of iron is going to skyrocket, because we know of the impending scarcity. And there are lots of materials we can use to replace iron. Same with oil.

There is no ponzi scheme. People are paying for an easier life, and they are paying other people to make life easier for them.

<comment><USER8> _First of all, we have limited resources. The resources we absolutely need, for example, food and water, however, exist in enough quantity for all the people that currently exist (otherwise they would die)_

Err, people _do_ die because they don't have enough food. That's not to say that we _could_ have enough food to feed the world, but famine is a real issue in some parts of the world.

 _If for example, we were destroying farmland to produce in excess right now, and we know this will make the farmland completely useless in the future, then this is a scheme that will collapse. But we're not doing that in any significant quantity._

There are many who believe this is the case (see Wendell Berry, for example).

<comment><USER7> People don't die because we don't have enough food. If there were not enough food, those people would survive a week or so, and would be long dead.

People are dying because they are restricted from moving to areas with enough food. They are not dying because we lack food in the world.

Be very careful with this line of argumentation, because the surface scratching articles in papers are different from what the reality of the situation in the world is.

<comment><USER8> I agree, with one caveat: I'm not sure I see a difference between having enough food but not having access to it v. not having enough food. People are still dying, whether quickly or slowly.

An issue is that we live in areas that cannot locally sustain a population, thus relying on a supply system to survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are some good points here: it certainly seems the growth of derivative financial products, and the whole financial sector, has outpaced what the "concrete" economy can support. But the claim that the Earth is full? Absurd.

Clearly, we have some serious environmental limitations. CO2 emissions, rainforests, overpopulation, etc. But this Earth is wonderfully well-stocked with potential sources of energy and other resources. We haven't figured out how to use all of them yet, but over time, new inventions and discoveries tend to expose them. The same process also helps us improve the value of resources we already have, like people and (until recently :) capital.

Basically, this is the Peak Oil argument applied to the whole economy. Popular in doom-n-gloom times, unmentioned in the good times. It's a useful extreme to consider, but it is an extreme.

<comment><USER10> "We haven't figured out how to use all of them yet.."

I would modify this a little with the following: "We haven't figured out how to use all of them yet or we don't want to use all of them yet..." Hero of Alexandria, for all practical purposes, discovered the use of steam power, but because labor was so cheap, it was never pursued.

<comment><USER11> The explanation is actually more complex..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Misread the title at first, thinking Tim O'Reilly was the biggest ponzi scheme of them all.

<comment><USER13> Larry Wall got in early and is now fantastically wealthy! You could too, all you have to do is write a programming book and sell it to 10 of your friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I liked the one where Ponzi jumped over the shark on his waterskis.

</comment><comment><USER15> Obviously, not everything is a Ponzi scheme but the point the article is making is totally valid. Any child can understand that you cannot grow indefinitely in a confined space, even if that space is the Earth and even if the value measured is quality. The measure of quality is appreciation and we only have a limited amount of time on our hands.

I wonder why so few people think about the following line of reasoning:

1\. Our current economy is based on money as a medium of exchange to function (separation of labor -> good)

2\. Therefore, money is a universal medium of exchange and acquires a value separate from the exchange value: liquidity, the possibility to exchange it for anything else (see Keynes et.al) -> unintended but ok

3\. As a consequence, our current money relies on a positive rate of interest to circulate. Whenever the interest rate gets too close to zero, money holders will not give up their privilege of liquidity and not lend out their money (bad!)

4\. As a result, the economy collapses - simply because the medium of exchange stops circulating. In the end, the government has to print new money to replace the money not being spent/lent, leading to inflation. Alternatively, the state has to make new debts or fund dying industries only to keep interest rates positive... (very bad!)

This reasoning does not depend on any technology or production-based argument because every human undertaking these days is based on beating the rate of interest. Even if you only invest your own money, you have to factor in the interest you might have gotten at the bank.

There's a really simple fix to it: motivate money holders to part with their money even without interest. You would get an economy that _can_ grow when it needs to but can contract as well without collapsing.

Even though it seems god-given, money itself is actually pretty hackable. If you're interested, one interesting proposal is here: <http://userpage.fu- berlin.de/~roehrigw/suhr/nngengl.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> We should keep two things in mind before we go overboard with the ponzi scheme thing:

1) Exponential GDP growth does not necessarily mean using exponentially more natural resources. Quite the contrary. A lot of growth could come from work going into reducing resource consumption. Describing this distinction as quantitative vs qualitative growth creates the false impression of a need for some kind of revolution in order to make that switch. It's not a switch. We're already right in the middle of it and it's a gradual development.

2) Global debt is always zero. Debt is always a claim on other people's labour. If debtors throw their hands up and say, sorry I can't work enough to provide that labour, debt is written off and that's it. There's no link to the use of natural resources at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> "It may well be that in some possible worlds, that could still be true, but it's increasingly looking like we're going to be stuck here with only one world's resources to draw on."

Umm, what? We're finally getting private space exploration.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just gave the author a point. What's the exchange rate between whuffie and Hacker News points? How many get you a cup of coffee?

<comment><USER19> I like it - an OpenKarma standard for karma trading between different sites, maybe with a central exchange and a floating exchange rate. "I'll trade two HN points for one point of your reddit karma".

<comment><USER20> I should think that an HN karma point would be worth a _lot more_ than half a reddit karma point! If anything, I'd say a HN:Reddit ratio of 1:10 or more...

<comment><USER21> At rates that good HN will be the first victim of the great karma rushes. Spectators will establish threads and mine each other for karma until so much has been generated that even diggs will purchase multiple hackerbucks.

<comment><USER22> It's OK, I'll start the Karma Currency Market and they'll reach equilibrium soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't PageRank a type of Ponzi scheme?

<comment><USER24> PageRank is a tool used to rank web pages in search results. But maybe Google is a Ponzi scheme. Users create all the content, Google sells all the ads!

<comment><USER22> <Brain Explodes>

Not everything is a dang Ponzi Scheme! Sheesh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do not understand what makes Tim O' Rilly think that he has any authority to express an opinion on such an issue.

I belive this is endemic to the internet as a whole. I say why does he not stick to technology an let scholars who have actually studied the issues he speak of enlighten us on them.</comment>


More than $300 million cut from federal broadband grants - <AUTHOR> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/08/302_million_shed_from_federal.html

<comment><USER2> To be honest, the first round of grants were useless because of all the restrictions on applying including my favorite "if broadband is available, for any price, in the service area, then the service area is ineligible for the grant".

It is one of those things: campaign promises don't matte, advocates get the money.</comment>


Microsoft Wakeup: You Have a Killer Static Site Generator! - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/docfx/commit/67d7dfbc3f45e16f5946681e1a266b70b3410a1a<p>Hello, The largest, glaring hole in Microsoft's offerings is a static site generator. None of its tools support Markdown out of the box (Word, OneNote, Sharepoint, etc.). DocFX IS A STATIC SITE GENERATOR on par (sort of) with things like Jekyll, GitBook, GitHub Pages, etc. Please consider pivoting DocFX from "an API doc generator from source code" to a more generally usable "Static Site Generator". Thousands of people will flock to those keywords and begin using this awesome, VERY UNDERUTILIZED tool. Thank you <comment><AUTHOR> HN influence test :)</comment>


How-to for new dads. All the practical stuff no one tells you - <AUTHOR> http://blairreeves.me/2019/02/13/how-to-for-new-dads/ <comment><USER2> Also, babies sometimes cry a lot during the first 48hs. Really a lot. It's (usually) only 48hs, but it feels like a thousand years. (Did you remember to (try to) sleep well before the birth?)

[Here in Argentina] The nurses in the hospital know how to massage the baby's belly so the gas escape an the bay stop crying. After some time traying to do this yourself, ask the nurses for help, it's like magic. [I hope they don't charge for this in USA.]</comment>


What Twitter Really Is - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotcoma.it/2010/03/30/what-twitter-really-is.html

<comment><USER2> okay this does match up with practice.

However, this makes it a poorly designed link sharing system. I never know where the link that i'm clicking resolves to, and it isn't really optimized for parsing the links out of the message (as a developer i've got to do a regex or something to pull the <http://> garbage out of the message). Why isn't there a seperate field for links?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know :) I'm not a twitter fan myself - I actually wish del.icio.us had been designed better from a social and interaction point of view.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to stop recruiters reformatting my resume? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for another position and my resume is written in Latex. It looks great, well laid out, easy to read, in .pdf
However, recruiters insist that I provide to them my resume in MS Word document and they do something with, unknown to me. One of the recruiters accidentally emailed me "by-product" of his creation. Not only he represented me, but document looked like shit.<p>I don't want anyone messing with my resume. How do I stop recruiters from making a mess out of my resume ? <comment><USER2> The only solution is to never use third party recruiters, apply directly to the company.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish there was a fix for this. As a professional resume editor, I hear this all the time after I have delivered the product. I would like to do away with MS Word and screwing with resumes by the evil do'ers. Markdown and LaTex would be an ideal world.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can ask them to remove you from their database. Even if you send PDF, they can still convert it to Word.

Source: am a recruiter

<comment><USER5> Convert each page to an image. You can't stop them but you can make it more difficult.

This is more for online job search where you don't want them parsing your resume for their database when you just want to apply to one specific job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't work with them.

I hate when they do that also. I refuse to work with third party recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER7> The "something" is almost certainly entering the text/data into their database.</comment>


The first social network for developers and the tech community - <AUTHOR> https://geekli.st/home

<comment><USER2> I signed up, logged in from the front page and it directed me to [https://geekli.st/micro/create](https://geekli.st/micro/create) which is 404'ing.</comment>


Ask HN: I've got a well paying job, but I'm depressed, what should I do? - <AUTHOR> Backstory:
I'm young, I've got a great paying job, enough to sustain my family on my income alone - but I've become incredibly depressed. The commute to my job is 2 hours each way, I end up working 12-14 hours a day, the office I'm in, the other employees segment me, they don't talk to me, and they're constantly rude to me. I'm marginally younger than the rest.
I'm depressed because it feels like I'm living a nightmare going into work, it's torture to walk into there and know everyone hates me, and the worst part is I don't know why. I've confronted said people, and they won't even explain, nor acknowledge my existence.
What would you do if you were in my shoes? <comment><USER2> 1st admit to yourself that work is work. No matter what type of work you do there are parts that you will dislike and don't want to do. 2nd the commute is painful. Figure out a way to shorten it to 1/2 an hour a day or find a way that you don't have to drive there-- Uber?. 3rd, yup coworkers can be jerks but you have to find a way to work with them. You are the only one that can change in this situation. They won't change for you. I suggest you read a few books on how to make friends. 1 tip, look at the most popular people and analyze why they are in that position. One thing I've noticed is that techies tend to feel superior to others because they feel they are smarter. The reality is that they are not. They might be in one area of life but life is very broad and no one is that smart. 4th don't get a new job, as you might be wishing, until you can figure out the problem with you and your coworkers. The problem will follow you unless you figure out the problem. Confronting co- workers will not get you many results. They will only come up with answers that will make feel better. It's best to talk to them as friends to help you but that won't happen unless they are friends. Lastly seek help, having someone else's perspective will help you a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a two+ hour commute per day (each way). Did it for _years_. The difference being that I really like my co-workers. A couple of thoughts:

Ask if you can go part time remote. Like two days. That made things so much better. I also was able to commute a large segment by train, and that helped. Eventually I went full remote, and miss my time in the office (bit really like my 30 second commute!).

Strive to get 360 reviews in place. It allows for anonymous feedback on stengths and areas where you can grow. You might get back some places where you can get better professionally and with interpersonal stuff and you might learn what people value about you.

Talk with your manager about your concerns. Y'all should be having regular one on ones.

Leverage the commute. Audiobooks for entertainment or something you want to learn more about. If you can do public transportation, work on something fun.

Realize life requires balance. Have fun. Do things. Be around and interact with people. Work on yourself, take up an exercise regiment involving lifting weights.

Know that a job is a job. Prioritize you and your family.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey, I'm sorry to hear that you're enduring this terrible situation. I was in your shoes a year ago, except that for me I didn't enjoy my personal life (bad relationships, no real friends, away from home, etc.) but was okay with my job (much younger than the rest, good salary). In my case, I ended up leaving my great paying job to return home. Life is much better now, but my current job is paying much less. It's still enough for me, but I can't single-handedly support my family anymore.

In your case, your commute is way too long but there are some ways to spend away the time such as sleep, read books, listen to podcasts, or even call to check on people. In workplace, if you enjoy your job, just ignore other employees and focus on your job. That would be best. Take their presence as a pinch of salt. Only communicate with them if needed. In the end not many co- workers will become your friend, and haters gonna hate.

If you are new to this job, try to cope with this for like a year or two, just to save up some money. For me, after quitting my job, I realized there ain't many companies that are willing to pay good money and also offer so many benefits as my previous employer.

However, if you feel like this workplace situation is killing you, get out asap. In the end having a lot of money is nice but it's not everything in life.

Good luck mate.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I were in your shoes I would not even accept a job that requires 20 hours per week to commute to even if it was a great job. Thats a 60 hour work week in my book. If you regularly work 12-14 hours then with commute your job takes away 80-90 hour per week from you.

What you describe is a clean and well lighted highway to burnout even if its a good workplace. And it's not.

</comment><comment><USER6> If everybody hates you there, chances are it's caused by something you do/are. If you can't figure out what that is by yourself, maybe talking to a therapist would help. If there is something specific in your character or behavior that causes people to dislike you, he's qualified to find that. Also, unlike friends and family, it's his job to be brutally honest with you if that's for your benefit. Plus, like you said, you're in a difficult moment of your life, so having some outside councel will be helpful anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is your commute worth the pay?

Calculate how much your time is worth, taking a job closer to home may very well be worth a pay cut.

Figure at least $50 an hour, that is $200 a day in commute, $1000 a week.

</comment><comment><USER8> As you are a family man/woman I would say either get a new job or professional help. I burdened my own partner with unhappiness for a time and wish I had of dealt with things sooner.

There are enough suggestions already as to how you might make progress.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you think these people seem like they would even spend a second figuring out how they could try to better please you if the situation were flipped around? Make your decision with that in mind. Sounds like a really shitty environment.

</comment><comment><USER10> Look for a new job. Get new the new job. Then quit the old job.

</comment><comment><USER11> Tell them you need to work from home. If they won't do it, quit. 2 hours each way is a terrible commute.

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds similar to why I left my last job. Ended up at the doctors' with severe depression and they dropped a bombshell on me.

      "There's nothing medical science can do to help. I can prescribe you with SSRIs but that won't fix anything. What you need to do is look for a job that you can at least tolerate, or you'll end up dead before you hit retirement, by stress or by your own hand."
      (yep, direct quote from my notes)

After a week or so of thinking about it, I realised she was right. I started talking to old friends in the industry, did a few after-work meet-and-lunch sessions and found a couple of companies local to me who were hiring. Talked to recruiters too, ended up with a few interviews. This time I wasn't jumping from a sinking ship, I had time to look and I was going to find "the right one" this time.

A few months of searching, I interviewed at my current employer. Took the job on the basis that I'd talked to old university friends and former colleagues who were working for them too, and nobody had anything negative to say. My former line manager a few jobs back was well-known and wrote me a glowing reference (I didn't want to ask my current employer and give away that I was looking).

I got an offer and I took it. It's been like night and day, and I keep having to tell myself "yes, you're being paid for this, no you're not dreaming". My partner told me the other night "I've never seen you so happy."

So my point is, if you really don't like the job (and from reading your post it sounds like that's the case), look elsewhere. Maybe it's not you, maybe you're just not a good fit for the current job's culture and environment. Different people are good at different things.

Polish off your CV. Put some feelers out. Make what you're doing work for long enough that you can find something else on a reasonable timescale. Book a few half-days off and set up some interviews. At the very least, you'll get a better idea what openings are out there.

Once you have a signed offer, politely walk into your boss's office and say "Thank you for the opportunity, sir, but I feel like I need to move on with my career". Never burn bridges unless you have no other option. If you have an exit interview, all you need to say is "I just think it's time for a change of scenery and I had an offer I'd be silly to refuse". Keep it short and polite. In 90% of cases they just want to tick the "did the exit interview" box.

Someone downthread said "if everyone hates you, chances are it's caused by something you do or who you are". Go down the "how can I improve?" line with your line manager in a private 1-to-1, but if you don't get anywhere.. it could well be "who you are", in the sense of "not a good fit for the company". Basically, you won't get on with everyone you meet -- and you can't make people like you because that's their choice. And if it's not working out... sometimes the best thing to do is say "this is not fixable in this way" and move on.

</comment><comment><USER13> something else</comment>


Win32 OpenSSH version v0.0.10.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases/tag/v0.0.10.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Just a massive list of fixed bugs: in particular, paging utilities and history when SSHd into a Unix box work again so this is way more usable as a daily driver than the last release.

[https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/TTY-PTY- sup...](https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/TTY-PTY-support-in- Windows-OpenSSH) makes interesting reading.</comment>


Packem: Experimental bundler +2X FASTER than ParcelJS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/packem/packem <comment><AUTHOR> Packem is a precompiled JavaScript bundler implemented primarily in Rust. It's faster than webpack and Parcel while still being relatively new. Packem uses Node C/C++ addons which includes Packem's core into Node's general runtime.

Learn more about Packem here: [https://packem.github.io](https://packem.github.io)</comment>


Coinbase Developer Spotlight: Julia, a Telegram Bot for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://developers.coinbase.com/blog/2015/08/03/julia-telegram-bot-for-bitcoin

<comment><USER2> Took me a second to realize this wasn't about Julia, the high-performance programming language aimed at the same userbase as MATLAB and R and Octave.

Was Coinbase already aware of the existing use of the name "Julia"?

<comment><AUTHOR> We were aware. We actually didn't build the app though, this app was built by a third-party using our API :)</comment></comment>


Free Speech Zone - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

<comment><USER2> In 2004, some friends and I got together to check out one of the Free Speech cages at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. The whole experience was surreal.

It was sparsely populated by a handful of disinterested people. It was like a cross between a Starbucks queue and a shelter. When we arrived there was a man who had taken to the makeshift stage and was reading something into the microphone. I don't remember what he said, but as best I could tell no one was paying attention whatsoever.

Emboldened by the attendees lack of interest, we took to the stage after the other fellow had finished his speech. I also don't really remember what we said. What I remember, very distinctly, was that a man piloting a riding street vacuum, drove back and forth in front of us as we tried to speak to the assembled. Even running into the stage repeatedly and easily drowning us out with the industrial street cleaner.

We wrapped up whatever we were saying, took another lap of the cage, and wandered off.

<comment><USER3> This sad little anecdote is the perfect embodiment of the (lack of) spirit of a free speech zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "...picketing is afforded less protection than pure speech due to the physical externalities it creates"

Part of the _point_ of protesting is that it inconveniences normal people and forces them to pay attention, and to likely hear the group's message in the process. I get personally irritated when some group is causing traffic delays and making a ruckus where I'm trying to go about my life, but I firmly believe they have the right to do it. Some day I might want to protest something, and I'd like to have the option.

<comment><USER5> In DC and New York (and probably other places), the local unions will pay big groups of homeless people to get together and protest non-union construction sites with drums and noisemakers. If they get noise-complaint fines, the unions just pay them and tell them to keep going.

After spending a few weeks with people with no stake in the cause wrecking my productivity with drums for a few bucks an hour because an organization didn't like the building next door, I started to appreciate the value of _some_ abridgement of picketing rights.

<comment><USER6> That situation sets itself up for a couple of pretty obvious countermeasures:

1\. Pay the protesters to go away. It's a free market, after all.

2\. Recruit your own volunteers to go to where the union is recruiting, and get paid to protest.

3\. Or, if you want to support the union, file a suit against the target of the protests for creating an environmental nuisance.

<comment><USER7> So "protection money", counter-assholery, or lawyers to file a nuisance suit against someone for doing a perfectly legal construction job? What a wonderful world that must be...

<comment><USER6> I'm looking at ways of hacking the system. And doing so in a way that might balance interests one way or the other.

Sometimes life is just a game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We already have a free speech zone in the United States. It stretches roughly from Maine to southern California, Florida to Washington state, and North Dakota to the border with Mexico, with a some outliers like Hawaii and Alaska thrown in for good measure.

The recent federal governments may not respect the constitution, but their violations of the very document they swore to uphold don't eliminate our rights. We need to remind them of that fact.

<comment><USER9> >We need to remind them of that fact.

"That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?" -Belling the Cat, Aesop's Fables

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a worldwide fallout from the American's setting up 'Free Speech Zones' that all our supposedly free countries tried to imitate to squash dissent.

Even with constant stories in the media about how angry the corporate serf population was with blocking traffic in the morning for Critical Mass rides 'Why can't they do this on Sunday afternoon when nobody is around?' they were unable to set up these freedom crushing zones as the supreme courts ruled them unconstitutional, so instead they passed laws creating emergency national security buffers around consulates and government buildings, and in various high end retailer and business district areas that were designated emergency response routes, and a freedom killing law banning face masks during protests. Islamic protesters were solely blamed in the media for this new law, even though none of those protests were violent, and none of them were even protesting the government they were going after foreign consulates. The real threat of protesters with masks was anti austerity protests that turned into riots. They all started wearing masks when peaceful protesters attending anti austerity marches had their faces plastered all over the media while some pundit ran a slash piece about "lazy protesters". Some of them were fired from their jobs once their face was in the media, of course not because of protesting but for some other minor reason so the company wouldn't be sued. Some were also targeted by extremist right wing groups and had their houses lit up by molotovs.

When they did this every propaganda pundit was on the media arguing 'Why do you have to hide your face if you aren't a criminal?' and the serfs let it be passed with standing ovation because of Islamic boogeymen and the handful of anarchists that rioted. National security was a concern, the freedom zones and identity concealment had to be enforced.

This lasted for a few years until even the corporate serfs with total apathy towards anything the government was doing to squash dissent started being arrested or denied entry while attending major events like the Olympics or G8 zones wearing hats, scarfs, or even sunglasses as they were declared 'identity hiding'. So many people defied the national security zones the police were unable to arrest them all then finally the party who brought in the law was tossed from office, the police chiefs quietly resigned with full pension for squashing human rights, and the identity law and security zones were repealed by the supreme court.

Now they are back to promoting these free speech zones and identity hiding laws again, claiming they are necessary to prevent two opposing political rallies from meeting each other on the street and starting a riot and to prevent vandals. They also want all protests to submit their entire strategy/plan of action to the police for approval first (yes, police approval) and of course the new police chief swears up and down he has no cares at all about crushing dissent he only wants an orderly population to prevent costly overtime and traffic problems. Nothing to worry about. They already swooped in and arrested the leaders of a Critical Mass ride who submitted fake protest routes to the police but they successfully sued for false arrest, so now they want a permanent law.

The same media pundit hacks are back on the air ranting at the lazy and entitled population for protesting and causing their commutes to be delayed. The exact same disinfo mocking identity concealment is being played out like these laws didn't already all go to hell a few years ago.

If at first you don't succeed, keep trying to squash dissent because the media has limited memory and of course isn't talking at all about the first time they tried to do this and failed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I saw a reference to this on the original seasons of Arrested Development, however I thought it was something ridiculous the show's writers had concocted. I had absolutely no idea that it was parodying real life.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Database is thrashing the disk again."

"Man... just symlink it to devnull."

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, I didn't know these free speech prisons.

Cynically amusing I've to say.

</comment><comment><USER14> It was also brought to my attention from that article a few days ago about the secret dance party: NY has a law disallowing gatherings of more than 50 people without a permit.

That to me is just as constitution-breaking as free speech zones (though note: not an american, have never read or studied your constitution, may be completely wrong).

</comment><comment><USER15> The armed forces welcome your dissent.

</comment><comment><USER16> There was some controversy over "free speech zone" at my school (USC) back in ~2007: [http://boingboing.net/2007/04/10/usc-students-defy- fr.html](http://boingboing.net/2007/04/10/usc-students-defy-fr.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm interested to know what one can be charged with for exercising free speech outside one of these zones...

</comment><comment><USER18> Free Speech Zone you say?

Time for a "Arrested Development" scene! [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xohzz1_lindseys-cage- dance_...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xohzz1_lindseys-cage-dance_fun)</comment>


Earth-Moon Fire Pole - <AUTHOR> https://what-if.xkcd.com/157/ <comment><USER2> > There's one more problem: The Moon doesn't always stay the same distance > from Earth. Its orbit takes it closer and farther away.

Then use a pole that is strong enough to eliminate this problem.

<comment><USER3> What material would you suggest is strong enough to handle the orbit of two massive bodies (relative to girth of a poll one could realistically hold onto)? And what do you suppose the consequences of altering the moons orbit would be?

Something with elasticity would be a better option than something that is strong but even that wouldn't resolve some of the other issues presented; such as the moons surface not being geostationary to any point on the Earth.

<comment><USER2> > such as the moons surface not being geostationary to any point on the Earth.

The pole would also solve _that_ problem ...

<comment><USER3> ...not without tearing the moon apart in the process. At which point you have much bigger issues (as well as no need for a pole in the first place).

But given you're just making absurd "just do X" style statements I'm sure you'll reply with some remark about gluing the moon back together or wrapping it in clingfilm before you insert the pole to strengthen it's integrity.

<comment><USER4> Glue and clingfilm? Don't be silly.

The solution is obviously attaching rockets to the moon to accelerate it first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As always, remember to check the title texts of the images as well!

</comment><comment><USER6> Reading these makes me very happy, I'm so grateful Mr Munroe is still working on them.

<comment><USER7> Do you know of any similar websites? I have a couple of questions that I would like to see answered. I emailed mr Munroe in the past but he never replied, I'm sure he has thousands of questions from readers to choose from.

<comment><USER8> [https://waitbutwhy.com/](https://waitbutwhy.com/) is pretty good, you need to set aside a decent chunk of time for each article typically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would imagine that what the five year old who asked wanted was an intuitive sense of how far away the moon is. My answer would have been far less interesting. I would assume a reasonable rate at which a child slides down a pole, say 1 meter per second, multiplied by roughly 384,000km from the moon to Earth, and it would take a little over 12 years.

<comment><USER10> Let me guess - your favorite map projection is Goode Homolosine. You like easy solutions. You think we wouldn't have so many problems if we'd just elect normal people to Congress instead of Politicians. You think airlines should just buy food from the restaurants near the gates and serve that on board. You change your car's oil, but secretly wonder if you really need to.

<comment><USER11> For reference: [https://www.xkcd.com/977/](https://www.xkcd.com/977/)

<comment><USER12> For mobile: [https://m.xkcd.com/977/](https://m.xkcd.com/977/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't attaching the pole at a pole (heh) be a better strategy to avoid uncomfortable relative velocities?

It would also have the advantage of providing a fixed place on the earth to find a stash of warm clothes and an energy drink.

<comment><USER14> If you fix it to a point on the earth, how will it get to the moon?

<comment><USER15> the pole doesn't need to be straight. It could be hook shaped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It must be so fun to have a Dad that entertains your foolish ideas as a child, and play them out in immense detail for you :) I hope I can be that Dad one day.

<comment><USER10> The question asker's father (Ramon Schönborn) is not the same person as the answerer (Randall Munroe). But nonetheless it would be fun to have a dad who sends your questions to random internet cartoonists to entertain your foolish ideas for them, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So he doesn't actually answer the question - how long would it take? He goes off on a tangent about disembarking from the pole

<comment><USER18> He does, indirectly. He just can't give a precise estimate. A few years to climb to L1, a matter of weeks afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There has actually been a lunar elevator proposed, the most massive part lying at Earth Moon Lagrange 1. In my opinion, not practical. I took a look using Xylon: [http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/04/liftport-lunar- teth...](http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/04/liftport-lunar-tether.html)

For the numbers I used a safety factor of 1. The slightest nick or scratch would cause a break. Safety factor of 3 is more sensible.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hey Randall! If you put a microwave in a sub-zero walk-in fridge, and after the device had reached equilibrium with ambient conditions, you connected the microwave to mains power, then put a chunk of ice in the microwave and turned it on at full power, would the ice ever melt?

<comment><USER21> I guess the answer would be similar to the toaster-in-fridge question[1] from a previous what-if, namely: yes, it would melt.

[1] [https://what-if.xkcd.com/155/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/155/)

<comment><USER20> but what if microwaves don't heat solid ice at all, they heat the water that forms on the ice because the microwave is at room temperature? google "how to melt glass in a microwave".

<comment><USER22> That's very cool. But if you had a standard 1000W microwave, heat from the electronics would probably get the job done eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminded me of the Space Elevator: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator)

<comment><USER19> [http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/04/liftport-lunar- teth...](http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/04/liftport-lunar-tether.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Fun fact: the orbit of the Moon around the Sun is concave in every point.

<comment><USER25> Convex.

<comment><USER26> Pish, details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> wait but he didn't answer how long it would take! i was reading for a big payoff at the end when he takes an integral to all those stages!

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how long these things take to math out. Is there a lot of preliminary research involved?

<comment><USER29> The "mathing it out" takes about as long as he has before he needs to actually start writing and putting the post together. The problems can involve a lot of research since there's basically no end to how far you can take a given question. The whole thing usually takes less than a week of on and off work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow, great to see a new what-if! After no updates for a couple of years (?), I thought we had seen the final one…

<comment><USER31> Looks like 156 and 155 were both in March 2017, so about one year.

<comment><USER30> I see. I guess it just feels longer :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I initially assumed this was Randall's suggestion for a new password.

<comment><USER33> It would need 'staple' on the end:

Earth moon firepole staple

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Randall Munroe is everything Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't. And by that I mean... not a bore.

<comment><USER19> XKCD is usually accurate as well. Tyson on the other hand...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Unfortunately it is inaccurate.

Actually, the person sliding the pole would be like an object changing orbit. Remember, Moon orbits Earth. Even at L1 you can't just push yourself and coast along the pole. The movement along the pole is changing orbits and as we know this requires energy. In this case if you push yourself along the pole you would suddenly find yourself drifting away from it.

That's of course if you could create a rigid pole. As every piece of the pole would be on a different orbit there would be huge forces acting on the pole.

<comment><USER25> > _Actually, the person sliding the pole would be like an object changing > orbit. Remember, Moon orbits Earth. Even at L1 you can 't just push yourself > and coast along the pole. The movement along the pole is changing orbits and > as we know this requires energy. In this case if you push yourself along the > pole you would suddenly find yourself drifting away from it._

Suppose you tether yourself to the pole with a ring, and are closer to the Earth than L1. You now are not moving fast enough to stay in the orbit implied by your current altitude, so you move in an orbit that brings you closer to the Earth.

You also try to move away from the pole, but you are tethered to it, so there is a force holding you by the pole. That force provides energy to you.

So it seems to me that it does work, and I don't understand your reasoning.

<comment><USER35> The mentioned loop around the pole attached to your waist would do but since none of the extremely detailed drawings contained the loop we must assume that the person travaled the pole without the loop.

Moon orbits Earth at about 1km/s and you have to loose orbital speed as you move along the pole.

Since the pole distance is about 400000km and the orbital speed to loose is 1km/s it means you need to loose about 2.5mm/s for every km of the pole that you travel. It may not sound much, but if you propel yourself along the pole in the direction of Earth at L1 you would be surprised to find yourself travelling away from the pole at 2.5mm/s after 1km. If you push yourself hard at say 36km/h (or 10m/s) and decide to get some sleep then you would travel almost 290km but you would also find yourself moving away from the pole at almost 1m/s and at about 10km from the pole.

<comment><USER25> Quoting:

> _Note: While you 're flinging yourself along, be careful not to drift out of > reach of the pole. Hopefully you brought some kind of safety line so you can > recover if that happens._

Of _course_ you have lateral forces on the pole, that's not in question. But if you're sliding down the pole then you're, you know, _sliding down the pole._ That means you are hanging on to it somehow, or tethered to it, or something.

The point is that if you are actually sliding down the pole then it really does actually work.

> _... you would be surprised to find yourself travelling away from the pole > at 2.5mm /s after 1km._

No, I wouldn't be surprised at all, because I do know a little about orbital mechanics. Possibly not as much as you do, but I do give talks on it, so if you can explain clearly how sliding down a pole (once closer than L1) won't work, I'd be really interested to hear it, because so far what you're saying hasn't convinced me.

If all you're doing is saying "If you're not tethered to the pole then you'll drift away from it and it won't work." then we have no problem. But I'm considering the case where we are, in fact, sliding down the pole.

<comment><USER35> Colin, you are right. Of course if you are sliding along it you have some option to grip it and thus provide additional force needed to keep you in the vicinity of it.

Of course, if you decide to actually fall to Earth from L1 that starts becoming problem. I'm too lazy to calculate exact terminal velocity you would reach when falling L1 to Earth (it won't be the 11km/s you would reach if you were falling from Moon _orbit_ because you also have Moon tugging you). I estimate it not lower than 9km/s (Moon has 2.4km/s escape velocity).

Now, if you moved along the pole at 9km/s you would feel much more tug (noticable 2.5cm/s2) or about 1/40th of Earth surface gravity. If you were 80kg person that would mean about 2kg apparent force.

Of course, by that time you wouldn't be thinking much about it as you would have other problems in mind...

<comment><USER19> Altitude of EML1 is about 320,000 kilometers. An ordinary 320,000 x 300 km earth orbit would be moving 10.81 km/s at perigee.

As an object falls towards earth it will surge ahead of the moon and the moon will be pulling it backwards. This makes effective apogee more in the range of 300,000 km.

A 300,000 x 300 km orbit has velocity of about 10.8 km/s at perigee.

In other words, dropping from the neighborhood of L1 will still give you speed very close to escape velocity by the time it reaches earth.

In the case of orbital tether, an elevator car would have gripping wheels in contact with the tether. If its's descending the wheels can power a generator to charge the elevator car's battery.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Putting 500k People's DNA Online - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/what-happens-when-you-put-500000-peoples-dna-online/543747/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> That's a terrifying read. See DefCon talk: DEF CON 25 - John Sotos - <USER2> Diseases to Guide Digital Hacks of the Human Genome ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY))

<comment><USER4> That was absolutely horrific. The worst part was this person calling for a "Apollo-level funded" arms race on developing the most horrific bioweapons possible.

If you really care about his problem you should call for a ban on related research and keep yourself silent. The further we delay the development of such technology, the better. Some people argue it's inevitable; Well it's not. For almost 100 years, despite their huge potential in war, chemical and biological weapons have seen almost zero development because of the strict enforcement of the Geneva convention. Let's keep it that way.

<comment><USER5> I don't think we can confidently say that chemical and biological weapons have seen almost zero development in the last 100 years. We can say as far as we know that's the case, but we also don't have a very compelling reason for knowing.

The development of these types of weapons is going to be highly secretive, and not just because of the Geneva convention. Absolutely nothing has gone on in the world in the last 100 years that might tempt the deployment of advanced chemical or biological weapons on any sort of scale. Naturally we haven't seen them used.

I also don't see how burying our head in the sand is going to help on this one. At least compared to nuclear weapons, projects on these weapons could be useful for defensive purposes. Everybody is working more or less within the same confines and rules, and I wouldn't be surprised if relatively similar developments were the result. Even if they aren't, the characterization of these weapons can be used to inform and guide the response plans to try to minimize damage in the case of an attack.

<comment><USER4> I have no doubt that biological weapons have been developed to some degree, somewhere, in a well-funded government lab, in complete secrecy. But that is not a problem. This secrecy is what saves us from a race to the bottom. Some government will develop a limited capability of biological warfare. They probably already have. With no information about what their adversaries are doing, they will simply stop. As far as they know, they have developed a state-of-the art biological weapon system, and they are probably correct.

One of the reasons that the nuclear arms race happened, was the "openness" of the competition. You can't hide a nuclear explosion. Your adversary knows how sophisticated you are, and they now have to push 1 step further.

Biological warfare doesn't have to be like this. Be sure that some Darpa or DoD funded secret project is working on countermeasures, but there's another interesting thing: You can stop biological attacks by quarantine. It's very simple, very effective, and doesn't require developing Armageddon-tier weapons in the process. Another issue that's purposefully isn't discussed in the video is how effective the delivery of these weapons are. Simply put, not very. Viruses, the main attack vector, change in every iteration. There's no guarantee you can infect that many people with an intact version of your weapon. Sooner than later, you genocidal weapon will stop being so selective, because it's evolving for it's own benefit, not yours.

And finally, if you really are concerned about this issue, as you should, the right way to fight against it is to find a way to stop the infection and proliferation, to find ways to stop these attacks without accelerating weapons development. There are ways to fight these weapons without building them, and you can definitely do better than starting a public campaign that asks people to develop horrific bioweapons just so we can find a way to stop them later on, maybe.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's fair to say that development programs will just stop after a reasonable advancement on the last known state of the art.

If you (a nation) are working on this, it's fair to assume your peers are as well. If you have improved on the state of the art, it's safe to assume your peers are in a similar position or will soon be.

By making advancements, all you are doing is proving that other nations with a similar level of technical sophistication can do the same. Even if you make strong assumptions that you are indeed the best, you can't assume other nations will never reach where you are now. Maybe you have 5 years on them, because you are clearly superior? Or maybe you take a more conservative stance and assume you're behind - just in case.

Furthermore, I don't think quarantine would be an effective response to an intentional biological attack. Even just quarantining say, New York City, would be a nearly impossible task. And since this is an attack, why wouldn't all major cities be targeted? There would be no way to contain it physically.

Even if you think pure quarantine is the way to go, there is a lot of useful information that can only be gained by doing the weaponization research. What sort of incubation times could show up? How virulent, etc. Knowing these sorts of things would really improve the quarantine situation. There also isn't really a good way to know without doing the research. It doesn't mean it has to be packaged into a weapon, but the hard part is all done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article fails to mention any privacy risks to the volunteers.

GWAS have proven to be, at best, of little value. In fact, due to the unfortunate way that many researchers chase p-values, these analyses often result in misdirection.

What happens? Genome privacy is exchanged for weak science.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This article fails to mention any privacy risks to the volunteers.

What privacy risk, exactly? Who has been harmed? 23andMe has been in operation since ~2007 and between them and Ancestry.com and the UKBB and the Japanese BB and others, there must be somewhere on the order of 10 million+ genomes cumulatively. UKBB alone has been the basis for what must be at least hundreds of papers at this point by thousands of researchers or groups. Even further: there are literally thousands of genomes available publicly online from groups like PGP for a decade now, which you can go and download right now, including mine. Is all this not enough? When should we expect to finally see these risks materialize?

> GWAS have proven to be, at best, of little value. In fact, due to the > unfortunate way that many researchers chase p-values, these analyses often > result in misdirection.

That is completely wrong. GWASes have an excellent replication record, and were founded on the basis of stringent p-values precisely _because_ of how earlier candidate-gene studies were garbage due to researchers chasing p-values.

<comment><USER7> > What privacy risk, exactly?

People will eventually be identified individually, as inevitably as the people in the AOL search leak years ago. Then they -- and their blood relatives -- will be associated with negative health traits.

And then, companies will discriminate -- in hiring, in insurance... anywhere they can. Because it will be financially advantageous to individual companies even though it is detrimental to society as a whole. Because companies are amoral organisms and it is folly to expect them to behave otherwise.

<comment><USER8> We're probably no more than a year or two away from a sequenced genome being considered PHI for exactly this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate to sound like a shill, but this sounds similar to an area Encrypgen (DNA) is trying to reach. ([https://encrypgen.com/](https://encrypgen.com/))

</comment><comment><USER10> I lead the software team in the Neale lab that develops Hail, the software that enabled this analysis: [https://hail.is](https://hail.is). If you're excited about about applying CS and engineering to enable scientific discovery of massive, fast-growing biological data, get in touch. We just got a bump in funding and we're hiring a number of roles: distributed system database internals, compilers, machine learning, scientific data viz, deployment and operations, and web applications. See our Who's Hiring post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16288145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16288145)

<comment><USER11> This is off topic outside the Who Is Hiring threads. Discussions here are supposed to gratify intellectual curiosity. It sounds like you're in a position to say a lot of interesting things about this topic! but a job ad isn't interesting.

<comment><USER10> Fair, and thanks for clarifying the moderation.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: How important do you think it is to have a blog? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like everyone and their mother is blogging.  I'm getting ready to jump into the job market (sr. tech mgr.) and don't blog, but read a ton of them.  Does the fact that I don't have a blog of my own hurt? <comment><USER2> Everybody may be blogging, but very few blogs are actually worth reading - many are just regurgitation.

I think it comes down to: Do you have something original and substantive to say? If you do, then blogging is a great forum for it. If not, then you'll be lost in the noise and it won't help.

<comment><USER3> I hate the regurgitation thing. The entire commenting on other people's comments about other people's original work is just such a massive circle jerk.

When decided to write my blog I made two rules (which I rarely break): no linking to other blogs just to stroke my ego with an opinion post, no personal experience posts (i.e. today I went to the Taj Mahal and...)

<comment><USER4> I think some personal experiences are interesting, if they're somewhat unique. People seem to appreciate some of my writing about living in Italy, and even more importantly, I've made some good friends after people have contacted me to say hi and get information. I don't mix that up with the technical/business blog, though, which is on another domain entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When people will search for you online, you'd rather have them land on your blog, no? This is a great opportunity to market yourself. You don't have to blog to build an audience..

<comment><USER6> And it's not that hard, especially if you don't have a famous or extremely common name. I got to the top Google search result for my name in less than 3 months.

<comment><USER4> Another tip for accomplishing the same thing: being active on mailing lists and having a .signature with a link to your site. Open source projects are a great way to build up google points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People will tell you that you shouldn't have a Facebook account or a blog because it might hurt your future job prospects. The thing is, if I Google you and your name doesn't come up then you are, quite literally, a nobody. And who wants to hire a nobody?

<comment><USER8> The problem is that, to speak in over-broad stereotypes, everyone under 25 grew up with blogs and agrees with you. Meanwhile, everyone over 40 thinks that you are a dangerous loose cannon who might blab the Vital Corporate Secrets all over the internet and embarrass your boss. This kind of creates a dilemma for those of us in our mid-thirties, who can see the future but who sometimes have to move in a world that's run by people who don't.

I think the ultimate answer is... it depends. I will say that, if you don't like to write blog posts, you probably should avoid starting a big, echoingly empty blog and just use something like Twitter, or a microblogging engine, or Facebook to establish your online presence. This is kind of why Facebook is there -- to allow folks to express themselves online without having to write entire paragraphs full of interesting and original prose. Not everyone is cut out to be a magazine writer.

The ultimate coward's answer is Linkedin, a site which basically caters to frightened 37-year-olds like me who know they need an online presence but are afraid to actually say anything.

I think having a blog is good for my own career, but unfortunately my blog is really lapsed right now because I find it much more entertaining to reply to posts on news.yc. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd say if you want to put the effort in to present yourself professionally, form coherent well thought-out posts and keep at it on a regular basis then it's a winner. I find having a anonymous blog on some social networking site where I can rant if I feel like it is nice too, of course if you were to get ridiculously famous somebody might figure it out :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Blogging for mortals is to show who you are, how you think. When someone is interested in you (interviewer), they will read backwards through your past blog posts until they get bored. That's it. Post every month or so when you have something interesting to say.

</comment><comment><USER11> People only have time to really read a few blogs regularly, thus, it is a rather hard niche to get into.

Reading blogs, however, is more important than writing. I actually got asked in a job interview recently who some of my favorite bloggers were. One I mentioned was joelonsoftware, after which the interviewer told me that their company uses Fogbugz, mainly because they too like Joel's blog. It was a definite good point in the interview :-)

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should only put stuff on the internet that you won't mind people reading years from now, because once it's out there it's out there.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is actually a great question. I've been toying around with the idea of having a personal blog, but when I look around at most personal blogs, they've been updated like three times since the new year, just talked about some conference that I would have had to been at to enjoy, and really offered me nothing. After awhile, what's the point of even looking?

It's nice to put on a business card, but I question whether its mere presence actually makes a difference in selling you to the public. Unless it's regularly updated, it just looks budget...

</comment><comment><USER13> Depends on why you want to blog. If you are in the corporate world, and are trying to market yourself in the job market, not sure if a blog is essential. But if you are an entrepreneur and working on a startup, it is absolutely essential. Its the voice of your company and helps you connect with your community. We're just launching now, but have build a great community over the past few months just by starting our company blog early.

Either way, if you enjoy writing, just do it!

</comment><comment><USER14> There are few things in life I can recommend more highly than writing. PG wrote a great essay as to why that is, so I won't rehash it here.

Blogging is just like any other writing, except with the added caveat that you know people will read it. That makes it so much more motivational than, say, writing a diary, or working on a novel that you suspect you'll never complete.

It's changed my life in ways I can't even describe.

<comment><USER6> Matt, I feel the same way (and I enjoy your writing!). I don't know why people would downvote you for saying that.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm not sure either. Wasn't my most informative comment ever, as I didn't go into much detail, but wouldn't have guessed it would be downmodded.

I never can predict what people will like here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unless you take the effort to write regularly (doesn't have to be daily or weekly, just consistently) and write quality stuff there, don't bother. A crappy blog won't help and may reflect poorly on you. On the other hand, a well written blog with lots of quality posts can make a big difference.

</comment><comment><USER15> I blog in Russian, and have considered switching to English for a wider audience. A difficult choice.

<comment><USER16> Funny I've thought today about the same.

I've found that I better express my thoughts about project in my terrrrrible English.

I think it's because: 1\. It's more natural to write about programming in English 2\. My English constrain me. And this good =) 3\. I need to write less symbols</comment></comment>


A New Jersey Law That's Kept Smart Guns Off Shelves Nationwide - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178305/a-new-jersey-law-thats-kept-smart-guns-off-shelves-nationwide

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hesitant to submit this because I don't want to start a gun control flame war. Pretty please, if this does make it to the front page can we keep it civil?

Personally, I find the intersection between tech and law in this instance very interesting. It is an instance of a law whose writers wanted to promote a technology having the opposite effect and hindering it instead.

<comment><USER2> Gun control is literally Hitler!

:)

Edit: In all seriousness, the article's title is simply wrong. It's not New Jersey's law that's keeping them off the shelves, it's right-wing terrorism.

> "Raymond says he received multiple death threats. Both stores quickly backed > down on their plans to sell the Armatix gun."</comment></comment>


Demystifying Secret - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/12ab82fda29f <comment><USER2> "First, your data is stored on Google servers — essentially the same servers as Gmail. This means your secrets are as safe as your email."

Well, if David says so…</comment>


Ask HN: How do you collect valuable feedback? - <AUTHOR>

My next idea is to have a "is this good enough?" link on the bottom of every page link to a feedback form but that seems rather unprofessional.
Offering feedback@email does not yield results. An online form asking for user input won't yield specific improvements other than bug fixes.
How do you collect valuable feedback? <comment><USER2> UserVoice [1] and GetSatisfaction [2] are the big guys in customer feedback.

[1] <http://www.uservoice.com/>

[2] <http://www.getsatisfaction.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't mean to be pedantic, but you need to be a bit more specific about what kind of valuable feedback you want. If you think along the lines of "if I had X information, I'd be able to do Y with my site."

If you're looking for user comments, put in a clearly marked link to a feedback page. Make sure that you ask what the users would like to see (offer a few example suggestions next to the form).

You could also use a javascript-based use tracker to see how users are using your site (I think there was a company that implemented this a while back, but you could probably make your own in a few hours). You can also use some web analytics packages or A/B testing to see what is actually being used on your site (i.e. what the users like about it).

EDIT: isharan mentioned ClickTale in his post, which was the company I was thinking about with the UI tracking.

</comment><comment><USER4> Its actually pretty hard to get valuable feedback from a lot of users. Either users don't think too much about how the site could be improved or they're just too lazy to type it all out.

But yeah, being a little more specific would help. Looking for UI feedback? (Try this <http://www.clicktale.com/>) General feedback about the company?

The best thing to do is make it easier for people to give feedback.</comment>


Top 5 Google Analytics alerts - <AUTHOR> http://metrics.watch/top-5-google-analytics-alerts/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author, let me know what you think about it!</comment>


Ask HN: Is it okay to interview with two YC companies in the same time? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently interviewing with a YC company in a technical role. However, a few days I got call from another YC company (different YC batch) to for another interview offer. Is it okay if I interview with both of them ? Should I disclose the fact that I'm interviewing with another YC company to either of them ? <comment><USER2> I strongly recommend interviewing with as many companies as possible. You are under no obligation to disclose that you are interviewing to anyone.

<comment><USER3> _" You are under no obligation to disclose that you are interviewing to anyone."_

Maybe your spouse...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think they are already aware that if you are looking for a job, it's likely that you'll have others interviews. You don't have to "disclose" anything, it is obvious to anyone imo.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, it is ok. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be.

You should be interviewing with as many companies as you can, not just one and hoping you get the job.

</comment><comment><USER6> They are just another company - you treat them as the same from the perspective of the interviewee.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple: Tell them if and only if it puts you at an advantage.</comment>