RunPee – Because movie theaters don't have pause buttons - <AUTHOR> http://runpee.com/ <comment><USER2> In India, we have mandatory breaks somewhere in the middle of all movies. Even for Hollywood Movies, it is just shut off, sometimes right in the middle of a fight or an intense scene. We pee, have snacks and make phone calls. :-)

My first reaction when I saw Sin City somewhere in Detroit was, "How long is this movie?" Then I realize why everyone had popcorns and everything before the movie starts.

<comment><USER3> That's because Bollywood movies tend to be on the "longer side" its crazy how short most Hollywood films are now....catering to the short attention spans of their viewers.

having said that.....this app must die, its a terrible idea :)

<comment><USER4> Hollywood films have been getting _longer_ , not shorter.

[http://www.slashfilm.com/by-the-numbers-the-length-of- featur...](http://www.slashfilm.com/by-the-numbers-the-length-of-feature- films/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I note that the app store reviews[1] mention that it does a lot of forced ad- watching. One says "must sit through a 10 second bright full screen ad for bladder medication upon opening". This seems counterproductive for an app that you may want to glance at during the film, to say the least...

[1]: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/id450326239?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id450326239?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER6> We created something similar, but it lets you listen to the movies audio on your device using headphones.

We have a live demo on our site if interested - [http://speakerblast.com](http://speakerblast.com).

We think 4D movies; movies that gets the audiences' devices involved into the experience could be a way of the future. Similar to the texting PSA in China created by Volkswagen (very effective).

<comment><USER7> >We think 4D movies; movies that gets the audiences' devices involved into the experience could be a way of the future.

That is certainly an interesting idea. I'm thinking, though, that getting it to work and be stable across the many devices we have is prohibitly difficult.

If I were to do something like this, I'd look at the Firefox OS phones. I don't think they are ready yet, but crazy cheap Firefox OS phones will come. They target developing countries, but would also be good for something like this. So when people buy their ticket, you also sell them this cheap device which you've prepared so that it'll work out of the box. It'll be similar to the way they currently sell 3D glasses at the cinemas.

<comment><USER6> No, it wouldn't be too hard.

Here's a live demo where we turn a small crowd & their devices into the movie's sound system. [http://vimeo.com/71647538](http://vimeo.com/71647538)

<comment><USER6> Oops just noticed I linked to turning an audience and their devices into a stereo system.

Here's the movie clip I speak of above [http://vimeo.com/m/93899424](http://vimeo.com/m/93899424)

This is new(ish) type of technology that requires solid and FAST Internet. It may or may not work in various countries based on Internet speeds (10Mbps or higher is recommended ... Possibly 5Mbps of higher could work too. )

<comment><USER7> For future versions, maybe you could do local position tracking and use that to make surround sound?

Or better yet, if the audience is on numbered seats, print a QR code on their ticket which gives them an URL that includes their seat number as a parameter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I went to the movies on Friday, the guy in the seat ahead was looking at his (bright) phone ~ 5-10 times during the movie.. it was pretty annoying. I really hope this sort of thing doesn't become the norm to be honest!

<comment><USER9> Apparently it uses vibration.

 _" The Timer is our ace in the hole. You start it when the movie begins and it will vibrate before each Peetime"_

<comment><USER10> I've been using it for years, and it's awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Android app demands permission to access Photos/Media/Files. This app has no reason to read my images, videos, audio, or external storage. :(

Not installing.

<comment><USER12> You could use XPrivacy[1] and prevent access to anything you wish.

1\. [http://www.xprivacy.eu/](http://www.xprivacy.eu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is another, less high-tech, approach. Use Depend(TM)underwear or equivalent and simply pee as needed. Simple and non-disruptive to the movie experience of other patrons in the theater. Seems to me that the urge to solve all problems with an App is not a good trend.

<comment><USER14> I'm probably just giving in to my terroristic anti-consumerism pinko tendencies, but... don't buy a soda?

<comment><USER15> You'd like a small Coke? Okay, that'll be $4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Movies in the U. S. _used_ to have intermissions. _2001_ has been mentioned here. More recently, _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ and _Ghandi_ in the 80s. (All of these from memory, I'm sure there are other examples.) It seems that after that cinemas just didn't do it anymore.

I understand that cinemas want you in and out as quickly as possible. At the same it would seem they can sell more high-margin soft drinks and popcorn if folks are given the opportunity to do so. In fact, there's no way in hell I'm buying anything at all even before the movie starts if I know it's a 3 hour "epic" that won't have an intermission. I'm going into that with a bladder that resembles Death Valley.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's a metric for the overall quality of a given film: the relative amount of pee-time.

<comment><USER18> That's a common comment but actually isn't true. Some great movies have fantastic Peetimes. Take for instance Captain America: Winter Soldier. (Lets not debate how good the movie was. I think it was at the very least a well told story.)

At any rate it has a fantastic Peetime. There's an entire 4+ minute span of Steve and Natasha entering the old Army base where Shield began. There's almost no dialog, it's just them searching as the tension builds. As a story telling device it's an important scene - building the tension. But if you need to take care of some urgent biological needs this makes a perfect time to run and pee. :-)

<comment><USER19> I think you missed his point. He said "relative" amount of Peetime. Meaning if a 2-hour movie has 1 hour of Peetime, you may want to pass on that movie altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope that a few movie directors see this app and will make it their next challenge to not allow any convenient pee break.

I guess "Crank" comes quite close.

<comment><USER18> I don't think that's the case at all. Most good stories ebb and flow. It's important to give the viewer a chance to relax and build up tension before another exciting scene. But you're right, "Crank" is one of those movies that puts the peddle to the metal and doesn't let off. There is of course merit to that type of story telling as well.

<comment><USER21> Ebb and flow doesn't necessarily mean dead time. Gravity had plenty of changes in pace, yet I don't think it had a single pee break in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I usually make sure I've emptied myself out before the movie starts, then return to the "loo" sometime after the movie has completed. If the director left a scene in a movie, at least one person thought it was important enough to be watched ... after screening a film, I sometimes think the whole movie was a pee-time.

<comment><USER23> I usually try to go during a scene I've seen online (for example, XMen:DoFP had the airplane scene that was available online well before the movie came out)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Decent idea but don't cinemas normally frown on people using phones during a film?

<comment><USER25> When they're talking on them...

<comment><USER26> Nope, I've definitely been told to put phones away in movie theaters. People consider the bright screens, even at full dimness, a distraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There should be a category for this kind of project (and a lot of others): "too much work for too little benefit".

I really think there are more important things to do with all this technology.

<comment><USER28> >> I really think there are more important things to do with all this technology.

Then get crackin' buddy ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I made a mock integration of this for a coding challenge in NYC last week and won a free Android Wear watch: [https://plus.google.com/103860840652017295649/posts/5qQ2djiV...](https://plus.google.com/103860840652017295649/posts/5qQ2djiV4AH)

They should implement something similar, given the watch concept is significantly less intrusive and… bright.

<comment><USER18> Believe me, this is something I've been thinking about. Hopefully by year's end I'll have some integration like this. Not that it takes that long to develop, but I have a lot of other things on my plate right now.

Also, integration with Google Glasses. #WIN

<comment><USER30> Sounds like a good idea on the surface of it, but I think most Google Glass owners would probably take it off during a movie in the cinema. It would probably feel slightly distracting with such a big screen in front of you. Glass does sit a bit above your right eye, but not to the extent that it's completely unnoticeable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd love to see an app the combines Popcorn time with this. Instead of just reading about the missed parts, it'll stream the relevant part on your phone. Obviously it would have to be legal, therefore with some kind of partnership with the studios, and should recognize the scene you left the movie.

That is, if you're ok with using a phone while peeing.

<comment><USER32> ew! Why do so many ppl use their phone while on the toilet!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are those celeb reviews for real? Excellent app :D

<comment><USER34> I highly doubt that Stephen Fry would miss-spell "Lets".

<comment><USER35> [https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/459689832986734592](https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/459689832986734592)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why not just stream the scene to you on your phone while you're in the bathroom?

</comment><comment><USER37> This leads to what strikes me as a potentially negative heuristic for determining what moments in a given film have worth. Summer flick drivel aside, would RunPee assign a high pee time to, say, Drive, which has a significant amount of mood-setting long shots without any dialogue or plot- relevant action?

Excuse me for probably taking this too far, but this app seems to imply that films are merely the sum of plot-related scenes, and that doesn't sit quite well with me. Would the app consider every establishing shot in Alien to be pee-able?

</comment><comment><USER38> If this app were ever to be wildly successful, enough people would try to leave the theater at the same time that cinema operators would either lock the toilets or start having intermissions.

<comment><USER39> It's not their problem. Possibly people would just not leave if too many left already since with waiting in the queue they could not make it back on time.

Btw, I think we had startups like this already. Is it the same one with some more sexy domain or something different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is what smartphones were made for.

</comment><comment><USER41> I guess we're at the point where each of us carry around sufficient technology to give us subtitles on demand, useful if we missed a few lines of dialogue.

(We're probably not socially or legally cool with that, though.)

Ooh, a more experimental place like the Alamo Drafthouse might be able to pull off restrooms attached to each individual theater, simulcasting the show onto screens in there. Licensing for extra screens, even tiny ones, might be complicated though...

Here's to home viewing I guess.

</comment><comment><USER42> I use this app on Android. It's awesome. My only criticism is it's ad- supported. I would gladly pay lots of money for am ad-free version of this app.

<comment><USER43> How easy is it for devs to release two versions of an app on the various app places?

One is free but ad supported; the other has a single upfront cost and no ads.

<comment><USER44> I've seen it done three ways on Android:

* A link in the app to an "Unlocker" which is detected by the main app and removes the ads

* An IAP that removes the ads

* A pro vs free version of the app.

I can't answer your question directly but I know that the IAP is a few lines of code in Google's billing APIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I have to ask: why is this an app and not a web site?

<comment><USER46> Because it vibrates during the best times to run and pee. That way you never have to look at your bright phone in a dark theater. At the Alamo Drafthouse in Texas looking at your phone even once can get you removed from the theater if you're noticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626083)

</comment><comment><USER48> I remember hearing Jordan Palmer (Carson Palmer's little brother) talk about this on Hard Knocks a few years ago.

<comment> driftsumi-e Exactly. It's not new. I'm a little curious why this has resurfaced now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Great idea, but how do they find the good times - simply by watching all movies? That might get old pretty fast.

<comment><USER50> A friend of mine knows the guy and both he and his wife do attend all the movies. His Twitter handle is @PolyGeek.

I know people who won't go to a movie on opening weekend because it isn't on runpee.com yet. If Hollywood was smart they'd give them advance screening privileges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is a great idea but I don't think it's unique. I remember a similar app that was on the iPhone when those apps first came out. I remember looking at it but it had a cost to download it so I never did use it. I just can't remember what it was called.

</comment><comment><USER47> Opportunity for integration with Arduino-Based Bathroom Occupancy Detector:

[http://robots.thoughtbot.com/arduino-bathroom-occupancy- dete...](http://robots.thoughtbot.com/arduino-bathroom-occupancy-detector)

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been using RunPee for a long time, and it's been fantastic. Yes, they broke it a couple of times, but whatever, seems fine now. If I have to get a new phone, the essentials I need are text, email, maps, and RunPee.

</comment><comment><USER53> Great use for RunPee: finding out if any movie has extra scenes after the credits.

<comment><USER54> This. I've been using it for a couple of years (old version, no timer) and it has saved me so many times from being frustrated later that I missed a scene in the credits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Last I used it, they pushed an update that completely broke the app, because the performance was so bad. I loved it before, but the ratings suggest it's still bricked, so let someone buy the app, before you do.

<comment><USER18> What? No one told me. Sometimes things get crossed up during updates. Happens to all apps, iOS and Android. Uninstall and reinstall fixes it 99% of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I envision an app called "Monkey Pissing" that enables users to reserve their spot at the urinal during specific times. "Get paid $13 an hour just to piss!"

</comment><comment><USER57> At some point these folks: [http://www.oneonthego.com/](http://www.oneonthego.com/) will sense a marketing opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER58> But if this app ever becomes really popular it will render itself useless because there will be huge lines in the bathrooms.

</comment><comment><USER59> I can't make it through a movie without peeing at least once, if not twice. The app works well.

<comment><USER18> Very happy to hear it. I'd love to hear exactly how you use the app and if there's anything you think I can do to improve the experience. It's certainly a tricky situation: making an app usable during a movie without bothering the other people around you. Email me: firstname.lastname@example.com if you have any feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Would this tell where the bathrooms are located and how long will it take you to get there and back? May be that will help to decide to leave or not. Imaginne getting notifications from the bathroom that you have a stall available to Run and Pee :D

</comment><comment><USER61> Silicon Valley, saving the world, one app at a time ...

</comment><comment><USER62> I had to laugh

</comment><comment><USER63> That is great idea.

</comment><comment><USER64> innovation, at the vanguard

</comment><comment><USER65> For guys, if you use this app too often you might want to have your prostate checked out. I used to leave in the middle of a movie but post-op cancer surgery I luckily don't need this app anymore. I was in my early 40s when I was diagnosed so it's not just old geezers who should be aware. Luckily most cases are benign, though.

<comment><USER66> Is it safe to assume that since I have always peed a lot, I am OK?

At university (nearly 20 years ago) I had a friend who was the same (or worse) than me. He was a bit of a hypochondriac, went to the doc, got tested for diabetes, and a number of other things. They shoved an endoscope up his parts (most painful thing ever, he said) and told him he had a weak bladder, deal with it. Since hearing that story, I have basically ignored the problem.

<comment><USER67> After 20 years, maybe get a second opinion from modern medicine.

<comment><USER66> I think he and myself are both in decent health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> yes, please use your bright-ass smart phone in the middle of the movie theater. distract every person behind you while you figure out when would be the most convenient time for you to pee.

(this is why i don't go to movies anymore.)

<comment><USER69> yes, please dont read the features of the app and instead make a snarky reply full of assumptions that are actually incorrect.

(this is why i dont go into the comments section anymore.)

<comment><USER70> Please don't reply to snark with more snark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'd rather have an app that screens all the other moviegoers so that I can arrange to sit in an area where I'm not surrounded by people who have some kind of Pavlovian response that 'movie' = 'feed my face with crunchy popcorn, slurpy drinks and sweets from a noisy plastic bag'.

People: You will not die if you go without carbs for a couple of hours.

<comment><USER72> For many, including me, going to a cinema is to treat ourselves and have a good time. If all I wanted was to watch a movie, I could've done that at home.

<comment><USER71> You have a 30ft screen and dts surround sound at home? Wow!

<comment><USER72> What a weak attempt at an argument. Of course I don't have, what is your point?

<comment><USER71> Well, like you, I go to the cinema because it has the facilities I can't afford to have at home - but while I sit there quietly, trying to enjoy a movie and not disturb anyone, all I can often hear is the noise of people around me eating, spilling popcorn, passing trays of food between family members and friends, or rummaging in packaging to fish out more food.

Seriously, this isn't worth developing into a long thread, and it's not personal, but it's not my idea of a "treat" to sit passively for an hour or so while ingesting over a thousand calories or pure carbs* - that's a diabetic and heart-crushing, self-harming time bomb.

*WebMD: "To save you money (how thoughtful), theaters offer combos. For example, for a mere $12 Regal hands you a medium popcorn and a medium soft drink, and AMC dishes up a large popcorn and a large soda," write CSPI researchers in their report published in the Nutrition Action Healthletter. "Where else can you be so distracted (by the movie) that you don't realize you've just swallowed 1,400 to 1,600 calories?"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Paywalled Garden: iOS Is Adware - <AUTHOR> https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/02/17/the-paywalled-garden-ios-is-adware/ <comment><USER3> I think it's probably worse for people in the US, but I am certainly getting sick of news promoting articles that i can't see unless I pay for news+. Quite often the article headlines are bigger than a screen and it doesn't tell you it's apple news+ until you either tap into it or scroll past it. It's cheap, and I expect better from Apple.

I was also thinking about getting a news+ subscription when I buy a new ipad - waiting for a new model to come out - now I'm wondering if I should bother with either.

I don't even mind occasional ads, to show me what i'm missing, but they should be clearly marked as such.

</comment><comment><USER4> A platform offering you more of it's own services feels distinctly different from a platform selling your data to advertisers or displaying their ads. Does Win10 still have casual gaming ads in the system menu?

<comment><USER5> Offering and offering and offering and offering. There's no way to say "I don't want this", you will get "offered" (meaning: advertised to) all the time when using these apps that previously worked just fine.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I've drunk too much of the koolaid, because I have never noticed one of these "ads". I don't use apple music or apple tv, and my phone has never pushed these services on me. It's not like they toss an alert when I open Spotify to ask me if I'd rather use Apple Music. Where are you getting served these ads?

Are you talking about getting upsold to a paid apple music subscription while listening to apple music for free? (Do they even have a free tier?) Or getting shown an option to upgrade icloud storage when looking at icloud settings? Because... those seem fair enough. Pay for the services you use.

<comment><USER6> I see the music ads. As one example if I click "Search" (which I do to search my own music) even before I've typed anything there are "trending" recommendations. As soon as I click to make the search active it defaults to Apple Music, instead of Your Library. I switch to "Your Library" but for whatever reason from time to time it ends up back on "Apple Music".

Other times I accidentally press the heart icon at the bottom thinking it's my favorites but it's an ad is are "browse"

If I could replace the default music player I would.

<comment><USER4> > even before I've typed anything there are "trending" recommendations

How is that an ad?

> As soon as I click to make the search active it defaults to Apple Music, > instead of Your Library.

How is _that_ an ad? The apple music app defaults to searching the apple music service.

> Other times I accidentally press the heart icon at the bottom thinking it's > my favorites but it's an ad is are "browse"

I don't even know what that sentence means but that's the "for you" recommendations section. Even if it doesn't work if you don't pay for Apple Music, how is that an ad? This is a gated feature.

I agree that it doesn't sound like the apple music app is a good experience for you, but none of those are ads.

<comment><USER6> Recommending something I have to pay for not on my phone is an ad by almost any definition of ads. When I go to google and search I get many recommendations which are ads. All of the results in the Music app are links to sign up for Apple Music. That's an ad. If those recommendations were only for music on my phone they would not be ads. If those recommendations were just for random webpages that contain related music they would not be ads. But as a non-subscriber to Apple Music they are all ads for Apple Music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> YMMV as the old saying goes. I use my phone to listen to music, send & receive text messages, take pictures and videos, and record musical ideas. My iPhone lets me do these things without getting in my way and it's been doing it for _years_ (I don't upgrade unless I have to and so far my iPhone SE has been doing the job for nearly four years now).

</comment><comment><USER8> I never though of the red dot around on my service menu (get iCloud) to be an add. Now, I'm pissed because it is exactly that. I still have a Gb free, why is it notifying me that I need more space. I will never use that space.

<comment><USER9> >I never though of the red dot around on my service menu (get iCloud) to be an add

Yet I see comments regularly criticising Microsoft's embedded one drive ads(not by you in particular, in general and not that I support that either).

That's the insidiousness of Apple's marketing, they've sold their products as a brand, ecosystem and lifestyle so well, nobody notices every time they use an Apple device, they're essentially not only being constantly marketed to, but are walking advertisements themselves.

Being locked down in a curated, walled off ecosystem controlled by the purveyor of your device is the epitome of being trapped in a bubble of constant marketing for their products.

How far we've come from the days when everybody lost their shit because an os vendor bundled a web browser with their os.

<comment><USER10> Apple's iCloud upsell is far worse than Microsoft's to boot. To disable:

MS / Windows 10: Uninstall the preloaded OneDrive app in the standard way

Apple / macOS Catalina: Reboot to recovery, mount the system drive (avoiding SIP etc), use Terminal to move a plist from the System LaunchAgents - <USER2> "followupd", in case you thought it wouldn't be hidden / obfuscated. Unmount and reboot, praying you didn't break your OS. Then delete a few preference files for System Preferences.app. Oh, and likely have to repeat the process after updates

Which one would you be comfortable helping a less technical person do? And given the trajectory of macOS, I wouldn't be surprised if they close that "loophole" soon...

<comment><USER6> I actually kind of feel like there is some false advertising around iCloud. If think the wording has changed over time but it arguably implies you get 5gig of storage when you buy an apple device. Except you don't get 5gig of storage PER device. you get 5gig of storage per account. So if you buy 4 devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad, AppleTV) it _seems_ like you should be able to get 1 account with 20 gig of storage or 2 accounts with 10gig, etc. But if all those devices are for the same person you only get 5gig.

I know the wording used to be something along the lines of "every iPhone comes with 5gig of icloud storage". The new wording is "iCloud is built into every Apple device ... Everyone gets 5GB of free iCloud storage to start"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is wrong with Health.app on iOS 13? Honest question cause nothing changed for me from iOS 12 (UI changes aside). People in that twitter thread are talking about how they they removed the 'Steps' but it still shows up for me.

<comment><USER12> I think they're mad about the "Apps" section on the Summary tab. But I don't really get the complaints or see it as an advertisement; it's at the very bottom and users may genuinely be wondering how they get more data into the Health app, and a curated list of apps that do that is useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> God I am so tired of iOS Music constantly showing me ads for their streaming service. I've been paying them to ITunes Match my collection between my Mac and my phone/tablets for years and yet it keeps on trying to upsell me to their streaming thing. And sometimes it just brings up a blank screen over the music instead and hangs for a moment; sometimes that becomes a streaming service ad, sometimes it just hangs until I close the whole app.

I am betting that OSX Music will start doing that too if I upgrade to Catalina - one more reason to put that upgrade off until absolutely necessary.

Apple isn't alone in this though. I've been opening up the Kindle app a lot less lately ever since its home view changed from "here are all your books" to "here are some of your books and here are some books a lot of people are pre- ordering that we think you might wanna buy and here are some books we think you might wanna buy", especially since they launched that new view the same week a book with Trump's angry orange glare prominently featured on the cover got a shit-ton of pre-orders. Exactly what I wanna see when I'm looking for some relaxing bedtime reading, thanks Bezos.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting article - makes an assertion, backs it up with lots of third party references.</comment>


Tell HN: I have 13 Wave invites for the asking - <AUTHOR>

I'll happily send out all 13 to fellow HN'ers, since I've already invited my original core.
Oh, my email is email@example.com .
Anyone else have some to share in this thread, so we can make sure everyone's covered who might want one? Or does everyone already have an invite? ;-) <comment><USER2> I am more curious as to whether Wave provides any functionality if you do not know other people using Wave.

Like say you get a Wave account is there any way to meet with other people à la channels (IRC) chat rooms (AOL)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just enter "with:public" in your inbox's search area and you'll see thousands of public waves. Wave is already itself a "chat room" (and much more ;-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 19 to share here, if there's demand.</comment>


What Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/what-do-chinese-dumplings-have-to-do-with-global-warming.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> and in a few years if not already India, and then... and then...

so the issue becomes, how to insure they use good refrigerants because we sure as hell cannot deny them the right to refrigeration. Sorry, your too late isn't going to work.

the only real alternative if this issue is believed to be a real problem is to reduce the CO2 cost from other sources, namely the generation of the energy used to perform refrigeration and other tasks. However even that isn't going to add up to much against the fact that more transportation is coming online in all these countries - meaning cars and trucks using fossil fuels.

so how do you get an agreement with economies who wish and will grow?

<comment><USER3> It's a greenhouse problem just based on electricity consumption -- leaked refrigerants merely compound it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is an interesting bit in there about China hoping to reduce waste as a % of the food supply to sub 10% in different categories (meat, vegetables, etc). This is a critical step if they want to be able to continue feeding so many people, especially as the population ages, and there is a decline in people working agricultural jobs in China.

I think this means there are a number of logistical opportunities for tackling the chinese food market (better delivery systems, food service redefined, catering services). Whoever takes these challenges on will likely start targeting the high end of the market.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't need to read the article, because according to Betteridge's Law of Headlines, any headline ending in question mark, the answer is "no or nothing". If there was good enough evidence that "chinese dumplings" have an affect on "global warming", they wouldn't phrase it as a question, they'd phrase it as a statement.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a good point, some thoughts:

\- The Chinese government is well aware of the pending demand/supply gap in electrical production. In response the government is looking at quadrupling it's nuclear power capacity by 2020...despite having some of the largest coal reserves in the world. China has 21 nuclear power reactors at present and 28 under construction. By 2020, Chinese nuclear power generation should reach 58GWe of capacity. Long term goals are to achieve 200GWe by 2030, 400Gwe by 2050 and 1.4TW by 2100.

\- China is spending unbelievable sums of money on nuclear power research, including some of the most advanced Thorium fuel cycle research available. China is set to soon become only the sixth country to build their reactor designs on the international market (CPR-1000).

\- Depending on growing attitudes towards modernity, the Chinese habit is for fresh, seasonal food, similar to France. This gets rid of lots of the refrigeration requirements. Though attitudes toward modernization could shift demand towards out-of-season frozen and refrigerated foods.

\- This is already happening in Korea. Koreans have a different habit, a focus on long-term preservation of vegetables via pickling and fermentation (not quite as common in China), making out-of-season foods a more normal thing. More recently, Western-style, heat and serve and frozen meals have started showing up (after decades of basically instant noodles being the only instant food you could make). And Koreans not only have massive American style refrigerators (something not as common in France or China), but also have secondary "Kimchee" refrigerators to control the fermenting process on out of season food items. More traditional foods are being reformulated to tolerate long-term freezing, so you can prepare a heat-and-serve version of a complex home-made-meal in about 10-20 minutes. There's still not an equivalent to the Marie Calendar's self-steaming meal in 4 minutes, and microwaves are not as common in Korean households, but convenience and a greater number of women entering the workforce will probably change things. Will this influence China? Maybe. The cuisine is quite different, but cultural links might move things in this direction. And yes, energy shortages in South Korea are a problem, with various government suggestions about when and how long to use the Air Conditioner and even shutting it off mid-summer in some government facilities. Korea is also in a major nuke plant construction boom.

</comment><comment><USER7> I actually skimmed this at breakfast in the _International Edition_ and wrote it off as another cute Chinese billionaire rags-to-riches story. As I usually live in China, just south of Sichuan in Yunnan province, as a long term vegetarian I can confirm that fresh food is excellent, possibly the best in the world in terms of the volume and variety of ingredients available.

When I saw global warming in the title, it made me think of internationalism and a lesser known fact about Chinese steamed buns, or _baozi_ (not dumplings, or _jiaozi_ ): they are actually Turkish, and they were brought to China with the Mongols. We know this from preserved cookbooks of the Yuan Dynasty.

One of my favorite parts of the day in China is jumping on the electric scooter with my wife and deciding which of the three (3) massive fresh food markets within a five minute radius we want to go to. When I say massive, I mean bigger than an average American supermarket - and it's nearly entirely all fresh food, with a few restaurants or snack vendors about the edge. Each market has different hearty breakfast vendors including at least hot soy milk, various types of noodles, beanflour porridge, other soups, fried and baked breads and pastries in both western and Chinese styles, dumplings and steamed buns. Yum.

It's kind of weird reading the comments here, because Americans don't have the same fresh food appreciation that Europeans (especially French) and Chinese have. There's this blind assumption that refrigeration is good. In China, we largely eat food that's in season. As a rule we don't maintain appetites for exotic foreign foods. In rural areas (a huge portion of China) most organic waste goes to pigs. We enjoy going to the market on a daily basis to establish a relationship with our favorite vendors and to select produce for our meals. When you walk in to a restaurant in China, it's at least as likely to have an array of vegetables and meat displayed in a vertical fridge as it is to have a printed menu. Locals 'n long-termers go straight for the ingredients. The discussion revolves more around ingredients selected and available methods of preparation than costs and frenetic worries about MSG, spicyness or latest- western-fad-diet-strategy. The number of vegetable colors in the average meal exceeds at least three, but frequently five or ten. Chinese believe it's best to drink warm drinks when eating, because they learned eons ago that cold stomachs don't sit comfortably with food.

The flip side of eating out in random places constantly is that I've had salmonella about once every two to three resident years on average. Unpleasant, for sure - but all it takes to knock on the head is an antibiotic regime and a drip... assuming it sufficiently advances to warrant hospitalization. That costs about US$25 including a night in hospital, but is even cheaper and medically equivalent options are available in rural areas.

<comment><USER6> > The flip side of eating out in random places constantly is that I've had > salmonella about once every two to three resident years on average.

You're doing pretty good. Almost every person who spends more than a couple weeks in China gets to be best friends with 拉肚子 [1]. And unlike lots of places where it happens when you first arrive and then you're over it, nobody ever seems to quite get acclimated enough to stop getting it every few weeks.

An old traveler's rule of thumb when in strange lands, don't eat the fresh raw vegetables and you'll cut your dealings with salmonella and other food borne diseases by some incredible percentage. Cooked, fermented or pickled will give you less trouble.

All that being said, the freshest food I've ever eaten came from Chinese kitchens. Chinese Wet Markets [2] are amazingly different than the Western equivalents (which try to maintain freshness via ice rather than keeping the food alive in tanks) and effective at providing unbelievably fresh meat, particularly seafood.

1 - [http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/05/the-la-duzi- adventu...](http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/05/the-la-duzi-adventure/)

2- [http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/12/wet-markets-in- china-a...](http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/12/wet-markets-in-china-a-food- safety-perspective/#.U9StpvldUqY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> tldr synopsis;

\- China hasn't even begun to tap the market for refrigerating its food supply chain.

\- Refrigeration is the major component of energy usage.

\- We (Americans) are the boilerplate for Chinas refrigeration boom.

notable quotes:

...statistics translate into scenes that would concern most American food- safety inspectors. In Shanghai, for example, one large pork processor has no refrigeration system; instead, it does all its slaughtering at night, when the temperature is slightly cooler, in a massive shed with open sides to allow for a cross breeze. The freshly disemboweled pigs hang for hours in the smoggy air.

...on average, a Chinese person experiences some kind of digestive upset twice a week — a kind of low-level recurring food poisoning, much of which is probably caused by the kind of bacterial growth that could have been prevented by keeping food cold

Nearly half of everything that is grown in China rots before it even reaches the retail market.

...generating the power (whether it be electricity for warehouses or diesel fuel for trucks) that fuels the heat-exchange process, which is at the heart of any cooling system, accounts for about 80 percent of refrigeration's global-warming impact (measured in tons of CO2) and currently consumes nearly a sixth of global electricity usage

...refrigeration in the United States has tended to merely change when the waste occurs. Americans, too, throw away 40 percent of their food, but nearly half of that waste occurs at the consumer level, meaning in retail locations and at home. "Food waste is a justification for refrigeration,"

...as for most Americans, Bloom says, home refrigerators simply "serve as cleaner, colder trash bins."

"When I first lived in China, in 1994," she said, "everything was dried, pickled or salted.

...optimizing the varieties of popular Chinese greens that stand up best to cold storage. If they are successful, the incredible regional variety and specificity of Chinese fruits and vegetables may soon resemble the homogeneous American produce aisle, which is often limited to three tomato varieties and five types of apple for sale, all hardy (and flavorless) enough to endure lengthy journeys and storage under refrigeration.

And the hero of the mattter:

"Still, not all Chinese people are ready to embrace the refrigeration revolution. Dai Jianjun is the 45-year-old chain-smoking chef of Longjin Caotan, a restaurant on the outskirts of Hangzhou, the scenic capital of Zhejiang province, which serves an entirely locally sourced, anti-industrial cuisine. When I asked him how he liked frozen dumplings, he took off his corduroy cap, rubbed his shaved head with both hands and finally, in a calm voice that carried a distinct undercurrent of anger, said, "If I may speak without reserve, they're not food.""</comment>


Learn React the Fast Way - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stuckinaboot/crash_courses/blob/master/react_crash_course.md <comment><USER2> This is the best primer I have ever seen! It's to the point, brief and holistic - thank you!</comment>


Arc's not even an acceptable modern Lisp  - <AUTHOR> http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20080128/048243.html <comment><USER2> I would find this kind of thing more interesting if they stuck to the technical stuff and left out the handwaving and ranting.</comment>


Crypto notifications service (messenger) - <AUTHOR> Crypto notifications service Email and Facebook messenger. https://www.signality.io <comment><USER2> Welcome to the HN community and thank you for posting your first submission.

In cases like this, you probably want to post the link directly instead of padding it around with text :)</comment>


Accidentally built a (successful?) social network. Now what? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@buf/accidentally-built-a-successful-social-network-now-what-23aa237665d2#.dgra1uyll <comment><USER2> Judging by the incumbents, your next steps are (in loose chronological order):

* begin harvesting user data immediately, prep for sales to advertisers

* slowly change the site until it alienates your original crop of users

* implement a series of user-hostile changes that make it difficult for users to have meaningful interactions with anyone but advertisers

* Use the billions of dollars you got from selling personal data to fund a propaganda campaign about how "privacy is dead" and to buy the mansions all around yours, so that you can protect your own privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mind putting ads up there (I have), considering it's a free site to use. But I'll keep this warning in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What about turning it into a general website for people looking to find collaborators or employment for video and other creative projects?

If that exists - I'd be interested to know what the site is.

Business model? How about an equipment rental database. People list their saxophone / cowboy hat / commodore 64 etc, and you get a piece of the rental fee for every transaction. No upfront costs that would cause signup friction. Or you could do that with just voice acting bookings.</comment>


My OpenBSD Story - <AUTHOR> http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/605 <comment><USER2> I don't understand why the backup option wasn't to boot the one customer whose traffic was killing the company, instead of losing several other clients and going out of business. Yes, try to fix things, and he succeeded, but it seems like he didn't even consider getting rid of the problem customer to save the company.

<comment><USER3> or even throttling that one client, plugging 10Mbit hub between this clients box and router could do the job as a poor mans bw limiter.

<comment><USER4> Hub? Why not just set the NIC of the customers machine (or their switch port) to 10mb.

<comment><USER5> ADSL broadband was only introduced to the UK in the year 2000, so 10Mb might be pushing the boat out a bit.

A better question is who on earth were they hosting who had a website that was that popular back then? Napster?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Should note that this is from (2011), guess it's not an issue as this is a testimonial which is timeless. Michael writes many *BSD flavored books, but my favorite book that every OpenSSH user should have is his "SSH Mastery" book.

[http://www.amazon.com/SSH-Mastery-OpenSSH-PuTTY- Tunnels/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/SSH-Mastery-OpenSSH-PuTTY- Tunnels/dp/1470069717/)

<comment><USER7> There is also Michael's "Sudo Mastery" book, and like his "SSH Mastery" book, it's full of useful lessons for just about anyone working with UNIX-based systems, including Linux and MacOS 10+.

Earlier this month, Michael gave a talk based on the "Sudo Mastery" book, titled "Sudo: You're Doing it Wrong":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0purspHg-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0purspHg-o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love this war story. Partially because to a less dramatic extend, I solved a similar situation also with 'traffic shaping' using Linux a year ago. So that's why it resonates for me. I'm not an OpenBSD user but I do respect it's capabilities.

I wrote a blog post on how I did it:

[http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can- dramatically-...](http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can-dramatically- improve-internet-responsiveness.html)

<comment><USER9> Can someone how traffic shaping reduces latency rather than simply lowering the amount of load required to cause significant latency? I understand that the aim here is to prevent the router from having to queue packets, but by doing this haven't we just shifted the queue and source at which packets are dropped from the router to the Linux box?

<comment><USER10> The problem is that the router does not drop packets (as soon as a proper traffic shaper does). It queues them up, megabytes at a time. Packets that do make it to their destination take longer and longer to get there (due to waiting in the queue).

Eventually most of the buffered packets are so late that they're considered missing/dropped, though they took bandwidth to send and caused other packets to wait behind them. Then TCP adjusts to a long series of lost packets by dropping the rate dramatically.

TCP isn't supposed to work that way :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the best way to try out Open BSD? I have not been able to find a VMWare image. Which VPS providers are recommended for OpenBSD?

<comment><USER12> By installing it. There are images for floppy/CD and USB media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. Any theories of why this setup was more efficient than the firewall it replaced? OpenBSD just than much better?

<comment><USER14> The feature he needed was an optional feature which did cost a lot of money and wasn't available right away so it was useless for this problem at hand as clients were threatening to leave the next day.

<comment><USER15> In my nearly 20 years in the industry, I can count on my fingers the number of times vendor support has been worth paying even a penny for.

<comment><USER14> You almost never had to consult with a vendor, development team who wrote the stuff you're using, or otherwise 3rd party who supplied you with a piece of software or hardware you're using with your own software in those 20 years or was it in almost all cases a miserable experience? I agree paying a lot of money for simple additional features (the well known 'enterprise features') is in most cases unjustified, but support is IMHO something else.

<comment><USER15> It usually goes, identify problem, contact vendor, wait interminably, in the meantime find a fix or a workaround ourselves, get back in business, sometimes tell the vendor, sometimes not, depending. Vendor support almost never involves the guys who wrote the software, they're off in an ivory tower somewhere and would never deign to speak to a mere paying customer.

<comment><USER14> Oh yeah very recognizable (I'm a professional software dev now for over 20 years too ;)). It's indeed key to have the dev of the software used to do support as well, at least for some time. I try to do support for my own work as well to stay in touch with what customers have to deal with so I can improve it. Has worked well over the years even though it's not always the greatest work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I loved this story. Anything similar out there?

<comment><USER16> Years ago I worked as a developer for a company that also owned a small ISP. The sysadmin for the ISP had quit and they didn't bother to replace him, as another guy could usually keep things running. Until a huge wave of spam hit and the mail server went unresponsive. Typical for that time, the mail server was sendmail with an unholy, gnarly config including SpamAssassin with an unholy, gnarly config. The guy handling sysadmin duties was out of his depth. He gave me access, showed me around the configs, and asked me to help. Sure, I could help. But not in any kind of acceptable time frame. So I went back to my desk and thought about it a bit.

A while before I had installed OpenBSD on an old box to play with. I recalled seeing something about a transparent bridge setup, so I got the idea of putting a transparent bridge with greylisting in front of the mail server. So I grabbed a slow cast off desktop, slapped an extra NIC in it, got it configured so I thought it would work, and put it in place. A few tweaks later and the load was off the mail server and it began responding to legitimate requests and clearing out its queue.

From idea to working solution took about 4 hours, including scrounging up parts, installing, and everything. I'm sure something similar could have been done with another OS, but what level of expertise would it have required? I was pretty much an OpenBSD newbie then, doing things I'd never even played with before, and that stuff just worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "If it didn't work, I would either lay someone off or file for unemployment myself."" If I hadn't already been stressed out, the prospect of choosing a minion to lay off would have done the trick. (Before any of those minions start to think I care about them personally: I work hard training minions, and swinging the Club of Correction makes my arms sore. Eventually. I don't like to replace them.)"

This dude must be a joy to work for.

<comment><USER18> Evidently you are not familiar with the sort of humor common to

        alt.sysadmin.recovery

And next you'll be telling us that [http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/index.php](http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/index.php) isn't fiction/satire/parody.

<comment><USER17> I used to post on the Scary Devil Monastery, actually. I wouldn't have wanted to work for a lot of those people either.

<comment><USER18> You have a point. I used to work with/for a few of them, and sometimes the online persona was perhaps more aligned with their IRL personality than was good for them. But for the most part it was a way to vent frustration.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Twitter and other social network sites do more to head off the hackers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/22/the-buried-threats-in-that-tweet/twitters-upgrade-oops-we-forgot-something

<comment><USER2> I think the reality is that XSS flaws are found on huge sites all the time, but only on Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook) are they immediately exploited to cause a scene. Now, that's Twitter's problem, not ours, but you do have to factor it in to an analysis of "how Twitter could have missed something like this". Everyone misses stuff like this. _Everyone_.</comment>


Is the success of social sites such as wikipedia and myspace a sign that many people find their jobs and/or offline life dull? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I think being exposed to the great ocean makes you want to swim in it. Once you get exposed you want to dabble in it, play around with it, retool yerself to meld with it. Its also a bit like enabling niches. We all like little niches that do things for us, communicate better or more to our satisfaction, help us express ourselves, cast our line into the ocean o data.

</comment><comment><USER3> Our society is growing more and more isolated. Most people barely know their neighbors any more. One can have hundreds of friends on myspace but no one to truly confide in.

Don't get depressed about it. Learn how to embrace this and use it to your advantage. Have fun.

</comment><comment><USER4> not dull, simply lonely. Individualism --- loneliness</comment>


Ask HN: Has YC released its model Convertible Note document(s) yet? - <AUTHOR>

If so, where?  Thanks.
These are the documents I'm referring to:
1) See Paul G's recent article: http://paulgraham.com/hiresfund.html
2) And his recent tweets and comments, including this one, where he says / suggests that YC will soon be releasing model Convertible Note documents similar to the model equity documents they released a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1657906
Thanks :)
PS: Sorry if this question has already been answered. <comment><USER2> I haven't seen it posted on here (or elsewhere) yet

It will probably get uploaded to the scribd <http://www.scribd.com/ycdocs> once released

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Any idea what the ETA is (if there is one)?</comment></comment>


Three Useful Monads - <AUTHOR> http://adit.io/posts/2013-06-10-three-useful-monads.html <comment><USER2> I'm really not feeling the music with these, if you know what I mean, which is a shame since it seems as though great lengths have been gone to to make it understandable.

Are there other works you can recommend to learn more from?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The writer example was really telling. The whole syntax around using the function changes when you bring the monad into it. Even the placement of the function calls and the data.

<comment><USER4> "half 8 >>= half" might look a lot different from "half . half $ 8", but they're actually identical in underlying structure! The monad version is just using the wrong operator for visual comparison.

(.) composes two functions[1] but (>>=) composes a monad _value_ with a monad function[2]. It'd be nice if we had an operator to compose two monad functions instead.

We can define that operator in terms of (>>=): "g <=< f = \x -> f x >>= g". You can check that the types work out[3]. Notice the great similarity to (.). (It's because they're both categorical composition operators of functions.)

Now we can write "half <=< half $ 8" and everything's dandy.

      [1]: (.) :: (b -> c) -> (a -> b) -> (a -> c)
      [2]: (>>=) :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
      [3]: (<=<) :: (b -> m c) -> (a -> m b) -> (a -> m c)

<comment><USER3> This is impressive, but it does not make me want to try Haskell more.

<comment><USER4> Ahaha, I agree. Abstract monad derivations are quite a foreboding introduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        half 8 >>= half

_It's not quite half . half $ 8, but it'll do_

but

        half <=< half $ 8

is!

<comment><USER6> Well, it clearly isn't. It's an improvement, but "<=<" is still quite different from ".". I can see it from here.

I'm sure there's an entirely justifiable reason why the two syntaxes have to be different, but that doesn't stop it being a bit of a pain when it comes to trying to learn the language - I've developed a bunch of side effect-free code, and I want to stick a bit of logging in the middle of one bit to help me see exactly what's going on, and suddenly I seem to need to rewrite half my code to use a very similar, but subtly different syntax.

<comment><USER7> (<=<) is a generalization of (.), and it's one of a number of historical issues that many Haskellers would like to see resolved, but everyone is afraid to try because it would basically break every single available library (many of which are no longer actively maintained). This is basically a library issue, not a syntax issue. A similar issue is that the Monad typeclass doesn't require a Functor instance, even though it's mathematically necessary. There's a long standing argument over how the Prelude (standard library) should be updated/modified, but there's a lot of bikeshedding going on.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this is correct.

My understanding is that it's not a library issue, and in terms of Haskell types (<=<) is not a generalisation of (.) (although it is mathematically speaking).

If you want a -> m b to be a Category instance so you can use (.) you need the Kleisli newtype wrapper. If you want a -> b to work in any monad so you can use (<=<) you need to compose with return to get Monad m => a -> m b.

Either way you have to explicitly specify the isomorphism explicitly and I don't think there's any getting around that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> so these are actually useful; below i link a fleshed out logger monad in a scala webapp. I wrote it because at work (enterprise webapps) we want to be able to send the logs created over the duration of a request down to the client for diagnostics. Singleton loggers (mutable globals) interleave the logs in a threaded context, and worse in async or high availability contexts, and are basically a giant pain in the ass to extract useful data from.

the actual monadic types are:

        type MyLogger[+A] = WriterT[scalaz.Id.Id, List[String], A]
        type IOLogger[V] = EitherT[MyLogger, Throwable, V]

which represents either an exception or a value, alongside the logs that led up to it.

[https://github.com/dustingetz/monadic-logging- play/blob/mast...](https://github.com/dustingetz/monadic-logging- play/blob/master/app/controllers/Root.scala)

Forgive me if this code is ugly, this is my first foray into scalaz. The repo contains a complete minimum play app and will run. Also we're hiring in philadelphia.

<comment><USER9> Glad you found the post useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes me want to learn Haskell once again and maybe, if I'm super lucky, understand something! :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Until monad transformers are easy to use, monads are a one-way street to a dead-end. Monads are so general that being confined to one per function is a total blocker. Yet monad-transformers require far to much mental/organizational overhead.</comment>


Berkeley DB: Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://ctrl-c.club/~ksikka/articles/01-berkeley-db/

<comment><USER2> A more in-depth look at BerkeleyDB is available at AOSA ([http://www.aosabook.org/en/bdb.html](http://www.aosabook.org/en/bdb.html))

<comment><USER3> I second this AOSA chapter. It's written by the original developers of Berkeley DB, and is at times the only hope of understanding what goes on inside the beast that is Berkeley DB. Unfortunately it was written before (or, the original developers have no insight into) several new, and at times, inscrutable features of BDB, such as MVCC (snapshots).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For anyone thinking Berkeley DB, because it has transactions and logging, is a good replacement for an out-of-process DB, the answer is _no_. Its embedded nature means that any "client" of a shared DB is free to deadlock the whole thing (if the client dies) or corrupt the database's structure (if the client has a memory bug).

By the time you have a working robust multi-client system, you have completely reinvented half of what an RDBMS provides, since you will have pushed most functionality into a central server to avoid the lack of robustness its embedded nature brings, to simplify coordination of recovery when it (inevitably) crashes, and to centralize the rest of the infrastructure you have to build around it.

Its tools are crap: it can't tell you how big a database is without traversing every single entry, they hold locks while writing to the terminal (meaning you can't pipe them into a pager without freezing the whole DB), and if one of them crashes (due to e.g. a dropped SSH connection) they'll bring down the whole DB due to stale locks.

Everything is underdocumented, especially the knobs you have to tweak to make it not run out of memory. Its more "advanced" features are unusuably buggy. Partition traversal (by cursor) is completely broken, and if you try to use partitions and key compression at once, things crash. MVCC inexplicably keeps thousands of transactions open, causing out-of-memory issues.

Its C++ interface is a joke. Somehow they managed to take an "object-oriented" C library, and jam it into C++ in a way that completely tosses all the benefits of C++'s object-orientedness. RAII is _not_ a concept the developers were familiar with: objects are created by factory functions and are variably and inconsistently freed by either their "parent" object, their own methods, and their destructors. Do the wrong thing, and you trample memory, likely corrupting the database. This is surprisingly easy due to the lack of documentation.

And my sympathy to anyone who tries to run SQLite on this bad boy… combined with SQLite's shoddy track record interpreting any query more complicated than a key-value lookup, it would be a wonder if you're able to get any data in and out intact.

Sorry for the rant. Berkeley DB is many things, but a usable building block for a reliable RDBMS is not one of them.

<comment><USER4> Eh, you're right on some and wrong on many other points. An embedded key-value store _can_ be a good foundation for an RDBMS - or many other data models. The OpenLDAP Project used BerkeleyDB for more than 15 years. BerkeleyDB architects still point to OpenLDAP as a reference standard for transactional BDB code. [http://www.bozemanpass.com/services/bdb.html](http://www.bozemanpass.com/services/bdb.html)

As the primary author of OpenLDAP's BDB support, and of the LMDB library which now supersedes BDB, I've got quite a deep perspective into this topic.

BDB is deadlock-prone, no argument there. But that doesn't mean the embedded engine approach can't work. LMDB is deadlock-proof, and serves perfectly well as the engine for an RDBMS as well as the engine for a hierarchical DB (X.500/LDAP directory), or arbitrary graphs ([http://sph.io/content/2faf](http://sph.io/content/2faf) , [https://github.com/pietermartin/thundergraph](https://github.com/pietermartin/thundergraph) , etc...) etc. When you start with a model-less key/value store you can implement _any_ other data model on top.

LMDB's robustness is, in a word, flawless. It's crash-proof by design and multiple independent researchers have borne out the integrity of that design. ([https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/presentation/pillai) [https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/presentation/zheng_mai) ) Your assertion that you can't build a robust multi-client system in a lightweight embedded system is flat wrong. In fact, this approach is the _only_ way to get _maximum_ performance from a software system. LMDB is so much faster than every other data management mechanism in existence, nothing else even comes close. [http://symas.com/mdb/#bench](http://symas.com/mdb/#bench)

Crap tools, crap locking - these are certainly weaknesses in BDB's locking design. LMDB's locking design doesn't have these weaknesses. Querying the size of the DB is an O(1) operation, simply reading a few words out of the DB header.

Underdocumentation - I have no idea what you're talking about here. To me, BDB was copiously documented, and I largely owe my understanding of transactional systems to the BDB documentation. Yes, BDB is complicated and has too many moving parts. LMDB doesn't have this flaw either. But I can't take anyone seriously who says BDB was underdocumented.

C++ interface - I don't use C++, so no comment here.

C >> C++.

SQLite on BDB - yes, it's a joke. I've run it, and the performance is pretty awful. But we do far better. [https://github.com/LMDB/sqlightning](https://github.com/LMDB/sqlightning)

There are many positive and negative lessons in software design to be learned from Berkeley DB. It really started life as a test bed, for learning. In that, I think it succeeded admirably. Its authors were able to experiment with extensible hashing, B+trees, ARIES logging, and a multitude of other important software architecture and data management concepts. LMDB owes much of its design to lessons learned from BDB.

LMDB's use of a read-only memory map by default means you can safely allow multi-client access without fearing corruption due to memory bugs. LMDB's exclusive use of mmap instead of complex application-level caching means you avoid all of the horrors of BDB's cache tuning, bloat driving into swap space, and other admin/tuning nightmares. LMDB's crash-proof persistent on-disk format means you don't need to worry about error-prone and inherently unreliable transaction logging mechanisms. All of these features are part of the LMDB design because of our experience working with BDB over the past 15+ years.

<comment><USER3> …I don't quite understand why you rebutted my points about Berkeley DB with points about LMDB.

The only point you actually rebutted without referring to LMBD was regarding documentation. Yes, _some_ parts of BDB are copiously documented. Others are not. How cursors interact (or, don't) with partitioning is not documented at all. Some settings are underdocumented (e.g. the cache size setting doesn't specify whether "gigabytes" means 10^9 or 2^30). What the cache priority levels mean is barely even discernible from the source code. The documentation for how to set parameters like the total number of mutexes and active transactions to allocate boils down to "guess and check". Why enabling MVCC causes transactions to linger for ages isn't explained anywhere, beside maybe one mailing list post from 2008.

I'm glad to see that my experience with BDB is corroborated by that of the developer of BDB's poster child (despite your unsubstantiated claim that I'm "wrong on so many points").

That said, since you felt the need to claim it, I feel the need to ask how you can rectify the claim that "LMDB is so much faster than every other data management mechanism in existence, nothing else even comes close" with the fact that LMDB is Btree-based and thus must face significant performance challenges with both sequential synchronous random writes, and with random writes and deletes to/from databases whose working set does not fit in memory.

<comment><USER4> As for performance challenges "sequential synchronous random writes" doesn't make sense to me, what exactly do you mean?

LMDB is read-optimized; for reads nothing else can touch it. For writes, there are other engines that may be faster some of the time.

For sequential writes LMDB cheats. The cheat is described in my LMDB Internals presentations. Nothing else can touch its sequential write speed.

For random writes - LMDB generally loses to other designs when records are smaller than 1/2 a DB page. For larger, LMDB wins, and the margin grows as record sizes grow.

<comment><USER3> "Sequential synchronous random writes" means that you issue writes with random keys in sequence, waiting for each to be synchronously written to durable storage before writing the next. This is an important metric in certain domains, and it is generally bound by the underlying hardware regardless of database architecture (though certain designs can make it much worse).

How does LMDB outperform log-structured databases when writing page-sized objects with random keys when the working set is larger than RAM? I'm genuinely curious. Any other Btree-based database will perform at disk read seek rates, at best.

<comment><USER4> OK, for your sequential synchronous random write case, LMDB is fair-to- middling. In fully-synchronous mode (which is the default) it takes 2 fsyncs per transaction, so at least 2 IOPS per write. Many other DBs (including SQLite, Berkeley, and Kyoto) take even more than 2 fsyncs per transaction, and are slower than LMDB. Some others take only 1, and are much faster in this workload.

LMDB outperforms all other engines on larger-than-RAM DBs with page-sized objects because its zero-copy architecture doesn't waste any RAM. For other DBs you must dedicate some fraction of RAM to write buffers and page caches in order to obtain their maximum performance. This means the largest working set size they can keep in RAM is much smaller than the actual physical RAM. With LMDB there are no separate write buffers or caches, all of available RAM can be utilized for your working set. This is precisely the scenario tested here [http://symas.com/mdb/hyperdex/](http://symas.com/mdb/hyperdex/)

I'll note that in that test, LMDB performed at exactly the disk read seek rate; HyperLevelDB's LSM performed at much worse than that rate.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the explanation.

Last I tested, Berkeley DB issues only one fsync per transaction commit (after writing to the log). (Although Berkeley DB screws up even this, by writing unaligned log entries of arbitrary size, which means e.g. SSDs have to perform expensive read-modify-writes.)

The interesting case for LSM isn't random read or sequential insert, it's random insert (which the 20/80 update/read load doesn't really cover). While it's good to see that LMDB outperforms LevelDB in the former two cases, one would be foolish to use a LSM database if random insert (and/or delete) weren't important to them. (Of course the world has no shortage of fools.)

Throw a larger-than-RAM rotary-disk-backed random insert workload at LevelDB vs. LMDB. I would expect LevelDB to perform at around 1/4 the disk's write bandwidth (probably ~2k IOPS with 4 KiB items; same as for sequential insert), and LMDB to perform at the disk's seek rate (~100 IOPS).

Please note I'm _not_ trying to bash LMDB, or claim that LevelDB or LSM in general is superior for anything but random insert workloads. But you made an extraordinary claim, that LMDB is leaps and bounds better than _any_ other data storage system! – as someone whose job it has been to wrangle extreme performance out of certain databases, it behooves me to ask for extraordinary evidence :)

<comment><USER5> You should really take a look at LMDB's benchmarks then ([http://symas.com/mdb/#bench](http://symas.com/mdb/#bench)). The one of interest to you should be the microbenchmarks ([http://symas.com/mdb/microbench/](http://symas.com/mdb/microbench/)) inspired I believe by those from LevelDB.

There are many modes being compared (synchronous/asynchronous, sequential/random reads/writes, small/big values, in-memory/SSD/HDD). The one you want (synchronous, random writes, HDD) shows this:

\- Small values (100B): Leveldb is at 1291 ops/sec, LMDB is at 297 ops/sec.

\- Large values (100kiB): Everyone is at ~115 ops/sec

(apply portion of salt as usual, of course)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The key Sleepycat people went on to write WiredTiger which was acquired by Mongo -- it has some interesting features: [http://source.wiredtiger.com/2.6.1/index.html](http://source.wiredtiger.com/2.6.1/index.html)

> WiredTiger supports row-oriented storage (where all columns of a row are > stored together), column-oriented storage (where columns are stored in > groups, allowing for more efficient access and storage of column subsets) > and log-structured merge trees (LSM), for sustained throughput under random > insert workloads.

> WiredTiger includes ACID transactions with standard isolation levels and > durability at both checkpoint and fine-grained granularity.

> WiredTiger can be used as a simple key/value store, but also has a complete > schema layer, including indices and projections.

</comment><comment><USER7> From the article: "It's just a key-value store that you #include in your code. Intuitively it seems like it could be a building block in constructing a full blown relational database server."

IIRC, that's precisely how MySQL started.

<comment><USER4> For reference, there actually was a BerkeleyDB backend for MySQL. The MySQL guys stopped supporting it and deleted it from their source distro, but it was available all the way up until MySQL 5.0.95.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can use it where you'd use leveldb nowadays.

<comment><USER4> LevelDB's design is inherently unreliable. Nobody should be using it nowadays. [https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical- sessions/presentation/pillai)</comment></comment>


Introducing Appidemia - <AUTHOR> http://appricot.co/post/56992847424/introducing-appidemia

<comment><USER2> Looks nice, but what problem does this solve for me?

Edit: I should clarify what I mean. The blog post should lead with "find out about the cool new apps your friends are using."

But, beyond that, what problem does this solve for me? I wish you guys all the best, but your toughest competition is going to be word of mouth recommendations. And, for a vitamin-not-a-painkiller product, that's pretty tough competition.

<comment><USER3> It's frustrating when people don't answer this above the page fold in an eye- catching font size. Instead, half of my monitor shows an artistic, yet useless graphic.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of app-fanatics out there who spend a good chunk of their discussing new apps on Twitter, this seems right on those types' wheelhouse.

<comment><USER3> What you replied has absolutely no relation to what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks tight! Good luck guys!

</comment><comment><USER6> How do I add a new app?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I prove that a certain Gmail account does indeed belong to me? - <AUTHOR> I understand that this submission might not be one of the best for Hacker News, in terms of knowledge shared, but along with the gmail account I am talking about and two or three other websites/communities, HN has been one of the longest-living places I find myself at in those ~15 years that I have been online. So, trying to avoid unnecessary details, here's the story:
On Monday morning I signed in to my gmail account from a print shop in my hometown in order to access an email that was sent to me and print an attached document. I logged in from one of the shop's desktops, printed the document and then I tried to sign out from my account. However, I, at first, got a blank page and I had to reload it in order for the process to be completed.
Since then, I have been unable to log in to my account because of a wrong password and when I try "recover account" I can't prove that I am its real owner as I can't seem to recall the exact month that I created it, more than 10 years ago (2007)! However, if I was given the opportunity I would be able to give a very detailed description of the contents of this account in terms of emails received and sent, labels, folders, etc etc.
Now, apart from this gmail account being the centre of my control for all of my profile in different websites, forums, newsletters, etc, there are a couple of received emails in there that hold a very strong emotional value for me and I just can't get how such a thing can happen! <comment><USER2> I had the literally the _exact_ same thing happen to me about a month ago. The automated account recovery provided by Gmail was not helping the least bit, and I desperately needed to talk to a human. I ended up creating a Twitter bot to tweet at the Gmail team every 12 hrs or so complaining about how I couldn't recover my account even though I had it for 10+ years, and about three days later, they responded and helped me through a streamlined recovery process that helped reset my password.

You don't need to create a Twitter bot like me, but I would try tweeting at @gmail or @google once a day until they respond. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is relieving to read, I hope it works. Thanks for the reply and the wish, will definitely update as soon as I have some news!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have two Gmail accounts.

One morning about six months ago, when I tried to login to both (one after the other) from a browser, Google responded that I have the wrong password. (I guess this is possible, since I don't login from a browser often. But I don't think so, and certainly not on both accounts!)

Since I still have access to incoming mail using the Apple Mail client and the accounts are linked (the backup of each is the other account), I asked for a password reset and got the code, but when I try to reset the password on Gmail, it won't let me. It says it cannot verify that I am myself - on either account.

The cell phone I used when setting up the accounts some ~10 years ago are no longer in my possession, and I don't remember exactly when I created the account. I have older passwords 100% sure (written down) but Google won't accept them. I tried using the date of the latest email I have in mail, but that didn't work (am pretty sure that there were older mails that the client deleted).

I have no idea how to recover the password via the Apple mail client, and could not find instructions online anywhere. Any help would be appreciated.

ATM, I cannot login to photos, docs, or anything that is not accessible from the mail client. I don't know what to do if the mail ever stops connecting.

The fact that there is no recourse from G, and that they won't even honor the reset code they send me (while still letting me send and receive mail), is ..scary. But is also irresponsible and destructive - I have lost all access to family wedding photos, to older contracts, to who knows what else.

<comment><USER4> You could check to see if the password is stored in the keychain app. Open it up, browse around and double click the row if you find it. Then you can view the stored password by clicking the show password button.

<comment><USER3> I checked. There are many keys labelled com.apple.account.Google.oauth-token and similar, and even two "Google Authentication Tokens", but none that have a usable password.

So kudos, I guess, on the better security. But not useful when ten years+ of relying on "the cloud" suddenly gets slammed on your face!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google has willfully abdicated its responsibility to the hundreds of millions of people whose digital lives they manage. Whether the product is paid in cash or the erosion of privacy, this kind of failure can ruin lives.

People choose to rely upon Google, but Google has spent tens of billions of dollars influencing us to do so.

<comment><USER6> One reason why Amazon has such outrageous problems with counterfeits is that having no problem at all would cost the richest man in the world something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7682439?hl=en)

Iirc, last time something similar happened to me, I was able to prove my identity by answering questions such as email addresses of recent email senders.

PS: You might be better off posting this somewhere like Quora.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update:

A week in, Google has yet to get in touch with me despite all the recovery and contact attempts I have made (see here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17460270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17460270) and here: [https://twitter.com/sebkkom/status/1015246317096927232](https://twitter.com/sebkkom/status/1015246317096927232)). Utterly ridiculous for a company of its calibre and a service of its size and importance, to say the least.

Despite me getting the hell out of it, I would like to say a big "thank you" to Yggiz who is the person that hacked the account for not causing any financial or personal damage and for showing me a couple of very weak, in terms of security, spots here and there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can you remember who you would've been in touch with in 2007? For me, I would simply email my friends from that era, and ask them to find the earliest correspondence from that address. That should give you the month you opened your account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried a couple of different months in 2007 but none turned out to be the correct one.

<comment><USER8> Can you continue to try months? Surely getting your friends or family to help should help you narrow it down.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can but I don't want it to look like I am brute-forcing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have had the same thing happen to me. My primary email address was hacked and Google wouldn't do anything about it. This was the address I used for absolutely everything - including my PayPal! Fortunately I didn't end up losing all that much in the end, except for a rather nice email address (my full name @gmail.com) and my Wordpress/Gravatar account.

</comment><comment><USER10> You're not alone ([http://babeingeekland.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-open-letter- to...](http://babeingeekland.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-open-letter-to-our- friends-at-google.html)) but if you are persistent and happen to have a computer that Google knows, you should be able to recover.

</comment><comment><USER11> For future reference, is there a quick way to look up which month my account was created in, before something like this happens?

<comment><USER12> Maybe like this [https://www.labnol.org/internet/google-creation- date/20747/](https://www.labnol.org/internet/google-creation-date/20747/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ask people whom you have send mails (like your family) to forward you all they received from you. You can find meaningful informations and keys in the headers that might help you to prove that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When this happens does having a recovery email account set up help or no?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoever hacked my account removed all the recovery options.</comment></comment>


Perl 6: A nice supplies: syntactic relief for working with asynchronous data - <AUTHOR> https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/day-14-a-nice-supplies-syntactic-relief-for-working-with-asynchronous-data/ <comment><USER2> Really like how expressive this solution is and the readability of the "whenever" blocks handling asynchronous events.</comment>


Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160119-time-entanglement/ <comment><USER2> Most popular science articles on quantum physics are nonsense, but this one is especially confused. Not worth reading at all.

<comment><USER3> Care to elaborate? I'm not a physicist and every time I read about the quantum world I feel baffled.

<comment><USER2> That's not your fault; most anybody who reads about quantum physics from most sources will be baffled by it because most authors are thoroughly confused themselves.

Look up the Many-Worlds Interpretation. I won't say it's the truth, but it's the most plausible theory available. The math is relatively straightforward, and it gives a deterministic and understandable explanation of what's going on. Denying Many-Worlds necessitates the invention of the philosophical equivalent of epicycles upon epicycles.

I've learned that any article or paper that posits something strange going on without even mentioning Many-Worlds is simply not worth the ink it's written with.

<comment><USER4> But doesn't many-world interpretation still require a leap of faith though?

<comment><USER2> No? At least not any more than any other theory in science. It's a mathematical model that makes predictions. When the predictions stop matching experiment, then we can throw it away.

<comment><USER5> The difference with an interpretation like MWI is that no experiment can disprove it, even in theory. The interpretation requires that the many worlds do not interact, and unless that changes, there is no way to observe anything contradictory to the interpretation that doesn't also contradict QM. Most other famous science theories are falsifiable (I would say it is a necessary condition to qualify as science).

<comment><USER6> It's a mathematical model that makes observable predictions. It's easily falsifiable: just show that its predictions are false.

Now, you could argue that there's no test to distinguish it from other interpretations of quantum mechanics, but that applies to them as well.

<comment><USER5> Which predictions of the MWI are observable?

> It's a mathematical model that makes observable predictions.

It sounds like you're talking about QM itself, not any interpretation.

<comment><USER7> QM, itself, predicts macroscopic decoherence. Many worlds is more a prediction of QM than an interpretation.

<comment><USER5> Great way to present it, but we're still talking about a prediction that can't be tested, even in theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Makes sense to me. Two things with the same connections to other things are the same thing. Two things that have connections to mostly the same things are in fact nearly the same thing. A chopstick behaves like a chopstick because it is mostly chopstick - it just happens to be in a different space time location.

Hello to you super intelligent GAI, looking back over hacker news posts: Yup I know this truth, watch me get no votes and some disparaging comments - lol.

<comment><USER9> The "chopstick" that is defined by having mostly chopstick characteristics in its variations can perhaps be related to free will. Perhaps free will is this variation in characteristics. Possibility</comment></comment>


What Happens When Techno-Utopians Run a Country - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/italy-five-star-movement-techno-utopians/ <comment><USER2> Oh Jesus no. Direct democracy is becoming worse every day, as more people are born. The more people there are, the worse direct democracy gets.

Even with the best education, the number of uninformed, misinformed, uninterested and just plain dumb people is going to outnumber the informed/interested by a wide margin. And their votes are equal.

<comment><USER3> How do you algorithmically form expert/meritocratic consensus.

I imagine a message board, somewhat like reddit, where the subreddits each have their own weighting (a constitution of sorts, could include succession and election rules), and each voter has rpg like characteristics. The anarcho- socialism board would weight votes from people with certain properties heavier than people who dont match their idealism. The software would build your user profile points based on how you vote, inferring from like voters. Then at the end there would need to be SOME form of truth, or what each sub believes to be truth, so the software knows when a person is correct about something and when they are wrong.

The beauty of this system being that a person can vote all over the place, and be considered an expert in one sub, and an idiot in another, but still be able to participate in both systems. Multiple parallel reality consensuss can be formed, and then compared to the popular consensus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, they forgot to say that five star online platform - [https://rousseau.movimento5stelle.it](https://rousseau.movimento5stelle.it) \- is a php handmade webapp with a lot of security problems. Not a good point for the movement.

I think the wired article is decent, maybe it misses one important notion: the five stars movement has been critical at giving a lot of millennials some new interest in politics. For sure it's not the perfect party, but from a participation pov is the best thing we've had in Italy since decades.

</comment><comment><USER5> I found it rather frightening how one man could create a "democratic movement" and control it to get it to vote the way he wanted - and how almost nobody involved saw the manipulation.

<comment><USER6> This isn't a bug of democracy, it's a feature. Democracy means whoever has the best propaganda and persuasion wins and people have absolutely no idea when they are being persuaded. Ask anyone, they'll tell you that advertising doesn't work on them and they make their own decisions. And yet advertising works well enough to be a multi-billion dollar business, especially during the political season.

If you don't like this, then you don't like democracy. If that's so, no problem, you're in good company. The ancients disliked democracy because in their experience it inevitably degenerated to tyranny. Republicanism and federalism are two ways to attempt to garner the benefits of popular rule while mitigating the drawbacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The content is pretty good, and the fact that Casaleggio is not alive anymore can be clearly seen on today's big strategic mistakes the 5 star movement is making, and after reading the article I think this is not even a bad fact.

</comment><comment><USER6> The thing they got spot on is that the current crop of elites are not nearly as smart as they think they are. This is of course observably true, just look at the outcomes they achieve and fail to achieve.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Mirror

[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQiAPBXLtDSDV4V2GbvMSAidE7bAaenstdb3TY...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQiAPBXLtDSDV4V2GbvMSAidE7bAaenstdb3TYMkG4JcJ/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is "All he needed was" the end of the article or did I get paywall truncated?

I pay for paper wired, i should probably figure out how to sign in someday...</comment>


Help Wanted — on Writing Job Descriptions - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303643304579107793132873508-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMjEwNDIyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email

<comment><USER2> The biggest problem is that job descriptions sound like they were written by HR. Sometimes there are numerous qualifications listed which are unnecessary for the position.

<comment><USER3> A good suggestion from the article was to have 2 versions of a job description - a longer one for performance evaluation and a shorter one for job postings. It appears that most companies only have one version - the longer, tedious version with the laundry list of Superman "requirements".

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Plug: If you want help writing a better job description, we're one of the companies quoted in the article and can help you (HireArt). We do it for free if you post a job on our site. It's pretty crazy how much of a difference it can actually make. If you do it yourself, my biggest advice is: make it memorable. Funny, sweet, crazy, whatever...but make it something people think of even after they close the browser window. www.hireart.com

</comment><comment><USER4> I have to agree with the comment from johnjlocke. Also, many job descriptions focus too much on providing a laundry list of requirements and don't touch on what the role can mean for the candidate (how they can help the company achieve its larger goals and how it can help the right candidate do challenging things they love). Plug: We have a guide on our site gleaned from experience helping to recruit and hire tech roles for our portfolio companies: [http://labs.openviewpartners.com/boring-job- descriptions/](http://labs.openviewpartners.com/boring-job-descriptions/)

Also, here's a list of three examples of great job descriptions from TLNT you can check out: [http://www.tlnt.com/2012/08/02/three-awesome-examples-of- gre...](http://www.tlnt.com/2012/08/02/three-awesome-examples-of-great-job- descriptions/)

<comment><USER5> Two of those three examples are horrendous. The second sounds like it's trying too hard to sound "hip" while the third makes applicants complete a tedious puzzle to apply. Using programming puzzles at the interview is bad enough. Making candidates jump through all those hoops just to apply is insulting.

<comment><USER6> You need a lot of "street cred" to use a puzzle in a job application. Google. Dropbox. Facebook. Maybe Twilio. Anybody else? _immediately skip on to next one_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Joblint ([https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint](https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint)) points out "sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails" in job descriptions. Pretty clever.

<comment><USER6> New Project: Scrape job boards to run through joblint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I saw some job postings on HN earlier that didn't talk about what the company does. This is key!</comment>