Linus Torvalds switches back to KDE - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LinusTorvalds/posts/DbmEE8kXLDA <comment><USER2> This sounds like a scene from the movie "To Rome with Love" where this normal guy is followed around by reporters and he tells them how he likes to brush his teeth and exactly which kind of toast he ate in the morning.

Not sure why it is interesting to know that Linus (or anybody else) is installing a piece of software to try it out. Perhaps a livestreaming site where people would go "Whoa, did you see the way he opened the browser" would have some popularity too!

<comment><USER3> He's not just installing something to try it out. He is _announcing_ that he is installing something, and in that way both promoting the software he is installing and de-promoting (?) the software he is switching from.

You could read between the lines that he isn't completely happy with XFCE or he wouldn't be seeking new DE. And overall that was fairly positive "first impressions review" of KDE from Linus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...best Linux DEs I know are:

1\. latest Mac OS + ssh-ing into your Linux machine 2\. a Windows 7 + ssh-ing into your Linux machine 3\. latest Mac OS or Windows 7 + Linux server in the VM

(...now fastening my seatbelt and gettin ready to be downvoted all the way to hell:P )

<comment><USER5> Perhaps you could explain why you feel this way? That might make it less trollish and make this into a productive conversation. If the only response you can anticipate is downvoting, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER4> ...to calm things down, I actually believe using one OS for all your needs can work for most people that have all their skills in one "bucket" ...but not when you're put in the position of doing devops + web development + design (and yeah Adobe software is important and hard/impossible to replace for 90% of people doing pro design - if only for being able to edit and send back edited copies to your colleagues) + desktop app development (either Windows or Mac OS...), because you're going to use 2 OSs no matter what (and it's going to be Mac OS or Windows + a Linux or BSD...) + using some finance shit that REQUIRES Microsoft Office, and when you're already at this point, the only sensible solution, perfomance-wise (and the only one that actually _works_ if you throw in some occasional video editing in the mix with premiere or after- effects...) is putting the Linux in the VM, because you need a "monster" machine to do it the other way around (and a "monster" machine under 2 kgs / 4.5 punds and with good battery life is not available right now...), so here's one winded road that got me here...

And yes, I believe either KDE or XFCE are DEs that can work for me (XMonad is cool but I'm not into tiling WMs...) if I were to only do server-side dev and devops...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Offtopic but how you are supposed to find interesting G+ comments? There is no way to sort or filter them, and there isn't even threading so you must basically read every one of the 500 comments to see if there was anything interesting in there? What's the point if +1'n stuff if the stuff with lots of +1 doesn't get promoted in anyway?

</comment><comment><USER6> Google+ comments are annoying don't you think? There's hundreds of them under every popular post, and they add exactly zero useful information. The real name policy appears not to stop people from posting trivial bullshit like "$X FTW" (surprise, surprise). Google demonstrates again (see the youtube trainwreck) that it can't handle comments in a way that furthers interesting discussions while pushing the one-liners and trolls down to the bottom.

<comment><USER7> Google can't, yes, but who can (genuine question)? Even control-freak Apple can't stop all the noise in App Store reviews (even though they all have to be screened by someone at Apple before appearing online). App Store reviews are literally 98% noise and 2% signal (all buried in 43rd page)...

I'd love to know _who_ has been able to do this. Maybe Yelp? (I don't use Yelp as it's not available in my country, so I don't know).

<comment><USER6> Reddit, Slashdot, or even just HN all have better systems than what Google is doing. Sure, making something perfect is extremely hard, but even a 80% solution would be great for the G+ and YT users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "trying out" != "switches". Let's see how long he can stand it.

<comment><USER9> Very true. XFCE & LXDE are the cleanest DEs by far (among the top five)

<comment><USER10> From what I've seen, mate (the Gnome 2 fork) looks decent too. After the disaster that was Gnome 3 I've went away from full DEs to a simple but great tiling window manager (awesome, that's the name of it as well as the description). Since 99% of my use cases really involve just a terminal or firefox that's probably as good as it gets for me :) No bloat, just great usability without ever needing the mouse - which is especially great on a laptop since touchpads have always been suboptimal pointing devices.

<comment><USER11> Although I don't use it day to day, I was rather impressed by Cinnamon (on Mint). It's got the GNOME 3 visual wizziness, without all the usability problems that GNOME 3 suffers from.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_%28user_interface%29>

<comment><USER12> The Cinnamon desktop is a Kickstarter worthy effort. I believe it supersedes Linux Mint in its possible impact, because it is potentially usable on any Linux flavor.

<comment><USER13> Cinnamon is great. I'm actually using a gnome classic DE right now, but i suspect that I'll switch to cinnamon when it becomes more polished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Next Hacker News: Lady Gaga switches back to iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER15> When ubuntu moved to Unity i started using XFCE, but since 12.04 i'm surprised how much Unity has grown on me, i use it every day.

KDE seems over complicated, i have never got on well with it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't know why more people don't just use tiling window managers. It's a bit confusing at first but now I couldn't be happier. I used LXDE for a long time then realised - why don't I just use dwm to open stuff, and actually get a window manager that arranges my windows to maximise screen space usage?

<comment><USER17> "I don't know why more people don't just use tiling window managers. It's a bit confusing at first [...]"

That pretty much sums it up. I believe it's fair to say that casual users are (often) adverse to dramatical change--and switching from a point-click-and- move to a system that manages it all for you can be a bit crazy.

<comment><USER16> Well that's a problem with culture, I guess. Once you get used to a decent tiling WM (I'm using herbstluftwm at the moment), they're absolutely fantastic and useful. I think the experience easily competes with OSX, maybe not on ease of use, but definitely on usefulness once there's some investment.

It's like people using GUI applications for things when they really aren't necessary. I'm constantly helping out people who are using, for instance, the GitHub Git client (which is great), because it abstracts away the logic of using a system and creates more issues itself.

We're not really talking about average day-to-day users here, we're talking about technical people (like Linus Torvalds), so the ability to spend time investigating a new paradigm isn't unreasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tell him its writern in C++ .... He will switch again ;)

<comment><USER19> Building graphical interfaces in C feels like carving a tree with a knife

Now, building them in C++ feels like carving a tree with a power drill. Better, but still not the right tool

And GTK makes C feel like C++, the bad parts I mean, without the good ones.

I think Android does it in a good way, browsers also made it easier to create nice interfaces, not sure how it works in IOS though.

<comment><USER20> I will vouch for your comment. I recently tried to knock up a simple GTK+ UI for something and it was utterly painful.

<comment><USER21> You can write GTK+ in pretty much any language, so if it was painful, you chose the wrong one.

<comment><USER22> I don't know. Take QT for example, I'm happy to risk blowing my leg off with c++ just because I feel really productive with Qt, it truly is a wonderfully productive library, and the external ecosystem is supportive, whatever complex visualisation I want to draw, I can often find a lib that's happy to draw into a qpixmap - c++ on its own or with boost etc. doesn't leave me feeling as productive.

GTK feels drawn out to me in comparison.

<comment><USER19> Exactly

Some libraries manage to iron out the difficulties of the language. QT and WxWidgets are examples of that.

GTK (on C) and Windows MFC are examples of how libraries can make it harder on the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727721></comment>


Show HN: Mowish, movie reminder. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mowish.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey it's freakin cool! Sure, I'm one of the creators of mowish.

<comment><USER3> So you tout the ability to "Explore movies for your taste." as something that's possible with a free account, but upon signing up require a paid subscription for said feature. I understand you want to monetize the service, but not being outright to your users isn't cool.

<comment><USER2> Yes you're right! Thanks for pointing this out, we'll address this issue somehow.

Any suggestions for working around this? How should we highlight the paid benefit and show that creating your list is basically free at the same time?

<comment><USER3> You should make it clear that it's a freemium model. I don't know how effective you can sell the "premium" part of the site though, considering the only reason I signed up was to see movies that I might like - but wouldn't be willing to spend money each month on. Maybe if it offered _more_ than just movie recommendations - or at least do it significantly better than the other services out there.

<comment><USER2> That makes sense! We've just launched so we'll reconsider this part, that's for sure. Thanks for the valuable insights.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder - <AUTHOR> http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec13/

<comment><USER2> For anyone that's looking for a handful of real takeaways- I've put together the 26 quotes that I found interesting from this lecture here: [https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/26-quotes-reid- hof...](https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/26-quotes-reid-hoffman-on- how-to-be-a-great-founder-ff99c713a199)

I've left out a lot of the X or Y slideware related aspirational statements he made. I think his comments on being a contrarian these days and the need for an investment thesis was interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great lecture - one of the best so far IMO.

From the comments, it looks like a lot of people are struggling with this one because Reid Hoffman was (absolutely) lacking in specific, concrete advice.

I think it's missing Reid's point -- everyone here is either (well, likely) thinking about founding something, or well on their way.

When he poses his questions, I think that he's trying to help us reflect on where we are, and how we can tackle the hazy questions (flexible v. persistent, short term v. long term, etc.) that will drive our decisions. This midway course lecture isn't about giving lessons -- it's about helping us to reflect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some of my takeaways:

"Product distribution is more important than what the product is."

It's not enough to be contrarian. You should also be right.

"It's useful to be able to recognize whether you are on track or not. To have both that belief, but also paranoia, about am I tracking over my investment thesis."

You need to be able to articulate the vision well.

One of the founders needs to be able to build networks of people.

What is my distribution edge? What is the hack that I know that other people don't know?

Just as you spend 20+ hours with a possible CEO, go in depth in conversations with a potential co-founder to identify all the parameters and set expectations. Go over the parameters that might lead to a divorce.

<comment><USER5> If I recall correctly, what he actually said was product distribution is next in line in importance after product idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This talk might have been brilliant, but I wasn't really able to take away any concrete lessons or advice from it. In my opinion it was far too vague. I've really enjoyed the other talks though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found it very interesting when he spoke about founders who've learned to mimic an attribute investors find important. He notes that ignoring a single investor's feedback is fine, but ignoring the world in general is usually disaster.

I imagine the rise of this sort of mimicry leads investors who previously would consider investing in an idea and seemingly great founders to more strongly favor traction. I wonder if the YC partners keep track of the change in the percentage of startups accepted with an idea alone or complete a prototype just before an interview.

I'm also curious about the percentage of successful (or surviving) YC startups that were accepted with no traction versus those accepted with a product that had a quickly growing number of users. This value may be misleading, though, because the sample size isn't enormous, and there are so many other variables that affect the survival of a startup.

<comment><USER8> >I imagine the rise of this sort of mimicry leads investors who previously would consider investing in an idea and seemingly great founders to more strongly favor traction.

Not sure if you came to that conclusion inductively or deductively based on experience, but it is basically 100% the case. Every potential investor we have spoken with doesn't really seem to care about anything but traction.

<comment><USER7> I've just recently begun learning about the startup world, so I have almost no experience. Unfortunately, this result will restrict those who don't already know and cannot afford the time to learn how to build a prototype. Thankfully, the effort required to get a software prototype built has been dropping significantly.

<comment><USER8> Prototypes /= traction so that almost won't help either. I had a prototype two years ago. Nobody cared. We had an MVP a year ago, nobody cared. Now we are out there actively selling and even then investors are saying: We want to see that you will have 1MM in revenue in the next 12 months before we decide.

A rule of thumb in fundraising is this: "When you don't need money you will be able to get it."

<comment><USER7> I agree that a prototype /= traction, but it is a necessary step to get traction. I understand that marketing/sales are necessary to expose the product to target users, but a prototype allows founders to reiterate based on feedback to build what people want.

I agree with your rule of thumb too. One analogy that best described it IMO goes something like, "Investors are there to throw gas on the fire, not ignite it."

<comment><USER8> _I understand that marketing /sales are necessary to expose the product to target users, but a prototype allows founders to reiterate based on feedback to build what people want._

This is certainly true as it will help validate your idea/market, and it is a step toward traction. A common mistake though is to assess positive feedback to a prototype as traction. Your quote is also apt. Here is another from me, right now:

"Nothing matters except sales"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't mean to be flippant but can someone separate out the concrete recommendations from the abstract motivational speaking?

All I hear is a series of "X or Y?" slides, which sort of imply there's a decisive answer on the way, but when you peer through the verbiage it ends up being some form of "Do both!"

</comment><comment><USER10> How to be a horrible founder: SPAM your users and raid their inboxes.

</comment><comment><USER11> This one hurts because its true: "If I ever hear a founder talk about oh this is how I have a balanced life so on and so forth — they're not committed to winning." So that you know that the work-life balance in SV is not anyone's priority, no matter what we say or jazz hands or post in lovely medium blog posts.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did he say a panopticon of skills?

<comment><USER13> Don't you know? It's crucial for startup founders to have an 18th-century dystopian surveillance system of skills. In fact, if you play the video backward, you can actually hear Reid recite the entire text of Foucault's Discipline and Punish.

(Seriously, I'd guess he meant "panoply.")

<comment><USER14> Great guess. I was trying to imagine what sort of metaphor he was evoking with Panopticon - as though the super-founder can see every task that is required of him - works, but it's a stretch. Panoply is much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Notes: [http://jonalmeida.com/posts/2014/11/04/htsas- lec13/](http://jonalmeida.com/posts/2014/11/04/htsas-lec13/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Haven't watched this one yet, but all the lectures have had at least one really great insight to learn from. Thanks for uploading them so quickly, it's really nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - my favorite part of Reid's lecture in this video is his clarification of what a contrarian founder really means. Don't miss that one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great lecture!! I have a question: Can somebody list the names of founders from the slide at [26:14]?

<comment><USER5> From first row (left to right):

Oprah Winfrey (The Oprah Winfrey Show), Jan Koum (WhatsApp), Jack Ma (Alibaba), Evan Williams (Twitter), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Hosain Rahman (Jawbone), Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook), Paul Graham (YC), Adora Cheung (Homejoy), Kevin Hale (Wufoo), Leah Busque (TaskRabbit), Brian Chesky (AirBnB), Patrick Collison (Stripe), Benjamin Franklin (USA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> More business graduates gravitating to the "tech" field full of useless piffy advice peddling themselves and their shoddy unoriginal offerings. When will these people realize they are like chefs who can't cook, nobody cares what they think.

I know I'm in the belly of the beast here but you all need to hear it.

<comment><USER19> > More business graduates gravitating to the "tech" field full of useless > piffy advice peddling themselves and their shoddy unoriginal offerings.

Ah yes, the "self-made entrepreneurial IT consultants".</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sentiment Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.sentimentsearch.com

<comment><USER2> Great idea but doesn't work very well. Samsung Galaxy S3:

-I connect to my wifi using a really good asus router. Sentiment 9.0

-I often lose connection in locations where previously I had excellent reception. Sentiment 8.0

-it worked great until july this year when it stopped receiving a network signal. Sentiment 7.5

-the samsung exclusive touchwhiz apps were gimmicky at best. Sentiment 9.0

Etc. If it's unbiased I'd guess the errors would average out, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your comment. The sentiment analysis algorithms are being constantly fine tuned using new data sets. There are some inaccuracies but as the results are averaged out using large quantities of text, the inaccuracies do not influence the overall sentiment significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> SentimentSearch.com is a search engine that crawls the Internet for people's opinions and reviews on a diverse range of topics. The content is aggregated and filtered to provide a 'smarter' view of the information available.

We have been working on this idea for a few months now and would appreciate any feedback. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Great idea. Have you guys considered adding an overall rating for the sentiment in question. For instance, searching for iphone5s will return the total Positive, Neutral and Negative sentiments.

And what sources do you crawl so far?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We have an average rating for the subject in question above the graph. There is also a list of sources crawled below the graph (we are working on expanding this list significantly in the near future).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like the idea. Request for the developer, have you considered implementing 'Vs.' comparisons.

For your search I liked what I saw for the Xbox One and PS4 but any possibility of matching them and presenting them side by side?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. Comparisons are next on our to-do list. So you should see this feature online within the next few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I keep getting "no results found" =(

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, at the moment the search terms are limited to the auto-complete suggestions and the terms listed on the home page. We are working hard to make this a powerful search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice idea. Does your comparisons take into account feedback from users ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

When you say 'feedback from users', are you referring to how we crawl the content or do you mean feedback from users on our site?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea, how would the framework scale to say ~1 million items?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, we are currently in the process of building an enterprise-scale crawler. However, for the purpose of this beta test, we simply chose a few pages to index to validate the effectiveness of our idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> cool idea. Maybe do something clever with the collected data in terms of visualization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Will definitely take your idea into consideration.</comment></comment>


Clarkson fired by BBC - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/video/clarkson-fired-by-bbc-over-physical-and-verbal-abuse/9ABD9AAC-E9CB-4F07-B43B-DDADCFF5834E.html

<comment><USER2> Top Gear and Clarkson have always given me mixed feelings. It seems clear that he's a huge ass, and their misleading reviews of Tesla and extreme nationalism put me off, but there's no doubt that the show has more entertainment value than almost anything I've ever seen, and was hugely influential. I'll miss it, despite its flaws.

</comment><comment><USER3> end of an era

<comment><AUTHOR> totally, but another channel will take him, we just have to wait</comment></comment>


Drawing as a programmer - <AUTHOR> http://gameofworlds.tumblr.com/post/76836176462/drawing-as-a-programmer <comment><USER2> Professional cartoonist here.

If you want to move on to the next step of drawing whatever the hell you want to out of your head, in any angle, I strongly recommend you go to [http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair- le...](http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-lessons- fundamentals-of.html), get the Preston Blair book, and start doing these exercises. You will get a lot better, a lot faster.

You can build on the simple cartoon characters in these lessons and do super realistic stuff, or you can keep on being a cartoonist. Whatever works for you.

<comment><USER3> (Another professional cartoonist here.)

I strongly disagree with the suggestion of starting with cartoons first. Start with real anatomy first.

Books that show step-by-step guides to drawing a comic character are only good for one thing: Learning how to draw that comic character, in that position, in that style, in that medium. I hate them. One may look at these books and think that's how all cartoonists (or other artists) learned to draw, and they'd be wrong.

To be a good cartoonist, in my view, you need a foundational _understanding_ , not just technique (which is what these books teach, in a very limited way). Once you _understand_ anatomy, how bodies move, forms, perspective, composition, visual weight, ... Then turning your ideas into a cartoon (or any other form) becomes simply a matter of technique. (And even at that point, learning techniques from step-by-step instruction books is a lousy method.)

<comment><USER4> For someone who just wants to doodle and play around, while still learning the fundamentals, what resources would you recommend?

<comment><USER3> I received a formal art education, so my answer may be very biased, but I'd recommend starting with a fundamental drawing class. If you're in NY or SF, there's no shortage of them. If you're anywhere else, you may be able to find one at a library, college, school, or artist organization.

But keep on doodling! Even mindless doodling improves your skills.

<comment><USER5> I had the weird experience that fundamentals classes seemed to assume that I had much, much more experience than I actually had as a beginner. Is there some distinction between different "fundamentals" classes that people should be looking for?

<comment><USER6> Artists love creating other artists. We all mostly remember the hundreds of a-ha moments that changed our view of the world _again_. It's sad how eager most of us are to share the knowledge. :)

Depending on where you are, you may do well to find a tiny studio with good reviews on yelp or, if you're near a school, look for tutors.

In the mean time, definitely keep doodling but occasionally try to doodle something you can see. Then laugh at it and shade a sphere or a cone. :)

This is one area where everyone has potential. You just need to develop it with some basic tools, most of which involve ways of _seeing_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I do believe that anyone can draw with enough time. In 2009 I took 8 days holiday, one per week and dedicated it to drawing. I could see the improvement vastly:

[http://eightweeksproject.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/projectone...](http://eightweeksproject.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/projectone- weekeight/)

Then in 2010 my new years resolution was to do a sketch a day. Hard going but very enjoyable:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFWNlK2H29U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFWNlK2H29U)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtXlhVLYYE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtXlhVLYYE)

[http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/l_640_480_937...](http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/l_640_480_937cc10c-5982-4acf-94eb-8837ce87083c.jpeg)

[http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/p_640_412_cb0...](http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/p_640_412_cb00f9bd-d6b1-4839-86be-1b23f91880bd.jpeg)

I didn't dedicate enough time to each sketch so only got a handful of good drawings. I've fallen out of it again so would have to get right back to basics, but it shouldn't take too long before you start to feel fluid again.

Being able to draw is like a muscle.

<comment><USER7> Nice progress! I do note that you are under 30, which means you can still make progress. There is a famous forum post of someone starting some very basic drawings and progressing onto higher skill level a few years later. He started at 23 or 24.

What I am hoping to see is someone starting at a later age.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you can still learn when you're older. Especially if you have an inquisitive mind like most hackers. The brain doesn't "solidify" completely as you age, it just solidifies the knowledge you already have. People have learned languages past 30, just by immersion, which is a very complex task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really don't like how much that book (and other books of the same author) is promoted. I am into drawing for quite a long time already (and I also think it helps me as a programmer etc.) and I've heard about that book like thousand times, so I've finally read it. I understand why it's impressive: because author delivers the material like "so, there are some techniques to use your right side of the brain instead of the left one and woah… you see, you draw much better now! It's magic! By the way, I have million students who couldn't draw, but they took my courses and now they are master-artists and own their own design saloons." And you probably actually will draw better than you expect (especially when you don't expect you can draw) after some simple guidance and a few tries.

What I'm saying it's very populistic, but explains many thing the wrong way, which may cause some problems if you'll want to improve your techniques later. If you are learning to draw I'd better recommend you start with Andrew Loomis: "Fun with a Pencil" or even Vilppu Studio tutorials if you have serious mindset.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I find that Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has too much pseudo-science in it and that the results you get, while they may be impressive to a complete beginner, are only superficially impressive. Getting good at drawing takes time.

<comment><USER11> Superficially-impressive is better than not-impressive-at-all for keeping someone motivated.

I'm getting the impression that by analogy, DotRSB lets you play music that someone else has written; but to be good at drawing, you need to be able to play music that you've written yourself. And that's a valid criticism, but playing someone else's music is still fun, while writing music isn't going to be much fun if I can't play it well. So it seems reasonable to quickly get good at playing, and then later I can learn to write.

Does this seem like a fair assessment?

<comment><USER12> I think it's a good analogy. I also think its why everyone who wants to be an artist but not put in the right-brain work wants to be a photographer now. It's like creating without being required to do the actual work part. I guess being certain types of "DJ" is a similar metaphor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One can't fault a simple pencil and pad of paper, but I think if technologists become interested in drawing (which seems both likely and desirable), over time there will be more ways to do this with a tablet and stencil, with all the advantages. For me personally, notorious for moving lines around in my drawings, that would be very nice -- one would be able to delete lines that didn't work out.

I've always envied people who are actually gifted draftspeople -- people who lay down the exact right line on the first try, and whose drawings are paragons of minimalism. R. Crumb, for example -- there's a video showing him drawing with a pen and never laying down a bad line. Whenever I watch that video, I have an envy meltdown.

My point? With a tablet and stencil, by being able to delete things, I could pretend to have actual drawing talent. :)

One of my old drawings: [http://i.imgur.com/hRQY84G.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/hRQY84G.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I think the trick is that they are using the Bob Ross method. They don't make mistakes, they make happy accidents.

There's this program for rapid sketching called alchemy [http://al.chemy.org/features/](http://al.chemy.org/features/) it specifically has no undo button, for that reason.

It's pretty fun to screw around with.

<comment><USER3> I disagree that there's a trick to it. Laying down a line with precision and exactly in the way that you planned is a skill. When you watch an architect or draftsman draw a line, they've drawn that same line thousands of times before.

<comment><USER15> Being a good draftsman is like being a good painter; it's all in the prep. There's a lot of work that goes into getting things setup and guides in place before the first real line hits the paper.

If you watch someone that's really good with a CAD program you'll see they do more work with things that don't end up on the final drawing than they do on the actually drawing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd love to become good at drawing because I believe it can help presenting your ideas in a very visual and straightforward way. Moreover it is an activity that stimulates the creative and imaginative part of the brain. My main issue, aside dedication, is that I "suffer" from a natural tremor in my hands which I have been unable to shake off, even after seeing a doctors years ago and undergoing a battery of tests which showed nothing conclusive nor serious (I also took some pills which showed no results).

So my main questions would be: \- Can I still be good at drawing despite my trembling? \- How do I cure my trembling?

<comment><USER2> As a practicing artist, most of my drawing is really done with the muscles in my arm, not with my fingers and hand. My hand is fairly relaxed, with just enough tension to keep the pencil/stylus/pen/brush making contact with the paper/tablet/canvas. You can force yourself to learn this by holding a common wooden pencil such that the side of the tip draws a big broad light line on the paper, rather than the point drawing a thin, dark line.

I don't know the full cause of your tremor, but I know that if you have a death grip on a drawing tool it will be a lot less steady in your hand. A light grip may or may not help.

Also of course learning to whip out lines quickly can help. If you tremble about once a second on average, and get enough control to whip out roughly the line you want in .5s, I can imagine easily finding a rhythm that avoids a lot of the tremors.

Alternatively you could just embrace the trembling and groove on a lot of Edward Koren.

<comment><USER17> I have exactly the opposite :) Ever since I suffered a burnout, I have a tremor in my hands, it's gotten a bit less over the years, but it's still there.

I can still draw. But I do it explicitly with my wrist+hand, not with my arm. I never have. Always rest my hand on the paper and draw with my fingers. Then I don't tremble, I only tremble when I gotta keep my hand still in free space. But on paper my hand's 100% relaxed and only moves as I want it to. Maybe it's because I've drawn things all my life and there's a trust in my hand that allows it to relax in that way.

There's two consequences to this drawing style: I draw best when it's really small, because of the range of motion of my hand and wrist (although there's a few ways I can use a marker and draw nice curves and cartoon faces on larger paper as well). I can't paint :) Because if you rest your hand on the paper you'll smear out all the paint :) This was already a problem in highschool, before I burnt out, it's just not how I want to interact with the medium. It's gotta be up close and personal.

Either way if my movements had to come out of my arm, my fingers would tremble, and it would suck.

BTW I have a similar fear for starting to learn electronics, I really doubt if I can handle a soldering iron and those tiny elements accurately enough to make things without it becoming a hugely frustrating exercise in "accepting one's limitations".

To the GP I say, try it, and really, try to relax about it (if relaxing helps with the tremors--it doesn't for me, 100%, which is why I also need to calmly rest my hand on a surface. but then it's pretty steady).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Long time lurker here. I am also a programmer who started to learn how to draw. I even put a blog documenting the process. [http://louislearnstodraw.blogspot.ch/](http://louislearnstodraw.blogspot.ch/) So here is my 2 cent. Drawing is definitely more than being able to reproduce a 3d object on a 2d surface, it's about understanding how things are constructed and work. For example if you want to draw a steam locomotive, you have to understand what are the parts of a steam engine, how power is generated and transferred to the wheels, how it is built, why the parts have this shape, ... . If you don't have this understanding, there is no way you can draw a steam locomotive from imagination. Of course you can do a nice copy with beautiful rendering that will look nice, but drawing something that is realistic will be very difficult. Since I started learning to draw, I learned a lot of things on a variety of subjects: entomology, anatomy, marine biology, history, technology,... When I visit a new city the first thing I look up are the museums, where I then go to draw. I could elaborate more on that subject but I have to run. Let me know if there is any interest.

</comment><comment><USER19> Want to make your 10-minute drawing breaks more fun? Try Drawception: [http://drawception.com/](http://drawception.com/)

<comment><USER20> Doodle or Die is another site that does the same thing (games of picture telephone): [http://doodleordie.com/](http://doodleordie.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From what I can tell, Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain teaches you to draw things you already see, which is nice, and can help you impress your mom if you practise a bit, but as far as drawing ability goes, being a human copy machine is an extremely basic skill.

Don't get me wrong, basic skills are valuable, but reading the book and practising for a couple of months will not make you a skilled artist any more than learning to touch-type and adding an existing Javascript menu to a web page will make you an expert programmer. It can be a first step, but if you want to be really good at drawing, you probably want to to spend years practising composition, perspective, anatomy, the emotional effects of lines and shapes, color theory, storytelling, creating variation/contrast/depth/movement, etc. There's much, much more to drawing than just being able to copy what you see in front of you.

(I'm not writing this to discourage anyone, I just want to put the book into perspective.)

<comment><USER22> I agree. I went through that book and then noticed that I can't draw the things I see vividly in my mind, only copy what's in front of me. Then I realized that to sketch from imagination, I need to understand the 3D structure of things, not just how they look from one side. So here's some exercises I'm doing now:

\- Drawing a lot of boxes, spheres cut in half, cones, other simple 3D objects in various views

\- 30-second poses using Posemaniacs, and quick poses from imagination

\- Head structure from imagination, like in Loomis "Drawing the head and hands" (available online for free)

The next problem is going to be color, I can already tell that I'm OK with structure but will need a new set of exercises for color and value, no idea yet what they will be. Can anyone who's further along help me out?

<comment><USER9> If you are pretty good at drawing already I'd suggest to practice at color drawing for some short time using your intuition and your eyes, and then move on to the serious stuff. I mean color theory. You might find useful Gnomon Workshop tutorials on color theory and Johannes Itten's "The Art of Color". Also, here you inevitably will need guidance in proper usage of your instruments, so find yourself a manual for the technique you use (some book and I find youtube videos on topic pretty useful ofttimes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aside from the mental stimulation or distraction drawing provides, it's an incredible tool for solving or communicating problems... Especially to non- programmers.

What other tool or method allows you to explain a development challenge or solution (at a basic level) to a non-developer, in a matter of minutes? Being able to stand up in a meeting, walk to the whiteboard, and sketch out basic concepts for everyone in the room to understand makes you a goddamn hero. You'll go from being just a developer to the developer who can communicate with the biz guys, the sales guys, the designer guys, etc. That's valuable.

There's a good book on this topic, which I highly recommend: [http://www.danroam.com/the-back-of-the-napkin/](http://www.danroam.com/the- back-of-the-napkin/)

(I have no affiliation with the author or the book.)

</comment><comment><USER23> To me, the important question in this article, is whether drawing (or music, dancing, acting, yoga, sports), actually helps you solving problems? Not sure, what helps solving problems is talking about them, discussing them, etc. and this can be done with social networks (or writing, tweeting, etc.) too.

</comment><comment><USER24> I recommend Fast Sketching Techniques by David Rankin. Of course, nothing beats practice and the book will help you focus your practice in a very rewarding way. I have been drawing my whole life, and still always keep an open notebook and pencil right next to my keyboard when I program.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm a beginner programmer who is attracted to aesthetic aspects of creativity ('art' is a dirty word for me because of people associated with it). I tried to learn playing a recorder, because I like the way it sounds, and I adore music in general. I couldn't stand it, and I learned something about myself in the process. I'm dreadfully bored by repetitive tasks. For me it leads to routine, and routine leads to terrible errors. I intend to try this book and drawing in general.

Drawing has the potential to suck me in just like playing an instrument failed. I think drawing is to playing an instrument like solving nonograms to solving sudoku. Sudoku is inherently repetitive to solve, you need to check for all numbers in a square, one by one, then all numbers in a line, line by line... In contrast, nonograms usually have non-linear solutions - there is no single way to get to the final result. This makes the process of solving a nonogram vastly more enjoyable for me.

I have no illusion that learning to draw won't require days, months, years of practice. But you can - should - try new things, and you improve in the process. No endless repetition of one piece until you can play it perfectly.

Sounds a lot like Starcraft, doesn't it ? :> I think Starcraft players who like to invoke comparisons to Chess have an inferiority complex and can't enjoy Starcraft for what it is. And it is a lot more like playing guitar than Chess. It's just that Chess much more accumulated prestige.

One of things putting me off Starcraft is that learning to play it violates the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle. A few years from now you may be vastly better at Starcraft, and I'll be able to draw many /different/ things.

I think it's a wider problem with most games. I know very few that really reward creative thinking rather than memorization of strategies and their counters, and practicing to execute them perfectly. Board games have it easier, in absence of computers they can afford to be less strict about rules, and the focus in boardgame industry is still on developing interesting mechanics rather than building on a few established genres.

<comment><USER17> > 'art' is a dirty word for me because of people associated with it

lol, once more I see that nobody escapes the tentacles of post-modernism :)

I totally get the DRY principle regarding music btw. Every time I try to play an instrument (especially percussion), and I get it right, I find myself wishing for a "repeat" button.

Somehow with drawing this is very different for me. I love zoning out on penning tiny details, cross-hatchings, or on the computer, handpixeling sprites.

I think this is also what the article is really about, learning to access this other "mode" of your brain thinking.

I'm all for DRY, but it's great to be able to stretch the other brainmuscle and just DRRRRRRRRRRRaw :)

Also there are no terrible errors in drawing. Especially not if you do it because you love doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I also heartily recommend the book that the author of this piece recommends. I'm currently about half-way through it, and the reaction to my drawings from my family has been: "Wow! I had no idea you could draw so well."

<comment><USER27> I found this book a bit shallow. What I liked a lot were the before-after self-portraits shown in the book. They are really nice. However, "drawing with the right side of your brain" means simply: Don't think about the concepts you have of objects (tree, glass, house), but really LOOK at something:"What angle is this line compared to that line?" and just draw them.

While this can be a revelation for some and improve drawing skills a bit, it is simply the first step. There is absolutely no way around learning how to draw but putting many hours into it. And drawing can be very exhausting. At first, you won't have the patience to sit through a drawing for more than an hour or so. It gets better though.

The drawing of the OP is okay, but not particularly good, but then he never claimed that it was good but just a way to relax a little bit. I will try this. Drawing as a mental break from coding. But you could probably achieve the same result with music, taking a walk, doing some physical activity, meditation etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to squish a warning like "You won't become a good artist after reading only one book, you still need 10000 hours of practice" into the post, but couldn't find an appropriate place for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I tie flies, for fly fishing when I'm working from home and it has the same effect. It's a different way of using my brain that helps me refocus. It's also really nice to physically produce something. Plus then I have a better selection for fishing. Doesn't work so well when in an office setting though.

This article does make me want to draw again, I used be an amateur comics book artist/cartoonist but I haven't drawn seriously in years.

</comment><comment><USER29> Which hacker news article did the post refer to?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found it after all!

[http://nabeelqu.com/blog/surprisingly-undervalued- books/](http://nabeelqu.com/blog/surprisingly-undervalued-books/)

Old HN post now refers to dead link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Fantastic article. As an ex-avid comic book reader and programmer, it certainly turns on some old hopes to draw better.

</comment><comment><USER31> I bought this book and did find it amazing, the first exercises are very good in showing how you Can draw, specially the inverted picture exercise. However, I struggled to find the material with which to do some of the later exercises and ended up putting it aside.

</comment><comment><USER32> I used to keep paper taped on my desk under the keyboard. whenever I was working something out mentally or just taking a break I'd push the keyboard to the side and add to an ever growing elaborate abstract drawing.

</comment><comment><USER33> I didn't get the bit about the video (the kings speech). I've never seen the movie. Seemed like a random throw in. Wish there would have been at least one sentence to tie it in.

</comment><comment><USER34> if you like drawing living things (and you care about proportion, realistic renditions) studying the underlying musculoskeletal structure helps.

i just try to capture something fleeting. i identify the most salient element and try to communicate that in my drawing. the most useful exercise in that book imo was the technique of trying to draw something once, then turning it upside down and trying again. ("disorienting" the object trains your mind to better identify spatial relationships.)

</comment><comment><USER35> Programming is "computer art". We have simple succeeded in making this discipline a science. All by deciding to call the discipline "computer science".

</comment><comment><USER36> we have a tiny blog with a friend (programmer too) where we put up our drawings, both learning to draw from various books and sources on the internet. I started 4 years ago at 28, don't know about my friend. I'm all for messy and sketchy, he likes the clean things :)

[http://hackingart.tumblr.com/](http://hackingart.tumblr.com/)

I haven't posted much lately, been in a kind of slump and not producing much.

<comment><USER23> some nice ones

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I could never draw that stick figure. It has a certain flair I could never replicate. That led me to be instantly disheartened when reading this.

<comment><USER17> :( I get what you mean (about the "flair") ... and I'm not really sure what to say.

Except that I hope you do try. A few stick figures. Take a look at xkcd's earliest stick figures: [https://xkcd.com/6/](https://xkcd.com/6/) and compare them to the way he manages to put actual emotion into those few lines with his current cartoons.

Okay yes his other drawings of that time are actually pretty good, but my point is, even when drawing stick figures, you can get better at it with practice :) But not if you get disheartened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. I used to draw a lot as a kid, and was pretty good at it, but I now realize that the more I programmed, the less I drew.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a programmer, I think (y)our hobbies should be non-visual. E.g. music, learning spoken languages, etc...

<comment><USER40> Programmers aren't all the same person. People have different hobbies, lifestyles, interests. Just because someone's interested in programming, or their job is a programmer, doesn't mean they should enjoy non-visual things like music, languages etc. Some may enjoy running, skateboarding, dancing, stamp collecting. I think what I'm trying to say is, programming is just another part of someone's character, not their whole character.

<comment><USER39> What I meant is, if you are staring 16 hours a day on the screen, It is wise to choose something that will be not as hard for your eyes.

<comment><USER41> Visual activities where you change focus, like drawing and photography, do not strain your eyes and might be good for your vision. One of the problems with staring at a screen is that your eyes maintain the same focus distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wouldn't other left-brain activity, such as playing a musical instrument, have the same effect?

<comment><USER43> All this left/right brain stuff is a myth[1]. I don't doubt doing something other than programming when you are stuck helps. My best ideas come in the shower, for example.

[http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain- myth...](http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain-myth.html)

<comment><USER5> Yes, those terms fail to correlate to brain activity. But that doesn't mean that there's not a real, subjective quality to different kinds of productive mental activity. Working with your hands (and with shapes or sounds or patterns) is a great way to take a break from doing heavy semantic/problem- solving thinking, and it has the crazy side effect of gradually giving you skills you probably wished you had.</comment></comment></comment>


Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/fogbank-america-forgot-how-make-nuclear-bombs/ <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK) \- "A root cause investigation showed that input materials were subject to cleaning processes that had not existed during the original production run. This cleaning removed a substance that generated the required impurity. With the implicit role of this substance finally understood, the production scientists can control output quality better than during the original run."

Cites [https://www.lanl.gov/orgs/padwp/pdfs/nwj2_09.pdf](https://www.lanl.gov/orgs/padwp/pdfs/nwj2_09.pdf) \- "Fogbank: Lost Knowledge Regained".

<comment><USER3> This can be a problem in trying to reproduce old chemistry research too, even research published entirely in the open. You may have to do a little historical sleuthing to determine how the materials used for research circa 1920 differ from their modern reagent grade counterparts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For all the talk about fusion energy research, much of the work done at the national ignition facility is related to the nuclear physics end of the "stockpile stewardship" problem. I have often heard that aside from obtaining the material, the design challenges are mostly associated with conventional chemical high explosives and directing the shockwave in a controlled way. On the other hand, there is no test ban on conventional high explosives so its surprising so few resources were allocated to that considering the billions put into replacing nuclear testing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some previous discussions about Fogbank:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115211)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15331731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15331731)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1928233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1928233)</comment>


Palantir to File IPO in Weeks for Possible Fall Debut - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-11/palantir-is-said-to-file-ipo-in-weeks-for-possible-fall-debut <comment><USER2> Super interesting that their funding round in 2015 valued them at $20 billion. In late 2015, public SaaS revenue multiples were in the 6-7x range [1]. According to the article, they are looking to hit $1 billion in revenue this year. If we assume a 25% compound annual growth rate from 2015 to today, this would put their 2015 revenues at ~$350 million, for a multiple of >55x (Zoom's current EV/NTV revenue multiple) at the time of the raise. That's pretty astounding, and makes me think there must be more to the story here (and not necessarily in a good way).

[1]: [https://www.meritechcapital.com/public- comparables/enterpris...](https://www.meritechcapital.com/public- comparables/enterprise#HistoricalTradingData)

</comment><comment><USER3> I expect market demand to be incredibly if the financials look good in any way. They are on the ones that pickup all the government work dropped by google/etc for moral grounds.</comment>


How to subnet IPv6? - <AUTHOR> http://anuragbhatia.com/networking/how-to-subnet-ipv6/

<comment><USER2> Google Cache of the page: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eoDEqVB...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eoDEqVBKQ4UJ:anuragbhatia.com/networking/how- to-subnet-ipv6/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</comment>


Baggage claim: Trading your excess airline luggage-allowance - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/09/baggage-claim?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fte%2Fbl%2Fed%2Fbaggageclaimtradingyourexcessairlineluggageallowance <comment><USER2> >Grabr largely skirts this conundrum by having the courier do the purchasing and packing.

On the US customs declaration 6059B form[0], question 14 is:

 _I have commercial merchandise: (articles for sale, samples used for soliciting orders, or goods that are not considered personal effects)_

Truthfully answering yes means you waste an extra 15 to 60 minutes dealing with customs and paying import duties on whatever you're bring (personal exceptions doesn't apply for commercial goods). That's assuming you're a US resident. If you're a non-resident then you better plan on sleeping in the airport that night.

Lie by answering no and 99.99% of the time you won't be caught. But 10 years down the road if the government ever have an axe to grind against you, they can just look up that confirmation email you got from Grabr and match it against the 6059B form you filled out and they got you on the hook for making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1001)[1].

[0] [http://www.immihelp.com/immigration/sample-us-customs- declar...](http://www.immihelp.com/immigration/sample-us-customs-declaration- form-6059b.pdf)

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

<comment><USER3> Use a throwaway email for Grabr, there's not much they can do short of a sting operation.

<comment><USER4> If they know where to look they could issue a warrant for that info, and Grabr have your credit card information.

<comment><USER5> > If they know where to look they could issue a warrant for that info, and > Grabr have your credit card information.

Bitcoin funneled to paypal cash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Airmule, a rival, sets standard fees for deliveries: $40 for packages up to > 5lb (2.3kg), or $60 if the "mule" departs within 48 hours, plus a $5 fee if > the mule has to travel to pick up the package.

Uhhh.... They actually named it Airmule? Is this satire?

<comment><USER7> What could possibly go wrong?

"did you pack your bags yourself? Are you carrying anything for anyone else?"

"Well I'm carrying an Airmule(tm) package. They packed it. They texted a photo to prove it was totally legit."

"Um, really sir? Please come with us"

<comment><USER8> "You've earned a free body-cavity search!"

Hope no Airmule users plan travel to the Philippines...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One big thing the article leaves out is the delivery logistics on the other end of the trip.

Let's consider the $5 watch example. For such a low-value parcel, how much time and effort will each party put into delivery/receipt? As a courier, for a mere $5 there is _no way_ I'm going to go out of my way drop off the package to anyone. So the recipient is going to need to retrieve it from me at the airport. Are they willing to wait around for hours (or pay someone else) for me to arrive, clear customs, etc.? Because I'm certainly not going to hang around at the airport for hours for _them_ if I'm only getting $5 - so they'd better be there on time. And that means they are going to have to pay for transportation to/from the airport (usually pretty far from the city center) on top of the cost of shipping.

All in all it seems like a pretty hard sell - mail/package couriers have already sorted out these logistics and will deliver stuff straight to your door, usually quite cheaply.

The only way I can see the economics working is avoiding import duties in countries where they are prohibitive, which of course means shifting an unacceptable risk to the courier.

<comment><USER10> Actually, if they wait for me and throw in a lift to town and I might be tempted. Airports can be seriously costly to get from/to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Completely not worth it, against airline and government policy and an easy way to recruit drug mules. "Here, buy this thing from that suspiciously empty shop and take it across international borders."

Also $5 to buy a watch is hardly worth the time, unless your literally buying it at duty free.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _For bringing a Citizen watch to Vu in Ho Chi Minh City, you can make $5. > Franz in Munich is apparently unsatisfied with the quality of coffee there, > and will pay you $15 to bring him a box of San Francisco's Blue Bottle > beans. Ahmed in Cairo has seemingly spotted a good deal for an Apple Macbook > Pro in Dubai, and is willing to part with $100 to have someone bring one to > him._

The trouble of even downloading the app and signing up for an account isn't worth $5 to me.

<comment><USER12> Me neither, but we're part of a disappearing slice of the world where we cant be bothered. Much of the the labor force will do anything to make more than minimum wage.

<comment><USER10> Those people aren't flying internationally. If you spend hundreds on an airline ticket then you wont care abbot $5

<comment><USER13> Tell that to hostel-ers around the world.

<comment><USER10> I spent several months backpacking around Europe, through Russia, and then China, and a friend of mine is pretty much a professional backpacker well into his 30's. It can be tough, and you take odd jobs when you can get them. But realistically $5 is not going to buy you a nights sleep in a dorm, it might buy you lunch, it will just buy you a coffee in some airports.

Not worth the risk for the money on offer. Knowingly being a drug mule, on the other hand, pays better.

<comment><USER13> You can get hostel beds for $15-$20 in Hong Kong, even if it doesn't get you all the way, it's a significant chunk, so little bits from various places will add up.

<comment><USER10> You can get a hostel for $25 in most places, seasoned travelers are not going to be taking unknown packages around. The people that do that sort of stuff are the people going on their first trip overseas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Did you pack your bags yourself?"

Be careful about what you answer. "No" is a bad answer and "yes" is OK only if 1) the content of the bag is OK and 2) you really packed it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't see this as a long term viable market. Airlines obviously won't like this and it's only a matter of time until they lobby politicians to make this illegal because "terrorism"

It's a shame because I believe that loosening restrictions of airline tickets, specifically allowing for transferability would be a huge opportunity. If tickers were transferrable, the seemingly arbitrary shifts in pricing would fall considerably. The same restrictions could apply such as visa restrictions and perhaps even a limit to transferability such as 24 hours before the flight. It would be a huge win for the consumer but sadly I doubt this will happen any time soon.

<comment><USER16> Similarly, it's ridiculous how they charge for checked luggage.

Now, wait, let me finish! I don't mean in the confused sense of "lol everything should be free!"

What I mean is, checked luggage is _inconvenient_ for the passenger (less access, have to wait), while using the _least scarce_ part of the cabin -- they can't sell tickets to fly in the cargo hold, while they want to allocate whatever passenger-usable space they can for paying passengers.

So, if anything, they should charge for carry-on luggage while making (some level of) checked luggage free.

The system we have now -- the opposite -- creates perverse incentives all around: passengers are encouraged to _avoid_ using the perfectly usable cargo hold, and instead, cram increasingly absurd amounts into their carry-on allotment, testing the unwillingness of airline employees to say, "sorry, you're over your limit, you'll have to check that". And then people have more pieces to deal with, choking up the loading and deplaning procedures, and bringing more of their (potentially dangerous) items through a security checkpoint...

Every time I fly, I notice a sea of people toting enormous bags, as if to say "tell me can't take this on. Just try."

<comment><USER17> This assumes they don't make any money from selling space in the cargo hold for air mail couriers.

<comment><USER16> Right, but if we assume passenger space trades off one-to-one for cargo hold space [1], then the airline could reallocate the overhead bins to cargo (e.g. raise the floor). Then they could sell out even more cargo space as mail. So, in equilibrium, passengers should have to "compensate" (pay a premium) for the airline's lost opportunity to rent out the space.

Instead, everyone gets some of that premium, human-usable space for free. But if people are going to get some lump of space for free, why not make it the cargo hold, which is less constrained (doesn't have to be human usable) and thus cheaper? They're effectively letting people with more expensive requirements (must be able to access my stuff during flight) be subsidized by people with less expensive requirements ("I can wait until after the flight to access my stuff").

[1] which is probably true enough to a first approximation; you could redesign the interior to have more cargo space and less passenger space

<comment><USER18> Is floor height (and thus window positioning, ...) something an airline can order customized? (genuine question, I always thought of that stuff as fixed, but I could very well be wrong)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No thanks. The laws are so brutal in some countries, there's no way I would ever risk it. In Japan, Sudafed is illegal, which is something I would not have known if not for my friend who ran into this issue years ago.

And in some countries like Singapore and Indonesia, even a small amount of drugs will get you executed. Too much risk for so little return. Who knows what they are packing in their package, and it really seems like drugs and other illegal items would be relish at the opportunity to use this service.

</comment><comment><USER20> Shipping with a contract carrier provides lots of benefits. The method described here only increases risk for all parties.

</comment><comment><USER21> Given the current political climate and default skepticism and fear that comes with air traveling, I would not take $50 to take someone else's goods. Heck I double check if one of my friends of family member try to send an item with me (that has happened like 1 out of 1000 times I have traveled). This app has funding from Russia and it might be a success there. Sure they just wanted a media footprint catapulted by US media outlets.

What I would like to see is airlines encouraging me to check in a few days/weeks earlier and state how many bags I am planning to check in (international travel as domestic airlines dont allow free check in bags except southwest ). If none or less then I should be compensated in some sort of air miles. Then the airline can sell the extra space to a private shipping company. No need to turn travelers into Uber for taco bells for a nostalgic digital nomad living in Reykjavik.

</comment><comment><USER22> cool idea, but I just imagine someone getting in trouble for transporting something that is not allowed.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting - I was expecting this to be about trading your luggage allowance with other passengers on the same plane, which is a much tinier audience but might avoid some of the risks.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is exactly something I could see low paid employees at a US regional airline doing to make some extra money.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've watched enough Australia border security episodes to know I would never use this service.

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems like a very big risk. You are actually putting your name on a baggage that is passing trough a high security/high traffic control situation.

I would never do this for someone I didn't trust personally.

<comment><USER12> You didnt read the details. You're also tasked with provisioning and packing the thing . Eg: goto walmart and buy me M&Ms, fly them to london to deliver to me.

<comment><USER27> not with Airmule, with them the packages are pre-packed

<comment><USER12> Gotcha, because it was first mentioned I was thinking the article was about grabr. But I see now its about the whole idea in general. Yes, taking an unknown prepackaged ("ticking"?) container onto the plane for a stranger seems to either be 1) stupid or 2) vastly undercompensated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flappy Bird ported to e cig - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvQ6K8ariWs <comment><USER2> This is kind of hillarious and kind of terrible.</comment>


For the Next Election, Don't Recount the Vote. Encrypt It - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/01/next-election-dont-recount-vote-encrypt/ <comment><AUTHOR> Key takeaway: "thanks to some mathematical sleight-of-hand known as "homomorphic encryption," not even the election officials counting up the results can decrypt any individual votes. Homomorphic encryption allows simple arithmetic to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting it. So the encrypted votes can be added up and published online to produce an encrypted, public total tally that remains accurate without ever exposing anyone's vote. Election officials decrypt only that final result, and even they can only do so when a certain number of overseers combine their secret passwords. After the results are decrypted and declared, anyone can re-encrypt them to check that they match the online encrypted tally, to prevent the officials from colluding to falsify the count."</comment>


Managing environments in K8s with +1 service and app - <AUTHOR> https://humanitec.com/blog/managing-environments-in-a-kubernetes-cluster <comment><AUTHOR> Found this is done wrong in a lot of teams. Wrote this piece.</comment>


Need a hacker asap - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on something amazing for years and need the hacker. Any advice would help. Have the ideas but need the nerd! <comment><USER2> Isn't it ironic. Less than a day ago there was a link posted about how we should work to be more constructive and helpful, and not so destructive, sarcastic, scathing and rude, and it got a _huge_ number of upvotes:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322696>

And now, the first few replies to this have been - guess what - destructive, sarcastic, scathing and rude.

So here's your chance to put into action the sentiments in that submission and show that it wasn't just lipservice to have upvoted it so highly. Be helpful, and don't just take the piss.

So, to answer the OP's question - it's generally held that ideas are important, but that great execution of ideas is actually the most important thing. It's generally held that great execution of a do-do idea will win every time over moderate exectution of a brilliant idea.

The brilliant idea isn't worth anything at all without the execution.

So with that in mind, you need brilliant execution for your idea. Are you willing to part with 50% of all future profits? If not, how will you attract someone to make your amazing idea come to life?

If you really have been working on this for years, and if it really is amazing, then you can invest a few days to read about the sort of person you want, and perhaps submit a request that's more appealing.

As it stands, from what you've said so far, no competent hacker I know of would come anywhere close to you.

Learn. Adapt. Make it a partnership.

Otherwise your amazing idea will never see the light of day.

<comment><USER3> _And now, the first few replies to this have been - guess what - destructive, sarcastic, scathing and rude._

FWIW, I don't see HN as a "do my homework" site. I try to offer helpful replies to anyone that appears to have put some thought and consideration into a question.

The OP here does not appear to have spent any time getting acquainted with this site or its norms. Since the days of 300 baud modems I've never seen a site of any caliber that treated people asking for resources from the members with "respect" when those requestors did not themselves show a similar degree of respect.

Your answer to the OP was very well written, and the sort of thing that any halfway motivated person could have found with maybe an hours worth of googling around. That hour of their time would have enabled them to come here and ask much more detailed and targeted questions, and would have saved a lot of people from potentially having to be Google for them and answering the question.

In short, I'm all for helping people that help themselves.

<comment><USER2> But people still feel the need to show themselves superior by making comments that are utterly unhelpful. They could simply remain silent.

I agree entirely that the OP should do their homework. I agree entirely that the question really merits no reply at all. The point is that the quoted article can be paraphrased as saying "Be helpful, or shut up." That got _so_ many upvotes, and yet here is the same unhelpful, destructive behaviour.

I guess in short it's a case of "If you can't say something nice (helpful) then don't say anything at all."

<comment><USER3> Some people make snarky comments to feel superior, some do it to demonstrate the insanity of the question.

You could post nothing, and then possibly cause the OP to think no one has seen their question, so they post it again.

For this particular case I wanted to acknowledge the question with an answer that was about as parsable and logical as the question itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Meet me on the corner of Main St. and 49th in 15 minutes. Hold a newspaper in your left hand and a chicken wing in your right hand so I can identify you.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll do it. And you don't even have to pay me. Just the chance to work on something amazing is payment enough.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hacker here. At your service

</comment><comment><USER6> My best advice is to take a couple weeks and learn enough python to build a simple prototype. Come back when you have something (anything) to show for your efforts.</comment>


The Proof Is Trivial - <AUTHOR> http://theproofistrivial.com/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this got picked up on HN too.

My roommate wrote this last year as a joke for CMU students. It's a simple script that pulls from a pre selected discrete set.

Author is Alan Pierce btw.

<comment><USER3> The script is trivial! Just view it as a concatenation of strings whose elements are pulled from a discrete set of terms.

<comment><USER4> s/discrete/finite/

Although it definitely is discrete as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To make it perfect, insert a line saying: "Website by M. Bourbaki."

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm still waiting to get "The proof is trivial! Just biject it to an ordinal number whose elements are ordinal numbers!"

</comment><comment><USER7> This would be even better if it was possible to annotate the randomly generated "proof" description with links to any actual proofs following that skeletal description.

</comment><comment><USER8> be sure to reload the page a few times to get the right one :)

<comment><USER9> That's a non converging Monte-Carlo optimization with a constant cost function

<comment><USER10> Isn't Monte-Carlo non-converging by definition? If the algorithm converged it'd be a Las Vegas algorithm...

<comment><USER9> You're right : there is a lot of redundancy in my last sentence. But we're speaking about a non-nonsensical sentence describing an inept process...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had to reload this about 10 times before I realized that the phrases were just utter nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER12> Makes me think of an article I read many years ago (in, I think, Mathematics Magazine) titled "Confusion Rings" which parodied abstract algebra papers. About all I remember now is "heterocococomorphism".

<comment><USER13> I'll give this one a try. (Hetero)(co-coco)(morphism) - Heterosexual chocolate relations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot more Reddit than HN to be honest, but thanks for the laughs in the office.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the dumbest thing you do but do anyways? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Alcohol by far.

Also cocaine.

MDMA.

Sugar.

Develop software skills a tiny bit in a bunch of languages and areas without becoming an expert at anything or finishing projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> I keep buying books that I don't have time to read. For example, I bought 6 books yesterday on Black Friday. I will probably read one or two. It just feel too good to buy things.

</comment><comment><USER4> Drink and stay up too late.

Kids and wife go to bed. Have a drink catch up on a few things. Should just stop there. Next thing you know I've had 3-4 strong beers and it's 2am.

</comment><comment><USER5> Eating too much sugar and not exercising enough.

</comment><comment><USER6> i keep building sites that dont make any money

</comment><comment><USER7> Buying domain names I never use.

<comment><USER8> I'm glad I finally broke this habit. I probably bought hundreds over the years! I'm down to about 5 now :-)

<comment><USER9> Kudos for breaking the habit. Did you let them simply expire, or sold them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Undervalue self in salary discussions and negotiations.

</comment><comment><USER8> I clip too many articles and URLs that I never read!

</comment><comment><USER11> Probably eating too many sugary snacks, since I've got a bit of a sweet tooth.

I also tend to put things off a bit much. Got way too many projects I need to get around to finishing, tons of articles and videos I need to actually read/watch at some point, and a ton of things I generally want to do that I never get around to actually trying.

</comment><comment><USER12> Engaging in open source communities with my real name. Never do that. Always use synonymes.

It's not that you cannot behave or might behave unprofessional. It's the others, and it will backfire one day.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not building right routines to take advantage of the opportunities that life is presenting. Not having a good sleep routine is the chief one among these.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pay $4 for coffee

</comment><comment><USER15> Working for "the man".

</comment><comment><USER16> Living

</comment><comment><USER17> Smoking Staying up late

</comment><comment><USER18> Overeating</comment>


Apple's full change log for iOS 5 beta 4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/22/apples-full-change-log-for-ios-5-beta-4/

<comment><USER2> This isn't a full change log, it's just a list of known issues changes between releases.

</comment><comment><USER3> on-device/over the air upgrade works now!</comment>


Google PDF Search: "not for public release" - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?as_q=&as_epq=not+for+public+release&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=pdf&as_rights=&gws_rd=ssl <comment><USER2> Sometimes a document is actually no longer confidential, and there's a newer version without the watermark, but accidentally the older version is the one that gets shared/linked to. (Usually the only difference is the watermark; we're not talking about documents that get redacted for public consumption here.)

I encounter this problem pretty frequently with System-on-Chip spec sheets. They're confidential while under development; and still confidential while being floated for sale by private negotiation to private device makers; but once they're _in_ a production device, those devices will have their own public PR pages describing exactly the properties of the SoC, so the SoC can't really hide its specs any more at that point.

So, once the SoC manufacturer makes a high-profile sale, they will usually "declassify" the spec... in the sense of _allowing_ the release of the spec sheet. But they don't usually bother to ever _publish_ a copy of the de- watermarked spec sheet at any canonical URL; they only begin sending the de- watermarked sheet in place of the watermarked one to new customers.

So, when you find one of these spec sheets online, they're just as likely to be a copy that a device maker got from the SoC manufacturer from _before_ the specs were declassified, which they released once they were told it was okay to do so. And such documents still have the "confidential" / "not for public release" watermark.

<comment><USER3> So it's analogous to the key revocation problem, but more like a key _invocation_ problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not surprising, in all my years as a "Security Analyst" I found tons of sensitive information like this.

Here's a database that I always keep at hand whenever I need ideas for my projects [1].

[1] [https://www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database](https://www.exploit- db.com/google-hacking-database)

<comment><USER5> That's interesting. We have a couple of security companies that do ton of requests like this on serpapi.com. I always wondered if that approach was organized somewhere.

<comment><USER6> Smooth placement for a pretty sweet-looking product. How do you get around Google's ToS?

<comment><USER5> Thank you! Always trying to do an organic placement when there is a relevant opportunity.

INAL. Regarding ToS. In the US, scraping public data is a fair use exemption under the first.

<comment><USER7> Could you elaborate on what you mean by "public data"?

I'm not sure that just because some data is in Google search it becomes any sort of 'public'.

<comment><USER8> How do you think Google got their data in the first place? Nobody complains about Google scraping and indexing everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a bunch of equivalent statements 'not for public disclosure' 'for internal use only' 'company confidential' etc.

If you add 2019 to the search term you'll get a bit more relevant content. You can also use doc, docx, etc for the filetype.

Be careful. The fact that it's possible to download something doesn't necessarily give you the legal right to.

<comment><USER10> Especially if you have any government security clearances.

<comment><USER11> And if you do it accidentally, you also have a duty to report.

And if it's sensitive stuff (not classified, secret, top secret, or scif) you can still be forbidden to even provide the link other than to your approved security contact.

It's really better not to know if you have any sort of clearance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my favourite things to do as a teenager was search google for `intitle:"VNC Viewer for Java"`

<comment><USER13> I'll bite: what did that find?

<comment><USER14> VNC Servers on the public internet, that typically used weak passwords. You could monitor or remote control other people's computers.

<comment><USER15> There was a site posted here a while back that scanned for wide open VNC and found a lot of things that looked disturbingly like industrial control consoles. Want to blow up an oil refinery?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I didn't dare to click any of the links returned by this query:

"top secret" filetype:pdf

The Google summary for my first hit starts with this:

The attached material contains TOP SECRET information which bears directly upon the effectiveness of our national defense or the conduct.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean this — [https://i.imgur.com/y2z2Zva.png](https://i.imgur.com/y2z2Zva.png) ?

It's just an empty template — [https://i.imgur.com/H9u5sYi.png](https://i.imgur.com/H9u5sYi.png)

<comment><USER17> [https://github.com/umbrae/reddit- top-2.5-million/blob/master...](https://github.com/umbrae/reddit- email@example.com/p0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was stupid/bold and downloaded a few. Every hit I got was a heavily redacted document.

So maybe this isn't as big a deal as folks want to make it out to be? 𐑴𐑝𐑻𐑤𐑰 𐑛𐑮𐑩𐑥𐑨𐑑𐑦𐑒, 𐑥𐑱𐑚𐑰.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow. I added 'site:.au' and on the first page was an old doc related to the Australian Defence Force's position on the Wikileaks release (2010):

[http://www.defence.gov.au/foi/docs/disclosures/054_1213_Docu...](http://www.defence.gov.au/foi/docs/disclosures/054_1213_Documents.pdf)

It's both marked as "Declassified" and "UNCLASSIFIED - Document not for public release". Hilarious!

That said, there's some great commentary:

> _The potential for the leaked documents to adversely affect the safety of > deployed forces, or operational security more broadly, is being assessed by > the Defence task force. It appears unlikely at this stage that ADF or > coalition forces will be directly endangered by the leaks. The information > examined so far is tactical information that is now sufficiently aged that > it poses minimal threat_

It's interesting to see how despite the apparent "minimal threat" Julian Assange is still under quite a lot of heat from strong political forces over this (& other releases).

EDIT: formatting

</comment><comment><USER20> Wonder how many of these are actually still confidential. Some from just randomly clicking were once confidential and have sense been redacted or otherwise prepared to be made public.

<comment><USER21> Yes - the second in my list is a private company's internal report, but it's hosted on Australian Energy Regulator servers. I assume the document was made public during some discovery process by the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I write content and document workflow products for public government, so was half-expecting many of these to be from my products, but was pleasantly surprised. Only 3 documents came up when I searched on our domains. 2 were OK, just defining which types of document should contain the phrase "not for public release", and the 3rd had already been corrected.

These kinds of things are absolutely in the hands of the organizations who are authoring and publishing the documents, not the vendors like myself who provide the tools, but it is still a relief.

<comment><USER23> > These kinds of things are absolutely in the hands of the organizations who > are authoring and publishing the documents, not the vendors like myself who > provide the tools,

If you can detect "publishing smells" like this with a Google search without access to the tools, you also ought to be able to detect and raise warnings about them in tools; quite a lot of tooling exists in software development workflows to catch the programming equivalents of this kind of oversoght and prevent them from getting into deployed code. (And arguably even more similar, there are a wide array of tools designed to identify and protect against internal information being exfiltrated, intentionally or accidentally, via email, etc.)

So while responsibility for the results of what gets published is always the responsibility of the tool users and not the tool vendors, I don't think it's accurate to say that this is completely outside the hands of tool vendors. And, I'm pretty sure customers (especially in the enterprise space) would see support from publishing toolchains for preventing this as a competitive advantage.

<comment><USER22> Let me clarify - it is a legal/strategic decision not to put in tools that monitor their content, because keeping the line distinct between the content they author and the tools we provide also keeps the line distinct between who is responsible for whether that content meets all legislative and regulatory requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just FYI:

Downloading confidential documents, even when they are publicly available through google, can be a legal liability.

There is at least one case in France where a security researcher/blogger faced legal issues after downloading confidential documents that where publicly available when using the correct search terms (see Bluetouff vs French justice).

I don't know about the situation in the US for that kind of things though.

<comment><USER25> That can't be right. How can you know if the document is confidential unless you download it?

<comment><USER26> I think the reasoning that it is generally not legal (including in the US) is that it's a slippery slope into the ambiguities of hacking. e.g. "I found a public link that listed a bunch of addresses marked "private.foo.com"" I then pinged those addresses and they were also publicly available. I then scanned for documents and other links. I found more links publicly available named "classified-do-not-open.pdf" - I downloaded them all and distributed them to others.

Or for example when Dropbox disclosed a brief moment when you could sign into anyone else's account. What if all their links had just broken and had auth removed at that time? If you were to exploit that, are you hacking - or was it the fault of Dropbox? Are you wrong for taking publicly available files? They were publicly available when you downloaded them - but you knew you shouldn't have.

How do you draw the line?

<comment><USER25> I think a "reasonable person" would believe it's ok to download the file, but then discard it once they realize the contents are not actually public.

By analogy, suppose you receive a letter in the mail; you reasonably believe the contents are yours, so you open it. Oops, it was actually mailed to you in error; the contents belong to another person. Obviously you did not commit a crime, but you are obligated now to discard the contents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nothing new. You can find .env files that has database passwords, secrets all over by typing "filetype:env" in google

<comment><USER28> Personally I like "filetype:id_rsa"

<comment><USER29> I know it wouldn't fix the leak, but files like those would be extremely simple for Google to filter out of their index.

For github/gitlab/etc links, they probably also could inform project owners about the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For even more fun, try filtering by the past year or past month or past week.

</comment><comment><USER31> The Signal-to-Noise ratio is quite low. There are actually quite a lot of false positives, including...

1\. Declassified/Released documents.

Many historical documents are no longer classified, yet some had its original classification markings. The same goes for commercial documents. For example, the Trump-Russia dossier was a previously classified document of a private company.

2\. Whistleblowing documents.

These documents were released by whistleblowers, thus no longer private and classified. You can find many NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden hosted on Amazon AWS owned by news websites.

3\. Boilerplate classification.

Many commercial documents have boilerplate classification, regardless of whether they are truly sensitive or not. It's very common to find technical documents and datasheets with "Confidential" markings, which should have been removed long ago, probably related to (1).

In my experience, these documents make up 85% of the search result, only less than 15% of the documents in the search result are truly security breaches and confidential.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a feeling this could get people into serious trouble for "hacking" in some juristrictions if they were to download some of the files found in the search. Especially when adding additional search filters such as site:gov

</comment><comment><USER33> funny. I think I would even spice up the search with "site:example.com"

</comment><comment><USER34> "not for public release" then you got the search results: About 81,600 results (0.31 seconds)

</comment><comment><USER35> Now you are a hacker.

</comment><comment><USER36> I needed a good laugh today. Thanks.</comment>