Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT - <AUTHOR> http://emergency.mit.net/emergency/ <comment><USER3> I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories. I understand there is debate about gun control and this and that, but we are having a much larger cultural problem here. The attitude of helping your neighbor or even someone less fortunate is slowly disappearing and being replaced by a fear for protecting what we have, as if someone else is after it. In my mind it's cyclical, if we help those in need, they really won't be after what we are trying to protect. As for the random gun violence, its enough already.

Being born and raised in Flint, and the victim of gun violence (father was murdered outside his work for 20+years over <$600) I always tell people Flint might be the murder capital of the world, but we aren't the random murder capitol of the world. For whatever its worth, its true.

<comment><USER4> "I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories."

Me too. But it won't end soon.

Currently every shooting in every city is a candidate for promotion to a national media campaign that is focused on gaining additional restrictions on firearms, especially at the federal level (but also state level: Colorado is at this moment passing new highly-restrictive state firearms laws).

Every opportunity to alarm the citizenry about firearms, every chance to get parents' blood-pressure up with false or real reports of gunmen afoot will be invoked by the media. It's both good for their business and it's good for their political agenda.

In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and the subsequent heightened public sensitivity as leverage to advance a long- present liberal goal to register and confiscate all firearms.

<comment><USER5> "In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and the subsequent heightened public sensitivity..."

Oh please. Who orchestrated that? The media got together? The government?

There is nothing odd in requiring safety from other people's activities, whether that's their their reckless driving or their gun fetish.

<comment><USER6> It's not like it's a hidden conspiracy. Gun control activists have explicitly stated that they need to take advantage of the emotion following the shootings to push their agenda. And yes, the goal of many of them (including the author of the assault weapons ban currently proposed) is confiscation. She said it herself.

<comment><USER7> Yeah it's totally irrational to seek the most obvious way to prevent recurrence of the shooting massacre of 20 children, which happens with a marked regularity. Only a New World Order could explain why people want to ban guns.

<comment><USER6> The snark is unnecessary. Gun control advocates have had these goals for decades - long before Newtown - and openly speak about them. There is no tinfoil hat, no new world order. Just a political agenda by a minority of the political spectrum that uses tragedy to their advantage without apology.

<comment><USER7> That still doesnt make any sense. It's like say in nuclear energy. There are two camps: one side says it is safe the other says it isn't. However, if evidence of more and more nuclear tragedies accumulate, one side looks more and more correct than the other. That side isn't "using" a nuclear tragedy to "further their own agenda", they are simply using it to demonstrate they are correct.

<comment><USER6> I'm just responding to the claims that there is an orchestrated attempt to use Newtown emotion to further gun control and confiscation. There undeniably is, and it's not some crazy notion of the tinfoil hat crowd - but the admitted and public goals of some people in power.

They have stated that they need to act now or they will lose the emotion required to pass such laws. That is not demonstrating that they are correct - it's the equivalent of "act before we have time to calm down and think, because we know we are in the minority on this."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Scene is clear. Call unfounded. No threat to public safety in #CambMA #MIT"

[https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/30533598012521267...](https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/305335980125212672)

<comment><USER9> "Call unfounded" - I wonder if that means they got a prank call or maybe someone saw some geek costume with fake gun/armor

<comment><USER10> About a year ago, a student's umbrella was mistaken for an assault rifle at the university where I work and we were on lock down for hours. <http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/10387437/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Police responded to report of man w/ gun inside building on Mass Ave. Police searched building w/ negative results."

<http://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/305324628149153792>

Also, follow the Tech's coverage here: <http://twitter.com/thetech>

</comment><comment><USER12> Update from Cambridge Police: Scene is clear. No danger. [https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/30533598012521267...](https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/305335980125212672)

</comment><comment><USER13> MIT, like most schools in the US, has an explicit policy that no one is allowed to have a firearm (or sword!) on the campus. [http://studentlife.mit.edu/mindandhandbook/policiesandproced...](http://studentlife.mit.edu/mindandhandbook/policiesandprocedures/weapons)

</comment><comment><USER14> How many people need to die before people in the US realize that having easily obtained firearms is not a good idea?

<comment><USER15> Guns also save lives. And nations without guns are not violence-free at all. Its a spurious connection, made by lazy thinkers.

<comment><USER16> Nowhere will ever be violence-free.

If guns are not the cause of violence and banning them isn't for the better, why is England a less violent place than America? The gun murder rate in England is 0.1 murders per 100,000 people, in America it's 3.2.

The problem America has is not exclusively caused by guns, it's a problem with culture too, but it seems strange to argue that connecting the high presence of guns to the high number of gun murders is "a spurious connection, made by lazy thinkers".

<comment><USER17> What happens when you include stabbings and beatings?

<comment><USER16> A popular misconception is that England has just as much violent crime as America but it's redistributed across other weapons, the reality is that every country counts violent crime differently. If someone were to break into my apartment in England while I was out that is a counted as a violent crime, whereas in America it wouldn't be counted. The only fair way to compare countries is to compare specific crimes (eg: Murder, Robbery) comparing "Violent Crime" doesn't work.

For 2011/2012 there were 549 homicides in England[1], for the same period there was ~14,000 in the US[2]. The population of the UK is 62 million, the population of the US is 313 million. There are 6x more people in the US but 28x more homicides, most of which are firearm related. If you remove the firearm homicides from the America figures they become almost the same as the UK figures (in per 100,000 people).

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime- st...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics- england-wales) [2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-usa-crime- stats...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-usa-crime-stats- idUSBRE85A1JZ20120611)

<comment><USER15> Wait - your numbers come out to something far less than 28X. 28x the homicides divided by 5x the people = 5.6x the rate?

<comment><USER16> 28x is based on the raw figures (500 vs. 14,000) not adjusted for the differences in population.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, cause it looks worse that way. How to lie with statistics!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> @CambridgePolice is reporting Scene is clear. Call unfounded. No threat to public safety in #CambMA #MIT

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd be interested to know how Americans who live in countries with strict gun controls feel about not being able to carry a weapon? Do they feel any less safe?

<comment><USER20> I can say that when I was stationed in Germany that I felt safer.

I grew up around guns. I was a pretty good shot -- expert with the M16, M60.

But I own no guns now. I never will.

I simply don't understand how someone can feel safer around a loaded gun. It's a fallacy to think that because you've gone through training, or that you go to the range, or whatever, that you are better equipped to handle a weapon; it's akin to claiming that you are safer walking around with a lit stick of dynamite -- just because you have done it a lot.

Which leads to why I felt so much safer in Germany. It wasn't the idea that criminals didn't have guns, it was that every empty-headed fool didn't have one. The real problem is that I am subjected to every fool's second-ammendment rights. It's not just that they can blow their own head off with their foolishness, but that me and my family are also endangered by them.

Although they may be our family, friends and neighbors; although they may be good people; they endanger us through their "rights." I would much rather live in the "danger" of a place where only criminals, police and soldiers carry weapons than to live in the "safety" of a place where any fool with a pinch of paranoia who has watched too many action-adventure apocalyptic movies can play soldier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that this has been shown to be a false alarm, we can relax with some unintentional humor from the beloved Department of Homeland Security:

<http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/active_shooter_poster.pdf>

This is a real thing.

<comment><USER21> Interestingly, I got "Access Denied" when I click that link in my primary browser. I can copy-paste the link into another browser and load this, so I think they're actually checking my User-Agent and blocking me because it is empty. Our beloved DHS.

<comment><USER6> Well, you know. Terrorists and all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed people who have never fired a gun before, researched crime statistics or seriously thought about this issue making comments about how people "do not need to protect themselves"

I'm a gun owner, in fact I own many guns, I also carry a gun every single day. I'm also an honest and law abiding citizen. I have several years of defensive training with firearms and improvised weapons. I attend shooting matches and training schools with other law abiding gun owners nearly every weekend.

I can tell you that the vast majority of people who have a gun are good people and not the <1% of psychotic killers we have been seeing on the news lately.

I see some people here saying "There's some reason you have police, military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this aspect of security."

To me, this is a really misinformed comment. Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family?

Does anyone here really believe that criminals follow laws? If a movie theater has a sign out side saying "This is a gun free zone, no guns allowed" do you really think that a psychopathic killer or angry criminal is going to turn around and go home because the sign said they can't bring a gun into that movie theater?

And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws? Lets ban magazines that hold more than 7 rounds. Sounds like a great idea right? So that criminal that is planning to go kill some people today is going to wake up and decide that he is going to load his firearm to only the legal capacity. Or he is not going to go purchase a gun illegally, buy it off the street or steel it. Because that would be illegal and we all know that criminals follow laws...

So forget the constitution and the 2nd amendment for a moment, because I know people like to argue about what the Founding Fathers really meant by it. Do you really believe that we should not have the right to protect ourselves from active shooters, murderers, rapist and cold blooded killers with a highly affective tool just because a select few people have used that tool to do evil?

If guns didn't exist and everything else were the same and these evil people still had intent to do harm do you really believe that they would just give up because they had no other way to harm people? A gun is only a tool, just like a knife, a car, or a screw driver. All of which can do some serious harm to a person. Should we ban those things too?

I know some people are sheep and guns are not for everyone, they expect and hope that if they get put in a bad situation that the police will be there to save them. Just remember that it is NOT the job of the police to protect you. Their job is to uphold the law and to react to those breaking the law. It's fine if you personally want nothing to do with guns but that doesn't mean you have the right to tell others that they shouldn't be able to protect themselves.

So if you really want to make comments on how gun control should be and if people really need guns to protect themselves, please do some research first. I encourage you to look up how many guns that are purchased legally are actually used in a violent crime. Look at the crime rates of cities with strict gun laws and look at the data on the increase of gun purchases vs. the decrease in crime over the last few years. The FBI has some great statistics for this[1].

Here's a interesting video from a Sandy Hook father whose child was at Sandy Hook the day of the shooting and how he feels about guns: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhXPlCjr0Vw>

[1][http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2011/c...](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime)

<comment><USER23> _Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive to save your life than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family?_

In the UK, yes we really believe this.

<comment><USER22> I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before that person does harm to you and your family?

What about someone who enters a business, gas station, whatever, one day and starts executing people on the spot? Is a cell phone really your best tool?

Maybe you are not capable of protecting yourself or not ready to deal with that yet but if I put myself in that situation and was also not capable or ready to protect myself then I would hope that an upstanding citizen next to me or in the same situation as me was prepared to stop the threat.

In a lot of situation where you can be seriously injured or killed in seconds by an evil person I really can't think of any possible way that the police can help me. Keep in mind that most criminals are surprisingly smart enough to not commit a crime with a uniformed police offer standing next to them and unfortunately you will not always have the police standing next to you.

<comment><USER24> I'm always really interested in the straw man 'home invasion' fantasy that the pro-gun lobby brings out. Why would someone invade your home with a weapon? For financial gain? Just for jollies[1]?

The thing about giving everyone a gun is that it makes every crime that much more likely to be fatal. In Canada, for example, if I break into your house for your TV and you catch me, we're sort of at an impasse. Maybe I have a knife or a hard-to-get, illegal gun, but more than likely I hadn't thought it out. I'll run away, you'll call the cops.

Compare to the US, where I'd get a gun before I break into your house, because why not, they're everywhere. Now I want some crack, break into your house, get startled and shoot you. Or you shoot me. By introducing guns into what would have been a non-violent crime, you've significantly increased the risk of injury or death for all parties.

This is not to say that it's impossible to get an illegal gun if you think it might be beneficial; as in your 'holding up a convenience store' example. But why would I cap a bunch of random bystanders, and turn my potential armed robbery charge into first-degree murder? If I do have an illegal gun, and I know everyone else is unlikely to be armed, I hold all the power. The gun is merely a tool to keep people in line, I don't have to shoot anyone to achieve my goal. If I think everyone has a concealed carry, suddenly the situation is fraught with peril for everyone.

Gun control in the US is some terrible, bad-faith arms race where everyone 'needs' to defend themselves against these random, nun-toting boogey men.

1\. One would argue that mass shootings are this sort of irrational behaviour. However, they tend to involve legally purchased guns, and they represent a very small proportion of gun-related deaths.

<comment><USER22> Fair enough, so you would assume that the burglar would run away. What if they don't? A few years back in one of the wealthiest areas of Florida, I had 3 people enter my home one night while I was asleep and take computers, tvs, etc.. At the time I never owned a gun and didn't wake up to notice there were people in my home.

They were later caught by police and found to be over 6 feet tall with baseball bats, crowbars and a history of violent crime. Had I gotten up that night and walked into something unexpected I would prefer to have something to help me through the situation... Just my opinion though.

To me, a gun will help level the playing field. I have some empty hand combat skills but I surely wouldn't bet my life that I could take on 3 large men armed with baseball bats who didn't want to get caught and were clearly displaying reckless disregard for other people.

I just really don't think bad people are some imaginary "boogey men".

<comment><USER24> Frankly, your story is the perfect, one-in-a-million anecdote.

\- Your house is broken into. Not really a routine occurrence.

\- The people breaking in don't have guns. If any of them had a gun, and you had a gun, now it's a proper disaster.

So you're weighing all the risks of easy, legal gun-ownership ( lower barriers to shooting sprees, accidental discharges ) against being in this precise scenario, which happened to you one time. Further:

\- I'm going to take it on your word that 'history of violent crime' means beating up random homeowners. I can only imagine in the business of housebreaking and fencing stolen goods you probably have some extra-judicial problem solving, which might involve beating up other people you've had criminal dealings with. This is quite different from murdering suburban homeowners in cold blood.

\- Further, of course they had crowbars, they were housebreaking. The police didn't catch them at your house, so you can't really confirm the number or the kit they had at the time, just how many people the cops nabbed later.

The really telling thing is your comment about hand-to-hand combat. Why the hell are you looking for a fight, anyways? Is punching a random burglar going to help your odds of getting out safely? This is the really perverse american attitude, that it's not sufficient that you avoid bodily harm, but you need to dominate and punish the intruder yourself, because they've wronged you. If you're open to appeasement or trying to get away quietly, you save yourself significant risk of injury.

<comment><USER25> >Frankly, your story is the perfect, one-in-a-million anecdote.

No, no it's not. Homeowners defend themselves against home intruders all the time with guns. Google is your friend.

<comment><USER24> I read that as "homeowners shoot people all the time". I meant that his scenario, where there was a real threat of violence, was rare. It's entirely possible for you to shoot a guy who would've run off. That doesn't mean it was necessary, or defending yourself.

<comment><USER25> It's a rare scenario, and one that's not a problem until you're the one with an intruder in your house, the place where your family sleeps, and all you have is a bat (or whatever) because people who never thought they would be in that situation have seen to it that guns were outlawed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While I do hope this turns out to be a false alarm as below, the fact I know about this from the UK and can mail my friends visiting to check on them is to me seeing the glimmers of a worldwide immune system for humankind, able to react instantly.

Again, do not wish to detract from a potentially dangerous situation - <USER2> from 3000 miles away my second reaction was to be glad our grandchildren will live in a qualitatively different world.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Authorities found no evidence of a gunman reported to have been on the MIT campus on Saturday morning. Their search was prompted by a tip to the Cambridge Police Department (CPD), which is now calling the incident a 'false report.'"

[http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/police-find-no- evidence-o...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/police-find-no-evidence-of- gunman-reported-on-campus-0223.html)

All's well that ends well.

</comment><comment><USER28> Long rifle? Seems unlikely to me, but we should probably ban them.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=long+rifle&tbm=isch](http://www.google.com/search?q=long+rifle&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER29> I am sure banning them would have prevented this situation from ever happening.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, I guess my sarcasm wasn't apparent.

<comment><USER29> It's OK, neither was mine it seems judging by its reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm sure he is just a law abiding citizen, going about his patriotic business. After all, the vast majority of gun owners are law abiding, so I'm sure we have nothing to worry about. </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER31> Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed).

I still would like to understand few things.

Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful and rich (mainly because of license red tape and high license fee) and operational equipment for criminals.

But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane. I mean I just want to understand the logic behind it, if there's anything other than the logic that "the gun lobby makes sure it's open" - just like the tobacco lobby the world over even though it's perfectly clear that it causes cancer(i.e. it kills).

I mean this just doesn't add up. There's some reason you have police, military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this aspect of security.

There's one more doubt - is it as easy and as simple to get a gun in USA as it's projected in films or in the media? That looks like going to a store and asking for a new mobile handset. Maybe the latter is more complex.

<comment><USER25> >But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane.

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

-Thomas Jefferson

You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and gas cylinders.

<comment><USER32> Given the massive mismatch of firepower, training and numbers between the government and the very best armed/trained groups within the civilian population I have trouble believing that anyone can still make this argument at any intellectual level.

<comment><USER33> Is that really true, though? The US has a large military, but it pales in comparison to the number of armed civilians. Just look at the number of hunters in this country. In Wisconsin alone there are 600,000 hunters. That would make them the ninth-largest army in the world. There are more hunters in just the four states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia than there are in the entire U.S. military.

Obviously the U.S. army has far more firepower than a group of hunters. But even a much, much smaller band of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan has been able to create substantial problems for the U.S. in its own in guerrilla warfare against the U.S. military. Is it really so implausible that a group orders of magnitude larger would not be able to stand a chance?

(Keep in mind, too, that if there ever were to be a serious rebellion in the U.S. you'd probably have a lot of desertion from the U.S. military. In fact, some of them might even bring some of that firepower to the other side.)

<comment><USER34> This is a really poor argument. First, what's "tyrannical" to you? There are various degrees of "tyrannical", just as there are various degrees of terrorism. Can you expect the entire country of gun owners to react all at once? Because I have some evidence that suggests otherwise.

You're hoping for some "flipped switch" type of tyranny that _never_ happens. Even Hitler's madness took place in phases and wasn't universally recognized as a threat.

This idea of immediate revolt is a fairy tale. One that other gun-less countries watch in awe. Don't you think its time to move on and concentrate on more important issues?

<comment><USER25> You're arguing that because people might not suddenly decide to revolt en masse that... what, exactly? That a revolution is therefore not possible, and that we should then give up the right to bear arms?

How ironic that you would accuse him of making a really poor argument when yours is about as poor as they come. I hope no one upvoted that drivel.

<comment><USER34> Your _right_ to bear arms is silly. Incredibly silly and archaic. You live in 2013, not in colonial times. While the amendment made perfect sense then, it makes no sense now.

The pro-gun movement seems to be completely ignorant to the staggering evidence that guns in citizen's hands are unnecessary at the least and dangerous at the worst.

Society: an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

As the above dictionary definition suggests, a society is based on a collective set of ideas, rules and order so that all within the society can live peacefully. Remove the guns and the strange associated chest-thumping, less people die. It's really that simple.

You used to be able to drink and drive, until we all realized it was for the betterment of the society to change that. You _lost_ that right, too. Guns are no different.

<comment><USER4> "... the staggering evidence that guns in citizen's hands are unnecessary at the least and dangerous at the worst."

Not true.

US citizens are more effective than police in handling firearms:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-t...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming- the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/2/)

<http://actionamerica.org/guns/guns1.shtml>

scroll down to "Armed Citizens Make Fewer Mistakes Than Police"

<comment><USER34> This doesn't prove guns solve problems. It just makes it clear that police can be incompetent. This is the most bizarre argument. You're argument is that police do a poor job, so average people should do the job? Here's an idea: spend some more money on creating a more competent police force. So silly! Let's see, my employee isn't doing his job well, so I'll just call in another developer to bring competency. Talk about spinning the tires.

Please, America. Spend some time wondering how other modern countries get by. You'll have no choice but to conclude it is possible to get by without guns.

<comment><USER35> That ignores the geographic disparity of our nation. It would be relatively easy to create a rapidly mobile police force in somewhere like New York City, but nearly impossible to create an efficient police force in Glendo, Wyoming. Houses are, at the closest, acres apart from each other. Going grocery shopping can be a half hour trip each way from a nearby farm.

Police cannot be readily available in places like this (or in New York really, but for entirely different reasons).

<comment><USER34> Yes, the US is so special. Again, other countries have sub-urbs, country residents. Come on, really? This is your defence? That America has vast countryside? Jesus fucking Christ. Can't think of any other country that has this geography? REALLY?

<comment><USER35> If you know of a way to increase the police force in a way that is efficient, affordable and repeatable such that people living 45 minutes away from the nearest police station would still be able to have relatively good assurance that said police would be there to stop crime from being done to them, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.

In the absence of such knowledge, I think it's fair to point out that police are generally reactive. In the case of murder, they obviously weren't able to prevent the crime. As it stands, the sheer amount of crime we have speaks to the ineffectiveness of our existing police departments, and while they could almost certainly be made better, they can't likely be made perfect.

In the case of an assault against me, my home or my family, my call to the police is not going to be made until I have at least assured the relative safety of myself and mine enough that making a call would be prudent. This means that, if someone is pointing a gun at me, if you give me the choice of whether I should have a cell phone in my hand or a firearm, I'll take the latter. Police are the first responders, but I believe that self defense is a personal responsibility, especially as Warren v DC[1] concluded that the police aren't under any obligation to protect me, despite whatever slogans may be painted on their vehicles.

Of course, this ignores that nobody should have to defend their purchase of firearms in the US to anyone. It's a Constitutionally enumerated right, and according to our founders, a "natural, God-given right". Ignoring the theistic rhetoric, that means that I am able to possess a firearm, and most definitely for the purpose of self defense.

If you could figure out such a way that would prevent me ever needing to use a firearm for self defense, as well as ensuring a means to prevent government tyranny, then perhaps I would consider relinquishing that right. Until such time, I will exercise that right lawfully and responsible and hope that I never need to use a firearm in defense.

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Could it be a stunt by a particularly intuitive student to prevent a shooting incident by creating a false alarm, to get everyone to tighten up security, thus reducing the probability of an actual shooter event really happening?

Shooters are probably smart enough to pick their targets, and they would be unwise to pick one that's on edge from a recent incident. </conspiracy theory>

<comment><USER37> Or it could have been someone carrying a pipe which the witness mistook for a gun from a distance. I believe the last time there was a report of a gunfight on campus, the shooters turned out to have Nerf weapons...

<comment><USER38> I remember in 2004, when I was a freshman on campus we had Airsoft guns in the dorm and our cleaning lady actually picked them up for us and put them in a cup so we could reuse them for future dorm wide airsoft wars.

My how things have changed so many short years.</comment></comment></comment>


Adobe AIR soars to loftier heights - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/11/50TC-adobe-air_1.html

<comment><USER2> My wish for Adobe AIR (as posted in another article on HN) is to have the availability to distribute AIR apps with the runtime via your own custom installer. If you have a general purpose application (for non-hipsters) it's going to be a painful process having them jump through all the hoops of installing the runtime. Not to mention they probably will get the "Adobe Updater" at no extra charge!

</comment><comment><USER3> > ..and _even_ salting passwords with randomization modifications to help > protect against dictionary-style attacks

Wow. That's like almost a computer rocket science. I simply stopped reading their review at this point, because if they are excited by salted passwords, I don't really care about what else they have to say. _Especially_ if the final rating is 9.3 out of 10.

</comment><comment><USER4> Question: are there any real world AIR applications out there other than Twitter clients?

<comment><USER5> Balsamiq Mockups has been getting a lot of good press lately: <http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups>

<comment><USER6> oh! I didn't know that Balsamiq was built on AIR. And only now did I know that a lot of people are still clueless abt AIR like me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't really understand AIR. Isn't it just an animation engine that's had a programming language bootstrapped to it, and then flung onto the desktop? Seems a little too hacked together for me.

<comment><USER8> From what I heard it's kinda like running Flash apps on your desktop.

<comment><USER9> It is exactly that, though AIR also provides desktop-level capabilities like local file and device access.

AIR is another attempt at the age-old "write once, run anywhere" concept. One reason I left HTML/Javascript web design and got into Flash was that I wanted the incredible luxury of writing for a single platform with a single set of implementation quirks; AIR is an attempt to extend that luxury to the desktop.

It's got quite a few steps left to take; the runtime install is seamless and only happens once, but the app install screens are needlessly scary, as we've discussed before. Still, for many situations AIR is not an unreasonable choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> add me a nice "port to iPhone/Android" button and i'm sold.

seriously i would pay hard cash for it

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey, wasn't some Titanium thing supposed to be killing AIR?

Oh well, I guess it's yet another killer rumour that's been just a little exaggerated....</comment>


Making Electricity from Air - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/making_electricity_from_air/

<comment><USER2> Their theory and practice seems quite sound. I tend to agree with Mr. Adams that this could very well be a failure, though I certainly doubt it is a hoax of any kind. These people seem to really believe in the technology they are creating and they want to test the scale of their theory.

One draw back to this is their Indiegogo campaign production quality is a bit lacking. I would love to say that you should not judge a book by its cover. But let's face it, just about everyone judges a book by it's cover! A general face lift to the campaign site and more scientific information would significantly increase the credibility.</comment>


11 Badass Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes  - <AUTHOR> http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/150971

<comment><USER2> If anyone wonders what's the fourth quote about:

 _... when the Hubble was launched in 1990, a blunder in the design of its optics generated hopelessly blurred images. [...] We kept taking data, hoping some useful science would nonetheless come of it. Eager astrophysicists at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, the research headquarters for the Hubble, wrote suites of advanced image-processing software to help identify and isolate stars in otherwise crowded, unfocused fields. These novel techniques allowed some science to get done while the repair mission was planned.

Meanwhile, medical researchers at the Lombardi Cancer Research Center at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., recognized that the challenge faced by astrophysicists was similar to that faced by doctors in their visual search for tumors in mammograms. Using funds granted by the National Science Foundation, the medical community adopted the new techniques being used for the Hubble to assist their early detection of breast cancer._

source: [http://www.spaceexplorationday.us/benefits/america-needs- spa...](http://www.spaceexplorationday.us/benefits/america-needs-space.html)

<comment><USER3> I was just about to ask that. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How good is a performance of $0.05 cost per like on a FB campaign? - <AUTHOR> Hi Guys, I am just kicking off with a news startup and for 4 days I have been having a constant grow of 300 likes with less than 15 USD. As you guys know best, is this a performance something I should be extremely excited about (as it does not seem to slow down yet) or should I keep tweaking it to get it to a lower cost? <comment><USER2> I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm, but check whether your "likes" are real users or just fake users camouflaging as "real" users

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10232379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10232379)

We had a lot of "fake" likes for a university project, Facebook converted very badly for us (our goal was to do landing-page style validation, getting the user's email).

In my experience, organic / viral growth, interacting with friends and users is much better (for sales-oriented companies). I don't know how I'd measure a news startup, do you have a comments section? That might be a good measure of actual engaged readership.

</comment><comment><USER3> While there are some goals I usually have for my engagement, CTR, etc on facebook. The real end goal is your ROI.

I've had campaigns with extremely cheap clicks, but no conversions.

I've always had campaigns with expensive clicks, but it converted so highly that I was making good profit.

So pretty much there is no real cookie cutter answer for this question, especially since you are just paying for likes. From my experience most of IG likes are just bots and don't bring any real traffic.

</comment><comment><USER4> How active are those users that like your page? Are you sure it is worth it. Veritasium(A YouTube channel) bought ads, it worked but the users never interacted with any of the content be produced anywhere. Veritasium : Facebook Fraud [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

I am not sure this answers your question, but it might be something to consider.</comment>


Feedphobia - <AUTHOR> http://x4ab.tumblr.com/post/20747208882/feedphobia

<comment><USER2> I switched from Netnewswire and Google Reader to Fever (<http://feedafever.com/>), and highly endorse it. It claims to be designed with the goal to "reduce unread feed guilt".</comment>


Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/business/04digi.html?_r=1&ref=technology <comment><USER2> I think the publishing industry is in a much better place to encourage licensed use of their work than the music industry was. Look at the kindle and how simple and easy it is to grab a book. Imagine if an ipod could do that in 1999.

<comment><USER3> The publishing industry and the music industry is very very different. But if the publishing industry does not lead (or at least keep up) with the evolution of the market they will become marginalized. Just like the "little plastic disc" industry is today. They really need to make the e-book "market" mature before e-books become more popular than psychical books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will it become a problem??? It already is:

[http://www.google.co.in/search?q=the%20lost%20symbol%20rapid...](http://www.google.co.in/search?q=the%20lost%20symbol%20rapidshare.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. Books are "barely" pirated now because it is impossible to find most books from pirate sources. Hell, it's hard to find most books from legitimate sources online.

Books have an advantage on other media in that they are traditionally physical and their quality (when they are presented in a quality form) will still help sell them.

Having said that, the day someone manages to release a way (iphone app?) of letting you scan books easily (for book authors but lets not pretend it won't get used both ways) will be pretty awesome.

<comment><USER6> You'd be surprised. The pirating scene on IRC has a far greater selection than Amazon.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's easy enough to find pretty much any book if you know what to search for. It's been that way for years.

<comment><USER5> Really? Heh traditional torrent/p2p sources (say everything but usenet) tend to have a lot of trouble finding particular books.

<comment><USER8> try ed2k/kad. torrents are not for old or rare stuff.

<comment><USER5> Cool. What I'd really love is to be able to go to Amazon (or something) and pay to have a PDF download. I'd even pay retail if it meant I get the PDF now and the physical in the mail (though living in AU I don't think Amazon sell us books physically but you get the idea).

<comment><USER9> This system is exactly how pragprog.com works.

You can even purchase a PDF/book combo before the book is completed and have access to a (constantly updated) beta version of the PDF. When the book is completed, the PDF is finalised and the book itself is mailed to you.

<comment><USER5> Awesome. Can't wait to see this model expand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Piracy isn't a problem, it's a result - the question is so uninteresting... The more interesting question is the question of how can we make a better business model for publishers/authors

</comment><comment><USER11> I notice that they didn't compare ebooks to movies. I'm sure the MPAA would have issued the same scary stats, but the film industry is rolling in cash despite entire criminal industries dedicated to stealing content.

That would have for a pretty boring article, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't pirate/buy e-books because I can't read books on a screen, it is okay for small articles and coding and whatnot but feeling the paper and guiding your eyes is so much better with paper. (I haven't tried e-ink or the kindle so I don't know how that compares.)

</comment><comment><USER13> What about a system where you can download an e-book for free, read it for a month or so with the option of rolling-over that term for another month -- as long as someone else hasn't requested it? In short, where are libraries going to be in this?

<comment><USER14> What you're describing is not like a library. Libraries deal in scarce resources (physical copies of books). The point of a (public) library is to provide free information.

If you apply that principal to e-books, which cost almost nothing to copy, and therefore don't reasonably need to be checked out or returned, you have to remove all DRM, thus destroying the e-book business model.

Unfortunately, librarians have bought into the DRM mindset, and are putting into place (or planning to put into place) systems like the one you describe.

<comment><USER13> That's exactly my point (which was not meant to be a technical suggestion for implementation, I'm aware of the problems involved). My question is basically, "where do e-books and DRM leave the public library?"

In my opinion, if a business model requires there to be no public libraries or a substantially reduced public library, then so much the worse for the business model. There needs to be an analogue between the world where books are things made of paper and the world where books are made of bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It already is. E-books are pirated within minutes of staring their major distribution.

<comment> bjelkeman-again The difference so far though seems to be that I don't know anyone who reads pirated e-books, but I know lots of people who listen to pirated music. There is no suitable mp3 player equivalent for books yet.

<comment><USER5> Which is what the article is about I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only problem I can imagine is that we won't have enough of piracy of e-books :)</comment>


Stop Blogging and Start Building Tools for Great Content Marketing ROI - <AUTHOR> https://thinkgrowth.org/building-tools-can-provide-better-roi-than-blogging-ec87e304c47d <comment><USER2> Hubspot's growthbot sucks</comment>


NetChoice Identifies the Worst Proposed Internet Laws in America - <AUTHOR> http://web2.sys-con.com/node/995738

<comment><USER2> The ads on the page make the site utterly unusable.

<comment><USER3> <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/></comment></comment>


CHIP $9 Computer - <AUTHOR> https://getchip.com/pages/chip <comment><USER2> More like the $15.22 computer with shipping. And said shipping cost is hidden at the third stage of ordering, well after you've given your email (hello dark pattern).

At least the $6.22 shipping cost to my European country is reasonable and the same for two CHIPs (3: $7, 4: $9, 5: $11). I recall it was much higher during the kickstarter (and they worked to reduce it, as it seems on the campaign page).

 _Edit_ : PockeCHIP shipping is $11

<comment><USER3> You can get Orange Pi One for ~$14 with delivery - which looks more powerful

[http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-One-ubuntu-linux- an...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-One-ubuntu-linux-and-android- mini-PC-Beyond-and-Compatible-with-Raspberry-Pi-2/32603308880.html)

<comment><USER4> They say the 5V ⎓ 3A power supply needs to be connected through the Orange Pi One's DC socket. However, they don't mention the size of barrel connector¹ (outer diameter & inner diameter) that will actually fit inside the DC socket.

Does anyone here know?

――――――

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

<comment><USER5> 4.0mm/1.7mm barrel plug, centre positive according to [http://linux- sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_Plus](http://linux- sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_Plus) \- I think it's the same on all of the Orange Pi boards.

<comment><USER4> Oh, nice, thanks for that link and info! As you mentioned, the page even lists the output plug polarity¹ it requires (centre positive)!

EDIT: Just realized that's the same size barrel connector used for Sony's PlayStation Portable², PlayStation TV³, etc., and the power supply⁴ those devices come with is 5V ⎓ 2A and have a centre positive polarity, so it seems like they'll be perfect for use on the Orange Pi One.

――――――

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

² — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable)

³ — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_TV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_TV)

⁴ — [http://f.cl.ly/items/3I3N1m0U1E3o3I1q0v19/sony_ps_tv_ac_adap...](http://f.cl.ly/items/3I3N1m0U1E3o3I1q0v19/sony_ps_tv_ac_adaptor.JPG)

<comment><USER6> Don't DC power jacks come keyed for at least voltage/polarity?

If not -- why‽

<comment><USER7> They come in various shapes, varying on inner diameter, outer diameter, and length. Smaller connectors may tend to be lower voltage, but that's certainly always true.

There are several standards, and at least some of them specify voltage ranges for particular sizes, but there's no universal standard.

List of plug sizes and their common uses: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listing_of_DC_coaxial_connectors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> By being/attempting to be the "low cost leader" really brings out the worst people in comments. People who complain about shipping and packaging and the price on other sites and the price of other products, on and on and on. You couldn't pay me to be in such a market I feel bad for those who provide a cheap service or product and then get the worst feedback one could get.

<comment><USER9> If your tag line is "The World's first $9 computer" I don't think it's totally unreasonable for people to point out that you have to pay more than $9 to get the thing.

<comment><USER10> Who are these people that aren't aware that taxes, shipping, and duties are a thing?

They must be Amazon Prime members.

<comment><USER11> > Who are these people that aren't aware that taxes, shipping, and duties are > a thing?

Not every international person knows what is usual in the US. For example in Germany prices are always including taxes.

<comment><USER12> Its in India as well. Usually shipping is free or mentioned separately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can't remember whether I've seen this before. A few details after reading through some of the docs:

      * powered by Allwinner R8 (ARM Cortex-A8) with some proprietary bits
      * Debian-based CHIP O/S preinstalled on 4 GB flash
      * one micro USB port for power (supports USB OTG if powered by battery)
      * power connector for battery
      * one USB 2.0 port
      * one TRRS port for audio and composite video
      * built-in WiFi and Bluetooth
      * VGA adapter available for $10
      * HDMI adapter available for $15 (no audio)
      * case available for $2

<comment><USER14> That's wild. The computer is cheaper than the adapters.

<comment><USER15> Freebie marketing, a.k.a. razor and blades business model? [0]

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

<comment><USER16> No, because clearly the CHIP is usable without adapters, and provides the main functionality.

<comment><USER17> Yes,

because on every image on main page (row with three possible use scenarios) it's shown as connected to a display.

This _IS_ freebie marketing.

<comment><USER18> The bare board has a composite video output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting that they distribute the "CHIP Flasher" as a Chrome app. It seems very user friendly but somewhat opaque. And it's a pity there's not much info on the hardware.

Anyway, I've ordered two pieces. They're probably going to gather dust alongside my Raspberry Pis and Arduinos once the initial excitement has worn off. :)

[EDIT] OK there's lots of info on the hardware, just not easy to find on their sales page: [https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP- Hardware/](https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP-Hardware/)

<comment><USER20> Made a chrome app myself, for a reason that might seem odd. It fulfills the java promise: write once run everywhere, and access more stuff than java (bluetooth, USB, serial etc.)

<comment> saiya-jin surprising as it might sound, not everybody is using Chrome. my parents don't have it, I don't use it, fiancee the same. Firefox all around. because big brother google and no visible advantage over Firefox.

<comment><USER21> It's easy to get Chromium on any platform. It's harder to say that for Java, or native apps that the author may or may not know how to build and support across OSes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm having a hard time finding a reason why I would buy this over the Raspberry Pi. Like others have said for this to be useful as a general purpose computer you need to buy add-on boards for video. Compare that to the RPi Zero which is $5 bucks and includes an HDMI port. You can easily add a USB ethernet or wifi adapter to the zero for under 4 bucks and have a real $9 computer.

Not to mention the CHIP uses an AllWinner processor which has a record of not playing well with open source and a history of security issues.

<comment><USER23> The CHIP has much better audio support than the Pi. The Pi does not even have an ADC. The CHIP has a 24 bit ADC. I could see it being used in audio engineer applications where a Pi would not work.

<comment><USER24> This is pretty much what sold me on CHIP. With PocketCHIP, my dreams of a handheld Linux computer with audio editing capabilities can finally come true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is HDMI adapter worth $15? It's like create a hardware and split expensive parts and sell with low price marketing. It's not $9 computer, It's actually ~$35

<comment><USER26> Maybe because there are tons of patents on HDMI cables?

        US6932640	Oct 22, 2004	Aug 23, 2005	Yun-Ching Sung	HDMI connector
        US7059914	Feb 20, 2004	Jun 13, 2006	Advanced Connectek, Inc.	HDMI plug connector
        US7192310	May 16, 2006	Mar 20, 2007	Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd.	HDMI connector
        US20060148319	Mar 3, 2006	Jul 6, 2006	Advanced Connectek Inc.	HDMI type electrical connector assembly
        US8500489	Jul 15, 2010	Aug 6, 2013	Luxi Electronics Corp.	HDMI locking connectors

<comment><USER23> What does the cable have to do with it? The HDMI adapter even says "does not come with cable". If you are talking about the connector, they are $0.43 each on digikey.

If the rest of the HDMI adapter board looks anything like the VGA adapter, with just passives and a connector, then they would be making a profit charging only $3 for it, let alone the $15 they are asking.

<comment><USER27> Based on the BOM at [https://github.com/NextThingCo/DIP-HDMI- PCB/blob/master/v1.0...](https://github.com/NextThingCo/DIP-HDMI- PCB/blob/master/v1.0/BOM/BOM-DIP-HDMI-v1.0.pdf), you've got a Chrontel CH7035B HDMI interface chip, a serial EEPROM (probably used for EDID/HDCP key storage), and a LDO power supply for those chips. That definitely counts for the additional cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was an early Kickstarter backer and got mine right around the beginning of 2016. For me the sweet spot was small size, and WiFi. Note this was before The RPi3 was announced with onboard Wifi. CHIP had an early issue with flash corruption (no surprise there are always some issues with v1 hardware) but seem to have that sorted out with a firmware fix and mine has been running without issue for weeks.

Compared to the original RPi which required an $11 WiFi USB dongle and a powered USB hub this is a lot simpler. I primarily used it as a headless sensor node or wireless/networked LCD display. It's perfect for that and still one of the lower-cost options even after shipping $$.

Their documentation ([http://docs.getchip.com/](http://docs.getchip.com/)) and forum are actually pretty great. I think this will be a good contender if/ when they reach general availability.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been waiting for the PocketCHIP to become reality before ordering anything. It looks like they're planning to ship this month, so it might be time to order.

I love that it includes a game dev kit that includes a music tracker...that's what I want it for. I have an original GameBoy for making music with LSDJ, and it's a lot of fun. But, it is difficult to find good condition GameBoys for anything approaching a reasonable price these days. I'd love to have something a bit more modern with the same basic feel and sound.

The PocketCHIP has the advantage of having a "real" computer inside and a QWERTY keyboard, so if I get bored with four note polyphony, I could run something like SchismTracker or SunVox or whatever. It is in the sweet spot for me for this kind of device, in a way that the Raspberry Pi hasn't been (though the Pi is cool, too).

<comment><USER30> I backed the KS at the PocketCHIP level. My PocketCHIP arrived Monday, FWIW.

<comment><USER31> Hey, so did I! I haven't gotten mine yet, but I'm very pleased to hear that they're arriving already. Thanks for commenting!

<comment><USER30> Sure thing. It took about two weeks to arrive after I received the shipping notification

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> pi-rat Still waiting for the CHIPs i ordered several months ago :/

<comment><USER32> Also waiting on mine from a little over 6 months ago (the Black Friday deal). It's supposed to ship sometime this month according to when I purchased it. But really, at $8 (+shipping), I see it as one of those things that if it comes, it comes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm stoked for the PocketCHIP.

<comment><USER34> Hell yeah, me too. Its the latest in a very cool line of portable Linux machines designed for hackers to have a hell of a lot of fun. I hope that it is successful, and sits alongside other successes such as the Open Pandora (and soon: Pyra) as an example of how to do a portable, open, fun platform based on Linux, away from all the walled gardens and app jails that are prevalent on the other pocketable platforms.

There is one thing that bothers me, however. With the Open Pandora, the community has been amazing - and much of that has been because the focus is on developers^3. The online repo of apps for the OpenPandora is a true treasure trove of amazing things (see [http://repo.openpandora.org/](http://repo.openpandora.org/)) - an app store done right, in that you have total freedom to do whatever you want with the platform, but you can also just have the plug 'n play experience of browsing a well-curated and maintained list of apps, which can be installed with a single click - no BOFH'ism required. The Pandora has proven to be a very good balance of free and curated apps. Developers can make money as well, if they choose to, and for the most part the community has been very remunerative towards the key devs pushing the platform forward.

However, this doesn't seem to be a key strategy for the guys behind CHIP, who are a bit behind the ball with setting up a common, community-focused repository for developers to contribute to .. alas, it seems that its going to be a total free-for-all with CHIP development. The best we will have is "at least we can push our own .deb's up on a website somewhere to distribute our software".

I seriously hope that, when the PocketCHIP starts to launch (its trickling out now, will be ramping up towards the end of the month), the NextThing guys will realize that they've got to get on top of this issue before someone else does - it'd be quite feasible, for example, to turn on a "PocketCHIP apps" section of repo.openpandora.org, and if NextThing doesn't do it - someone will. Such is the nature of the Open Handheld community.

As a developer and user, I'd much rather have an 'official' repo, with curated apps and quality control for the end user, than just a free-for-all wild frontier of .deb's being passed around by all and sundry.

Actually, what I'd really like to see happen is the guys behind the OS for the Open Pandora/Pyra consoles work in coordination with the NextThing team, so that maybe - just maybe - all systems could be running the same basic OS core. There really isn't any good reason for this _not_ to happen - its only because of politics and control issues and NIMBY'ism/DRY'ishness that its not on the table at the moment.

<comment><USER35> > Actually, what I'd really like to see happen is the guys behind the OS for > the Open Pandora/Pyra consoles work in coordination with the NextThing team, > so that maybe - just maybe - all systems could be running the same basic OS > core.

Exactly. I would say now the Pyra will run Debian instead of Angstrom and Chip runs a Debian as well there could be an option of unifying. Angstrom was kind of horrible to work with IMHO; I use my Pandora a lot but from a Debian chroot.

<comment><USER34> Totally agree with you. Could this be the first stages of seeing a unified Debian system for open Linux mobile systems? That'd be coool.

<comment><USER35> That would be excellent indeed. And now there is not much reason not to. Mobile systems (and enough embedded as well) have enough storage/memory now to run those systems and Debian has no issue installing .debs on different partitions or drives. Basically the core packages can be on the internal flash drive and others on the SD drive which would've worked fine for the Pandora too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The chip has been on HN on and off for months. Is there something new happening?

<comment><USER37> General availability of the Pocketchip dock?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is amazing. Just need to figure out how I can attach a battery to it and everything in my house will be a computer.

<comment><USER37> [http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#chip- hardware](http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#chip-hardware)

First image shows a battery connector top right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'd prefer such product if I can just power it and control it over SSH. I don't really need an actual screen plug, as I would not use a home screen on such a tiny thing: it doesn't make sense.

Although the rasbperry pi zero seems interesting, I don't know if I can plug a minimalist, small and cheap screen on a mini-hdmi. Overall there is no point using a classic screen on such tiny devices.

This seems to compete with the raspberry pi zero, and RPi zero doesn't have wifi.

<comment><USER40> Documentation for using the CHIP headless: [http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#headless- chip](http://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#headless-chip)

<comment><USER5> Yeah. One of the nice things about CHIP is that in theory (mine hasn't shipped yet) you can just plug it into your computer over USB right out the box, open a serial terminal to it and configure it that way, no messing around with SD cards etc. The Pi Zero can't do that because it requires an SD card and also the driver support for USB-OTG is poor and requires manual configuration of device mode.

<comment><USER41> Not just in theory--that's precisely how I got mine (I KSed it, and got my pair at least two months ago) booted up and configured for the first time. Super easy, in fact--way easier to bootstrap than a RPi (I ordered a RPi 3 some time since).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Would be helpful if they were more transparent about shipping. I'm not going to go through the motions of pre-ordering just to find out what the total costs are.

</comment><comment><USER43> I bought one for June delivery, hopefully it shows up.

What bums me out is that there is no easy board that I can find of the (get chip, pi zero ilk) that comes with an ethernet port. I know I can get a regular Pi but it's too much for my use case.

On a related note, I've been looking for a low cost smart power plug with ethernet (10/100/1000) without much success. If anyone knows of such a beast, please let me know.

IMO, $80 for something like this [https://www.amazon.com/ezOutlet-Internet-IP- Enabled-Android-...](https://www.amazon.com/ezOutlet-Internet-IP-Enabled- Android- Interface/dp/B00KQ4R1RK/ref=pd_sim_23_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41LIb75CyNL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=WD0CR2WX3Q6NYFV37YRC) is too much

<comment><USER44> A regular pi has a USB ethernet device, so really you will not lose any speed by using a usb dongle on any sbc.

<comment><USER43> Speed isn't the issue here. Having an ethernet port is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Did they really use a banana for scale?

</comment><comment><USER46> I made a group order for 40 CHIP computers. I was definitely pissed off by the fact that I could only order five of them at the time (but there was no limit on the number of order I could place).

I am looking forward for them to start delivering.

I hope that VAT won't be too high.

<comment><USER47> Just because I'm nosy, what do you have intended for your 40 CHIPs? Education?

<comment><USER46> As I said, I made a group order. I gathered orders by many people (mostly friends) and ordered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know if one of the USB slots can act as a client while the other as a host? I can't seem to find any documentation with that level of detail.

edit: looks like one of them can run in OTG mode (i.e client), that's wonderful!

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone know what is that vertical scroll shmup on the image above the gaming header?

<comment><USER49> Looks like Psikyo's Aero Fighters to me. The proportions seem off though, so most likely a PAL console port played on NTSC TV and/or a sub-optimal emulator config we see there :)

Great game and astonishing feat for a $9 computer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I still can't see a full spec for the soc. Without that, _to me_ , this is uninteresting. Sorry. Perhaps others have different priorities. Having a fully hackable $9 computer would have been a wonderful thing to me.

<comment><USER27> [https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP- Hardware/tree/master/CHI...](https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP- Hardware/tree/master/CHIP\[v1_0\]/CHIPv1_0-BOM-Datasheets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A big market for these that doesn't seem to be mentioned is the potential for business presentation use: sales, training, basically anything in an office.

Why carry a laptop, when the location you're going to has a projector screen you'll use, and likely has a keyboard (or carry a portable input device), and a power supply. And your files are cached on your favourite cloud.

Make a nice looking case for these, and they're impressive novelties, lighter than the lightest laptop, and probably a bit more stable than driving a projector from a phone.

<comment><USER52> There's a clever feature in the Optoma Pico Pocket Projectors where you can store presentations inside the projector, or on removable media that the projector can read directly. So you can present from the projector itself without an external device.

Of course, the projector currently doesn't run a general-purpose operating system, so your suggestion is more useful if you need to do something beyond showing slides or video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I ordered a CHIP over a year ago with the VGA adapter. I think it should be shipping soon. I sort of now wish I had went with the HDMI adapter as I do not have too many VGA systems these days.

</comment><comment><USER54> I ordered these the day they announced. Not sure if mine have shipped yet. Excited to see them.

</comment><comment><USER55> I ordered mine in November, when are they actually planning on shipping?

</comment><comment><USER56> It's a bit frustrating there is no easy way to change the shipping address after the preorder.

</comment><comment><USER57> Can I start using CHIP without a display? Like ssh access when connected to USB or via Bluetooth?

<comment><USER58> cstuder already answered this questions below: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11908011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11908011)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Do they keep costs down because they are using conflict minerals? [http://enoughproject.org/special-topics/progress-and- challen...](http://enoughproject.org/special-topics/progress-and-challenges- conflict-minerals-facts-dodd-frank-1502)

</comment><comment><USER60> I ordered one. With tax and shipping to Northern California, it was over $16.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is it shipping soon ?

</comment><comment><USER62> where to get time to play with all the toys....

</comment><comment><USER63> CHIP's $9 pitch is nothing special anymore, with that Rpi device for $5 now, but the PocketCHIP wrapper is still a strong USP. Here is an IoT device where you don't need a soldering iron to actually get basic, useful stuff going.

</comment><comment><USER64> Impressive hardware, but UGH!, not yet-another-Linux powered computer! If I had the time, I'd port illumos to it myself, but since I don't, Linux on this thing makes it a non-starter for me.

<comment><USER65> As someone who spent years maintaining Solaris systems, it always amazes me that there are people out there that like Solaris.

Especially in the context of a hobby/experimental system.

<comment><USER64> I love Solaris (except Oracle Solaris 11, which I really dislike!), and I love illumos and SmartOS even more.

I grew up on Solaris - my first ever UNIX was a Solaris 2.5.1 system on a SPARCStation 20. I've been running Solaris on intel since my first Pentium 90 workstation on Solaris 2.5.1.

Since I know how to build and package software for Solaris, I have everything I could ever want or need on it. It's a comfortable system, and it's elegant, once one fully understands all of its capabilities. And it's extremely reliable and high performance, especially on intel based processors.

For some context, I am _forced_ to work on Linux and I spend my entire working day working on it. Compared to reliability of Solaris and ease of use, I have grown to dislike Linux in the extreme. If you are thinking, "but that is insane, Linux is so great, how is that possible!", remember that I grew up on UNIX, so I have different criteria for what is comfortable and reliable (even in terms of development) than your average Linux user or Linux system administrator does. I dislike the GNU tools and user land (with very few notable exceptions) because I'm used to AT&T System V tools and that is how I expect the tools to behave; GNU tool chain usually frustrates me to no end. Working with Linux frustrates me to no end (I do professional development and system engineering on it).

For example: --some-long-option comes to mind, or lack of proper manual pages ("see the texinfo page"), lack of backwards compatibility support, tar -z (tar is a tape archiver, not a compressor!), and so on, and so on... I miss my ZFS, I miss my mdb, I miss my dbx, I miss my SMF, I miss my fmadm, I miss the simple and effective handling of storage area network logical units, I miss the fiberchannel stack which actually works... I don't have any of those issues on illumos based systems, but it drives the point home:

the last thing I want is yet another Linux based computer. I have enough of that as it is at work - almost 71,000 servers, 49% of them running Linux, and it sucks.

<comment><USER66> >For example: --some-long-option comes to mind, or lack of proper manual pages ("see the texinfo page"),

What are you even talking about here? man/info works wonderfully, if I want more readable information a terminal sure as hell isn't going to give it to me easier than searching a wiki. And solaris absolutely had problems with documentation on their larger packages.

> lack of backwards compatibility support

Hardly even a real issue if you actually maintain your damn systems more than once every half decade.

>tar -z (tar is a tape archiver, not a compressor!)

... It still is a tape archiver AND a compresser AND a 100 different but completely valid and usable things.

ZFS absolutely is usable.

Why do you enjoy DBX over GDB?

SMF? One would think you would love and embrace systemd.

FibreChannel stack that works? [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/InfiniBand](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/InfiniBand)

I can't refute all that you have said here since I am not familiar with all of it. But, have you considered you are just doing it the wrong/difficult way?

<comment><USER64> Manual pages on traditional UNIX systems are extremely detailed and contain lots of good, usable examples, and Solaris / illumos based operating systems really shine in this area. People who grew up on a real UNIX expect to find comprehensive, high quality documentation in the manual pages in a terminal session. This feature was driven hard by enterprise customers and professional system administrators in times when wikis did not exist, and even today the quality of the content in some arbitrary wiki written by _someone on the internet when they felt like it_ is dubious in comparison to manual pages written by people with formal education in engineering and technical writing!

Like I wrote before, on UNIX we have different expectations in different areas than what people are used to and accept as given on Linux. The focus is different on UNIX.

Apropos dbx versus gdb: dbx has a 1,000 page manual, and makes it really easy to step through assembler code while listing the original source. How many pages of documentation does gdb have again? On top of that, gdb doesn't even fully support my OS, I don't think gdb properly supports anything that is not Linux... hmmm, that reminds me an awful lot of Microsoft Windows monoculture.

systemd versus SMF: systemd is a shoddy copy of SMF with a Windows twist, trying to replace every service in the system. Unlike SMF, which is part of the fault management architecture, which is part of self-healing technology, systemd has no such concept, self-healing and a contract filesystem is science fiction for systemd. SMF watches over services, but it doesn't try to replace them; "do one thing, and do it well."

InfiniBand is a different technology than fiberchannel.

<comment><USER66> To get full GDB documentation you need to use info gdb, the man page states that itself. Man pages are quite limited correct, so they offered a better solution just like what you are looking for... Not sure what the issue is here. The amount of documentation is massive, 2321 lines of text in an easy to browse format...

GDB also works on a large amount of computers. Windows, Linux, netbsd, etc.

>>>However, its use is not strictly limited to the GNU operating system; it is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Java[1] and partially others. [0]

>hmmm, that reminds me an awful lot of Microsoft Windows monoculture.

What? Actually they support windows, which is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to say here... I use GDB DAILY on windows (work.) with zero issues.

I'll agree that perhaps systemd doesn't cover all use cases or wants. But calling it a shoddy copy of SMF with a windows twist is disingenuous. I don't care for the for or against systemd arguments but after the initial reaction/learning phase when pulling away from upstart/sysv/init based shit/etc, many of us are actually starting to warm up to systemd. It handles services wonderfully, it handles logs wonderfully, perhaps it's a bit bloated whatever you can always revert to what you want if you decide to spend the time to actually do it.

>InfiniBand is a different technology than fiberchannel.

Fair enough, i'll have to read up more on it than.

You are making quite a lot of generalizations without doing proper research. If you want to be stuck in your "In the old days us Unix people had it right!" mindset than this discussion is pointless. Otherwise I would love to continue butting heads on this.

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

<comment><USER64> > To get full GDB documentation you need to use info gdb, the man page states > that itself. Man pages are quite limited correct,

`info gdb` is completely unacceptable, and an outrage: standard documentation on UNIX are manual pages, not to mention that systems other than GNU/Linux do not use GNU info.

> Man pages are quite limited correct,

Incorrect; manual pages are rendered by the _nroff document typesetting system_. Entire books have been typeset for printing with nroff. Case in point: the UNIX Text Processing book, the AWK book, the ANSI C book. The system is extremely flexible and very powerful, once one understands what is going on. When you hold the printed versions of these books in your hand, you can see that they are beautifully typeset and rendered. Brought to you by the same programs which render UNIX manual pages when you type `man some_command`!

What you see on the screen (on UNIX, cannot vouch for Linux) when you type `man ls` is an actual professional typesetting system rendering the content for stdout instead of a printing press!

> I don't care for the for or against systemd arguments but after the initial > reaction/learning phase when pulling away from upstart/sysv/init based > shit/etc, many of us are actually starting to warm up to systemd.

That's because you haven't had the opportunity to enjoy SMF. When you've worked with SMF, systemd looks like a cobbled-together toy. For example, systemd turns ASCII logs into binary format, just like on Windows. This in turn goes against the UNIX philosophy of

 _Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface._ [McIlroy]

[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html)

> You are making quite a lot of generalizations without doing proper research.

That's is quite ironic, telling that to someone who does professional system engineering and software development on GNU/Linux for a living. I have been doing UNIX and Linux professsionally since 1993, and working with computers in general since 1984, how many years is that? I spend every waking moment of what free time I have researching UNIX and Linux. To tell me that I'm "generalizing without doing proper research" just because I am not succumbing to GNU/Linux group think is what one could call disingenuous.

<comment><USER66> I'll admit, perhaps I am wrong in the greater picture of things here. But you are also wrong on some points. Particularly man pages being superior to info. troff/nroff markup is needlessly complex compared to Tex. You can also use your vi keys in info as well.. Perhaps you can just boil this down to being comfortable using man pages, but info pages provide more options and usability when it comes to created documentation, that's just a simple fact. If you have trouble quickly finding the information you need when using info, consider reading the info info page ;).

In fact TeX is used/preferred over nroff/others for a huge majority of physics/mathematics academic journals. And quite a bit outside of it. [0 - 3]

I will admit for stuff I already know and understand enough of to be considered proficient with it, man pages can be quicker. For something I just installed and still need to learn info pages provide a much better platform.

You may find the following link enjoyable to skim through. [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77514/what-is-gnu- in...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77514/what-is-gnu-info-for)

> What you see on the screen (on UNIX, cannot vouch for Linux) when you type > `man ls` is an actual professional typesetting system rendering the content > for stdout instead of a printing press!

Love the enthusiasm but (La)TeX falls into that description as well.

> That's because you haven't had the opportunity to enjoy SMF.

Maybe, I've put it on my list of things to tinker with more. Thanks for the link.

> That's is quite ironic [...] I am not succumbing to GNU/Linux group think is > what one could call disingenuous

I don't care about you succumbing to any group think or whatever other word you can come up with. I am trying to show you why it is actually superior in many ways. Just because you are comfortable with nroff absolutely 100% does not make it better. To put it simply, you may be a professional system/software engineer but if you can't keep up with why these systems are considered (and shown to be) better than what you have now than you will just continue to be frustrated/fall behind.

[0] [http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/submissions.html](http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/submissions.html) [1] [https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/academic- journal](https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/academic-journal) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX) [3] [http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch18s03.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch18s03.html)

<comment><USER64> [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77514/what-is-gnu- in...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/77514/what-is-gnu-info-for)

Quoting from the link above:

 _ADDENDUM: While not strictly relevant to the question, note that man pages are still considered the standard documentation system on free Unix-like systems like those running atop the Linux kernel and also the various BSD flavors. For example, the Debian package templates encourage the addition of a man page for any commands, and also lintian checks for a man page. Texinfo is still not widely used outside the GNU project._

Which I can confirm and concur with. Long story short, I would forget GNU info, because it is an invention not suitable to the task at hand, which is efficient and fast lookup of information in a reference manual.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best remote only company to work for? - <AUTHOR> I know there are quite a lot companies remote working possibilities. I was curious about the work culture in most of these companies. Any company doing this particularly well? Which and Why? <comment><USER2> Ad Hoc - [https://adhoc.team](https://adhoc.team) is pretty great. No whiteboard, homework based interview process, unlimited vacation, plus you get to work on things that matter to a lot of Americans like healthcare.

<comment><USER3> Not technically remote, you must be a US citizen.

Which is half the problem I have searching for remote jobs whilst living in Europe

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm biased, but Basecamp is an absolute joy to work for.

<comment><USER5> Hi t3rabytes, I think Basecamps values are pretty cool!

How would I go about applying for a job? I am a full stack web developer.

<comment><USER4> Hey! Sorry, for the late response, didn't see this until now. We don't have any positions open right now, but when we do, they get posted to [https://basecamp.com/about/jobs](https://basecamp.com/about/jobs). Sorry about that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't directly answering your questions, but RemoteOnly [1] is quite a good list of companies with carrying levels of remote work. While this doesn't answer how their cultures are, it can be a starting point for companies to look at.

[1]: [https://remoteonly.org/](https://remoteonly.org/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Red Hat. Been an absolute joy so far. Working on the stuff I like, talking and writing about it... and great colleagues!

<comment><USER8> Are they hiring?

<comment><USER7> Always... redhat.com/jobs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Adplexity - free hardware, high salary, work from anywhere, free events etc....

<comment><USER10> If you can live with yourself working for an adtech company.

<comment><USER9> It's not an ad tech company. It's an anti adtech company. Long term goal is to kill Google Ads and other ad companies by outing competitors ad campaign, turning advertising useless.

This is achieved through lessening information asymmetry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most people I know would say CrowdStrike should be on that list.

[https://www.crowdstrike.com/careers/](https://www.crowdstrike.com/careers/)

</comment><comment><USER12> If I'd apply somewhere, my go to would be Doist, Basecamp, or Automattic. Subject to change, though.

<comment><USER13> Just met with a lot of the Automattic devs last week, their company culture is interesting.

Each team division has a different theme. And subthemes from parent themes. Example, hogwarts/harry potter for their entire mobile dev team (40+ people). Maybe this is common practice for remote only companies, I am not sure though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I heard a lot of good things about gitlab

</comment><comment><USER15> Working for creators of Bugfender, Mobile Jazz has been a great delight so far ([https://mobilejazz.com](https://mobilejazz.com)). Fully remote, flexible working hours, bonus programs, company retreats...</comment>


How to obtain product(apparel) catalogs from other websites(merchants) - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I am in design phase of a startup(Not  mine). Website uses power of crowds to select and recommend best apparel to other users of website. However to start with we want to have inventory where users can start voting and recommending to each other. Any Ideas where such catalogs for apparel can be found?
I know lot of merchants submit their catalogs to websites such as yahoo shopping and others but for a new website what is the best way to obtain them? <comment><USER2> Froogle Feeds (?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer. Yes I considered it. But the size of the images is small and I might need images to be higher quality if I have to retains users on apparel website.</comment></comment>


An esoteric programming language compiler on LLVM based on Brainfuck - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brain-labs/brain <comment><USER2> LLVM seems like a huge dependency for something based around Brainfuck.

If I'm remembering correctly, the original Brainfuck interpreter was 250kb of ASM.

<comment><USER3> Brainfuck is simple enough that you could just write out the machine code directly in memory. I think that would make a really good exercise.

I made one based on GNU Lightning to JIT. Even that can be considered a pretty huge dependency:

[https://github.com/cslarsen/brainfuck- jit](https://github.com/cslarsen/brainfuck-jit)

The interesting part is how slow a one-to-one translation of Brainfuck code to machine code will run without any optimizations. That's where the speed comes from, entirely based on those sweet optimizations. So writing one yourself is a rite of passage, like writing a Mandelbrot renderer.

The above project, from the looks of it, looks quite mature, and therefore interesting in its own right.

<comment><USER2> Nothing there I don't agree with.

I was more hoping someone might be able to shed light on why LLVM would be a good fit for something that it looks like it might be overkill for. Might just be it's what the authour/s are familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does this link to a fork that seems to be identical to the original? Would the mods please update the link to the source: [https://github.com/brain- labs/brain](https://github.com/brain-labs/brain)</comment>


Make plastic printed circuits with a standard laser cutter [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z228xymQYho <comment><USER2> What's even more interesting is that this is pretty accessible. Given fairly common equipment, at least in a hackerspace, you can make ~8 mil traces on plastic or FR4. Not only that, but you can make them in 3D and with plated vias.

This dude has some absolutely jaw dropping (sputtering, scanning electron microscope, waterjet etc) videos on his channel; it's definitely worth checking out the rest of his back catalogue.

<comment><USER3> Google tells me 'mil' is some kind of abbreviation for 'thou' or thousands of an inch which means 8 mil = 0.2mm

<comment><USER4> It's an abbreviation for "mille", same root as the "milli" in millimeter. Common in electronics for describing trace widths and pitches, even outside of the US simply because there are lots of parts laid out in whole numbers of mils.

8 mil traces on a DIY circuit board is pretty good, it's good enough to be able to do some quite fine surface mount parts.

<comment><USER5> Also common for measuring thickness for films and foils:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousandth_of_an_inch#Contexts...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousandth_of_an_inch#Contexts_of_use)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm jealous of people who have such an elaborate workspace with so many toys and access to reagents. Still, it's super interesting to see all the engineering challenges that go into taking something from "works" into "work reliably"

<comment><USER7> I agree, the tools available now for tinkering are mind boggling! Of course, the other component is the time to spend on learning to use the tools, and for designing stuff to make with them...

With regards to chemistry - a staggering array of chemical supplies can be purchased from the hardware store, druggist, or supermarket; the trick is knowing what common name to look for, to get a particular chemical. Searching online for permutations of what you're looking for, and "household", "MSDS", or "common name" can yield some good results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> [16:45] And when I was getting up to about, you know... test number 66 or whatever here, it all started to fall into place..._

Quotes that let you know you're doing _real_ home science.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the advantages of the way FR4 PCBs for example are made is the following: 1) you can deposit a thin layer using an electroless process 2) then now that you have a continuous conducting surface you can electoplate to make a thick layer of copper that is quite strong and durable

Anyway, it would seem like with all this work he could have used the laser to define a photomask on copper clad board with some photosensitive material there, then just watch in the iron chloride solution as people have been doing for ages?

2 layer PCBs are really cheap these days and you don't end up with vats of chemicals left over..

Anyway cool stuff, I've tried to do similar stuff and has always just found that paying $50 for a few PCBs is actually much more economical than this type of setup.

<comment><USER10> > 2 layer PCBs are really cheap these days and you don't end up with vats of > chemicals left over..

The problem I have is that I have to wait weeks and get a hundred PCBs when I only want one.

<comment><USER11> Well, no. Services like JLPCB or AllPCB have a 1.5 day manufacturing time and both feature express shipping via DHL (APCB for free even). There are tons of services like these. Even 4 layer lead-free boards don't break the bank. MOQ is 1-5 on all of these services.

 _Even_ here in Germany, where local PCB manufacturing is usually very expensive compared to the options above, services like PCBJoker exist, which are only about 20 to 30 % more expensive.

<comment><USER10> DHL shopping is always more than 20 euros for me. I wouldn't call 35 euros for a PCB cheap.

<comment><USER11> To which country? AllPCB doesn't charge anything for DHL to the US and Germany e.g. MOQ is 5pcs.

<comment><USER12> I had a good experience with AllPCB recently. They even reached out for clarification on an extraneous drl file I had included in the gerbers zip accidentally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ingenious method!</comment>


What's Up with That: Why It's So Hard to Catch Your Own Typos - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2014/08/wuwt-typos/ <comment><USER2> "what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads."

Greg: "Bill, I know there is a bug in this code block, the output is transposed. I've been staring at it for an hour and I can't see it."

(8 second pause)

Bill (pointing at the screen): "You left out the second '+' in your incrementer."

Greg: (dumbfounded silence)</comment>


Results of ngx_pagespeed alpha on production WordPress sites - <AUTHOR>

Here are some interesting results of the Nginx Pagespeed module alpha on production WordPress sites. https://www.zippykid.com/2013/04/23/partnership-with-google-to-deliver-fast-wordpress-sites/ <comment><USER2> For future reference, if you want to link to an interesting post rather than ask us a question, you really should submit it as a link rather than as an Ask HN submission. Ask HN submissions are poorly suited for this task — they're penalized in the rankings and URLs in Ask HNs aren't transformed into hyperlinks. If you want to post a comment with your link submission, well, that's what the comments are for.</comment>


Leave My Brand Alone (or why are people defending brands) - <AUTHOR> https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/leave_my_brand_alone <comment><AUTHOR> "It makes sense when people rush to the defense of close family members or even particular places or objects with special significance—think of the house you grew up in, or the bed you have had since childhood. But why do people rush to the defense of brands?"</comment>


Show HN: XOR – qualified IT freelancers marketplace. Feedback is welcomed - <AUTHOR> http://www.xor.ai/ <comment><USER2> [Feedback]

I am not even close to a designer by any means but the scheme you are using on your site is an absolute no go.

Use literally anything else except neon green on dark grey

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey at such a low rate of $50, would any qualified person work for this?

I feel the quality of results would be low, just like odesk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually it is highly dependant on a geofraphical location of the specialist. For example, in Russia and Eastern Europe there are senior developers who'd work on this price. But of course it depeds on the task Mostly it varies from $50 to 150 per hour

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't figure out how to register as a freelancer. Hi!

<comment><AUTHOR> At Join us [http://www.xor.ai/#!join-us/j4hwc](http://www.xor.ai/#!join- us/j4hwc) here</comment></comment>


Show HN: Single neuron neural network written in COBOL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/victorqribeiro/perceptronCobol <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I made this a while ago just for fun. Perceptron was one of the first algorithms I wrote back in college when I was taking machine learning classes. So I thought how cool would be to write something fairly modern (not really) like a neural network using old tech like cobol. Hope you like it.

<comment><USER2> When classifying it's often a good idea to feed the prediction into a sigmoid- function.

I have never seen cobol code before, only heard about it so thanks for posting some. What do rows like "01 ERR PIC S99V9999." mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> ERR is the name of my variable "error" S indicates that this value is signed 99 is two digits V is a decimal separator and the other 9999 are 4 decimal places

[http://www.csis.ul.ie/cobol/course/DataDeclaration.htm](http://www.csis.ul.ie/cobol/course/DataDeclaration.htm)

<comment><USER3> And the 01 at the start of the line is the level number as explained in the link. It is how Cobol declared nested records, which Fortran and Algol lacked but became popular through PL/I, Pascal and C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool! It's great to see a simple but nontrivial program to get a feel for how a language like this works. Reading through and knowing no COBOL, it looks like this is logistic regression on four input features.

<comment><USER5> Yes, a single neuron is just logistic regression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So COBOL has no array concept, you have to name every input feature FEAT1, FEAT2 etc? Ouch. I can see why the language is dying out.

<comment><USER7> There are arrays, or tables, which I like to think of as being what an array of structs would be in C:

[https://www.mainframestechhelp.com/tutorials/cobol/cobol- arr...](https://www.mainframestechhelp.com/tutorials/cobol/cobol-array.htm)

Also, cobol will probably never completely die. No enterprise is going to pay to rewrite systems that have been their backbone for decades. (Disclosure: I work in Logistics industry, and we have a lot of cobol that isn't going anywhere.)

<comment><USER8> I mean it has to die out at some point, whether it takes decades or centuries.

<comment><AUTHOR> when I shared this on reddit someone said something along the lines: in one hand this is cool but on the other hand I just wish Cobol would just die

<comment><USER9> COBOL seems to be very translatable to any modern language, e.g. Pascal or BASIC. Real world reasons against "why not just translate it then" are understandable, but at some point that could become economical.

<comment><USER10> COBOL's numeric stack doesn't directly translate to many modern languages, which makes the translation introduce all sorts of fun edge cases that are extremely difficult to track down.

IEEE 754, which most of our modern languages are mostly compatible with, came about in '87\. Long after COBOL had standardised itself on how numbers were expected to behave.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could OkCupid work for finding co-founders? - <AUTHOR> http://www.okcupid.com/profile/ja-hn

<comment><AUTHOR> People always say that starting a company with someone is like marrying them. So why not try finding a co-founder through a dating site? I answered several match questions on OkCupid, thinking about traits I'd like to see in a co- founder. I'm interested in seeing match percentages between me and other Hacker News users.</comment>


A Vector Mapping API and D3-Based Rendering Library - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mapsense.co/

<comment><USER2> Great mapping platform</comment>