Google's "Right to be Forgotten" Disclaimer - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/06/googles-right-to-be-forgotten-disclaimer.html

<comment><USER2> So it should only be a very short time before someone makes a "diffing" search engine that queries both the european versions and other versions and shows you the difference, thus revealing all the most controversial content about any individual you happen to be interested in, not least, the very fact they have tried to suppress the information. (I suggest it be called streisand.com). I am curious what the next step will be after that - ever more draconian laws? Canada style laws that try for world wide censorship? How far will it go?

<comment><USER3> Something along the lines of [http://www.monzy.org/unsafesearch/](http://www.monzy.org/unsafesearch/), but for "forgotten" Euro-junk would be just the thing to send up these crazy "rights".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it fascinating to see the division of this topic being along seemingly national lines, i.e. European commenters seem in favor, while American commenters seem vehemently against the EU court ruling. This is somewhat of a generalization, but it does highlight an interesting phenomenon. It appears the overwhelming (?) majority of young American internet users, who have come of age in the post 9/11 USA are disturbingly willing to relinquish as many freedoms and rights, as is demanded of them. In fact, they take it one step further, in a form of self-perpetuating pseudo-cultural hegemony, they try to impose this "If you're innocent you have nothing to hide!" mentality on Americans and non-Americans alike.

The fact that global search engines often can have extremely negative implications vis-a-vis personal data retention, is one that more easily escapes those who were born naturally into the Internet age, as opposed to those who "merely adopted it". The "adopters" are usually more sensitive to the before-and-after effects, than the "naturals", usually because the naturals often lack the firsthand context with which to make informed comparisons of said effects.

A contributing, and perhaps aggravating, factor is the tendency of many (possibly younger) HNers to fall into knee-jerk behavioral patterns of vociferously defending all that is Google, from the somewhat irrational perspective of Google being All That Is Good And Holy, simply because of the corporation's trite slogan of "Do No Evil". At the very latest, the Snowden revelations and ensuing NSA scandals have shown us Google and co. are as far from sainthood as any other multibillion dollar multinational corporation.

In summary, the European little guy has scored an important victory that gives them the tools to improve their quality of life, or at the very least avoid a degradation thereof. How this is twisted into censorship of a search giant is fascinating and very revealing of other deeper and far more worrisome underlying tendencies within the very defenders of the "Mega Corp".

<comment><USER5> > It appears the overwhelming (?) majority of young American internet users, > who have come of age in the post 9/11 USA are disturbingly willing to > relinquish as many freedoms and rights, as is demanded of them.

I see Google's censorship as an attack on "freedoms and rights".

> HNers to fall into knee-jerk behavioral patterns of vociferously defending > all that is Google

I personally hate Google, and avoid their products whenever possible. I've used Bing for a number of years, and recently switched most of my searching to DuckDuckGo.

> European little guy has scored an important victory that gives them the > tools to improve their quality of life

I don't think this is an "important victory", but rather an attack on the freedom of information.

P.S. I live in Australia and New Zealand.

<comment><USER4> >I personally hate Google, and avoid their products whenever possible.

You took my quote out of context and ran with that. I said many HNers. Not all HNers.

There is no censorship involved here. Read the EU ruling. The ruling does not prevent Google from indexing personal information. It prevents Google from permanently indexing personal information if it is irrelevant or no longer relevant. Even after said information has been removed from Google's database, it will still be available at the source that Google previously linked too. It's fallacious to pretend that information is being surpressed.

<comment><USER6> The problem is defining what it is irrelevant

Wby Bing or Google can't index a La Vanguardia article? Why they are the ones censoring that name and not La Vanguardia?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The key point: unlike the old Chinese censorship warning, this notice appears on all name queries, not just queries which have actually had data removed. Thus, for better or worse, it isn't able to subvert the purpose of the law by encouraging people to search elsewhere...

</comment><comment><USER8> On the whim of national governments and rich individuals, Google has already been censoring the search results that appear to everyone. The only thing this law does is give the little man a chance - which is good.

</comment><comment><USER9> The idea is that we don't want businesses distributing your personal life and we don't want a defamation industry. Imagine the 2 of those combined, it would be powerful propaganda, we would all have to invest in the negative review industry just to compensate. We already have copyrights on everything else, ownership laws that apply to everything except humans. It seems fair for your life belongs to you. It would be something if I couldn't have mickey mouse on my website but could use your face for everything?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very bad. Google should be telling Europeans the truth about what their governments are doing. "Some results may have been removed due to EU censorship policy" would be a truthful and informative disclaimer.

Including the message only on pages that have actually been censored would be much better because then you'd know when the government has required Google to lie to you.

<comment><USER11> Why?

I'm a European and I like this policy.

I like that individuals have the ability to have things that are no longer relevant forgotten about them so that their ability to have social mobility isn't compromised. I like that young people who make mistakes are now given the chance to move on, mature and change.

The opposite to this law is a view that a person can never change, and must always be held accountable for their past in their future.

No, I'm really happy this exists.

"To err is human", otherwise translated as "everyone make mistakes". Life and potential shouldn't halt when it happens.

<comment><USER12> Except this only makes information disappear from Google, not from the web. If a news site has an articule about that time you were arrested for drug dealing, it will be there and you have no right to make it disappear.

<comment><USER11> This is true for very many things, the act of making it searchable is to make it follow you into the future.

The example I used in the other conversation about this when it first emerged is a real one, I know a girl who was the victim of an attack and chose to contact the police. The attacker was young and the court scrubbed his name from public record, but the local newspaper reported the victim's name and profession. Now you have a victim with a permanent smear against her created by an easily accessible record of fact (the newspaper, not the court record). The problem with the patriarchy and an unequal society being that woman who are victims of attacks are frequently met with doubt and victim blaming, "Was it something she wore?", "Did she act in any way as to provoke it?"... and so a victim is punished by the availability of information. Her peers have remarked how they've seen it on Google, because in her profession researching your peers is what you do.

The courts aren't wrong to record things.

The newspapers aren't wrong to report things.

But neither action was intended to be a permanent cross for the person to carry.

The girl in question? Her view is that if she knew it would end up on the front page of Google for her name, she would never have gone to the police.

Now ask yourself, is that the world you want to live in? I'm very glad the EU legal system agrees that it isn't, and that the EU politicians enshrined that it isn't. It makes me glad to be European.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, I just accidentally down voted you. I was trying to upvote.

<comment><USER11> No worries, it seems such a divisive topic it's almost entertaining watching the upvotes and downvotes aggressively cancel out each other.

I didn't realise just how extreme the opinion on this is. Shame HN doesn't show this in how the votes are displayed... I get that they're not displayed... but black text vs shaded implies only positive or negative, and hovering around 1 vote with lots of up and down votes is interesting in itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So can people request globally or just in Europe?

<comment><USER8> Only Europe - since the court ruling was by the EU and applicable only to EU residents I believe.</comment></comment>


Show HN: NullPass, a stateless password manager written in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.nullpass.org/

<comment><USER3> Have you seen SuperGenPass? It's much the same concept, and has been around for years (including browser extensions, etc).

[http://supergenpass.com/](http://supergenpass.com/)

For the justifiably paranoid, a web service is not going to cut it (lack of https is just the start - relying on any web service is a _lot_ of trust to put in such an Important Thing). Even if you are as trustworthy as I'd hope, it's foolish to even allow the possibility of you (or your service) being compromised to affect the safety of my passwords.

Personally, I use a command-line implementation of SuperGenPass that a friend of mine wrote (and I host at github:gfxmonk/supergenpass). It avoids all sorts of spoofing / browser vulnerabilities, and is reasonably convenient with something like Guake.

I'm not trying to diss the concept at all - I love this kind of thing, and honestly can't understand why it isn't more widely used / encouraged. But It's worth pointing out what already exists in the space.

<comment><USER4> SuperGenPass credits me as the originator of the idea, my page is still up at [http://angel.net/~nic/passwd.html](http://angel.net/~nic/passwd.html).

NullPass isn't a Web service, it's a one-page Javascript app like mine and SuperGenPass. But it loads a bunch of libraries, so it can't as easily be copied for safe offline or local use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat! Yours looks very nice.

I never realised there were so many implementations of this floating around. It might be a neat idea to inline/reduce the libraries I used to more easily distribute for offline. Although I have to say that I don't feel this is any less safe because it can't run locally :)

Thanks for your input :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problems with these master password implementations comes when you want to change the password for one site only. Sure, I can add a token in addition to the domain. But what token did I add to which domain? If I have to remember individual tokens I might as well remember the entire password. A solution could be to generate a "salt" for each domain, but then we're no longer stateless…

<comment><USER3> One solution is to use a separate storage for salts (or hints, really - <USER2> doesn't need to be a complex scheme, since we're hashing it anyway).

I do this myself with supergenpass, for when a site's password DB gets compromised (a common enough occurrence these days).

Importantly, this augmented state is a convenience - it's not irreplaceable. If I find myself _without_ my list of hints, I am not completely screwed - I'll just have a harder time logging into those few sites, and it's quite likely I'll remember the right hint after a few tries from memory if I really need to.

<comment><USER6> This post kind of inspired me to whip this up (probably not original, but it's minimal): [https://bitbucket.org/logannc/deterministichashpass](https://bitbucket.org/logannc/deterministichashpass)

Basically the same idea but seeds a random number generator with the master password and the service name to have an infinite supply of passwords. Technically no state is needed because Python's random module is deterministic, but I will end up saving the state with the service name and the index of the random number so that I don't have to try each and every one (not that I change passwords that often, for better or worse).

And, for convenience, since I won't be saving the master password, I'm looking into adding a credential cache like sudo has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, this is the first side project I've had that I've been happy enough to share with the world at large. I hope someone finds it useful and would be very eager for some feedback :) (Especially negative!)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using PassHash "[http://passhash.connorhd.co.uk/"](http://passhash.connorhd.co.uk/") for a while now and I really like it. If I understand your application correctly, PassHash does essentially the same thing as NullPass. I run PassHash using a local copy of PassHash so I don't have to worry about MITM attacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks identical to NullPass, I'll check it out.

Thanks for your input :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a reason why you are using straight sha512 with concatenated elements instead of using a sha512 HMAC with the local password as the key to the HMAC?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash- based_message_authenticati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash- based_message_authentication_code)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not really. I do like having the length concatenated inside as well, as this provides a unique password for different lengths (useful to quickly visually identify if a password looks 'right').

Is there any reason why HMAC would be better than my current implementation? I have had a read over the article and it seems that straight SHA512 should have similar cryptographic strength.

Thanks for your input!

<comment><USER8> Read the "Design Principles" section more carefully. Simple concatenation suffers from several different attack vectors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

I am concerned about changing the algorithm at this point in case anyone has already used it. I don't think there are any serious concerns but will report back if I find any (after taking some more time). Of course if anyone knows this stuff very well I'd be very eager for some feedback!

<comment><USER8> > Of course if anyone knows this stuff very well I'd be very eager for some > feedback!

Exactly why you should be considering changing the algorithm.

[http://happybearsoftware.com/you-are-dangerously-bad-at- cryp...](http://happybearsoftware.com/you-are-dangerously-bad-at- cryptography.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, except it resembles Cryptnos [http://www.cryptnos.com/onlinerevs/prod/](http://www.cryptnos.com/onlinerevs/prod/) with most options removed.</comment>


Secure Websites Shun HTTP Public Key Pinning - <AUTHOR> http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/03/22/secure-websites-shun-http-public-key-pinning.html <comment><USER2> Yup. We choose the "footgun" reason. Despite automation, despite best practices, the cost/benefit analysis of losing all traffic for months (more realistically, losing the use of a domain) because of a single mistake shows that the benefits of preventing against MITM is simply not worth it.

Were we bigger, the benefit might outweigh the costs. Of course if we were bigger, the cost would go up significantly as well. Can you imagine a world where Amazon had to completely re-build its order taking infrastructure around a new domain name due to a mistaken configuration file?

<comment><USER3> I QR'd my two backup private keys and corresponding CSRs, printed them out, and gave one set each to my two partners to keep safe. I agree that it seems a little overkill, but it doesn't have to be terribly complicated.

<comment><USER4> That's not overkill. That's doing it properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Shun" isn't the right word to use. The tools for managing SSL keys are abysmal, the documentation around HPKP so far is confusing (this article does a decent job of explaining how to use it), and the impact of any mistake is that your site might become completely inaccessible to your customers. The best example this article could give (github) uses HPKP in the most conservative possible way. That should tell you something.

As falcolas says, security is about risk tradeoffs. Right now the risk of using HPKP is rightly judged by most webmasters to be far greater than the risk of not using it. Key pinning Is a great security tool in many scenarios but for most public websites, it's not worth the risk.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, Google actually appears to have capped the max_age (max max_age?) to 60 days in Chrome. Expect this in Release 51.

We got into a debate with them over why they're imposing it, but ultimately, our use case was limited and they likely had the analytics to justify capping max_age at less than a year. I think we'd still rather have had the option of allowing up to a year, but I understand the need for the gloves. [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=523654](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=523654)

Which gets to my point: Cyph ([https://cyph.im](https://cyph.im)) found more utility in abusing HPKP off-label than in actually using it for its originally intended purpose, so in a roundabout way, I find myself in agreement with netcraft. Heh.

<comment><USER7> I just read through the issue and then went to cyph.im to take a look myself. It fails in my Firefox because of a HPKP problem, so it seems like I accidentally deleted the cached version (or it was cleaned up automatically?). How would you solve that issue for your use case?

<comment><USER8> Sorry, yeah, that is a known issue in Firefox that we're trying to have resolved; it apparently cleans up ServiceWorkers/AppCaches that haven't been actively used recently. Was this your first time opening cyph.im, or had you used it in the past?

<comment><USER7> I have used it in the past, that's why I assumed my cached version was cleared.

<comment><USER8> Ah, cool, that makes more sense (I couldn't think of a reason for that to possibly happen on the first use, since at that point the pinned TLS key wouldn't yet have been invalidated).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, curious, what happens in the case that my private key is compromised? An attacker can then change my key pinning and prevent users from accessing my website? Heck, can an attacker already do this to many users simply by adding some headers and using their own SSL key? Seems a scary proposition, someone could effectively kidnap control of your domain and you'd have no way to get it back. Especially given the opposition to OCSP by certain parties and the fact that smaller sites have problems even getting on their alternative lists, it could be part of impossible to get your attacker's certificate removed from many of your users browsers.

<comment><USER3> I would be interested in hearing someone smarter and more knowledgeable address this, but I will say that the public keys are sticky ("pinned"), so if an attacker was able to change it, it would only affect virgin clients during the time the false header was present. Returning visitors would (presumably) not be able to load the site because the public keys they have cached for your site wouldn't match the false SSL certificate. Unless the attacker was playing a sneaky long game and only changed the backup public keys...

<comment><USER10> If the private key is compromised or the HPKP header is changed through some other vulnerability in your site, the attacker could still satisfy the existing pin header. The attack for clients with cached pins would be a bit more involved and would have to be done in two steps¹:

      First visit: Add a new backup hash for a certificate that the attacker
        controls.
      Second visit: Use the new backup certificate for the TLS session
        and set a new HPKP header that excludes the keys the site owner
        actually uses.

¹ This is assuming browsers won't accept HPKP headers that don't pass for the current connection. I haven't actually checked this.

<comment><USER7> > ¹ This is assuming browsers won't accept HPKP headers that don't pass for > the current connection. I haven't actually checked this.

RFC 7469 requires this ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.5](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.5)):

       o  The TLS connection was authenticated with a certificate chain
          containing at least one of the SPKI structures indicated by at
          least one of the given SPKI Fingerprints (see Section 2.6).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could malware that infects a webserver set a HPKP key to a private key that only it knew (ala cryptolocker), and then ransom that key?

I'm sure we could survive a total webserver compromise (with some level of lost data), but losing access to our primary domain for 60 days to a year would be devastating.

<comment><USER7> IIRC The pin must contain at least one key that's in the current chain and at least one key that's not in the current chain.

So it first would need to set the header to include the ransomed key, then deliver the page using that key and afterwards remove the other keys.

Edit: I just read in the RFC. It is in section 2.5 ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.5](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.5)):

       o  The TLS connection was authenticated with a certificate chain
          containing at least one of the SPKI structures indicated by at
          least one of the given SPKI Fingerprints (see Section 2.6).

       o  The given set of Pins contains at least one Pin that does NOT
          refer to an SPKI in the certificate chain.  (That is, the host
          must set a Backup Pin; see Section 4.3.)

<comment><USER6> > then deliver the page using that key and afterwards remove the other keys.

Per bullet 1, this seems self-defeating since at that point all that would need to happen is for the victim to forensically extract the private key from the compromised webserver. So long as there's one private key corresponding to a pinned public key, the malware's defeated if the private key can be recovered (assuming I'm understanding your suggestion correctly).

I say "forensically" since I'd presume any malware following this pattern would likely build in some protections to try and blow the private key in the event that someone tries to recover it.

<comment><USER10> It's not technically necessary for a TLS web server to have unfettered access to the private key. The web server could offload the signing operations to a separate server under the control of the attacker. The web server only has access to premaster and session keys. CloudFlare calls this Keyless SSL.

This would make the attack quite complex, though. It's more likely that the malware will just use the new key for a few hours and then delete it and scrub the disk, which will be enough for the majority of production deployments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend this guide when making a choice how to set up HPKP.

\- [https://scotthelme.co.uk/guidance-on-setting-up- hpkp/](https://scotthelme.co.uk/guidance-on-setting-up-hpkp/)

<comment><USER13> The blog post you posted by Scott Helme is much better than the one I've seen posted in previous threads[0]. The information about not necessarily pinning to a leaf is critical.

Please Please Please read this.

>For me personally, on my blog and on other websites that I run, I've pinned at the leaf certificate level. It does come with the problem that you're responsible for the backups...

HPKP is a giant foot gun and even Ryan Sleevi expresses how he is somewhat unsatisfied with how HPKP turned out[1] and that you should be pinning to intermediates or roots.[2] (His name is on the RFC if you don't know who he is).

In my opinion. If you plan to roll out HPKP you need to read the RFC. Don't follow online guides for your production environment. Figure out what is best for you.

There is a really high operational cost to this in organizations bigger than a couple people. If you aren't prepared for that, then you're going to brick your site for a lot of users.

Security headers are hard to get right and even some really big orgs make mistakes[3]

0 - [https://scotthelme.co.uk/hpkp-http-public-key- pinning/](https://scotthelme.co.uk/hpkp-http-public-key-pinning/)

1 - [https://twitter.com/sleevi_/status/696171562383224832](https://twitter.com/sleevi_/status/696171562383224832)

2 - [https://twitter.com/sleevi_/status/696379082599059457](https://twitter.com/sleevi_/status/696379082599059457)

3 - [https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/3865c64...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/3865c64ae77925ee6b23de9aa61bd987871df13c%5E%21/)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps doing this in DNS with DANE-EE TLSA records is a much better solution for all the reasons discussed here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The main reason not to use HPKP is _it only protects people who have already connected_. There are a hundred ways to force a new user agent or device to connect, and then poof, compromised.

Pinning is a great way for companies like Google to use Chrome to detect when someone has deployed an illegally issued certificate on their behalf. But for a company that hasn't bundled its keys with browsers, the user will just spin up a different browser and go to the compromised site, since HPKP is browser/session specific.

HPKP is a toothless mitigation. We need better measures.

<comment><USER15> This is especially troubling in situations where you're not using your trusted browser, but instead some embedded one. Twitter's in-app web view is the best example of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wrote out some thoughts on the problem of HPKP:

[https://brianmhunt.github.io/picking-our-roots-between- hsts-...](https://brianmhunt.github.io/picking-our-roots-between-hsts-and- public-key-pins/)</comment>


Jeb Bush campaign dox citizens - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/jeb-bush-basically-just-doxxed-thousands-of-floridians-1684920622

<comment><USER2> "But they did not expect these emails to be released in such a public way."

When you email any public figure, expect it to be available publicly.

This should be more of a learning exercise for the people that emailed him than anything else. The lesson is that anything you email a government official can and will be available to anyone that asks.

Leave it the the media to take more transparency in government (which is what everyone seems to want) and spin it as a bad thing. If someone like Elizabeth Warren did the same thing, would we be seeing the same outcry? I think it would be spun to make it look like better transparency.

I remember a couple of years ago Wikileaks released undercover agent information online with no redacted names or information. The majority of people here on HN thought it was no big deal.

A more recent example is the Sony hacks. Emails were illegally obtained and published and sites like Gizmodo (and every other media outlet) didn't seem to care about the personal privacy of the people that were involved in these emails. They were too busy speculating on the content of the messages.

I'm sick of the hypocrisy and spin to make your political opponents look bad. You don't care about privacy Gizmodo, so please stop lying.

</comment><comment><USER3> The spin of " _In the spirit of transparency, I am posting the emails of my governorship here_ " is a dick move. Not because emails weren't redacted, but because emails _were already public_ [1].

In practice he just created a better search interface, and worded the story in such a way that it sounded as if he was being "transparent" and "publicizing it" for the first time. Not really. Everything was already public and available - including email addresses, name, and even some SSNs. But if you pick his words apart, he didn't say anything wrong. Just misleading.

As Feynman said [2]:

 _In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another._

 _The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn 't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest; it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will--including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with._

[1] [https://sunburst.flgov.com/exchweb/bin/auth/owalogon.asp?url...](https://sunburst.flgov.com/exchweb/bin/auth/owalogon.asp?url=https://sunburst.flgov.com/public&reason=2)

user/pass: sunburst

[2] From "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", transcript here: [http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html](http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html)</comment>


Cloact: Minimalistic React for ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://holmsand.github.io/cloact/ <comment><USER2> While I haven't had any time to play with ClojureScript, Om, React, etc. I've been keeping a pretty watchful eye, because the stack looks very appealing.

One bit that doesn't look appealing to me in Om, or Cloact is the tree- building. Is there anything in ClojureScript and React right now that will let me build templates in HTML and attach functionality via attributes Angular- style?

<comment><USER3> As I suggest below I don't see why you could not compile to Om or Cloact from HTML for a friendlier presentation for designers. Still I don't think Cloact nor Om DOM syntax is particularly unapproachable for designers - I think we need some good documentation and some compelling, friendly walk-through demos (Light Table anyone? :)

<comment><USER4> > Still I don't think Cloact nor Om DOM syntax is particularly unapproachable > for designers

It's not just designers who appreciate using declarative markup over programmatic syntax! Of all the people who might understand this, I'd have thought you would be the first in line (as a fan of your work on core.logic and inspiring me to learn prolog)!

<comment><USER3> I find the React approach very declarative. Certainly competitive with most of the templating systems I've used, few of which I can speak very highly of :)

<comment><USER4> I've used both dojo dijit and angularjs templates. I admit, I haven't done more than read your blog on Om, but I very much prefer the html declarative templates of both dojo and angularjs ... show me how Om/React beats direct html templates, I'm not seeing it.

I'm not trying to be too non-constructive critical here, I fully admit I haven't _tried_ Om/React, just looked at your blog post about it. So what am I missing?

<comment><USER5> Using clojure data syntax instead of SGML-like syntax doesn't make the language any more or less "declarative". Assuming you use the same features in your templates, the clojure version is precisely as declarative as whatever other template language.

However, if you use the clojurescript version [or in standard React, the javascript- or coffeescript-looking version], then you suddenly have a bunch of potential extra features which in some cases are invaluable. (Or you can deliberately ignore those if you prefer.)

When you say "declarative" I think you might really just mean "familiar for html experts". But most html expert should be able to learn the new syntax quite easily, since the relevant parts are less verbose than html, quite regular and straightforward, and semantically equivalent.

If you feel like putting your templates in separate files from your logic, or writing them using an SGML-like syntax, that's pretty trivial to do in any of these environments.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like I need to give it a try, thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't see that word without thinking of Cloaca. Cloaca. If you don't know what it is, you should. Cloaca.

<comment><USER7> I never thought that I would need this at Hacker News. A nsfw warning would suffice.

<comment><USER8> Ha ha! Oh wow! I just ran a google image search to see what you were talking about...

Knowing what a cloaca is beforehand, and then searching for it anyway on Google produces some truly curious results. I was trying to mentally prepare myself for what I may be about to see, because I couldn't imagine what might be on the other side, that would prompt your reaction. The only thing I could think of was some bizarre new form of bestiality that lurks in the shadows of taboo obscurity.

It turns out that most of the images are of obvious medical or scientific origin. I don't even know why pictures of humans show up in the search. I saw lots of pictures of various reptile junk which was totally expected, and none of it was being unceremoniously violated by unscrupulous human beings, so thank god for that!

Apparently there's a medical condition, "Persistent Cloaca Perineum", which is frequently misdiagnosed as "Imperforate Anus with Rectovaginal Fistula." The pictures that depict the condition are mostly de-identified newborn infants, and they originate from edu domains, but in a google search without proper context, they're kind of unexpected. I guess you learn something new every day...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> React is nice. I've created a simple library that shares same core concept - map DOM to Javascript objects. The difference is my lib uses Javascript standard data type, array, to represent tag, and hash(or object) to represent attributes, and strings for text contents. With a few tricks, I got a very powerful library - [http://github.com/gcao/T.js](http://github.com/gcao/T.js). You can see an example written in CoffeeScript here

[https://gist.github.com/gcao/8363743](https://gist.github.com/gcao/8363743)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish github had better syntax highlighting for Clojure. Different colors for matching parentheses.

<comment><USER10> Here is that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7043299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7043299)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IMHO, This look more easy to read than OM

<comment><USER7> Agreed. I'm so much more into the hiccup style tree building. This looks like something I can get into tonight. David is great but he prefers his code a little mysterious.

<comment><USER3> You can use Hiccup style with Om via sablono if you like via [http://github.com/r0man/sablono](http://github.com/r0man/sablono). Om will never dictate nor provide an alternate syntax layer as everyone will want something different. I personally don't care for Hiccup.

More importantly, Cloact is much closer to the React model while Om diverges quite a bit because we're interested in enabling patterns that are more difficult otherwise, trivial complete UI state rewind on exceptions/errors, trivial undo, and more powerful operations on the applicate state history oriented at interactive debugging and development.

Of course these values might not interest you and you just want a simple direct mapping onto React. Then Cloact looks awesome! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, again :)

Yes, exactly, Cloact tries to stay really close to plain React. But since it allows you to separate data from rendering, undo should be quite trivial to implement (if you keep all your application data in a single cloact/atom)...

<comment><USER12> One thing I can't figure out is why they need to be cloact/atoms and not just regular atoms. Is it because cloact/atoms are observable?

<comment><AUTHOR> In a way. Using regular atoms you can only get a callback when they are modified, but not when they are deref'ed.

You _could_ still use regular atoms, though, with some extend-type magic. But then you risk messing with non-Cloact code in horrible ways...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does this all work with non-inlined event handlers? I see a lot of on- click, on-change going on in these examples.

<comment><USER14> React inlines event handlers since it manages them through it's virtual event system.

For more information on why react breaks preconceived notions of best practices I recommend checking out [http://2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/pete-hunt- react-rethinking-be...](http://2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/pete-hunt-react- rethinking-best-practices.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry for the noob question, but: does this take the place of Hiccup? Or, would one use both at the same time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, Hiccup is Clojure (so basically server only). Cloact is ClojureScript, that compiles to javascript (so browser, node.js, etc).

Secondly, Hiccup produces strings. Cloact typically creates DOM elements, through React, that change every time a component rendered. But it can also produce an HTML string using the same data, to pre-render a page on the server using node.js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow this looks like an awesome little lib. I love stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Cloact: unfortunate name.

<comment><USER16> "Reajure" might be better. Halfway between "reassure" and "erasure".

<comment><USER17> Leiningen will actually complain with this message if you try to make a project name that is too 'punny':

      Sorry, names such as clojure or *jure are not allowed.
      If you intend to use this name ironically, please set the
      LEIN_IRONIC_JURE environment variable and try again.

edit: this did not stop me from starting such a project [https://github.com/tomjakubowski/dujure](https://github.com/tomjakubowski/dujure)

<comment><USER16> Hah, that's delightful! And a good lint rule besides. The Haskell world has a disproportionate number of packages whose names begin with H. Apparently my own joke wasn't appreciated, though. :(</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rovio planning Angry Birds theme park in Britain - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/03/20/business/20reuters-angrybirds.html?_r=1&src=busln&nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkam_20120321

<comment><USER2> I still don't understand this Angry Birds obsession. When I downloaded the demo, I found it wasn't very engaging. It's way too repetitive and incredibly easy, but that's what you get where the only premise is to catapult something at something else. Making it any more complicated would alienate a majority of their users.

<comment><USER3> Plus it was a shameless ripoff of (insert name of flash game with catapults here).</comment></comment>


The True Identity of Andy's Mom Makes 'Toy Story' Even More Epic - <AUTHOR> http://moviepilot.com/posts/2014/02/24/the-true-identity-of-andy-s-mom-makes-toy-story-even-more-epic-1247874?subscribe_to=1247874&utm_content=bufferdd57b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#!w7DPg <comment><USER2> Its a pretty good interpretation of Toy Story, but I do take issue that the end of the article is more-or-less petitioning for a wiki edit at the end.</comment>


The Complicated Case of magicJack - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2340417,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585 <comment><USER2> "...which consists of real-time instant messaging with service reps in the Philippines"

Whoa. Chat-based outsourced tech support is premature optimization. That's not support that's a bad joke. You have to have to spend the money on either a) making the product have fewer problems or b) a few dozen trained live humans on a phone bank. Even if it means charging $45 for the device.

I mean, come on -- it's a VOIP company that allows cheap calls, but they are too cheap to take support calls?

</comment><comment><USER3> Also here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468209></comment>


The future of GNOME - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2012/07/31/the-future-of-gnome/ <comment><USER3> GNOME 3 is a really great, well integrated (if not particularly innovative) desktop environment. Unfortunately, it broke existing workflows, which led to a great deal of criticism on its release. Had GNOME 3 had been a new, unrelated product rather than the next version of GNOME, there would be, if not more excitement about it, at least less criticism.

Making radical changes to an incumbent system is difficult and often thankless, even when the new version is, if not objectively better than the previous, very good. Apple encountered this with the transition to OS X. Anyone who remembers the "Classic" environment can attest to how poorly this transition was perceived by many Mac fans. Microsoft has a real problem on its hands trying to convince users that Windows 8 is better than Windows 7.

Ultimately, GNOME 3 feels like a much better _designed_ environment than the previous version. For those that tried an early release and gave up on it, I'd encourage you to go back and try it again.

<comment><USER4> 100% agreed. Although I'm still having a hard time with Alt-~ (Mac-style "switch windows" not apps), I'm very happy with Gnome 3. The number of keystrokes and inches of mouse travel have been greatly reduced over Gnome 2.

The lack of a Start-like menu was initially off-putting, but I've grown to appreciate the lack of that bit of complexity. 99% of the time I run: Chrome, terminal(s), Skype, Pidgin and WebStorm/PyCharm, so I don't need to fiddle with settings or wonder about where in a menu an application resides. When I do need to find an app, the action button and search are perfect.

The only thing I miss in Gnome 3 are the many taskbar plugins that show mem/processor usage, but those will come. Otherwise, Gnome 3 does a great job getting out of my way while I do my work.

<comment><USER5> You mean something like these?

<https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/120/system-monitor/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, this is a major part of GNOME3 that most people haven't yet noticed. Thanks to it being done in JavaScript, you can hack your desktop like a web app: [https://cannonerd.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/hack- gnome3-like-...](https://cannonerd.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/hack-gnome3-like- browser/)

This includes stuff like _reload_ (Alt-F2 r) and a reasonably nice data inspector (Alt-F2 lg).

<comment><USER6> lg is much more than just a data inspector, it's a full-blown REPL. The fact that you can jump in and interactively eval code directly in the running process is huge and opens things up to a whole new level of hackability.

<comment><USER7> And there is a DBUS interface for it, so you can even push code into the shell from external processes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I could say anything to the Gnome3team:

"I used gnome 3 shell for 6 months until I could no longer stand it. Please please, Gnome team, go back to Gnome2 or Mate. The desktop really doesn't need reinventing. You're solving fixed problems!"

Unfortunately, I don't know how well the open source adopts the philosophical concept of sunk costs.

<comment><USER3> > The desktop really doesn't need reinventing.

I'm surprised people think this. Do you think we're going to still be using the Windows 95 model in 10 years?

Sure, the relative importance of the desktop will diminish as other forms of input become viable, but we're not there yet. I still do 95% of my work in a desktop environment with multiple windows and everything, just like I did 10 years ago. The difference is that the desktop environments I have access to now are better than the ones I had then. I hope that trend continues.

<comment><USER9> I don't think the desktop needs reinvention. Enhancements and modernizations are great but our workflows are so refined at this point the cost of reinvention is ridiculously high. If you take away something that works for the user and replace it with something new they better be sure it's so much better the users are willing to throw away existing workflows and experience. I've yet to see anything that would justify throwing it all away. Within the constrains of keyboard/pointer input on a 2D display it's going to be tough to make that huge leap forward. I suspect the next big leap forward will be AI advanced enough to just eliminate the need for these carefully crafted workflows. If I could tell my computer what I wanted to achieve and let it sort out the workflow I wouldn't care as much about the UI. Even then I would still need a classic desktop interface available for tasks too complex to explain to the computer -- or too complex for it to figure out on its own.

<comment><USER3> > our workflows are so refined at this point

Whose workflows and at what point? Do we think the children born today will be satisfied with GNOME 2 (or GNOME 3 for that matter)? I agree that we're playing fast and loose with the definition of "reinvention" here (and that GNOME 3 is clearly not a reinvention of anything--to be fair, he started it!), but I think there's room for better than incremental improvements in all facets of computing, including the desktop.

<comment><USER10> The success of this reinvention hinges on being able to attract the next generation of hackers. The future belongs to them and they should be encouraged to invent is as they see fit. The risk is that throwing away the existing way of doing things pushes away people who are active contributors and have know how about the codebase. So far the desktop is losing because the next generation of talent seems to be fixated on the web stack at this point.

<comment><USER11> That fixation will change. We're seeing a resurgence of the server-terminal paradigm that was popular in a bygone era.

People enjoy the idea of not having to sync their data because it's all "on the cloud" (eyeball roll) and because they have a 3G modem.

Sooner or later that enthusiasm will fizzle out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The GNOME team really doesn't get it.

When you've got your own people, tons of power users, ordinary users, and key kernel devs telling you you've gone astray, something's wrong. What we're seeing is fortress mentality and hunkering down. Wrong move.

Ted T'so has commented on his desktop woes at length on G+. I lifted one a reply he made to his own post which I feel gets to the heart of the problem, and what is really necessary for a desktop solution (probably XFCE4 for most people these days). Note that Ted's including both GNOME and KDE in his criticisms:

 _My concern with KDE is how bloated it's become. I don't want highly integrated applications. My main applications are a terminal, emacs, open office, and the Chrome browser. I do way more with web applications these days. Bloat is bad not just because of the increased disk and ram usage (although I do worry about that); bloat is bad because of the complexity. The more you rely on an Object broker, the more it becomes harder and harder to fix things when they break --- and things do break, with appalling regularity. It's the fact that Xfce and Network-Manager uses D-Bus and PolicyKit which is why I still get asked for my password from time to time even with my localauthority hack. How do I fix it? Who knows?_

 _Unfortunately wicd isn't fully-featured enough, but it has as a huge win the fact that it doesn't use PolicyKit; it just uses a simple Unix group membership check for its access control. Once wicd can handle large numbers of access points with the same wireless network, I'll be removing network manager from my system and using wicd instead, because network manager is just too damn complicated, and relies on too much complex infrastructure which I can't debug because of the !@#@! D-Bus design. KDE is no better in this regard, and in fact it may be worse._

 _Why don't I use Openbox? It's too simple. For one thing, it doesn't support 3x3 workspaces. At the end of the day, I want a desktop environment that makes the things that I do simple. Which means wireless roaming, the terminal, emacs, open office, and a browser. Anything more than that increases the memory and disk usage, but worse, it means more infrastructure which can break, which means I end up having to debug things like PolicyKit. And that's just not productive time for me. So Xfce seems like the right balance point for now, although it definitely still has some rough edges._

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/117091380454742934025/posts/VjbF...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/117091380454742934025/posts/VjbFCa7X5NJ)

Once again: HN needs a proper blockquote markdown.

<comment><USER13> Dbus, PolicyKit and NetworkManager were already used in GNOME 2.x days.

I don't really see how you're quoting this as a good example of why GNOME doesn't "get it", while the situation is exactly the same as 2.x.

<comment><USER12> The integration of components started getting a lot worse in 3.x.

That said, my situation is much like Ted's. I don't generally use, or find much value in highly and tightly integrated applications. They're misfeatures. Most of my work is in terminal windows, editors, remote access tools, and browsers.

Early in the GNOME and KDE experience, it became very clear that these where complex systems with many moving parts. My distro of choice (Debian) makes using things that need to be updated in lockstep (GNOME's home environment, Red Hat, does this) kind of difficult to sustain. Less so in stable, but very much so in testing/unstable (where I prefer to live).

The systems (KDE and GNOME) keep getting more complex, they keep stripping out more power-user features, they keep getting in my way. Really, I've got little or no need for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> HN discussion about the piece this is responding to: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4300472>

</comment><comment><USER14> tl;dr: "lalala, we can't hear you, we'll keep doing what we're doing". Looks like I'm not coming back to gnome in the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER15> I find it amusing how Christian says they moved away from "their" ESD to a standard PulseAudio. ESD was the Enlightenment Sound Daemon (though it may have been maintained by GNOME hackers at the end), and PulseAudio is only "standard" insofar as it was included by default with most distros (i.e. ESD or aRts would have been "standard" under that definition).

KDE at least supports PulseAudio better than ESD but it could as easily have supported ESD if it were necessary, especially if there was as much support from ESD devs as was provided by PulseAudio devs (ESD was already in its nadir before KDE 4.0 thanks to broad usage of gstreamer making ESD redundant for most audio needs).

<comment><USER13> PulseAudio is used by almost all distributions and GNOME settled on it. ESD was not used by all distributions, furthermore it had bugs and wasn't maintained.

Also, Gstreamer is not the same as PulseAudio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice article and I agree. I have forced myself to use GNOME3 at work and honestly I like it. I think most people criticizing it haven't use it enough. It's a new workflow, and as such, you need some training to get to work as fast (or in this case faster) as before. Just imagine how first mouse users felt. It should have been a horrible experience, but good things last. And IMHO GNOME3 will last. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER17> Not to be a "Negative Nancy", but quite a bit speaks against G3's current direction in terms of blog posts and participation.

Especially the latter is easy to verify. Go to their mailinglists and see the level activity, it sure does not look very good. Reading the actual mailinglists gives sometimes a quite disturbing image as well, with a few examples already linked in Mr. Ottes mentioned blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see some decrease in the number of contributors: <https://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome/contributors/summary>

However, note that the current slide in the numbers is something that only happened after February-March 2012, which was when the previous major release was launched. In 2010 another slide lasted from April until October, so I suppose there is a need to worry if contributions don't pick up around Sep- Oct.

That said, the situation for GNOME is certainly different now, given that they lost their biggest distribution channel in Ubuntu doing their own thing.

<comment><USER13> The number of commits always pick up before a major release and drop off afterwards. If you try to conclude anything from your analysis, please be a bit thorough!

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought that was exactly what I said in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Who speaks for the users?

(Or could it be that there aren't any users?)

<comment><USER19> That's the real issue.

Gnome and Unity are both targeted at some sort of hypothetical casual linux user, that doesn't really exist.

Casual users DO exist, but they want iOS, not Linux - or more generally - <USER2> appliance, not a general purpose tool.

<comment><USER20> This entire conversation is incredibly disappointing. It feels like a giant echo chamber, a handful of people who don't like Unity/Gnome3 who hear each other complaining and assume that means the entire Linux universe feels the same way. Everyone I listen to hates Gnome 3, that must mean everyone hates Gnome 3!

The truth is, there are people who like Unity and there are people who like Gnome 3. You're just not hearing them because the negative types are yelling over top of them. The people who like the new WMs don't have anything to add to this discussion because the entire discussion is about how those people don't exist. I feel like if I mention that I'm using Unity right now and I like it, I feel like I'll be told "no you're not and no you don't, case closed."

You don't like it. We get it. But claiming that these people don't exist seems a little disingenuous when obviously they do or Ubuntu wouldn't be quite such a popular distro. Unless you're suggesting everyone downloads Ubuntu and then immediately installs a different WM?

<comment><USER19> There were plenty of people who liked AOL too. Does that mean we should still be on dialup?

PS: I've read very, very, few comments, on any site, from people who claim to "like" Unity. At best it's more of a "it's not as bad as everyone says".

<comment><USER21> Unity is the best desktop I've ever used.

<comment><USER22> Have you used other desktops?

<comment><USER21> Windows since 3.1 (though I was never an every day user of Vista and 7), OS X pre-Lion, GNOME 2, KDE 3.

OS X has a better combination of desktop quality and application support, but if Unity could magically run OS X apps, I don't think I'd ever use or recommend anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > maybe the time is ripe for us to strenghten our positions in the server and > desktop markets?

I always thought GNOME was a desktop system.

Not sure how they plan to take that desktop system and target it as a server platform?

<comment><USER24> There may be a market for Apple-like Linux server admin tools. [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/the-server- simplified-a...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/the-server-simplified-a- power-users-guide-to-os-x-server/)

<comment><USER10> But will people pay for these?

<comment><USER24> Of course, I meant "market" in the Linux sense. People won't pay for any of this GNOME stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While I agree with the gist of what he says, I disagree with his assessment of Unity. Specifically he compares it with Eazel and Ximian, but I think its different in that it has much more user acceptance, the backing of a much more popular distro, and is much more refined and mainstream than those projects. It won't topple gnome, but it will take much more market share.

<comment><USER26> It's not clear to me that it really has significantly more user acceptance. Unity was likewise the subject of much criticism, and drove many Ubuntu users away (like me, ironically to Fedora/Gnome3).

What saved Unity, I think, is firstly that it had time to get farther along the development curve before Canonical released it into the wild as the default (where Fedora 15 was shockingly rough around the edges) and second that Ubuntu has become the default development environment for cooking Android images, drawing a bunch of new users who aren't attached to the old Gnome 2 models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I used GNOME 3 for awhile. Of all the heavy, DE-style desktops, I like GNOME 3. I use Awesome WM more often because it's lighter and saves precious battery on my laptop, but GNOME 3 is zippy and mostly stays out of my way.

As long as you can access a terminal quickly, everything else is really window dressing.

</comment><comment><USER28> The future of GNOME: <http://mate-desktop.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be a common reaction to new major versions. After KDE4 came out people also started their own KDE3 fork: <http://www.trinitydesktop.org/about.php>

<comment><USER15> And that was despite KDE4 being much more similar to KDE3 than GNOME 3 is to GNOME 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could someone using gnome3 here comment on the status of multi monitor support?

<comment><USER29> I have my laptop hooked up to two external displays (three displays total) and it works great. Originally in gnome 3, when it came to virtual workspaces your non-primary displays were fixed, but they added an option to allow virtual workspaces on all displays.

<comment><USER10> Awesome - thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Actor Ben Affleck Testifies Before Congress as an African Expert  - <AUTHOR> http://www.voanews.com/content/actor-ben-affleck-testifies-before-congress-as-an-african-expert/1860170.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the full hearing: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqyaQKd5kk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqyaQKd5kk)

Very interesting from an actor. Real issue.</comment>


People can be identified by the way they dance - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/science/dance-style-identification/ <comment><AUTHOR> /s/by the way they dance/by the way they move</comment>


You got your Erlang in my Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://brainspl.at/articles/2009/04/30/you-got-ur-ruby-in-my-erlang

<comment><USER2> We're using Nanite on a project for delivering e-mails in the background (for now). We have bigger plans for it, but its pretty easy to get running once you get RabbitMQ going.

It has also been running really well in production, though no real load to speak of yet. However, we also run an ejabberd server which has been bullet proof, as are most erlang servers of decent maturity.

Being able to run any number of agents and have them be load balanced with Nanite out of the box, and also add and remove agents from the system flexibly and at will is great.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is the title showing (.brainspl.at) ? Is it a bug? Just checked some other submissions from country domains - there are .ca, .in, .co.uk and they all are fine.

<comment><USER4> yes i think it is a bug in yc with .at domains as anytime my blog shows up here it has that dot in front of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. How far does it scale, in terms of number of agents, without needing to change the way you do things?

2\. Does this need to run on a LAN or is it possible to spread the agents across the Internet at multiple sites?

<comment><USER4> 1\. So far I have tested it with 2000 agents and was not pushing the limit of the broker, rabbitmq is know to handle a lot more connections then this. my goals/estimations will be around probably 5k agents per rabbit cluster with a need to federate/shard nanite systems after they grow that big.

2\. This works on LAN or across the net transparently, so it can be used across data centers easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> awesome! I love this. Now I can finally build my Ruby Web Crawler. Thanks Ezra.</comment>


Erlang spam considered harmful - <AUTHOR>

What in hell is going on with the Erlang spam - is it a coordinated front page takeover attempt or a flash mob? <comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145>

<comment><AUTHOR> If I'd found this earlier I wouldn't have bothered posting... oh well - <USER2> little unintentional karma whoring won't hurt the site too badly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm... or is it someone running an experiment to see if everything with 'Erlang' in the title will be upvoted?</comment>


What languages and tools do you use for cluster computing? - <AUTHOR>

I've recently come into possession of an account on a research computing cluster. This is for bioinformatics work at a university. For the past few years I've been interested in parallelism-friendly functional languages like Haskell, but in my actual work I haven't come across anything that C, Python and Bash can't handle easily. So this seems like a great opportunity to try the weird stuff.
Most scientists seem to get by using MPI with C, C++ or Fortran. Naturally I'll learn how to do that, too, but I strongly suspect that this traditional route tends to result in sprawling, complex code that's difficult to debug. There must be a better way. Ocaml and Python have MPI interfaces, too; Scala seems to be designed for distributed computing on existing platforms.
And the platform is a limitation, too. The interactive node on this cluster shows a few stable packages to work with: GCC 3.4.6, Java 1.6, Python 2.3 (with a broken numpy), and of course the MPI suite. Nothing exotic; CVS and SVN for version control. I think this means Erlang and Haskell are ruled out, unless they're compiled to C or JVM bytecode first -- any VM must be available on all the nodes if the code's going to run. Right?
So, what do you use? Or, what would you use in this situation? <comment><USER2> I used OpenMosix and a modified version of john the ripper to build a distributed password cracker, back before rainbow tables.

OpenMosix is linux with a modified kernel and some user-space tools; nodes automatically join the cluster, processes get migrated across the cluster to equalize load across all the systems.

It's not as elegant as it could be, but it's quick and dirty.

</comment><comment><USER3> i learned on C with MPI. it really isn't that difficult. the trick is just to minimize the complexity and operations within the parallelized area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh. Then, why the fuss about Occam, Fortress, Hadoop, et al? Is there another, hairier area of HPC these languages and technologies are meant for, where scientists rarely need to tread? Or are most scientists deliberately avoiding those areas because of the hairiness?

<comment><USER4> Depends on what you want to do as well. Hadoop is not the appropriate solution for doing molecular dynamics simulations. You also have to look at the support system. Something like LAPACK makes Fortran very attractive for numerical programming.

What kinds of algorithms are you trying to implement?

<comment><AUTHOR> For research, right now I'm looking for better ways to visualize the results of Chain analysis on a set of sequences. (This probably doesn't actually need a cluster.) We're looking at evolutionary relationships between protein families.

I just started a graduate program, so I'll have to do a range of things for classes -- which is why I have some leeway to pick up a new language and stagger through a few numerical programs now if it will help me get things done quickly later, when it matters.

<comment><USER4> It's probably worth your while to take a loop at Hadoop them. When you can fundamentally map your problem into many small problems and then reduce the results (true for most sequence alignment, etc problems), then Hadoop is very viable. Not exactly common fare these days, but getting more popular and perhaps increasingly so. Plus you don't really have to learn new languages, just a distributed computing framework.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to generate API documentation from .md/.rst files? - <AUTHOR> How would you go about generating single-page API documentation using either .md or .rst files? Is there a managed service available? Something like Stripe docs: https://stripe.com/docs/api <comment><USER2> I can recommend you to use something like [https://docuapi.com/](https://docuapi.com/) for Hugo (golang-based static site generator).

If you fell in love with NodeJS and something like Vue, I'll recommend to use VuePress. Very impressive and fast.

Both of these is easy to use. All you need to setup is CI config and deploy static documentation anywhere you want.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's an actual API documentation standard called Blueprint API with some tools for this. [https://apiblueprint.org](https://apiblueprint.org)</comment>


Are We All Synesthetes? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=545 <comment><USER2> Synesthesia, at first blush, seems to be something that would be very difficult to study, since it involves the subjective experience of the subject. If you claim to see certain numbers in color, I either have to take your word for it or declare you crazy. But actually there are some very clever tests that have been developed that provide some confirmation that synesthesia is a real effect. Number-color synesthetes can very rapidly identify a shape hidden in this image: <http://mindbluff.com/syn3.gif> while non-synesthetes must do a very slow manual search (the shape is hi-lighted here: <http://mindbluff.com/syn4.gif>).

The theory of cross-wiring as the neuronal basis of synesthesia very suggestive and there may be other instances of it in other domains. For example, on the human sensory homunculus, the representation for the feet and toes are located right beside the representation for the genitals. Some degree of cross-wiring in that region could explain foot fetishes. Likewise the sensory-cortical representation of the nipple is adjacent to the earlobe, and so on and so forth.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I have number-color synesthesia but that test does nothing for me; I couldn't make out the image at all. For that test to work I would think that one would literally have to "see" the color of a number almost as though it were a hallucination.

I can only speak for myself obviously, but for me a number just invokes a certain color in my mind, almost as though the number has an aura. Two, for example, is blue-green, whereas five is just sort of black on white. But looking at a grey 2 on a background, I just see a grey 2 on a background... nothing more, unfortunately.

It was interesting nonetheless, just thought I'd share my own experience.

<comment><USER2> I suspect that there are varying degrees of synesthesia that range from the aura you describe to full-on hallucination. I have a friend that has an aural- color synesthesia who tells me that listening to music in the car (or for that matter having a conversation) is very difficult because the colors get in the way of her driving.

In any event, perhaps even in your case you could perform that test (or another like it) statistically significantly faster than persons without synesthesia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the bouba and kiki example, maybe the reason we associate shapes with sounds is because we already have words in our vocabulary that are associated with similar shapes?

For example, bouba is similar to bubble, which has no sharp edges. Kiki is similar to cut.

It'd be more interesting if you found similar associations in people who speak a completely different language with different origins.

<comment><USER5> If I were to graph myself speaking those two words I expect I would have two spikes on the k's of kiki, but bouba would be generally flatter.

We probably have abstractions, connotations, that these sounds share with the physical ideas of sharpness and soft-formed-ness (what word am I looking for). Then, we likely choose our words against these abstract connotations.

That's what I guess before I would look at your explanation as right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I've never thought of this as synesthesia, or really given it much thought at all, but I think I exhibit the visual motion to sound symptom sometimes. It's rare, seemed to be more common during high school years (I'm 21 now). If it was really quiet and usually when I was relaxed and alone, it was almost as if the ambiance would get progressively louder. I'm not sure if it was associated with visual motion or repositioning my eyes, but I would also hear whooshing sounds. It seemed like I could also hear faint sounds louder, like typing or the creaking of a chair. At times it would actually get annoying, but it would go away when I went about and did something to take my mind off of it. Since the beginning of the year, I can only remember it happening once, for about half an hour .

</comment><comment><USER7> > Are We All Synesthetes?

Well, probably. See taste vs smell. But on the whole, not the interesting types, since by definition the interesting types are rare.

<comment><USER6> I don't know if that's actually an example. While the perception of flavor is derived from both taste and smell, I don't think the two actually overlap. Although, you can certainly smell and taste something at the same time.</comment></comment>


Inside the BBC's R&D Labs - <AUTHOR> http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/23/reg_hardware_goes_inside_bbc_research_and_development_labs/

<comment><USER2> I read BBC D&D Labs and it all appeared more exciting...</comment>


Intel Acquires AI Chipmaker Habana Labs for $2B - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/12/16/intel-acquires-habana-labs-for-2b/#4d1a484519f9 <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that this is Intel's second acquisition of an AI chipmaker. They had acquired Nervana for $400M in 2016 - but now seem to be abandoning it in favor of Habana's chips. They would need to redo the Nervana software stack to work with Habana. As per the article, one of the reasons is:

 _" Nervana's Neural Network Processor (NNP-T) uses a proprietary interconnect for scaling, while Habana's Gaudi can scale to thousands of nodes over standard 100Gb Ethernet."_</comment>


Much of U.S. Was Insulated From Housing Bust - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/03/30/much-of-us-was-insulated-from-housing-bust/

<comment><USER2> Much geographically, or in terms of population? There's a lot of green spots out there where there aren't many people.</comment>


OpenMoney and the Community Currency Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.openmoney.org/letsplay/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Also worth a look:

<http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher></comment>


The Online Private Sale Trend Packs Its Bags - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/the-online-private-sale-trend-packs-its-bags/ <comment><USER2> Can the title of this be changed to something more clear? When I first read it, I thought it was talking about how the trend to sell businesses online (online private sale) - the way Kiko was sold on ebay - is no longer popular ('packing its bags')

EDIT: yes I know the NYTimes has that title. Doesn't mean it's clear.

</comment><comment><USER3> The 'private travel sale' is one area where Europeans have long been out- innovating American companies. Voyage Prive (www.voyageprive.com) was founded back in 2004 and is pretty huge. Surprised the Times didn't mention them, since they just expanded to America this week.

<comment><USER4> How are they out-innovating American companies?</comment></comment>


What are YC founders made of? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pairwise.com/2007/03/24/what-are-y-combinator-founders-made-of/ <comment><USER2> _"- Tend to have trouble empathizing with others."_

That's bad news:

 _"And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work."_ \-- <http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html></comment>


Ask HN: How do you choose where you want to work? - <AUTHOR> Let me preface this by saying that I recognize that having choice in where you want to/can work is an incredible privilege. Senior Software Engineers, especially those in Silicon Valley have a huge amount of opportunities available to them.<p>What frameworks/mental models do you use to sift through all of these opportunities and choose what's right for you? How do you avoid analysis paralysis? <comment><USER2> I look at the important people in the team besides the leader. What do they have on their resumes? Are they competent? And how long has the team been together?

If there are competent people, but there is a lot of churn happening, or there are incompetent people who have been around long, something usually isn't working.

Good people always have options to leave. And if they have hung around (my random number is 2 years atleast) its a good sign to me, that its a healthy team.</comment>


Ask HN: Would You Cut the Cord? - <AUTHOR>

Just cut the cord for Cable/Internet/Phone and am now solely on Internet at $55/month. So far, so good. Is there anyone else on YCombinator who has done this as well? <comment><USER2> By 'phone' do you just mean landline? If so, I've done this as well last year. And I was on Vonage for a 'landline' for several years before that.

</comment><comment><USER3> what do you do for mobile?</comment>


Facebook to Research Ad-Free Subscription-Based Version - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-04/facebook-is-said-to-research-ad-free-subscription-based-version <comment><USER2> They would presumably still harvest user data, it would just be less obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> The real power of Facebook is the trove of user data that they obtain through the freemium where the "user is the product". It will be really interesting to see the subscription price and how many users will end up actually paying for the service and to what extent a subscribed user's data collection is stopped is yet to be seen.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd bet that as soon as a potential paid version leads to greater benefits than aesthetics, people will be up in arms against whatever treatment free users won't get.

Facebook would poison their free tier and stale their remaining ad audience.

... and I wish I could see how this would work, because I hate ads so much I can't use the current Facebook app at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> This would be lovely - it will take a long time to regain people's trust (knowing the _current_ Facebook they'd still stalk you even if you pay), but if it happens then it will be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes please.

<comment><USER7> I'm a SlimSocial user. I'd want FB to stop trying to force the fucking Facebook Messenger app onto Android users on the "touch.facebook.com" interface.

But I use Facebook heavily enough to warrant paying for it. I certainly use it more than some of the stuff I have on Patreon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> like i'd trust that to happen properly</comment>


React Native for Windows Performance Chart - <AUTHOR> https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/11/07/memory.jpg <comment><USER2> The topic is interesting, but just submitting the chart doesn't help a lot. Mind providing a source for the chart, or even resubmit the entire article?

<comment><AUTHOR> The source was the talk at Ignite last year.

[https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81326](https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81326)</comment></comment>


Linden Lab is building a spiritual sequel to Second Life - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/view/news/219609/Linden_Lab_is_building_a_spiritual_sequel_to_Second_Life.php

<comment><USER2> I'm currently making my living on a game that's hosted within Second Life, [http://mossms.com](http://mossms.com). I used to work for Linden Lab. It's good to see them trying to move forward. I've long felt like the people there mostly don't understand Second Life, what draws people to it, what makes it special, or what it could be. There's a future in virtual worlds, but I'll be very surprised if that future is brought to us by Linden Lab. They've been kind of adrift for a few years. Maybe they'll get their groove back!

<comment><USER3> I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on what this future for virtual worlds would look like. The entire notion of Second Life has perplexed me. Perhaps you could write a blog post about Second Life, the issues with Linden Lab, and your vision.

<comment><USER4> I was a hardcore Second Life player for a few years.

It's a chat room with a built in 3d building and scripting language.

Or at least that's what it was most days to the people I played with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That read as a press release a la Paul Graham's "Submarine" article. I've been a member of Second Life for about seven years now, and for all its original promise, its dying. Soooo slowly, but it is. I doubt it will actually fold for many years to come, if ever, but the rosy picture in this release sounds more like a desperate PR move than anything.

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER6> All the article really says is that they are beginning to build a successor to Second Life. Do you dispute this?

<comment><USER7> One must look behind the release. It's not as if there's some kind of deception here, but more "Wait, if their main game, their bread and butter is in great shape, why are they releasing a direct successor instead of improving the main?"

It is a valid question.

Second Life is truly dying - I've been there on and off for ten years.

If not through Linden Lab's horrible mismanagement, through simple attrition as there simply isn't anything to do there anymore. The novelty has worn off. We're well past the days when a well scripted game gets ported outside of that ecosystem and turned into a Gameboy title[1]. We're well past the days where someone can make a ton of money selling virtual land[2].

The value proposition isn't there anymore. The starry-eyed excitement that surrounded both Linden Lab and the player base when the world was in its early days has been replaced by cynicism and apathy.

I'd say rebuilding the game with what they've learned in mind is probably the only way to shake things up. Hence the upcoming sequel.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tringo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tringo)

[2] [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/AnsheChung_Bus...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/AnsheChung_BusinessWeek_Cover.gif)

<comment><USER8> From a business point of view, Second Life is a huge success. Just in the last few years, it's been massively profitable. Hence why Linden Labs has been able to fund so many new projects at once (I think they are working on four new games now?)

So, saying that it's "dying" is overstating things a bit. They found their niche (whatever the hell niche they are serving), and there's little motivation to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The article mentions that it could be a reference to High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's new project. However, it couldn't be that, because Hi Fidelity is totally open source, and the article also mentions that this world will be closed source.

<comment><USER9> SL could be using High Fidelity code (it's permissively licensed), we can't tell. But yeah, I assume these are separate things. There are lots of next-gen virtual worlds platforms, 1 or 2 more is not that surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Spiritual sequel to SL, so this time the flying dicks are to be worshipped?

<comment><USER11> If a joke about the spiritual thing was needed, I would have worked in the _second_ life angle. Looks promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still can't get why people waste life in virtual worlds.

<comment><USER13> Escaping from a shitty real life. Overworked and underpaid? Clinically depressed? Cut off from social contact? You can leave it all behind and step into a fantasy where you are beautiful, live in a comfortable place, and where there are people who will actually talk to you. Do it long enough and your entire social circle lives online.

<comment><USER14> From what I recall one of the groups that seemed to be heavily represented in Second Life was stay-at-home mums, who were obviously limited in how much they could go out and socialise in the real world.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Uncover and filter critically acclaimed content on netflix- no autoplay - <AUTHOR> https://whatisontonight.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! I have always had a hard time finding something decent to watch on Netflix, even though I really like good films. I built this tool to filter and discover decent Netflix content. Thanks for checking it out!

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks good, except: Would it be possible to include other countries than US and CA? I'm in DK and the selection available to me is vastly different from that of US and CA.</comment>


I got my iPhone's battery replaced, and I'm angry Apple didn't tell me to sooner - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/1/17066242/iphone-battery-replacement-slowing-old-phones-waste-repair <comment><USER2> I have a 6S from the original batch with the bad batteries. I never had it replaced because it worked fine (a coworker's most certainly did not), and it made a good excuse for a free replacement later down the line.

Now that it's finally acting up, I'm in waitlist hell because of the advent of the battery replacement program. I've been on the wait list for our local repair shop for about a month now, it's pretty crazy. They said they've had hundreds of people sign up.

<comment><USER3> I would hope that it gets done sooner than later. Had a 6S with a serial from a bad batch and sent it to Apple for repair/replacement. They refused to fix it citing "3rd party modifications" with no further explanation or evidence. It wasn't until I escalated the issue up 3 levels and provided photos of the phone in stellar condition at the time of shipping did they finally back down. The experience bothered me so much that I switched to Android. Your post made me realize that perhaps engineers are so overwhelmed with 6S repairs that they are just declining them.

<comment><USER4> I don't know your situation but usually this has to do with parts replaced by a 3rd party. Usually a cracked screen done by a non-official technician.

They do scan ids of parts inside a device before repairing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anecdotally my wife got her battery (6) replaced recently and has noticed a similar change in her phone in terms of performance and reliability.

</comment><comment><USER5> My Nexus 5 still runs for a week on battery. I believe Apple shipped low quality batteries as part of the planned obsolescence.

It's like committing two bugs. By themselves, they aren't a problem, but together, they open an NSA backdoor. If anyone is caught, they have plausible deniability.

Same here with Apple. They're so evil, they though ahead on how to avoid punishment for doing bad things. They'll skip off to the bank with bags of money while ignorant iPhone buyers just keep buying more iPhones instead of a quality device.

<comment><USER6> My newish Pixel 2 lasts about 14-24 hours on battery. It's not great.

<comment><USER7> My Pixel 2 is lasting me 6 hours after the latest software update (February 5th patch?). One month ago it was great. Now I have to recharge it twice a day. I'm not happy about that.

<comment><USER6> 6 hours might be just enough to convince support to give you a replacement. It worked for my 5X, and it ended up being a full refund of the original (2 yr prior) price, due to some shipping issue (it never shipped). Give it a try!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I replaced my battery 5 minutes ago. It died, I have a spare. Why would you buy a phone where a savvy end user is afraid to replace the battery? Sure, the problem may be apple, but its really you.

<comment><USER9> He's not the problem.

It closer to companies and people like you, who assumes a consumer having to be a "savvy end user" to enjoy a $500-$700 product.

Developers get it, but most people would have no clue the battery on a phone could be the reason for no/bad performance.</comment></comment>


One in 50 combatants in Afghanistan is a Robot. - <AUTHOR> http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/04/last-look-war-of-the-machines/ <comment><USER2> One of the benefits of nuclear weapons was that they made total war too costly to contemplate. Any leader considering it would have to weigh the cost of a billion lives versus whatever his country sought to gain.

While I like the idea that robots vs robots could reduce the number of lives lost, I worry that it will also make war an easy option to choose.

Edit: Compare it to police tasers vs. guns. A decrease in lethality results in an increase in the application of weapons. Jevon's paradox for violence.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't change the nuclear calculus.

It's also worth at least pondering the question of whether or not a "war" of robot on robot is as big a deal in the concrete as human vs. human. I don't have an answer, I could argue in either direction. It's an interesting question. Especially when you try to consider second-order effects.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't the beneficial effects of using robots be like the beneficial effects of a broken window?

You are still destroying industrial production and diverting other production into warfare / war-related devices.

<comment><USER3> I would agree that one conceivable economic failure case would be an endless incentive to pour resources into war, instead of real wealth.

In fact one can argue that Orwell's 1984 had this economic setup. IIRC he explicitly had it set up so that all excess economic output went into an endless war, so that the proles never got wealthy enough to have enough spare time to rise up. He never addressed the question of how the military was structured but in a way it makes even more sense for the militaries to be fully robotic, rather than placing humans in command of powerful machines that could be used to start a coup against the State.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Grumman X-47B verbiage may have come back through a time portal. The X-47B had its first test flight on February 7th. It's a little soon be doing carrier landings and operational deployments. Carrier trials are slated for 2013.[1]

The cost is stunning. The entire 6 year program cost appears to be only about $600m. That is, the whole development was done for the cost of about 4 manned fighters.

[1] There is a similar looking, much more secret Lockheed RQ-170 operational in Afghanistan, but it probably doesn't carry 2+ tons of bombs.

</comment><comment><USER6> Combat robotics goes back further than I thought. I found mention of Soviet 'teletanks' being used in the 30s-40s - the remote controlled armed robots being developed at the moment look a bit puny by comparison :)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletank> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster- Miller_TALON>

<comment><USER7> The Goliath tracked mine wikipedia entry linked in the teletank entry was something interesting I've never heard of before (although I hadn't heard of the teletank either).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 9 in 10 combatants in Afghanistan is a grenade.

At least for the moment, robots don't kill people, people kill people using a variety of weapons including robots.

</comment><comment><USER9> An RC car with a camera and a shotgun is not a robot any more than a toy you buy at Radio Shack or a hobby shop.

<comment><USER10> I would call both of those things robots. Why would you say that they aren't?

<comment><USER6> From what I can tell, the ground based bots don't have any onboard intelligence - they require an operator at a remote terminal at all times, more like telepresence than autonomous or even semi-autonomous robotics. In contrast, the UAVs presumably have the equivalent of an autopilot, and the X-47B referred to in the article appears to have a very good one. The equivalent ground-based robot would probably be something like a backpack scout that you could chuck into a building and have it autonomously map it.

<comment><USER9> Definitely the X-47B could be called a robot (or an autonomous, mobile robot if robot takes on the broader definition used by a few of the other commenters). I wonder how it reacts if it is engaged or damaged. Does try to self-preserve by evading or moving to a safe place without human interaction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "One in 50 combatants in Afghanistan is a robot"

Uh. No. There is one robot for every 50 _US_ soldiers. The Taliban are not using many robots at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to see a number like this derived from manufacturing. Seems to me much innovation is going on there, albeit quietly.</comment>


The iMac Touch: unifying OS X and iOS? - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2010/08/the-mother-lode-welcome-to-the-imac-touch.html

<comment><USER2> I think it's rather scary to have a moderated app store on a desktop computer.

<comment><USER3> Scary in the sense that many inexpert users would find it helpful to have a curated store for applications on their desktop with a simple, reliable payment mechanism, no installation headaches, and no/signficantly-less malware?</comment></comment>


An upcoming Flask screencast series that saves you 500+ hours of dev time - <AUTHOR> http://buildasaaswithflask.com/#what-is-included <comment><USER2> Is there any free content available?</comment>


Fewer Roads, Less Congestion - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008957.html

<comment><USER2> I'm reading "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. It's about Robert Moses, who was responsible for building much of the road infrastructure around NYC, and many of the bridges into and between the boroughs.

Several of the bridges he built were done so to alleviate traffic, but traffic was always _worse_ after the bridge opened up. There were two main problems: more people wanted to use the "fast" routes, and the total volume of traffic increased.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wireless routing advice to individual vehicles and/or dynamic tolls (or other 'soft walls') can probably achieve optimality without blocking any roads.

</comment><comment><USER4> it didn't work like this in SimCity.

<comment><USER5> Actually, in Simcity 4, with the patch that improved pathfinding, with elongated blocks, and one way roads that inhibited stoplights, congestion measurably decreased for I and the other urban planning nerds at simtropolis who were odd enough to measure it.

Christopher Alexander mentioned an effect similar to this in "A Pattern Language". The result is due to something different though: less stoplights, less stops! In this case the problem is related to edge network flow.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I did buy SimCity 4 and attempted to get a city going. However, it was so different from SimCity 2000 that I had some problems with infrastruture not working right and other stuff. Mostly I think I was just burned out!

I do like the idea of narrower streets to slow people down rather than using stoplights and stop signs. This also increases the ability for pedestrians and cyclists to feel that they are welcome, rather than an afterthought.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tool that generates a report on how to reduce your webpack bundle size - <AUTHOR> https://webpack.jakoblind.no/optimize <comment><USER2> I'd love to see a demo. You should take a leaf from the other tools in this space and provide a sample son file to inspect.

[https://webpack.github.io/analyse/](https://webpack.github.io/analyse/)</comment>