Special-Use Domain 'home.arpa.' - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8375 <comment><USER2> Just in case you're wondering, as I was ...

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

> While the name was originally the acronym for the Advanced Research Projects > Agency (ARPA), the funding organization in the United States that developed > one of the precursors of the Internet (ARPANET), it now stands for Address > and Routing Parameter Area.

<comment><USER3> That's a brilliant trick to depoliticise an essential part of the DNS.

<comment><USER4> In my town Waterloo Lutheran University became Wilfrid Laurier University. I thoroughly enjoy backronyms.

<comment><USER5> Not a backroynym, but King County, Washington retroactively changed which person named "King" is its namesake.

<comment><USER6> There was a school called "J. Edgar Hoover School", which changed so it was named after Herbert Hoover

[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-06-26/news/940626022...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-06-26/news/9406260229_1_pta- honored-president)

<comment><USER5> Shame that that article puts "cross-dressing" on par with "wire-tapping, Constitution-stomping, blackmailing, bully". We've come a long way, and still have a long way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In case this issue on pages 7-8 is overlooked:

 _Because 'home.arpa.' is not globally scoped and cannot be secured using DNSSEC based on the root domain's trust anchor, there is no way to tell, using a standard DNS query, in which homenet scope an answer belongs. Consequently, users may experience surprising results with such names when roaming to different homenets.

To prevent this from happening, it could be useful for the resolver on the host to securely differentiate between different homenets and between identical names on different homenets. However, a mechanism for doing this has not yet been standardized and doing so is out of scope for this document. It is expected that this will be explored in future work._

<comment><USER8> In case people wonder why .home was not picked. One of the many issues here is that the current policy for the root DNS zone is that all new delegations from the root zone have to support DNSSEC. So they have to have DS records.

Given that the IETF specifically needed to "home" zone to be unsigned, that would result in lengthy process to change the policy for the root zone. The root zone is managed by ICANN who implement the IANA function. And then operationally managed by Verisign.

In the end using something under .arpa, solved a lot of issues.

It is quite possible that the IETF could have allocated .home because it is currently unused. But that would still require solving the technical issues.

At the same time, as long as there is wide spread use of .home, ICANN cannot really allocate that as a new gTLD.

So it should be sort of safe to continue to use that. But "homenet" compliant routers should come with home.arpa preconfigured.

<comment><USER7> Why not just reserve .home permanently so that it won't be allocated and tell people to use it? Does that somehow result in more bogus traffic to root and other DNS servers?

Between the lines, I read that ICANN doesn't give a f- about home users. Home users are not on the ICANN board (they've never heard of ICANN), don't give presentations at conferences or write papers, don't talk shop over lunch with ICANN members ... home users are invisible and have no voice. 'So here's this kludge that requires zero effort from us, is probably a little confusing for you[0] - we hope you like it because we're not doing anything more.'

<comment><USER8> The question is then who should reserve it?

The IETF can ask for domain names for technical reasons, i.e. as part of internet standards.

ICANN can allocate domains as gTLDs but doesn't have mandate/policy to reserve names without using them. Effectively .home is reserved because there is too much use to safely allocate it.

Finally, IETF can recognise .home as a special domain that is used locally. But that didn't work out because an insecure delegation is needed for DNSSEC.

Purely formally, ICANN has 'at large' structures that represent the interests of users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I still sometimes see .arpa in my server logs. I don't know if it's a spoof, or a misconfiguration, or just cruft, but it's there.

(I still miss Australia being .oz, instead of .au.)

<comment><USER10> in-addr.arpa is the reverse zone.

<comment><USER11> That's the legacy reverse zone, the state of the art reverse zone is ip6.arpa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is good for small stuff but most people should just register their own domain name.

It's so cheap now and such a benefit to have a publicly-accessible and publicly-reserved address. There's no need to make your DNS records publicly- accessible although it's often convenient and rarely a risk.

<comment><USER13> This is for residential networks - that is by definition small stuff. Registering a domain and running DNS is overkill for most residential networks, and well beyond the skill level and time commitment warranted for home use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In other words, they got a lot of money and then they sold the .home tld.

<comment><USER15> Not the case.

> In response to the report, ICANN labeled the .home and .corp strings as > "high risk" and proposed that neither of the strings be delegated until it > could be proven that risk is low. These two strings are currently severely > delayed and some community members guess they may never be delegated.

[https://icannwiki.org/.home](https://icannwiki.org/.home)

<comment><USER16> I just setup a brand new LAN for a client and used ".corp" for the internal DNS TLD.

[https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-chapin- rfc2606bis-00.html](https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-chapin-rfc2606bis-00.html)

> _Recommendation (2) of SAC 045 calls for the community to develop principles > for "prohibiting the delegation of additional strings to those already > identified in RFC2606 [RFC2606]." As the first step in that process, based > on the data reported by SAC 045, this document adds to the list of names > that may not be used for top-level domains the following labels:_

> _.local, .localdomain, .domain, .lan, .home, .host, .corp_

Now it seems like those TLD may be sold in the future? 1&1 is even "pre- registering" those TLDs.

<comment><USER17> You should not have done that.

* [http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-use-domain-names-that-you-own.html](http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-use-domain-names-that-you-own.html)

<comment><USER18> Wow, I think I need a shower to wash off the arrogance that came from just _reading_ that page. I'd agree in premise, but officially, not even ICANN owns them; they only manage them. You shouldn't use them because of plenty of reasons. But you're totally allowed to, sysadmins everywhere will just hate you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, my home LAN does indeed use .home.

Is this going to fuck that up?

<comment><USER20> Nope. This merely specifies that home.arpa is reserved for uses such as yours. It would probably be a good idea to switch to using home.arpa in case .home is ever allocated in the future, though that doesn't seem likely right now.

<comment><USER21> You have been spied upon. Our bad, we will ignore legit citizens at home.arpa

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've seen .local and .lan DNS suffixes and assumed that they were specified in a standard somewhere. Perhaps not.

<comment><USER23> I don't think they're standard. The RFC references "Special-Use Domain Names" [1] which contains a list of special use domains.

I'm confused about ".local" though. It's reserved for Multicast DNS? [2]

[1]: [https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain- names/sp...](https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain- names/special-use-domain-names.xhtml)

[2]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762#page-67](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762#page-67)

<comment><USER24> .local has always been confusing

<comment><USER25> Resolving a .local domain name works like this.

      $ dig -p 5353 raspberrypi.local @184.108.40.206

      ; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> -p 5353 raspberrypi.local @22.214.171.124
      ;; global options: +cmd
      ;; Got answer:
      ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 21640
      ;; flags: qr aa; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

      ;; QUESTION SECTION:
      ;raspberrypi.local.		IN	A

      ;; ANSWER SECTION:
      raspberrypi.local.	10	IN	A	192.168.1.175

A DNS query packet is to the multicast address 184.108.40.206 and UDP port 5353. All devices on your network that are listening on that address will see the query (e.g. Linux systems with avahi-daemon or Macs running mDNSResponder). The device whose name is raspberryi will respond. RFC6762 should have all the details.

<comment><USER26> mDNS is cool and all, but I wish they would've picked a slightly-more-specific TLD. ".local" is the natural suffix for LANs, and making computers confused about whether they should resolve that via multicast or standard DNS techniques wasn't very nice. Something like ".mdns" or ".zeroconf" would've been a lot better.

<comment><USER27> mDNS is roughly the equivalent of going door-to-door in the LAN and asking anybody if they've heard of "Greg", so it I don't think it is that confusing that it gets .local, especially given the circumstances that lead to relying on mDNS in that most LANs don't have authoritative DNS servers.

<comment><USER26> It's not that the name doesn't make sense, it's just that it collides with a very common TLD for LANs. It shouldn't be squatting on a name humans want to use. Computers are unlikely to do the correct thing when you ping a .local on a network that uses that suffix, because they have to decide how to handle the potential name collision (which is still somewhat frequent, more than 15 years later).

<comment><USER27> It's the other way around, though? .local's usage on LANs prior to the RFC was squatting on a non-reserved TLD. The RFC finally reserved the TLD for an appropriate usage. The name applies equally to both usages, the usages can live side-by-side, and the RFC is even kind enough to support that (though as you point out frequently don't always work as expected), even though it didn't need to take into account backwards compatibility with "squatters".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's a shame, I liked the previous .home

<comment><USER29> There's a good chance that .home will be reserved forever simply because it and a lot of other names have widespread internal use.

[https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-chapin- rfc2606bis-00.html](https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-chapin-rfc2606bis-00.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: OttoPost – Automatic Instagram Postcards - <AUTHOR> https://www.ottopost.com <comment><AUTHOR> I recently built this service as a side project and would love to get some feedback. Printing is currently done via Lob (YC S13).

</comment><comment><USER2> I like it. Can I send a postcard out of the US? Also, how didn't something like this exist before?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Right now I'm just doing delivery within the US to keep pricing simple and get initial feedback, but I hope to add international delivery soon.</comment></comment>


A letter to today's young people - <AUTHOR> https://marco.org/2016/11/11/letter-to-young-people <comment><USER2> Not the best message to young people: that puts people on either "the good, progressive side" or the "bad, conservative side". This is what creates the divisive, no-compromise society we see today. In addition, for some folks, it will seem like someone is telling them how to think.

The world is often more mixed than you'd think. For example, it's not like Trump supporters all absolutely reject progressive ideals. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-voters-climate- cha...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-voters-climate-change- poll_us_572a3072e4b0bc9cb0455ee4)

<comment><USER3> Americans need to stop dividing themselves into liberal and conservative. People are much more complex. This way of thinking is the best recipe for an eventual civil war and in the meantime it stops any reasonable political discourse.

<comment><USER4> Not really. Most of the population is near the middle and doesn't care how you label them. People on the fringes are loud. That's all you're hearing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of the best, kindest, most giving people I know are conservative. They're your firefighters, your nurses, your doctors, your mechanics, your teachers... Many, many people that are deep and complex and everything they believe is not wrong. This author would do well to acquaint himself with the side he demonizes and get to know people outside his bubble and the lens of propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER6> This piece is disturbingly ageist and naive in parts:

 _" That's not because you're inexperienced — it's because you're right. Your generation is, by definition, further ahead on the march of progress than everyone else. It is literally you who cause the progress as older people die and you rise into power."_

The exact same thing was claimed by the young generations who grew into adulthood along with the rise of multiple fascist and communist regimes. Sometimes change is progress and sometimes it's not. Assuming that new beliefs are correct _because_ they are new is dangerous and wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> If being liberal is right, why do a lot of people switch camps when they get older. You get less correct with age? Or maybe it's a little more complex than that?

<comment><USER8> I think in general people just want more stability as they get older, including protecting the wealth and status they've accumulated. Rightly or wrongly, this might encourage them to support the "conservative" side, which purports to want to protect the status quo and the way things were in "the good old days".

<comment><USER7> When dealing with the conservative, liberal divide I don't think right or wrong are the correct way to look at things. I myself have shifted from liberal to conservative. I don't think patting my self on the back saying I'm correct and congratulating everyone who agrees with me is productive. I want a better society for myself, my family and for everyone else. My view on the way to get there has changed, that doesn't make me better or worse than someone that wants to try a different way.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I think "a better society for myself, my family and for everyone else" is what a lot of people want. (I would have said it's what _most_ people want, except for the part about also wanting it "for everyone else".) Unfortunately, strategies for attempting to achieve a better society reside in an incredibly complex multi-dimensional space, but the media and the US political system force those strategies to be projected down onto a single dimension of liberal versus conservative, then discretized into two sides. The end result being that probably most people are unhappy with the way political discourse is carried out, but can't do anything productive about it. At least that's how I feel right now...

<comment><USER9> A lot of people I know feel that way too. We're all somebody's son or daughter. We may have sons or daughters of our own. I don't have kids, but I want to see a better world for my niece and nephews.It's really about the kids.

Things have been working Great for a lot of people in this country, but not for the average working person working 40 hours/week for $16k dollars/year.

It used to be we could expect our kids to have more opportunities than their parents, but that's no longer the case.

That's what we have to fix.

<comment><USER8> Sure. But while most of us are happy to work our asses off to improve our own status and our family's status, how many of us really put a significant amount of effort (time or money) into improving things for people who are worse off than we are? Especially when many of the people who need help seem to hold opinions that we find repugnant -- racism, sexism, LGBTQ hate, etc.

One thing this election has made clear to me is that we can't rely on the government to safeguard our society. The Republicans, of course, want to actively dismantle the government, while the Democrats (at least as represented by Clinton) will put in the minimum effort required to give the appearance of adequate progress to their base, while still effectively pursuing the same primary goal as the Republicans: further enrichment of the 1%. In other words, I don't see another New Deal or even a Great Society happening any time soon, unless there is a huge swing of the pendulum back in the other direction in 2018 and 2020.

I've been trying carefully not to turn this into a partisan rant. What I've really been wondering to myself the last few days is whether and how it's possible to effect positive change in society in a way that is scalable and routes around the brokenness of politics. (And preferably doesn't require me to quit my job and work for some broke-ass non-profit...)

<comment><USER7> Racism, sexism and homophobia are not issues the government need have a monopoly on. More good is done when attitudes are changed and hearts are won. I'm not sure the current approach of vilifying opponents will work. But most people have more compassion than they're given credit for. Engaging with people challenging false ideas and encouraging good ones can improve things. But in order for that to happen people from the differing views need to have contact and meaningful dialogue. I fear society is stratifying. Telling people they need to love people of other races, genders, sexual orientation and faiths while calling them nasty bigots sends mixed messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This piece isn't great. Sure, I agree that the election outcome was bad. In fact, I think it was an utter disaster. This piece tells young people (presumably, "millenials") not to worry, it'll be okay in the end. But it's too easily interpreted as "don't take action, it all works out in the end anyway".

A TON of millenials didn't vote in this election, and that's why the values they cherish (or will soon realize they cherish) will be trampled over. Marco's message isn't a call to action; instead it's placating. I hope someday we can look back and say "well, that was just a wrong turn." But goshdarnit, 3 days after the election is too early for that!

PS -- Like other commenters, I agree that this piece is a little too simplistic in its view of young=liberal=good and old=conservative=bad. I don't agree with that, and besides, it's a little tasteless to imply "don't worry, those people that disagree with you will die soon enough."

</comment><comment><USER11> > Obama didn't (and couldn't) fix everything Bush broke. But we did fix most > of it, and made a lot of progress in major new areas as well. Overall, we > came out way ahead.

The Drone and Stuxnet programs are far from a step forward. Every president seems to bring us to a worse state then before. It's not a political line that needs to be drawn but instead one of corruption.

</comment><comment><USER4> "we suffered through that horrific administration"

Thousands of Americans died and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's and Afgani's died. You obviously weren't one of them. Your weren't part of that. You went to college and lived your life in peace, but somehow you suffered as much as the people who watched their families die and their countries fall apart because your "conscience hurt".</comment>


Terrence Tao: "Hooked for Life" on math - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/23/tao.who.am.i/

<comment><USER2> Previously submitted:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293874>

But it looks like you submitted the canonical URL.</comment>


Efficient cache for gigabytes of data written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/allegro/bigcache <comment><USER2> > BigCache does not handle collisions. When new item is inserted and it's hash > collides with previously stored item, new item overwrites previously stored > value.

I'm not sure what hashing algorithm it is using, but this seems like a pretty undesirable property.

The code for the hash function is found here: [https://github.com/allegro/bigcache/blob/f64abe8f4fe2f5769bd...](https://github.com/allegro/bigcache/blob/f64abe8f4fe2f5769bd9bef5a2944a83ea673e7e/fnv.go#L19-L28)

        // Sum64 gets the string and returns its uint64 hash value.
        func (f fnv64a) Sum64(key string) uint64 {
            var hash uint64 = offset64
            for i := 0; i < len(key); i++ {
                hash ^= uint64(key[i])
                hash *= prime64
            }
            return hash
        }

The referenced `offset64` is `14695981039346656037` and the `prime64` is `1099511628211`.

I can find a reference to a similarly named `Sum64` function in [https://godoc.org/blainsmith.com/go/seahash#Sum64](https://godoc.org/blainsmith.com/go/seahash#Sum64) which indicates SeaHash is a non-cryptographic hash function and further considers `Sum64` to be a checksum function.

I'm guessing there's a lot more collisions possible here than otherwise expected.

<comment><USER3> It's using FNV-1a [1] which is indeed a non-cryptographic hash function and is a perfectly suitable choice for a hash table [2]. The goals are speed and low chance of collision, not security.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler%E2%80%93Noll%E2%80%93Vo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler%E2%80%93Noll%E2%80%93Vo_hash_function#FNV-1a_hash)

[2] [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4955...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/which- hashing-algorithm-is-best-for-uniqueness-and-speed)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for identifying the hash function in specific - that makes sense why it was in `fnv.go`!

My point is more to do with the fact that BigCache does not handle collisions at all, whereas the built in Go `map` almost certainly does.

Essentially, I can imagine that a Jepsen-like test would reveal that BigCache loses some percentage of writes (dependent on the data, of course).

Whether or not that is a problem depends entirely on your use case, of course.

<comment><USER3> While caches and maps share many of the same underlying properties, they serve very different purposes. Caches generally come with configurable size limits, eviction policies, and collision handling (overwriting is a simple solution). They are in no way designed to be durable data storage mechanisms.

<comment><USER4> So does it just serve completely incorrect data when a request for the 'old' cache key come in?

Seems like this would always be undesirable behavior for a cache?

It is definitely being advertised as a map-like structure, key goes in, bytes come out...

<comment><USER5> Haven't looked at the full implementation of BigCache, but typically, a cache would fetch the object and key from the data structure. If the full key doesn't match the requested key, then the cache will respond that the key is not in the cache. The calling function would then figure out whether to replenish the cache or not.

Update:

Yes, that appears to be the strategy in shard.go.

        if entryKey := readKeyFromEntry(wrappedEntry); key != entryKey {
            s.lock.RUnlock()
            s.collision()
            if s.isVerbose {
                s.logger.Printf("Collision detected. Both %q and %q have the same hash %x", key, entryKey, hashedKey)
            }
            return nil, ErrEntryNotFound
        }

so there is no risk of returning the wrong data for a key.

<comment><USER4> Ah OK, that's good, just was reading too much into this section in the README:

> BigCache does not handle collisions. When new item is inserted and it's hash > collides with previously stored item, new item overwrites previously stored > value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have a look at, also in Go written, [https://github.com/dgraph- io/ristretto](https://github.com/dgraph-io/ristretto) which out performs bigcache and freecache (see the colourful graphics)

<comment><USER7> Alas, Ristretto implements an eventual consistency.

<comment><USER8> Feel free to file an issue if that's a concern -- if enough people feel the same way we could provide an option to "synchronous consistency". It wasn't one in the use cases we looked at.

<comment><USER7> It would be a significant performance tradeoff, if I understand correctly. So there's no point, there are enough ACID in-memory databases in the world)

<comment><USER8> Most likely not a performance tradeoff. For every Get and Set, we do lookups anyway. Caffeine, for comparison, always sets the key-value, and then if the key doesn't get admitted due to policy, deletes it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Blog post that describes the implementation: [https://allegro.tech/2016/03/writing-fast-cache-service- in-g...](https://allegro.tech/2016/03/writing-fast-cache-service-in-go.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very cool. But why didn't they just go with Redis? Their blog stated that this requirement: "be very fast even with millions of entries" wasn't met by Redis, but I have a very hard time believing that.

<comment><USER11> Because Redis is... problematic?

1\. Redis has a lot of functionality that a simple cache client doesn't need.

2\. Redis's connection model can lead to complications.

3\. Redis's to-disk checkpointing in practice uses a lot of memory.

4\. Redis's poorly chosen default settings have cost the industry an uncounted but large sum of money.

5\. Redis is written in C. That's a bad idea for a networked application.

6\. Redis's creator is a person who doesn't deserve our support. He's constantly combative with experts who have give him good advice about how to improve Redis because he has a vision of "simplicity" which translates to "what I already understand."

Redis is a decent choice if you need all of its features. It's got a wide spectrum. But, if you don't need ALL of them, then pick a simpler and better designed system.

<comment><USER12> > Redis's creator is a person who doesn't deserve our support.

There are valid criticisms of Redis but this is shitty and vindictive. You should be ashamed.

<comment><USER13> I don't love the way the previous comment is written, but it's substantive. This is just drama; it distills the worst possible reading from the parent comment and tries to fix that meaning for the rest of the thread, which is exactly the opposite of what the guidelines ask you to do.

Further: the Redis take on display in that comment is pretty mainstream – very much including the statement about Sanfilippo's obstinacy – among systems developers. Even if you're an advocate for Redis, it's good to at least see the brief its detractors bring against it.

<comment><USER12> I agree that Sanfilippo can be obstinate. "Redis' creator doesn't deserve our support" is a shitty and vindictive conclusion to come to from that obstinance.

If that's ^^ unsubstantive drama to you, and the thing it's responding to isn't, calibrate your sensors because they're off.

<comment><USER11> I don't really understand why this is so traumatic to say. There are lots of people doing amazing things. Maybe we can look at projects run by people who don't disregard good technical advice for years out of what they themselves have called pride.

I knew my post would be controversial, but I certainly wasn't expecting that the main complaint leveled is that I'm supposed to ignore he and his community's prior transgressions because remembering them is "vindictive."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My understanding is that global variables in Go are not garbage collected. Is that true? If so then is this not creating the cache struct as a global var and therefore this cache will never be garbage collected? [https://github.com/allegro/bigcache/blob/master/server/serve...](https://github.com/allegro/bigcache/blob/master/server/server.go)

I ask this because I've run into a problem with this in the past.

<comment><USER15> The struct pointer itself wont be GC'd. It's intentional as the cache should be up for as long as the server process runs.

However, that struct contains data that can and will be GC'd once no longer used. This is the type of the variable: [https://github.com/allegro/bigcache/blob/master/bigcache.go](https://github.com/allegro/bigcache/blob/master/bigcache.go)

<comment><USER16> The mantra I'm always told around slices is "Don't keep pointer slices. Don't keep pointer slices." Because the entire thing will fail escape analysis and go onto the heap. But it's OK in this case, right? Because, as you say, the BigCache (including the []*cacheShard) is allocated once; never gets GC'd; and it's around forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> None of these projects or exercises are futile: something is learned in the process, and the language gets pushed into new areas, algorithms get proved out etc but it seems that Go is becoming the next hammer and every problem in the problem set has become a nail. Personally I would have just stuck with Redis

</comment><comment><USER18> All I can think of when I hear about Go now is garbage collector ballast, a hack for which Go has no proper solution see [https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2019/04/10/go-memory-ballast- how-i...](https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2019/04/10/go-memory-ballast-how-i-learnt- to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-heap-26c2462549a2/) and [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/23044](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/23044)

<comment><USER19> That's insane. My impression of Go keeps getting worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have not used this package but there is another one for Go called freecache that offers a similar solution. The primary benefit of such solutions is that if you have a Go service where you want to rely on the local caching of data, using a package like this can _significantly_ reduce GC scan pressure removing the work that Go needs to do when analyzing pointer data sitting on the heap.

Why does this help? Instead of keeping millions upon millions of items alive on the heap (leading to Go having to scan all such data) you can instead serialize/deserialize the data in a solution like this with usually minimal overhead. Storing your cached data in a solution like this suddenly gets rid of the need to have live pointers of data on the heap. This is because your data is now stored as []byte slice somewhere in the Cache data structure that this code uses. Finally, since packages like BigCache/Freecache are built with only a very small handful of heap objects the Go runtime performance can now go back to what it does best which is spending most of its time in your application logic.

If anyone has any doubts of this approach try it out...we saw dramatic differences with using a package like this vs a naive map of pointer based data or vs something like Hashicorps LRU datastructure.

The last service we applied this model changed CPU profile from running at around 900% to 400%. That was a big win in my book and practically cut our cluster size in half.

<comment><USER21> > Storing your cached data in a solution like this suddenly gets rid of the > need to have live pointers of data on the heap.

So if I understand this correctly, Go does not do any recursive scanning of structures? Each unique bit of data owns it data for as long as it needs to?

<comment><USER20> Not quite, the difference here is that instead of storing live objects on the heap you would need to serialize them into a byte slice. You then hand that to the cache library and it would find a place to copy those bytes and store them on your behalf. This means your object now just becomes data belonging to the cache and sits somewhere on the libraries internal data-structure.</comment></comment></comment>


Live small, be happy? The next new big thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150420-why-small-is-the-new-big-thing <comment><USER2> This article made me extremely unhappy. It's like a letter from the rich baby boomer generation living in big houses, and with multiple "investment" properties jacking up the prices for the rest of us, then telling us well you'll actually be happier living somewhere smaller!

The article hit the nail on the head pointing out, repeatedly, that this wasn't a choice so much as something that had been forced upon these people who were simply making do with what they could. And yet it comes up with the wrong conclusion and title.

<comment><USER3> Ummm... If you don't earn that much, yet still want to live in the center of a big city, isn't small housing a good solution? Unoccupied investment homes are making the space problem worse, but fitting lots of people into a small area requires small housing. In everyday physics, space is conserved.

<comment><USER4> Zoning laws and neighborhood associations actively fight vertical density which would bring down cost for new owners/renters all in the name of preserving "character."

Space isn't conserved, it's increase is being opposed.

<comment><USER3> I was working within the constraints imposed by those obstructionists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is horrible.

Reminds me of post by anon about how there will be no "collapse".[0]

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/DtpRs3r.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/DtpRs3r.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Text version

 _There will be no "collapse" the way some of these people think of it. It's not going to be like the movie "Dawn of the Dead" or whatever where one day suddenly shit hits the fan and prices skyrocket and everyone begins to riot and the SS comes marching down the street to kill everyone. There will be no "happening". It's far more insidious than that. Read the poem "The Hollow Men" by TS ELiot and you'll understand.

You'll just notice that every day simple things will become a little more expensive. Everyone's homes and apartments will start to get smaller. your work hours will get longer, but your pay will decrease. You'll see family and friends less, and find that in time you care less about them. Every day you'll find yourself lowering your standards for everything: work, food, relationships, etc. Job security will no longer exist as a concept. You'll notice houses and apartments shrinking. People will start hanging on clothing longer and longer. Less people will get married, even less will have children. People will engross themselves in technological distractions and fantasy while never truly experiencing the real world.

Whatever dream people used to have about what their lives were going to be will become for them a distant memory. The only thing left for them will be the reality of their debt and their poverty. And every minute of every day they will be told: "You are stupid, ugly and weak, but together we are free, prosperous and safe."

That is the collapse. The reduction of the American man into a feudal serf, incapable of feeling love or hate, incapable of seeing the pitiful nature of his situation for what it is or recognizing his own self worth._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > They offer living spaces of less than 46.5sq metres (500sq foot)

Ha, try living in The Netherlands!

I live in 24sq meters in a reasonable large city, my brother lives in 8sq meters in Amsterdam. We pay about the same and really, given how much the city offers neither of us complains. We both have a 5-10 minute commute by bike.

I have all the stuff I need and very little of the stuff that I don't need. We both live pretty close to a park, I can rent a place in a coworking space for 100 euros/month (including unlimited good coffee!) and given that I do things outside of the house most evenings anyway this works out perfect.

I couldn't imagine sharing my place with someone else but then again a friend of mine is living together with his GF on 28sq meters and they rarely complain about lack of space.

<comment><AUTHOR> > my brother lives in 8sq meters in Amsterdam

Let put some perspective around this. That could be 2 metres wide and 4 metres long. Did he rent a bedroom and share a living area with others?

<comment><USER7> It's a bed and a desk, they even had to cut up the bed otherwise it wouldn't fit into the room. He custom made his desk for the small space. They have two other bedrooms in that house, a shared kitchen and a small garden. No living area, although they often use the largest bedroom room as one.

He has been living in Amsterdam for almost two years now, if you're young, don't want to spend a lot of money and you want to live in "de ring" (the inner city) it's your only option.

It's perfectly livable though!

<comment><USER8> It sounds like a small space, but since it is a shared unit, saying he only has 8 sq M is misleading.

Instead, it is 3 people living in ~40 sq M.

I did the same thing when I first moveD to Boston. I got a bedroom in a four bedroom one bath townhouse, and the rent was quite reasonable split four ways. The shared kitchen and bath were not a problem, and I had plenty of space for one person with just a bed, desk, and dresser.

Now I pay more than that entire place for a 60 sq M place for my wife and me, that is only a 15 minute bike ride from work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok for a short time. Essentially vertical trailer parks. I would rent one but I would never buy one.

When I worked CBD jobs I always made the trade off of living space to commute time. Years later you forget your small place but the hours of commuting in packed trains leaves a tear in your soul.

It takes a real commitment to anti-hoarding and ruthless effiency to live in a small place.

<comment><USER10> It's when I read articles like these that I have to take a step back, realise that my situation is so much better than most people, stop complaining about the little things and just get on with it. Commute time is something that for me is non-negotiable. Those are hours of your life you'll never get back, and the whole process feels so draining. I don't know how people who commute 2 or more hours a day have the energy to go to gym, make food, read books, etc. I'd just want to get home, eat and sleep.

(144sq meter house, living on my own, 7 minutes to work, yeah I even drive cause why not, 10 minutes from work to gym, another 10 home, total travel = ~30 minutes per day).

<comment><USER11> Why notre driving? Air quality. Ride a bike, dont go to gym, earn more time.

<comment> FLUX-YOU May not be safe. The health benefits of biking kind of plummet if you become an asphalt decoration.

<comment><USER12> [https://nwurban.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/cyclings-impact- on-...](https://nwurban.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/cyclings-impact-on-life- expectancy/)

TLDR: Health benefits of cycling are believed to significantly outweigh health risks on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not sure I like the concept of no private spaces... If I can't invite my closest friends home, how can I conspire efficiently?

</comment><comment><USER14> Cheap credit continues to drive property prices into the insane, especially in Vancouver. This is a failure of monetary policy more than anything. You can now get a variable rate mortgage for less than 2%, which is the rate of inflation, so it's essentialy free money. This of course massivly inflates the bids people put on houses. It also does not help that the media repeats the R/E frankenumbers the R/E associations claim are fact, but are wildy out of step with reality.

<comment><USER15> Foreign investment is also a significant factor. That rope Lenin was talking about is tightening...

<comment><USER14> I think that's more media spin. The actual sales stats show a TINY fraction of sales are to foreign owners, but more often for very expensive properties ($2M+), which can make things appear differently. Over 99% of homes, even in Vancouver, are sold to Canadian buyers.

But the spectre of "foreign buyers" does help the real estate industry by adding pressure to increase bids. I'm not suggesting there's a conspiracy, just that it's a narrative many actors independently have a monetary incentive to push.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I live in a rural community 15 minutes from a larger city. Numerous entertainment options; scores of coffee shops and restaurants; international foods in great variety. My house is > 2000 sq ft. Also a garage and two outbuildings - an old cattle shed and a pole barn.

Big cities are a trap. Thousands of shops and theaters, sure, but how many does a person need? Try a smaller 'big city', of 100,000 or so people, and things get much, much better.

<comment><USER17> I grew up in an area like that. Thirty years later, I left that same area because all of the folks fleeing the big city had moved there. It's just a matter of time.

<comment><USER16> I cleverly settled in the country in the direction of town that has the airport, fairgrounds and cement plant. Nobody wants to live by all that; no new developments have gone in there for 20 years now. Town has doubled in that time, but in other directions. So a good call by my younger self!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess if the worlds young population wants to live and hang out in the centre of trendy cities (London, NY, SF etc) then the only options are packing them tighter or excluding more.

I think the tight packing thing can work if with some downsides.

<comment><USER19> Obviously they just need taller buildings with deeper basements. Same square footage, different elevation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This may work if you are used to small places (e.g., for students). But going from a big place to a small place is probably not such a good idea. I could be wrong though.

<comment><USER21> The pain only comes twice, really.

1\. The couple of weeks before you make your move, where you sort what you need and what you don't need, so you can get rid of the latter.

2\. A few weeks/months after you move, when you realize you only use 25% of what you kept and purge once again.

After that, it's really quite pleasant. The biggest change is spending more time out of the house in public spaces, since you no longer have the space to maintain separated individual little worlds in your home.

<comment><USER8> "Purging" stuff is a pain in the ass. How do you responsibly and efficiently get rid of your crap?

My living room is a quarter full of shipping supplies for selling my things on eBay, and I am getting sick of it. It's not even that I want the money, but that I don't want to just toss things in the landfill.

<comment><USER3> Depending on where you live, you can put it in the street and people who want it can pick it up. Come back the next day or two and throw the remainder in the garbage.

<comment><USER22> _Come back the next day or two and throw the remainder in the garbage._

How do you fit furniture into a garbage chute?

<comment><USER3> Why would you want to do that? Aren't there garbage containers where you live? How do you usually get rid of big things?

<comment><USER22> No garbage containers just generally available. And putting trash out on the street will at best get me very angry looks from my neighbors and worst a fine from the police.

The correct way to get rid of any garbage that I can't fit into the garbage chute is to take it to the dump (which is a bit tricky without a car).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Developments like this seem to generally support the idea that we are returning to the gilded age. Reminds me of tenements[0], with the exception that the apartments seem to have a higher construction standard.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement).</comment>


General Assembly's Jake Schwartz on education, his ambitions, boot camps - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-15/would-you-buy-a-new-job-from-this-man <comment><USER2> GA just fired 50 people a few weeks ago. if you are bearish on the tech industry (the 'winter is coming' crowd), you should be watching closely to what transpires in the for-profit 'hacker boot camp' sector.</comment>


Ask HN: What are A-player or 10x Dev attributes? - <AUTHOR> What are the best attributes to hire someone technical? Also, from what perspective: are you a lead, developer, or something else? <comment><USER2> I think A-player managers quit looking for 10x devs like all the B-player and C-players do, but instead they build procedures and systems that get 10x performance out of teams.

My advice for those who want to be 10x devs is that you have to rigorously purge bullshit from your job. If you spend 1/4 of your time in useless meetings and the project is going in circles, you are going to get nowhere no matter how smart you are unless you can break managment of it's stupor or move to another job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there are multiple different type of A player developers:

There are "researcher" developers that given a tough problem can come up with an excellent solution. If you gave the same problem to someone less competent, you would get a hack with lots of problems, or possibly no solution at all.

There are also "coder" developers that given a well fleshed out specification, can crank out code at break-neck speed.

You can tell research developers in interviews by proposing large-scale problems and asking them how they'd approach finding solutions. Do they get excited, or freeze up? Big tell.

To get coder developers, open source project activity is probably the best indicator. If someone is part of several open source project teams and has active forks and a commit history, that is a good indicator.

Once you have people like this, when managing them, you need to make sure that you assign tasks based on their strength. Coders are great as project maintainers, researchers will probably find a new job if you put them in a maintainer role. Likewise, coders aren't going to be happy if you don't have well fleshed out requirements/spec for them to chew on, while researchers view that as a license to let their creativity run wild.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> toptal does 100 million and I was wondering, how did a kid just out of college figure out the magic formula? or did they?

sounds like a sweat shop: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10107448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10107448)</comment>


A Swedish rail line now scans microchip implants in addition to tickets - <AUTHOR> http://nordic.businessinsider.com/swedish-rail-company-scans-microchip-tickets-17-6?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER3> > For those brave enough to get an implant inserted into their hand, however, > the time they save not standing in ticketing lines may be worth it.

There aren't really any ticketing line problems in Sweden. Anyone can buy their tickets online and have them delivered to their phones.

</comment><comment><USER4> > SJ, a state-owned rail line launched in 2000

According to SJ's website the company was founded in 1856.

It would have been strange if Sweden only had railways since 2000.

· [https://www.sj.se/en/about/about-sj.html](https://www.sj.se/en/about/about- sj.html)

<comment><USER5> Sort of. It was founded in 1856 as a government agency. In 2001 it was turned into a company with 100% of the shares owned by the government.

Additionally, it's not a "rail line". It's the largest train operator in Sweden.

<comment><USER6> Rail line is like airline but for trains, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microchip implants are one of those things that invokes a visceral and immediate rejection and fear from the conservative, apocalypse-believing American Christians I've known in my life. It's considered to be the fabled mark of the beast that biblical literalists will avoid at all costs. Some I know also staunchly avoid RFID chips in cards and other objects they carry on themselves (though, notably, not smartphones).

As a non-believer, I've always felt torn between wanting to poke fun at such a funny (to me) belief, and encouraging the drive to resist such implants because they offer far too much ability to be creatively abused by entities with—or seeking—power. When our political leaders cannot avoid helping themselves to all sorts of data and dubious practices to gerrymander districts, subvert democratic participation, target misleading messaging for power gains, and actively perpetuate starving the republic of a well-informed and reasonable polity, the ability to more efficiently and specifically target individuals for any purpose seems worth resisting, whatever the underlying reasoning may be.

<comment><USER8> I can always put down my phone or stop using credit cards. It's a lot more difficult to take out a microchip. But as long as it's not de facto required I guess it's fine.

It my belief that you should be allowed to walk around within America (or your country) without any form of identification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Implanted rfid chips must be the most stupid idea so far.

It does not really solve any actual important problems, unless you are a cat, and introduce health risks and security risks instead.

<comment><USER10> In the past I would lose my keys on a painfully frequent basis, lock them in my vehicle, etc.

Similarly master offline backups of mine have been lost, stolen, or simply not available to me when I needed them most.

A few years ago I had two NFC tags implanted. I use them to open/start all my vehicles, unlock my front door and office doors, as well as store encrypted backup seeds for my cryptocurrency wallets and other private keys. They even allow me to use a vending machine at my favorite hackerspace.

I can lose my keyring and my wallet and have my home burn down and I still maintain access to all of my remaining physical and digital property.

Over the past few years I have not had to keep up with metal keys, and it has been a pretty great life upgrade.

I still use HSMs day to day for transaction signing, binary signing, password management, ssh, etc. to keep from exposing secret keys. I will be replacing these cases soon with a Vivokey which offers an implantable NFC powered secure element.

Implantable RFID tech is solving a lot of problems for me.

<comment><USER11> passwords are bad, but I like that someone needs to beat a password out of me and can't just scan or rip out my implant.

neither scenario is part of my threat model, so I get that my objection isn't practical/rational. but I'd prefer my important passwords stay in my head, and not my body.

I'd also be concerned about what I could be compelled to do with such a chip at a border crossing.

privacy as a moral imperative doesn't make my life any easier (I still lose my keys all the time), but I'm not quite ready to get chipped, either.

<comment><USER12> According various articles about methods Soviet and Russian special forces has been using to extract information from the heads of their victims only people with no feeling of pain can withstand it. The claim is that using a metal file against teeth works in 99% of cases.

<comment><USER13> If you value your unharmed body more than the password you still have the option to reveal it. With an implant your body will always be harmed against your will.

<comment><USER10> Why would the body need to be harmed? Any NFC scanner can read the encrypted content, and trying to remove it forcefully is likely to damage it.

<comment><USER9> Need to get through door. Rfid tag gets cut out. The owner is likely to notice that.

Picking a wallet will probably not harm anyone.

<comment><USER10> At that point why would an attacker not use a crowbar?

I think we have very differnt threat profiles...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds creepy at first blush, but actually pretty neat. They aren't offering implants themselves, but just adding support for the implants that a couple thousand people in Sweden already have.

<comment><USER15> And this after having determined that out of the 2000 people only 200 will actually use the thingy.

I see it as just a way (intelligent) to get talked about on newspapers.

I know that everything must start somewhere/somehow, but to implement a (I hope) complex and secure system over a national (though of course Sweden is a relatively small country by population) railline with an expected number of customers of 200 sounds hardly as something making any economical sense, the current "electronic tickets" on smartphone as similar work AFAIK just fine, besides traditional paper ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is what will usher in the age of transhumanism and the singularity - <USER2> the quest for knowledge or the relentless march of technological progress but the convenience of not waiting in line.

</comment><comment><USER17> While this might provide short term convenience, we lack the human ethics and the engineering discipline for this not to be abused. And even if we addressed these challenges, a regressive authoritarian government or an emergent superintelligence would instantly have a fast and efficient mechanism to dominate society.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hell no.</comment>


Elon Musk Has Delivery Issues - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/elon-musk-has-delivery-issues?mbid=social_twitter&currentPage=all <comment><USER2> Seems to me more like the NewYorker has circulation issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps failing to meet targets 20 times is because they are setting high targets for thrmselves.</comment>


Show HN: Cliapp.store – An App Store for CLI Apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.feram.io/blog/2018-09-30_app_store_for_cli_apps/ <comment><USER2> The most important question for me looking at projects like git, httpie and youtube-dl being sold for 2,99€... Have they actually been submitted by their respective owner? If so kudos to this project for opening an additional revenue stream for opensource projects.

If that's not the case, this seems like yet another shady project, like plenty posted recently (I remember a similar one based on the softwarestack used), where the name of big successful opensource projects is used to collect money on their behalf and afterwards when enough money is piled up, they are offered to take the money on terms set by the marketplace.

<comment><USER3> There are pricing info modals that say that 70% of the proceeds of those apps go to their respective developers. These apps, it seems, have been seeded into the store by the authors of the platform.

<comment><USER4> All commits to date have been by the author of cli-apps. There have been no PRs or contributions from other maintainers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most of the programs that you're publishing on your "app store" have independent monetization channels, including direct donations from their users via _accounts that they control_. They might be surprised (and annoyed) to discover that you're charging for their work, even if the majority of that money ultimately makes it to them.

As others have pointed out, you probably have the legal right to run this sort of store. However, you should _strongly_ consider consulting each project before listing them -- you might find that many are hostile to this sort of platform, and would prefer not to be hosted on it.

<comment><USER6> Such a double standard.

Every time an open source project complains about the challenges of monetization (see the recent Redis controversy), people say "Don't like other companies making money off your software? Then don't license it that way!"

But now that someone is actually doing that, people are not happy.

My hypothesis is that people's opinion on this subject depends on what's convenient for them, and is not necessarily a reflection on whether the act itself is a good one or not.

People can already get all these CLI apps very conveniently from a package manager, for free, and _that_ is the reason why the idea of a paid app store disgusts people.

Every time a GPL vs BSD conversation comes up, most people support BSD, saying that it's "more free". But I think the true reason is that people want to be able to use BSD-licensed libraries in their apps, which they profit from.

Why were so many people against Redis Labs trying to protect their revenue streams? I think it's because people felt threatened that they may have to pay more in the future.

We, as a community, need to make up our minds and stop being misled by our own agendas. It is fine to have one's own agenda but stop conflating that with moral issues.

<comment><USER7> They are openly lying about the terms. Click the "trial license" (what?) text on any of the shop pages and read

> _You can try out Pandoc for free. To use it regularly, you must buy a > license._

They do not detail how they intent to share the money with the authors. Did they prepare with all the authors, are or they collecting money in their name without them agreeing to that? E.g. money paid to buy something is different than a donation from a tax perspective: how many authors are actually going to go to the paperwork to get the money?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a "Pricing Info" link right below the payment button where I describe meticulously where the money goes. Offering an unlimited trail for an actually commercial product is a standard (and I think very generous) licensing term. Just check out [https://www.sublimetext.com](https://www.sublimetext.com).

<comment><USER7> Pandoc is not a commercial product. By claiming one must buy a license, you are misrepresenting its actual license. If you're actually selling your own wrapper around it, make that _clear_.

The pricing info link also sounds dangerously like what other projects have done in the past: "we take the money and put it in a pot, and at some point the author can ask us for the money and we'll figure out how to get it to them". This means users wanting to support the dev unwittingly put the money in a pot the dev has then to go through additional effort and potentially expense to access, which the users would have avoided if they'd known, e.g. through a direct donation. If you actually have clear agreements with authors on how this is going to work, you should emphasize that. If you don't, that should be clear too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why should I pay you, whom will inevitably take a cut on top of the payment processing cut, when I can donate to the developer directly where only the payment processing cut exists? I.e. you arbitrarily have `jq` listed for 2.99 .. why?

<comment><USER9> Because you won't otherwise.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry that you assumed the worst of me, but I definitely do support some of the tools I use the most via either personal funds or, in the case of work, work funds.

This guy is just sticking his hand in a pot I feel he doesn't need to.

Where it isn't with money, I support with time to the project. Yes, I can't support _every tiny thing_ I use, but it's not a requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "You can try out Git for free. To use it regularly, you must buy a license."

Which license does this notice message refer to? This is completely wrong!

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, this is very badly phrased for git. It refers to the version of git we're selling, which only really makes sense as soon as we start to provide our own downloads (soon…).

<comment><USER11> To be accurate, it's badly phrased for most products. You (effectively) can't use software unless you're licensed to do so. Every app you ship that an end user can use must therefore be licensed. Most open source licenses contain clauses that the version that you're delivering (either for free or charging for it) retain the original license conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I appreciate the idea of allowing utility CLI programs to be monetised by their authors. But it does look at the moment like the site is charging for git, pandoc, etc.

Is any of that money going to the authors?

Of course it is technically legal to charge for these things. But it is unlikely to endear you to the community.

<comment><USER8> Supposedly:

The payment is composed of following parts:

19 % (0.57 €) is German VAT

Of the remaining 81 % (2.42 €)

70 % (1.69 €) go to the developer of the app (Ricardo Garcia). This amount is not transferred immediately, but aggregated until a threshold of 10 € is exceeded to reduce transaction costs.

30 % (0.73 €) go to us (Feram GmbH) in order to power this website and ensure a sustainable development.

<comment><USER12> I was asking about open source apps that they are selling on the store without the copyright holders' knowledge or permission. (On the basis that neither knowledge or permission is legally required.)

<comment><USER7> They _claim_ the same for those. How they implement that is a _good_ question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sounds like you are trying to trick people into paying for free applications. Scummy.

</comment><comment><USER14> All of these applications and a whole lot more are available in Homebrew as well. Which can be kept upgraded with Topgrade [1]

[1] [https://github.com/r-darwish/topgrade](https://github.com/r-darwish/topgrade)

</comment><comment><USER11> I understand that this is flagged now, because the idea seems to have significant obvious problems. The discussion on this though and why those problems exist and what to do better would be good to continue however.

</comment><comment><USER15> So this is literally monetisation [1] based on the work of Homebrew [2]?

[1] [https://github.com/feramhq/cli- apps/blob/master/git/main.yam...](https://github.com/feramhq/cli- apps/blob/master/git/main.yaml#L23) [2] [https://github.com/feramhq/cli- apps/blob/master/git/main.yam...](https://github.com/feramhq/cli- apps/blob/master/git/main.yaml#L36-L37)

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://github.com/agarrharr/awesome-cli- apps](https://github.com/agarrharr/awesome-cli-apps)

</comment><comment><USER11> I really like the root need of this, paying for open source, but I think the execution is significantly off. It might be nice to see an open source foundation create something similar to how topgrade works, but for funding.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is terrible. The pricing info page is completely misleading, and written in a way that obscures the fact that all of this software is available completely for free.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone explain to me in layman terms, how this is legal? I mean charging money for freely available open source tools, not owned by this site?

<comment><USER6> Free software / open source allows charging money. This is even intentional. See also [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html)

In case of copyleft licenses, the only thing not allowed is preventing your buyers from exercising the same freedom you had. That is, they are allowed to redistribute without cost, and they too are allowed to sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is really shady and I don't see advantages over a conventional package manager</comment>


Quartz's favorite charts of 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/156778/our-favorite-charts-of-2013/

<comment><AUTHOR> The first chart on the most contested topics on Wikipedia by language and the chart titled "Mandela's story, South Africa's story", truly show the great power of charts as well as their limitations. A book (or many) could be written to delve into the trends displayed by each. The power is that you get this information at a glance. This shortcoming is the same thing.</comment>


Apple founder Steve Wozniak thinks Amazon Echo is the next big platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-wozniak-thinks-amazon-echo-is-the-next-big-platform-2016-3 <comment><USER2> Are people upvoting because it's from Wozniak, or because Wozniak has a good track record for these sorts of predictions? As a reminder, these are some of the related things he's said:

> 2012: Steve Wozniak tells Gina Smith, Todd Moore and Dan Patterson why he > thinks the latest Windows 7 Mango makes his Nokia Lumia smartphone > "beautiful and amazingly designed." - > [http://anewdomain.net/2012/04/26/apple-founder-inventor- > stev...](http://anewdomain.net/2012/04/26/apple-founder-inventor-steve- > wozniak-why-i-love-my-windows-phone-7-5-fan/)

> 2008: I begin to wonder whether he was even briefed by the Apple press > office when he predicts the imminent death of the company's most popular > product, the iPod. ... Mr Wozniak even speaks out against the iPhone 3G, > Apple's latest cult product which caused pandemonium in the West End when it > was launched in Apple's Regent Street store this summer. - > [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/3145691/Steve- > Wozniak-interview-iconic-co-founder-on-the-iPod-iPhone-and-future-for- > Apple.html)

> 2012: Steve Wozniak predicts 'horrible problems' with cloud computing ... "I > really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said. "I think it's > going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible > problems in the next five years." \- > [http://www.news.com.au/technology/apple-co-founder-steve- > woz...](http://www.news.com.au/technology/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak- > has-predicted-horrible-problems-with-cloud- > computing/story-e6frfro0-1226443447897)

(And now he likes the cloud-based Amazon Echo?)

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought an Echo because I received a $40 off, one day only, sales email from Amazon.

I enjoyed writing a simple "Skill" using the Echo SDK but as far as using the Echo, I rarely do. I use it perhaps once or twice a week for an average of 15 minutes each time. My wife uses it slightly more often.

Echo is a good product, but I usually have an iPad or my Android phone with me, and I end up preferring to use those.

Hearing Woz's comments though, I think that I need to give it another try.

</comment><comment><USER4> I largely agree. We got one in October and use it every day. The sonos devices now gather dust.

Now we have expanded to 8-10 more use cases largely due to the integration with IFTTTHE.

e.g. It took 5 minutes to set up my niece's echo in Boston to automatically trigger a remote treat dispenser I built in SF and return a video to her phone. It was cool enough to impress an 13 year old girl, which is a high bar</comment>


Create Isometric Illustrations with Ease - <AUTHOR> https://isometric.city/ <comment><USER2> May I suggest putting a prominent example somewhere, perhaps in place of the black background of your splash page? I do my pleasure browsing on an iPad, and get a "Please use Chrome or Edge" message before I get to any visuals, which isn't ideal for an art tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats awesome! I really like this tool, even though its pretty glitchy and buggy for now. I'll use this a lot! Great idea pulling from online isometric sources and making the assets easily composible. If I were to do something manually it would be hours of me dealing with clogged download folders trying to dig through to the right verison.</comment>


Prosecutors halt vast, likely illegal DEA wiretap operation - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/25/dea-riverside-wiretaps-scaled-back/80891460/ <comment><USER2> Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see this was stopped, but how long until the DEA is simply drinking from the same firehose the NSA is? We've already heard all about parallel construction, and now there's talk about sharing the information the NSA sucks up. Why isn't any of this going through Congress or being given proper oversight?

<comment><USER3> Not very long before they get NSA data, Obama just took the first step: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama- administ...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama- administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html)

<comment><USER4> This is the worst case scenario from the NSA mass-surveillance debacle.

I could plausibly justify it when the NSA (a department of the DoD) was solely focused on national security (assuming the NSA's self-imposed controls, protocols, procedures, etc were implemented and executed as the NSA Director claimed).

Now national security resources are being retasked to fight another failed prohibition. The US Federal Government's failed drug policies are as much a threat to US national security as foreign drug cartels are. Re-legalize narcotics, redirect enforcement and imprisonment funding to rehab, education, abd.

<comment><USER5> The DEA's Special Operations Division already shares data with the IC for parallel construction purposes, and they have a $280,000,000 budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it passed time that the federal government has overstepped its authority here? We need to see some repercussions for directors when these departments start breaking the law.

When I exceed the speed limit and get caught I get a speeding ticket. To enforce the law we put police in strategic spots and give them the tools to enforce the law. We should have similar policing of federal agencies.

<comment><USER7> Well that's what the the courts are for. There are punishments like adding oversight into the agency.

It's reactive, but hey you don't get a ticket for "conspiracy to speed".

There isn't a lot of piercing of the corporate veil happening in gov't agencies though. As in people getting arrested.

But at the same time, if you work at the FBI, want to try something, and your lawyers say it's legal... Should you go to jail? Should the lawyer?

Sending the person in jail doesn't really help much, but forcing the agency to adopt new postures could help more. We could do both as well, but what does throwing the person in jail really accomplish, apart from giving people a sense of vindication?

<comment><USER8> I don't know about the US but in Canada a "Justice of the Peace" has a full- time job to signs police warrants not regular judges who deal with criminal cases. I've hear that Justices rarely deny police requests and they deal with police all day... there is never a defense attorney present when wiretaps are agreed upon. Oversight is always well after-the-fact.

They are only ever question way later into the legal process (sometimes over a year afterwards) and always with a different judge and circumstances.

Law enforcement have a far easier job getting it approved than it is for defendants to question it's legitamcy. And even if it is ruled illegal the wiretap still happened and the defendants privacy was still unduly violated. But there is almost never any repercussions outside of the potentially losing a legal case against a defendant.

The chains of responsibility between where decision-making takes place and scrutiny is made are very disconnected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Likely illegal doesn't mean anything. It's the judicial branch that decides whether it is or is not legal. It's not until that point.

For some reason there's a lot of leeway for the government to push boundaries in this regard. The running outcome is that if something was not expressly illegal then there's no prosecution but a slap on the wrist. The judicial branch should start taking a much harder line against overreach; they should begin operating the other way: if it's a case of citizen rights and privacy then it's not legal unless it's expressly legal.

<comment><USER10> The entire common legal system is set up in a way that is the exact opposite of this. Everyone is breaking the law all the time. It's suppose to be the case that unless someone complains about something expressly, that the government is suppose to mind its own business. This is no longer the case in the United States. The State has created many different departments to go after people when no reported crime has been committed. And then it continues to overreach on this using totalitarian information systems. The logic of the system keeps becoming more totalitarian.

It makes sense that if some harm keeps getting committed then someone should do something about it. But if that's not the case, then it does not justify any action from the government. Like in Mexico the drug war, sure go after the major drug kingpins using totalitarian systems. But to put this on petty criminals, small time crooks, etc. that's just horrible.

<comment><USER11> > But to put this on petty criminals, small time crooks, etc. that's just > horrible.

Petty criminals and small time crooks are often the ones that make life hardest for people, especially the poor who live in the neighborhoods where these guys operate.

When I lived in Wilmington, DE (a pretty run down post-industrial city), our favorite restaurant was run by an elderly Indian couple. But it was in a terrible neighborhood, and one day their house was broken into. These sweet, hard-working people were violated, and by who? Not some kingpin. By some "small time crook." Should he not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law?

<comment><USER10> > unless someone complains about something expressly

Would cover your case.

<comment><USER11> You don't think people complain about people dealing drugs out of their neighborhood? 80-90% of people support keeping all drugs besides marijuana illegal.

<comment><USER10> I don't disagree with your assertion that people complain, and I don't disagree that when people complain the police should look into it. I don't agree on massive dragnets going after thousands of people in the name of fighting crime who might be only peripherally involved with the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "prosecutors" of the title are the ones who were "authorizing" (along with a "single state court judge").

This is a voluntary reduction. Neither the judge nor the prosecutors authorizing the "likely illegal" wiretaps have been charged with any wrongdoing.

There is nothing in place to prevent a similar thing from occurring again.

<comment><USER13> Judges can't be charged with misinterpreting the law. They just get disbarred.

<comment><USER14> And persecutors also have absolute immunity. They can only be charged for things done entirely outside the scope of their duties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So is there any legal recourse against the public servant who violates the law, if the law itself provides no penalties?

In short, if this isn't punished, why won't it happen repeatedly?

<comment><USER16> > So is there any legal recourse against the public servant who violates the > law, if the law itself provides no penalties?

(1) By definition, if the law provides no remedy, there is no legal recourse;

(2) The law often provides remedies, either specific to the violation or more general, but there may be difficulties in securing them (e.g., many violations of people's rights are, in fact, crimes by government agents. However, prosecutors are unlikely to pursue such crimes, especially if they were in support of executive policy rather than a rogue -- with respect to the leadership -- agent. Many also would generally open up civil liability under generally-applicable principals of law, but public officers and the public entities they work for may be able to assert various forms of governmental immunity to such liability.)

Ultimately, the remedies for bad behavior by government often must be political, rather than legal.

<comment><USER15> _(1) By definition, if the law provides no remedy, there is no legal recourse;_ I meant the law mandating the requirement, not "all law".

It's possible that there's another law dealing with the execution of duties, similar to "honest services fraud".

I'm not saying that it exists, but I disagree that it's impossible by definition.

I do take your second point, though.

<comment><USER16> > It's possible that there's another law dealing with the execution of duties, > similar to "honest services fraud".

I was taking that as a case of the law providing a remedy for the offense in question, as part of some more general provision, so I think that our disagreement here is mostly just semantics rather than substance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You don't stop things like this when they're legal or maybe legal. There is no "Maybe it was illegal" It was, or it would have continued.

</comment><comment><USER18> Shouldn't that Riverside County judge be under scrutiny here as well as the prosecutors? Judges have to sign off on these things.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like season 5 of The Wire...

</comment><comment><USER20> It might get easier for law enforcement in the future.

A bill by US lawmakers, set for release in March, could require encrypted devices to be able to give un-encrypted data to law enforcement. Feinstein says the bill is "coming along ... some people are making it a lot harder than we think it needs to be". An alternate proposal is also on the table

[http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning- cybersecurity/2016...](http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning- cybersecurity/2016/02/march-is-encryption-bill-month-hackers-going-after- japans-infrastructure-a-mixed-final-2015-tally-212865)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how many people are sitting in a cell due to this?

<comment><USER22> as many tobacco and fast food company CEOs are sitting on a beach

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was extremely surprised to see the reporting done by my hometown paper, The Desert Sun, as it's not exactly a nationally renowned paper.

</comment><comment><USER24> If it was illegal, will anyone go to jail? Also, is it happening in any other locales?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you visualize complicated problems? - <AUTHOR> I've been struggling to find a medium that works better than a piece of paper and a pen when it comes to visualizing my ideas, especially when programming. I can usually think through a simple problem when there are a few components involved but once I start losing track of things I need to write it down.
The problem is I end up with all these sticky notes around my desk with small diagrams. I like things like draw.io, but it's just too much sometimes for a simple sketch. A Wacom tablet would work great (especially using mypaint) but, it's a bit much to buy to have to take out and plug in every time I want to make a simple sketch.
What do you all usually do? <comment><USER2> Why are the sticky notes a problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I'm thinking of a piece of code I wrote while I'm out and about, I'll just pull it up on my phone. I can't do that with sticky notes.

I'm looking for something digital.

<comment><USER2> Why not just photograph the sticky and organize it in cloud storage or note taking software?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a bad idea actually. Only works if you have a phone that syncs with my other devices.

Still looking for more of a simple application or website.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Leap Motion - $70 3D motion tracking on your computer - <AUTHOR> https://leapmotion.com/ <comment><USER2> Not really clear there about Mac support (other than 1 screenshot with one in it), but interesting nevertheless!

Actually, Apple should buy this company and integrate this thing above the trackpad on mac laptops...

</comment><comment><USER3> My mind is racing with all of the creative and fun software possibilities that this type of hardware can enable. The video showed some great examples. At $70, its within a reasonable price point to take off.

The only thing I'd be concerned about is arm strain that results from holding your hands in the air like that. After a few minutes, its probably pretty uncomfortable. Does this work even if you rest your elbows on the desk? I assume it would, but the question of arm strain and comfort is the only thing I wonder about.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have they revealed _anything_ about how it works yet? What category of device it is?

All I see are a blank grey surface and boasts.

Kinect may have been sufficiently advanced that the media regarded it as magic, but as an high-speed parallax-based IR laser projector rangefinder coupled to a webcam, it's built of real devices with real performance specifications and limitations. This company has a credibility problem, especially with their grandiose claims of precision.

<comment><USER5> Looks like it uses stereo cameras[1] and it appears to live up to its accuracy claims [2] and devkits in the wild seem to be just as capable [3]

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY3Ya__6BHw#t=183s> [2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQkKyOOyLSs#t=29s> [3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoiwL0SK3jA#t=57s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wondering if it does support text input.

If yes - then this will be heaven for someone "sniffing" passwords.

</comment><comment><USER7> What kind of radiation does it use for sensing (infrared, ultrasound, visible light, ...)?

<comment><USER5> Looks like light of some kind

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY3Ya__6BHw#t=183s></comment></comment>


Defending Darwin - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/03/teaching_human_evolution_at_the_university_of_kentucky_there_are_some_students.html?wpsrc=fol_tw

<comment><USER2> I teach high school math and science. I don't let my students use the phrase "believe in evolution", no matter their perspective. Instead, I focus people's attention on questions such as:

"What is the difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis?"

"What happens if we only ever use one kind of antibiotic in the world?"

"Does evolution imply that a monkey gave birth to a human baby?"

Only after students have answered those questions clearly and correctly do we enter into conversations about what it means to "believe in evolution". Once we have clear answers to these questions, students no longer feel the need to use that phrase.</comment>


Best HTML5/CSS3 Presentation Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://zoomzum.com/6-best-html5css3-presentation-frameworks/ HTML is the most popular web development language in the world, Using this language designers can make web application more attractive and creative. HTML 5 is the advanced version of HTML and getting popularity among web designers with their advanced features and functionality. <comment><USER3> As a quick test, I decided to test a feature which I consider 100% vital to any presentation tool. Does it cleanly work when I find myself on a 800x600, or even 640x480, projector?

        html5 slides (from google) : No
        Slides Presentation with HTML5: No
        CSSS : Unusably slow on Chrome 18, pegs to 100% CPU
        html5rocks: No. I can't actually get the presentation to view on my laptop at all.
        Impress.js: No
        Reveal.js: No
        Shower (mentioned in comments): Yes!

I would really, really like to switch to HTML presentations. At the moment I use keynote and it is the one thing stopping me from switching full-time mac os x -> linux. But, really I don't think most of these can be considered as more than just toys.

Hopefully some time we will get a nice shiny tool, which will allow easy simple animation, presentation tools, and resize to different projector sizes.

On another note, the actual blog post this is based on was terrible - <USER2> listing a bunch of tools, all of which are (in my opinion) terrible, was not particularly useful. However, I am now going to look at shower.

<comment><USER4> What part of Impress.js doesn't work? Don't look at the demo slideshow they give you, create your own. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

<comment><USER3> Why wouldn't I look at the demo?

I want a presentation that looks nice when I am using a 640x480, and also looks nice when the projector is 1280x960. Can Impress.js do that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately doesn't mention my favourite - Shower: <http://shwr.me>

<comment><USER6> looks good, but unfortunately one can't navigate with the mouse (think about touch devices like iPad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think most of these are too heavy for my use. I've been helping out on a simplistic slideshow tool using Markdown, which might interest some of you: <https://github.com/gnab/remark>

Example presentation: <http://gnab.github.com/remark/>

<comment><USER8> Zero server-side dependencies is what sets Remark apart from other alternatives using markdown. The markdown is simply parsed client-side. (and kjbekkelund: get back to work ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These roundups are getting too much.

Some of them can just easily be found by doing a simple search on github.

Maybe I should just do some articles like "Top 5 javascript mvc frameworks", "3 asynchronous libraries you can't live without"

</comment><comment><USER10> I did a similar round up last year:

[http://luigimontanez.com/2011/web-based-slide-decks-done- rig...](http://luigimontanez.com/2011/web-based-slide-decks-done-right/)

</comment><comment><USER11> We created an online editable version of Google's html5 slides at <http://slides.pageforest.com>.</comment>


Repl.it Offline - <AUTHOR> https://offline.repl.it/ <comment><USER2> This is amazing, so glad it finally came!

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice</comment>


Forests Emerge as a Major Overlooked Climate Factor - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/forests-emerge-as-a-major-overlooked-climate-factor-20181009/ <comment><USER2> I've wondered if people were forgetting trees in climate modeling ever since I read in 1492 about the hypothesis that the European mini ice age was caused by forests growing on abandoned Indian farms in North America.</comment>


Deep Learning to Break Semantic Image CAPTCHAs [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~polakis/papers/sivakorn_eurosp16.pdf <comment><USER2> For anymore interested in a slightly lighter version of the paper, it was presented at Black-Hat Asia 2016:

Slides: [https://www.blackhat.com/docs/asia-16/materials/asia-16-Siva...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/asia-16/materials/asia-16-Sivakorn- Im-Not-a-Human-Breaking-the-Google-reCAPTCHA.pdf)

Notes: [https://www.blackhat.com/docs/asia-16/materials/asia-16-Siva...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/asia-16/materials/asia-16-Sivakorn- Im-Not-a-Human-Breaking-the-Google-reCAPTCHA-wp.pdf)

Source: [https://www.blackhat.com/asia-16/briefings.html](https://www.blackhat.com/asia-16/briefings.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> These captchas are a great pain for Tor users, who are often presented with them on all websites protected by CloudFlare.

It would be greatly appreciated if the code used for the paper were released, even better if it's in the form of a Firefox extension and submitted to the Tor Browser maintainers for inclusion in the default install.

<comment><USER2> CS papers don't usually publish code, given that the code is usually research quality (read: built for a specific hypothesis, usually hard to port and generalize). Technically speaking the implementation for the code is given in the paper, which means someone could definitely build it. You also don't really want a tool like this for botters in an easily accessible form.

<comment><USER4> This is one of the most disappointing points about research. They write code and then don't release it as free software. Sure, it isn't "production ready" but if you don't provide the code you wrote then someone will have to waste time reimplementing it.

<comment><USER2> Holding onto code gives researchers a competitive advantage over other researchers when performing follow up papers. I'm not saying this is a good thing, rather this is something to be aware of.

Also, the burden of proof is usually on someone to _disprove_ a paper, rather than proving it, so having someone reimplement it (possibly in another, but similar, manner) allows a fresh pair of eyes at the research topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there an automated marketplace for solving captchas?

<comment><USER6> [http://www.deathbycaptcha.com/](http://www.deathbycaptcha.com/)</comment></comment>


Hadoop, Big Data Focus Shifting To Analytics and Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://wikibon.org/blog/hadoop-big-data-focus-shifting-to-analytics-and-visualization/ <comment><USER2> It seems more organizations have begun realizing the potential that lies within their own data, and more importantly, that the perceived barriers to entry - large/complex/expensive infrastructure necessary to house and build around these mountains of granular data - no longer exist.

The new challenges revolve around the people, methods, and software that can separate, aggregate, disseminate, and _present_ this information in the most efficient way possible.

The opportunities that lie within and around Big Data are tremendous.</comment>


A Lisp that runs Python (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2016/03/30/OMG-A-Lisp-that-runs-python/ <comment><USER2> This article is about Hy, [http://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/](http://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/)

"A Lisp that runs Python" is kind of vague. Hy describes itself as "a Lisp- flavored Python". I'd call it "a lisp that compiles to Python".

<comment><USER3> Hmmm that's too bad, I'd like a python-flavoured lisp. That is a relatively fast functional language that replaces most of the brackets with indentation.

Any suggestions?

<comment><USER4> Make sure you use an editor, like emacs, that really understands lisp and the parentheses won't mater. The auto indenting with lisp makes working with it syntactically just as easy as python.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree, I did that back in university. My problem with the brackets is that it lends itself to a 'write-once-read-never' style when a function ends with 12 round brackets.

I think S-expr trees and their macros are the right way to write code, and that a S-expr diff is the one true way to do git-diff. But so far I haven't seen a language that integrates into the toolchain like that.

Go has gofmt that at least acknowledges that style should be consistent, but I would argue 'who gives a fuck'. The expression tree is what really matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only problem is that everytime he/she wants to execute Hy (Python in s-expression syntax) code, he will invoke the macro "org-babel-execute:hy", and this runs Hy as a shell command.

So Common Lisp objects can't be quickly copied or shared to Python, and for each invocation there is a time overhead.

I'd love to see a good bridge from Common Lisp to Python. It should be possible.

<comment><USER6> Maybe burgled-batteries, which relies on CPython ([https://github.com/pinterface/burgled- batteries](https://github.com/pinterface/burgled-batteries)).

<comment><USER5> Thanks! You made my day!!

And the "burgled-batteries" name was a good laugh! (If Python is "batteries included", let's steal those batteries!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meanwhile, at the shallow end of the meme pool, this gem from back in the day - a LISP interpreter in a single Python expression:

[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pcorbett/yvfc.html](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pcorbett/yvfc.html)

<comment><USER8> Is that just an enormous tuple?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is also this: [https://github.com/metawilm/cl- python](https://github.com/metawilm/cl-python)

</comment><comment><USER10> Has Hy gotten the let special form working yet? Last I looked, there was a ton of conversation over let not working right/at all, which seems like a big sticking point.

<comment><USER11> IIRC, it still uses Python's weird ideas of scope. That is to say, no.

<comment><USER12> > Python's weird ideas of scope

I don't know that I'd call them weird, just the natural result of Python's assignment syntax (tho I suspect that you might call that weird as well). Without specific declaration syntax, it would be somewhere between messy and impossible to differentiate between block and function-level scopes. The only thing I could think of would be the inclusion of a new declaration/assignment operator, like `=:`, that would declare the variable as block scoped, but such a change would be backwards incompatible and I don't believe they're going to do that again.

What would you like it to look like? How would you want it to work?

<comment><USER13> Many choices for a new operator would not cause backwards incompatibility, as it'd currently be invalid syntax.

However, allowing block scope variables would make the interpreter internals far more complex for dubious benefit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LaTeX for thesis and basic introductions - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCRFsOKSM7ePUBOfh3O-K5XZldM5uCPwk http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCRFsOKSM7eNGNghvT6QdzsDYwSTZxqjC<p>http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCRFsOKSM7ePUBOfh3O-K5XZldM5uCPwk <comment><AUTHOR> is there any software better than this ?</comment>


Ask HN: Apps or chatbots for mobile commerce future? - <AUTHOR> Will consumers adopt chatbots and make them their preferred interface for mobile commerce, or will apps remain the destination of choice? There definitely seems to be different use cases for both, discovery vs search. <comment><AUTHOR> To be more specific: discovery oriented activities seems to work well with chatbot, while search oriented activities seems to work better within the world of apps. Thoughts?</comment>