Why Arabic Is Terrific (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://idlewords.com/2011/08/why_arabic_is_terrific.htm <comment><USER2> I absolutely agree - Arabic is a beautiful language and a joy to learn, and it is particularly appealing for those who enjoy structure and regularity (e.g. CS and math folk!). Be forewarned, though - the significant differences between MSA (modern standard Arabic, the focus of most "Arabic" courses/material) and regional/national dialects (and the differences between those various dialects themselves) may make it a bit less practical than you'd hope (and a source of disappointment when you go to actually speak with people!).

Permit me to plug a pet project of mine:

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

It's basically an online version of Hans Wehr, the de facto standard dictionary for students of Arabic. You can search by root or by word and provides form I vowelling, masadir (infinitives), broken plurals, and other useful information organized by form. I know there exist other good dictionaries out there, but I never found one I quite liked as a reference as much as I enjoyed Hans Wehr. I hope someone else finds it useful! (I've been neglecting it a bit recently, so I apologize for any bugs and for the lack of an SSL cert).

<comment><USER3> Hans Wehr's dictionary is awesome. How did you get permission to use it online?

<comment><USER3> I'll try to answer my own question: I knew Wehr's dictionary was fairly old, but it may be old enough that it has entered public domain. There are still major publishers that publish the dictionary, but it may well be public domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anybody who finds Arabic interesting might also like to take a look at Maltese, an Arabic offshoot which is the only Semitic language written in Latin script:

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

As a Maltese person, we were required during the 1980s to learn Arabic as an additional language in school, a task made considerably easier by the similarities between the languages.

<comment><USER5> You might enjoy "The Hyperglot" which stars Michael Levi Harris, a true polyglot, in a cute short film involving the Maltese language.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YKahZwqZjWg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YKahZwqZjWg)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the- hyperglot/id992386797](https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the- hyperglot/id992386797)

<comment><USER6> Thanks as well, I love to dive into all sorts of languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And then there is this beast: ع a consonant pronounced so far back in the throat that you must wait two hours after eating to safely attempt it. Naturally it's one of the most common sounds in the language.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/07/learn- arabic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/07/learn-arabic- pronunciation) says:

: We have a muscle in our throat which is never used except in vomiting. Think about that and pretend you are about to be sick. You will find that what is normally called in English gagging is actually a restriction in the deep part of the throat. If you begin to gag, and then release the airstream from the lungs, you will have produced a perfect : (called :ain in Arabic).

<comment><USER8> Is that the same muscle used to roll Rs in some of the Romance languages?

<comment><USER9> There's a decent wiki page on this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R)

<comment><USER8> So yeah that helps me articulate, but I'm still fuzzy on if there's a different muscle back there that Arabic uses, or if the answer is "yes, it's a variant on the same thing"?

I'm a bit of a parrot and so sounds I can't reproduce draw me in like a moth to a flame. The click sound in some African languages and the very guttural singsong of Vietnamese/Thai are my only nemeses... so far.

<comment><USER10> isiZulu / isiXhosa have not one, but three distinct click sounds. I suspect the Khoisan languages have even more.

<comment><USER11> Not that many more, they mostly only use 4, with 5 in some localised dialects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent article on a very logical language. However this part:

> No other language will make you work as hard to avoid speaking formally to > pairs of women

Arabs actually don't speak this formal way and may look at you strange if you do (they may not even understand in countries like Libya or Egypt); most of the colloquial dialects skip most of these rules, and don't deal the difference between "those two females ran" vs "those two males ran" vs "those males ran", etc.

But author summarizes it:

> The second is that spoken Arabic has diverged substantially from the written > language, so you can study it formally for years and not be able to > understand a television commercial

</comment><comment><USER13> "1\. There's something about intelligence agencies - maybe the familiar comfort of a three-letter acronym on the wall, maybe the late-night spanking parties - that draws fraternity boys like ants to a picnic, and right now the road to bro advancement leads through an Arabic classroom. Their complete lack of a sense of irony allows these students to combine sincere appreciation for The Fountainhead with a desire for a lifelong career in government service, and the hardest part of studying Arabic is having to listen to their asinine opinions after they have gained enough proficiency to try to express them."

Is there a term like "Brook" is to "Spook" like "Brogrammer" is to "Programmer"?

<comment><USER14> I'd like to propose "Brost" <\- "Ghost" <\- "Spook"

It's a weaker connection, but rhyming with "Boast" it maintains the clear "Bro" prefix and is distinct from other spoken or written words.

<comment><USER13> Brost! Aha yes, rhyming with "Boast" gives it a nice ring, while the pronunciation and meaning of "Brook" is kind of ambiguous.

I wonder if spies now prefer to be called ghosts instead of spooks because of the latter's racist connotations, or have they reclaimed the term and wear it as a badge of honor? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love learning writing systems and think the Semitic languages, including Arabic, are especially fun to learn and write.

I thought about trying to learn more Arabic for fun, but this part convinced me not to bother:

> My absolute favorite is that all non-human plurals are grammatically > feminine singular: al-kutub hadra' (الكتب خضراء) "The books, she is green"

After attempting a minor in French, I hate dealing with arbitrary gender in languages. I'm convinced that the grammatical construct of gender exists only to make it easier to identify foreign or uneducated speakers!

<comment><USER16> This is a common opinion even amongst language specialists. So much so, in the process of modernising Turkish, about 90 years ago, whatever little concept of gender Turkish had was completely stripped from the language, leaving only 'it', alongside its conversion to Latin alphabet.

The good thing is that it's truly a structural, mathematical language now, though still hard to learn, and it can avoid the whole his / her awkwardness for people whose gender is unknown to the writer. The gaps left by the Arabic words dropped from common use was filled by French (11% of its corpus is 1:1 to French) and if you know a Romance language, you can make pretty decent guesses.

The bad thing, on the other hand, is that Turkey is full of ancient history, and so much of that history is adorned in Imperial Turkish, using Arabic alphabet that no one can read. Even if they did, they wouldn't understand, since Imperial and Modern Turkish has diverged so much they are no longer mutually intelligible, not even the slightest clue.

It makes you feel like a foreigner in one's own country, in a way. Always found it funny that I can understand Middle English from 1300s, and I can read inscribed colonnades in Rome from 500 BC – but I can neither read nor understand Turkish from 1922.

<comment><USER17> > So much so, in the process of modernising Turkish, about 90 years ago, > whatever little concept of gender Turkish had was completely stripped from > the language, leaving only 'it'

Do you have a source for that at all? Lack of grammatical gender is a feature of the entire family so I would be surprised if there were somehow "remnants" of it that were present as recently as Ataturk's reforms. Removing loans that happen to be gendered in their source language don't really count.

<comment><USER16> Turkish grammar never had gender, but Arabic loanwords it had did. They tried to remove those from mass circulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Unlike the rest of the language, numerals are written left-to-right."

Everyone makes this mistake. It is rather the case that in English (and other languages) numerals are written right-to-left. You can tell since, when reading right-to-left, you will know exactly what each number signifies. If you start from the left, you will not know what the first number signifies until you have reached the end of the whole number.

Interesting to learn though that in Arabic it is still pronounced from left to right, up until the tens.

<comment><USER19> It actually used to be right to left, just like the language! In some formal communication it's still the case, like when news channel announce new year "one and eighty and nine hundreds and a thousand. The change to read from left to right started fairly recently in the twentieth century, along with the change of the order of alphabets from أبجدهوز to أبتثجحخ.

I'm a native Arabic speaker, and yes I still struggle to both: speak P and hear P, Put no BroPlem!

<comment><USER20> I'm curious, when was it right to left?

In computer speak, the way we write numbers in English is 'big endian'. We write the most significant digit first.

The most common 'little endian' system is postal addresses, where we start with the smallest unit (name) then in, some cases, house number, street, city, country.

Note that roman numerals are commonly written in big ending way. So this practice is very old.

<comment><USER21> Yet historically English numbers were little endian, base twenty: "four and twenty" etc. Base 20 comes from Celtic roots I think, so perhaps other European languages have a similar history too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2909136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2909136)

</comment><comment><USER23> "Glottal stops are everywhere in English but we are not trained to hear them, so a long portion of one of your first Arabic classes will be devoted to blowing your mind with the fact that English words like 'apple' and 'elegant' do not start with a vowel."

Is this for real?! Do non native speakers of Arabic (and similar languages) not hear the common sound at the start of words like apple, elegant, ignite, umpire? I find that hard to believe since they are saying it.

<comment><USER24> No, at least for me, Canadian English, I hear them as starting with: ap, el, ig, um

So sound wise they all start with a glottal stop that we don't notice as it isn't written as such?

<comment><USER25> You may very well pronounce them without a glottal stop. If you whisper the words, you might be able to hear it as a click in your throat.

<comment><USER24> I tried that and I sounded a bit like an exaggerated latin accent from a movie. Sort of like a faintly pronounced h in front. Is that a glottal stop?

<comment><USER26> No it's not like the initial h in 'hospital' at all. It's closer to you pronounce the 't' in 'batman' with a Boston accent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A not very well known fact is that Arabic has a pharyngealized lateral fricative letter (ض) which a lot of people mispronounce as eather a pharyngealized /d/ sound, or merge with the pharyngealized /dh/ sound (ظ). Both of which are incorrect. Apparently there are still some people in Iraq and parts of Saudi Arabia who maintain the correct pronunciation.

It is even mis-transliterated as /d/ in the linked article in (hadra).

<comment><USER28> For someone like me who has no idea what these words mean, could you explain a little more or link a video on the topic? :)

<comment><USER29> It's the "dh" in Riyadh. (الرياض)

<comment><USER27> This is the correct pronunciation: [https://youtu.be/U0qr9XxJges?t=99](https://youtu.be/U0qr9XxJges?t=99). Note that they sound similar, but they're independent letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My best friend has a little site which I'm always trying to get her to do more on. If you're attempting to learn Arabic it may help.

[http://www.rememberarabic.com/](http://www.rememberarabic.com/)

She has a very definite style:

> When writing the rules for Arabic grammar, someone decided that Lakin should > be called the weak version of 'but', and Lakinna should be called the strong > version of 'but'. If someone can decide that, then I can decide to create a > Hammock of Freedom. So I did.

Go check her out. I'm seeing her for a walk in an hour, I can pass on kind comments. :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm trying to learn Egyptian Arabic and the resources available are incredibly frustrating. It's a very popular language yet nearly all the beginner resources are for Modern Standard Arabic.

It's almost like being forced to learn Latin first before you can learn Spanish.

</comment><comment><USER32> I crammed 3 years of Arabic study into my 2 years at Cal. The logic of the triliteral root system is partly what got me interested in programming.

<comment><USER33> Doesn't Hebrew have a similar concept?

<comment><USER34> Not just similar, many/most of the roots are shared.

<comment><USER35> Hebrew, at least as far as instances of Hebrew writing, is _much_ older than Arabic. There are 3,000 year old Hebrew Inscriptions ( see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayit_Stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayit_Stone) ). The Zayit stone was found 31 miles south west of Jerusalem and its dated as 10th century BCE.

Also see: [https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-older-Hebrew-or- Arab...](https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-older-Hebrew-or- Arabic/answer/Helena-Almagest)

<comment><USER36> That's because Hebrew died out for over a thousand years and is now a revived dead language. The lack of a vulgar dialect prevented it from changing, similar to how Latin has not changed since native vulgar speakers died out (or rather, their dialects became so distinct that they are now considered different languages e.g. Romanian).

<comment><USER35> Hebrew never "died." That is revisionist propaganda. People have been continuously speaking Hebrew in Jerusalem, Judea, Sumeria, and nearby in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Gaza for the past 3,000 years, as well as using it for prayer and study while in exile.

<comment><USER36> Source? Obviously people have been speaking Hebrew all over the world as part of prayer and study, nobody would dispute that. But to my knowledge nobody was using Hebrew as a day-to-day language until Zionism became popular in the late 19th-20th centuries.

<comment><USER37> Depends on how strict your definition of language death, I suppose. AFAIK Hebrew has always been used in religious contexts by the Jewish diaspora.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> You can hear some spoken Arabic and a comparison of some of the dialects here: [https://youtu.be/WEwgafTDrOU](https://youtu.be/WEwgafTDrOU)

I think it's an awesome sounding language.

The differences between the dialects are huge though, but everyone will understand Lebanese Arabic and Egyptian because they make the most tv and movies ت

<comment><USER39> Wow, I'm thoroughly impressed how well he nailed that. For reference, I speak Egyptian Arabic and know speakers from nearly every country represented in that video. Very neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> >Muslims believe that Arabic as written in the 7th century A.D. is the language of divine revalation. This has served as a tremendously conservative force on written Arabic, with two important consequences.

>The first is that texts from over a thousand years ago remain accessible to modern readers. If you're an English speaker, where even texts from 200 years ago can be rough going, this is quite a treat.

The former has less to do with the latter than you might imagine. Many languages without a supposed divine mandate are also readable many hundreds of years later. English is in the minority in that regard, in that its history of being influenced strongly by conquest locks off its older writings to modern eyes.

<comment><USER41> Had the experience in the National Palace Museum Taiwan of both Taiwanese and elder Chinese (the ones who don't only speak simplified but can handle traditional) looking at thousand-plus year old artifacts and mumbling to themselves, way beyond what an english speaker will try and do with roman or greek inscription.

<comment><USER42> Those older texts were written in Classical Chinese, so there's still a barrier in terms of context and education to fully understanding them.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > The Feminine Plural

> Formal Arabic distinguishes between groups composed entirely of women and > groups that contain one or more men, and has distinct pronouns, plural > forms, and verb conjugations for feminine dual and feminine plural.

> This gives Arabic a total of twelve personal pronouns. No other language > will make you work as hard to avoid speaking formally to pairs of women.

All Romance languages I know (French, Spanish, Portuguese) work like that. For example in Portuguese: _" They play football."_ is _" Elas jogam futebol."_ if it's about the women's national soccer team but _" Eles jogam futebol."_ if it's an all male or mixed team.

<comment><USER44> AFAIK they (in Arabic) also have dual pronouns which refers to exactly two people; they use another pronoun for 3+ people.

<comment><USER45> Which language? Spanish doesn't.

<comment><USER44> I meant Arabic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> But most importantly, you can use an Arabic letter, teh (sounds like t) as a smiley face: ت

See this happy fellow? ت

</comment><comment><USER46> Traditional Arabic (fusha) is closest to Modern Standard Arabic. Everyone who said msa or fusha is generally relegated to academic or formal use is not incorrect. But fusha is still widely in use by Muslim scholars (clergy-ish). It is necessary to do an advanced study Islam, Quran and majority of Islamic texts (legal, spiritual, theological) and new texts of a higher academic caliber are still written in fushah today (albeit with voweling)

</comment><comment><USER47> > This idea is so cool that you'd think it came from a constructed language, > and yet Arabic has actual native speakers who live completely normal lives > and will not try to talk to you about Runescape.

Is there a large overlap between constructed language enthusiasts and Runescape enthusiasts? That seems kind of strange to me.

</comment><comment><USER41> My favourite bit, after the comments about the screaming eagle?

 _This is where a douchier person would write 'colophon'_

But overall it did its mission: it made learning arabic feel linguistically interesting.

</comment><comment><USER33> > Arabic, on the other hand, twists healthy minds in twelve ways:

I only see 11.

<comment><USER48> That's the 12th way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The ambiguity of the term "terrific" seems uniquely suited to describing Arabic.

For non-native readers: the word means both extremely appealing, and also mortally horrifying. It is best used when both apply to some degree.

<comment><USER50> Interestingly, "terrific" in Arabic means "فظيع", which has exactly the same ambiguity as in English: it can be used to refer to something extremely appealing or extremely horrific.

<comment><USER49> It leads me to wonder if this is a universal, from Uruki to Iroquois.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I really enjoyed learning Arabic and this article nicely calls attention to a number of the highlights. As my first non-indo-european language it helped change some of my perspectives.

If you speak French the Arabic language texts and practice books are better than what I've been able to find in English.

</comment><comment><USER52> Bonus points for not being on Medium!

<comment><USER52> double bonus for being witty as all get-up. well written. scroll to the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Proto-indo-european also had extensive use of ablaut, and a dual number.

</comment><comment><USER54> Sort of off topic. I still remember this project we inherited from DLI ages ago. Folks there were having difficulty with storing UTF-8 strings in JavaScript. Whenever a character gets truncated (due to db length limit), Netscape would complain and die. Someone apparently discovered that you wouldn't get the error if the broken UTF-8 text was in a JavaScript comment. So every text string in the program was a function that parses its own source code for a comment. It was a hilarious hack.

</comment><comment><USER55> Japanese grammar is decidedly not vanilla. Arabic is actually much more similar to English and the ind-european languages.

</comment><comment><USER56> I wonder if this is still true: "right now the road to bro advancement leads through an Arabic classroom."

<comment><USER41> Well that, or inheriting a few billions from dad, to turn into millions so you can be a millionaire without trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The books recommended seem to have less than stellar reviews, unfortunate

<comment><USER58> Al-kitaab is a diffcult book to self study, and somehow an even harder one to work with in class. While it's inefficient, somewhere around book 2 you've aquired enough vocabulary and grammar to speak in fusha, although unless you've really followed through with a dialect for ammiya you're going to need a tutor to help you out. I wouldn't put too much stock in the reviews for the textbook.

Realistically, arabic is difficult, and actually speaking street arabic is frustrating.

Source: Currently doing arabic, spending the month in Jordan on vacation doing an arabic intensive, using al-kitaab in both classroom settings and self study.

Arabic is, however, definitely terrific. I'm definitely going to blow all my vacation days next year to come back again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Have you tried Hebrew?</comment>


Giving a shit - <AUTHOR> https://successfulsoftware.net/2016/12/15/giving-a-shit/ <comment><USER2> "Do usability tests."

Does the author think that, in the case of the examples given, a lack of usability tests was the real problem? I'd bet a paycheck that in the "design meeting" for the pasta, the ATM, the education website, there was someone in that room verbally saying, "are you fucking kidding me?" And that person was soundly ignored...because no one else gave a shit.

I once gave a shit. I still do. But I'm drowned out by those that don't give a shit, just want to do the minimum required to merit a paycheck, and go home. Sometimes I'm drowned out by someone who does give a shit, but doesn't know as much as they'd like to think. I can forgive that, and probably work with it. But those folks are much more rare. Most of the time it's because I'm one of the few in the room that gives a shit, or even knows enough to give a shit (as in, it doesn't have to be this way). I raise my objections, then remain silent. I'm generally not paid to ultimately make the decision, so I make sure that those who are paid to do so have as much information as I can give so as to allow an informed decision. Out of my hands at that point. Sure, I can raise my voice and stamp my feet, but that just makes me a bad team player. The boss wants it to suck, then let it suck; I get paid the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see that exact model of ATM every day down the road from my home, and every time I wonder about the chain of decisions involved in producing it.

It really blows my mind.</comment>


Notes on Bioinformatics (PDF) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/17727/complete-notes-on-Bioinformatics Follow links throughout the pdf for a much better coverage. <comment><AUTHOR> Follow links throughout the pdf for a much better coverage.</comment>


What we can all learn from Chick-fil-a - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/arkccz/what_we_can_all_learn_from_chickfila/ <comment><USER2> Somewhat unrelated: Chik-fil-a has a pretty fascinating engineering blog[1] that describes an interesting tech stack and engineering philosophy in an industry that you wouldn't expect.

1: [https://medium.com/@cfatechblog](https://medium.com/@cfatechblog)</comment>


Ask HN: I would like feedback on the premise of a book I am writing. - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing an e-book of sorts regarding software development, targeted towards those who find themselves thrown into a position where they end up writing JavaScript specifically. It may sound silly but it's not entirely about JavaScript as much as it is about the things you need to know to be successful as a JavaScript programmer.
I outline the premise of the book in greater detail on my blog: http://cowbelljs.blogspot.com/2012/01/personal-project-writing-quality.html
I highly respect the opinions from others on HN, and was looking for general thoughts, concerns, feedback, or ideas regarding this project. <comment><USER2> Truthfully, I don't care about quality if I am starting out... I need results first. You'd sell me the book with results, you'll enrich the deal with how to do it right.

Focus on creating 'working' JavaScript, along the way encourage proper formatting/syntax, labeling, etc as you go. Useful type-in in examples are great.

As an example I needed to make a field input aid for a project, this one would be an alternative to a [YYYYMM] text entry, where they click on the tool button and are presented in a popup (ala date/time picker) with a range of months around the current date (or range specified in the calling code) where the user could quickly click the appropriate textual month/year and it fills in the form... also pulls the current field data into the script.

Examining date time picker code - I got it figured out. The books I've bought/checked don't seem to cover (or cover well enough to recognize it) what I was looking for. So an annotated cookbook approach I feel would be a good and mix in the style/management along with it.

I'm sure others working mainly on the backend code wanting some more front end support code would be interested in such a book as I would.</comment>


The Entire History of Steel - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20722505/history-of-steel/ <comment><USER2> Dupe?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17508087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17508087)

</comment><comment><USER3> Gee, I dunno....I have a few books on my bookshelf from that mechanical engineering degree I did that are either largely or entirely about steel. I can't help but feel that this "entire" history might omit a few details, but it is a good start.

<comment><USER4> Hence the name 'popular'

<comment><USER3> That's in the name of the publication though, not the title of the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The amazing thing is how long it took from the first good steel to the Bessemer converter. Millennia.

</comment><comment><USER6> And it ultimately has a Lisp connection as well, given the history of [sbcl]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Bank_Common_Lisp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Bank_Common_Lisp)).</comment>


Ask YC: Setting price for services - <AUTHOR>

I am working on an a app which I plan to sell to other businesses and wanted to know what people thoughts were on setting prices.<p>I am at a lose because my target market will be selling on my product and thus I need to keep the price at a point where both parties can make a margin. <comment><USER2> Can you describe the services in more detail?

<comment><AUTHOR> sure, basically it others a cms type software to web designers to sell on to their clients. The pricing can be done via pages.

<comment><USER2> I suggest a free package with X pages and additional per page pricing bought in multiples of 10. That way, you can pass on volume discounts to the web designers and aggregate their total client's pages (instead of per client pricing).

<comment><AUTHOR> yep thats the lines I was thinking, now how much will they pay. I think I will do some market research to gage from the market what price they would be comfortable with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I started writing tests – and other stories - <AUTHOR> https://chunksofco.de/why-i-started-writing-tests-and-other-stories-422a2773b961 <comment><USER2> I used to argue that tests were a waste of time and provided no real value. Then I got a client who insisted on having them, so I had to write them, and I started discovering subtle bugs in my code (an uncaught Promise rejection here, a reference I thought was a copy there). They weren't things that would show up in any typical manual testing or even everyday usage, but they were there and _potentially_ could have caused problems. Now I write a lot of tests, and I continue to catch those little bugs. And I spend _a lot_ less time dealing with old code..</comment>


HFT in my Backyard – IV - <AUTHOR> http://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/htf-in-my-backyard-iv/

<comment><USER2> This is a fascinating read, particularly because a few familiar names pop up...

>> (Knight collapsed on August 1, 2012 because of a little problem with one of their smart order routers)

No kidding :) For anyone interested in a good breakdown of this, Nanex has a pretty good one @ [http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/3525.html](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/3525.html)

<comment><USER3> The SEC proceeding on this [0] is quite readable and goes into some technical detail as to what exactly went wrong.

[0] [http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fabulous stuff.

Microwave mapping fans will also enjoy the following post from windytan: [http://www.windytan.com/2014/07/mapping-microwave-relay- link...](http://www.windytan.com/2014/07/mapping-microwave-relay-links-from- video.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is part 1: [http://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my- bac...](http://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard- part-i/)

I found this article intriguing but much like walking into the middle of a movie and wondering what the heck is going on. Part I should be a better place to start.

</comment><comment><USER6> HTF? HFT?

<comment><USER7> hat the fuck, indeed.</comment></comment>


SOFIA chases Titan's shadow - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/sofia-flying-telescope-occultation-chasing-shadow-titan/10635802 <comment><USER2> How had I not heard of this amazing flying telescope before today?</comment>


1985 - Peer-to-Peer Encrypted Phone Calls to Avoid NSA Wiretapping - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/1985-peer-to-peer-encrypted-phone-calls-to-avoid-nsa-wiretapping/

<comment><USER2> Hello, starter of the fundraising campaign here. I'm excited to put for this solution which combines and modifies several existing technologies into a useful solution for phone privacy. I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys have!</comment>


What kind of knowledge do you need to invent a new programming language? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2575801/what-kind-of-knowledge-do-you-need-to-invent-a-new-programming-language <comment><USER2> I think beyond all that, you need to have the ability to keep all of it in your head at once. It has to be a cohesive thing, not something that's strung together like Frankenstein's monster.</comment>


Bloggers, Surveillance and Obama's Orwellian State - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/2976711/obama-press-surveillance/

<comment><USER2> Near the end of the article, Time Magazine, that bastion of the establishment media, gets in their dig at the bloggers:

 _" But as citizen journalism – people without an official press affiliation reporting on personal blogs – becomes more popular, the way the military and intelligence community is reported on could shift. Random bloggers need not follow the professional standards by which journalists abide.

Matthew Pinsker, a professor of history at Dickinson College, pointed out that this "new" form of journalism is a throwback to previous models that did not value objectivity and impartiality. In some ways, bloggers use the same practices of 19th Century pamphleteers, where anybody with a hand-crank could stand on a corner and shout to a group of people.

If these bloggers can't hold themselves to the same standards of journalists in the 20th Century, "maybe the Obama administration is justified in pursuing leakers in a harsher way," Pinsker said."_</comment>


World's top 100 universities listed  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/datablog/2009/oct/08/top-100-universities-world <comment><USER2> I seriously hate these lists. Top 100 universities _at doing what?_

There's no point being in the crappiest department of the "best" university.

<comment><USER3> I agree. There are pretty good technical specialists coming out of Russia, China and India. I have not found a single university from ether country.

<comment><USER4> IIT certainly should rank right up there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> European universities could fare much better if only they would group. What that means is that in Lyon for example, the University of Lyon is legally divided in 16 institutions, Lyon 1 to Lyon 3, plus various other specialized colleges, e.g. my school, Insa de Lyon, for administrative reasons. Each is ranked separately in most lists. They do badly in Shangai Uni's ratings because each separately has 16 times less published papers, and the absolute number of publications is a big factor in most ratings.

Starting a few years ago, they started asking researchers and students to attribute their papers to "The University of Lyon", an entity that administratively does not exist, but logically it should. Most other universities I know in France are in the same situation, and have started applying similar measures.

Paris engineering colleges have grouped under a new entity, ParisTech, for example. Hopefully, this will focus attention and fix ratings. It should, because some member colleges have been around for some 1000 years, so they must be doing something right. Consider it a brand hack :)

<comment><USER4> _European universities could fare much better if only they would group._

UCL, Imperial, King's and LSE are all individual colleges within the University of London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find this list hard to believe. University of Illinois Chicago is in the list and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is nowhere to be found.

I think it is widely held that UIUC ranks higher than UIC.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I also pointed out above that ranking U.C.L.A. above U.C. Berkeley, the flagship and leading campus of the U.C. system is nuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Indian Institute of Technology is not listed? That's a shame. There are 7 institutes and atleast one of them should easily be in top 10. But again that's just my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER9> What they should do also is write how much it costs to actually attend these schools, then throw that in as a .2 weighing factor.

Continental Europe would fare quite a bit better in that case.

<comment><USER10> But (a) that would then be a different list, the 100 best bargains, not the 100 best universities, and (b) if you really want to measure what it costs, you have to factor in European taxes, since you have to pay more unless you are an EU resident.

<comment><USER4> It costs (roughly) GBP 3000 to attend as a UK citizen and GBP 9000-11000 as a foreigner depending on subject - and I believe the individual universities have no say in it, it's set by the government. So compared to the US, you could get a bargain.

<comment><USER11> However, top US universities are very generous about scholarships for high- achieving individuals even if they are non-nationals. UK universities have very few scholarships to start with and most of them are closed to non- citizens.

I come from Trinidad & Tobago, and most of my schoolmates went to American universities for this reason: UK universities are completely unattainable to a non-western income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> MIT and Caltech got shafted in these rankings.

Also from the comments:

 _As for the comparative ranking of U.S. universities . . . this list does not correspond very well to some rankings done by people competent to rate our institutions.

For example, only the delusional would rank U.C.L.A. as above U.C. Berkeley, the flagship and leading campus of the U.C. system. U.C. San Diego should also rank very high, it competes very well with UCLA._

<comment><USER12> Perhaps the moral here is that ranking colleges is a stupid way to do things, that comparing a large enormous entity to another large enormous entity is silly, and that when you're really good at what you do, the difference between #1 and #40 isn't much at all.

Also: Did you REALLY repost your comment because the first time you submitted this it got swiftly downvoted? I replied to this same comment only to find it had been deleted and replaced with a dupe. Not cool.

<comment><USER7> I was making a point beyond the general idea that rankings are stupid. _These_ particular rankings, particularly of the California schools is terrible. There _is_ a difference between ULCA and Berkley. Especially when looking at the metrics of very top level achievement, such as Nobel Prizes, the difference between #1 and #40 can be very large.

<comment><USER12> Nobel Prizes are _not_ a metric for achievement. That's _insane_. It's the most selective and irritatingly limited metric you could come up with.

What I'm trying to get you to understand, xiaoma, is that if ranking anything is stupid, then it doesn't make sense to point to a certain ranking system and say "Gee, that's stupid." Of course it's stupid. It's ranking.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


7 Year Old Tesla Model S at 98% Battery Capacity Today - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/15/7-year-old-tesla-model-s-at-98-battery-capacity-today/ <comment><USER2> Indicated capacity and actual capacity are correlated in a dishonest manner from a publication that damn well knows better. Everyone knows batteries are derated with spare capacity in software. I love car tech, but this tesla fanboy crap is seriously and uselessly out of control.

</comment><comment><USER3> 7 years old, not 1... bad title</comment>


Show HN: I added AI players to my small multiplayer game - <AUTHOR> http://pixelwars.hajdarevic.net/ <comment><USER2> Add a timer after the bot is spawned for it being able to shoot if it spawns really close

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to source?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I send an email to 35 contacts on gmail (that doesnt bcc) - <AUTHOR>

I tried using Streak, but it kind of sucks. And the native gmail tool bcc's all the contacts. How do I just select a number of contacts (say a few dozen), and send an email all at once? Thanks HN community! <comment><USER2> Hey there - founder of streak here. would love feedback on how we can make our mail merge functionality better? We know there's a little jank right now because we do a lot of it client side but we're looking to mover it over to running on in the background on our backends.

Any features specifically you're looking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice proactive job on improving product! :) Can we chat via email? greg [[at]] whttl doterus commerus

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote Postman ([https://github.com/zachlatta/postman](https://github.com/zachlatta/postman)) because I wanted a simple CLI mail merge utility. You can use your Gmail credentials with it.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this. I wrote something similar in Go, albeit much less featureful.</comment></comment>


Fixing vs. Replacing Email - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opp.io/post/98393113318/fixing-vs-replacing-email

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link to the referred HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4228402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4228402)

</comment><comment><USER2> I support you on replacing email. But it should be well integrated to the concept of emails, as 1) I don't want to use another system over my system (only if it replaces my all email system) 2) I need to be able to use opp.io also if not everybody uses it (It's taught to make other to use a new system) 3) Most of my tasks are something to do with emails (as in your example: write an email to the costume)

</comment><comment><USER3> We're taking a slightly different approach with our startup, MorphMail (still replacing email, but not going the todo list route): [https://www.morphmail.com/](https://www.morphmail.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like the opp.io way of messaging. We are very excited about the idea, even if it needs some fixes, but hey! it's still not in beta yet! We look forward to use it every day basis in our team.

</comment><comment><USER5> Definitely looking forward to the beta, will try it.

Are you thinking about integrations with task/project management systems?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely. We want to integrate to both "directions", both to communication tools - with things like a gmail plugin - and to pm tools.

What tools do you use?</comment></comment>


"Any company with less than a year of cash in the bank is in the intensive care unit" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedeal.com/techconfidential/vc-ratings/vc-ratings/alwayson-venture-summit-angels.php

<comment><USER3> _The panelists named several market segments poised for growth: Search engines powered by crowdsourcing..._

Really? Hasn't that been the "next big thing" for a few years now?

<comment><USER4> I thought that was basically how yahoo started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And the companies that do have the cash in the bank, cross your fingers and pray that your bank doesn't go bankrupt.

<comment><USER6> That's what FDIC insurance is for. You just probably need to have accounts in a number of different banks to ensure you won't lose your money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jeff Clavier actually put on his blog that digg was built for $200. Since then I file pretty well everything he says as "not credible."

</comment><comment><USER8> What if they are cash flow positive. Perhaps not exactly profitable but close to it?

Do they still need a one year reserve?

What if they are profitable, what's a safe cushion then?

<comment><USER9> If they are cash flow positive, then by definition they have more than a year of cash in the bank. Their burn rate is negative, so they'll never exhaust their cash supply.

(They should have contingency plans for a sudden drop in revenue though - <USER2> you're barely cash flow positive and your customers drop out from under you, you won't be cash flow positive for long. That's one reason I left my last employer - they were profitable, but a major shakeout in the financial industry could easily leave them without customers. Seem to be doing okay so far, but I felt the risk was as great as leaving to start my own startup.)

<comment><USER10> I'd define a year of cash in the bank as the ability to keep living, even if your inbound cash flow dries up. Obviously you can adjust the required amount by how certain the income is. Income from a non-terminateable contract with a solid business is "better" than 10.000 private users paying $5 by credit card every month.

A private person who spend his entire salary every month (but no more) is cash flow positive, but only if he keeps his job.

<comment><USER9> "Income from a non-terminateable contract with a solid business is "better" than 10.000 private users paying $5 by credit card every month."

From a financial security POV, I'd much prefer the 10,000 private users paying $5/month, because of the law of large numbers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers>

Say you have two companies. One has 3 customers with non-terminable contracts, each of which pays you $1M/year. The other has 50,000 customers with at-will contracts, each of which pays $5/month. Revenue is the same in both cases, $3M/year. But if the first company loses _1_ customer, their revenue is instantly down 33%. The second company would have to lose 17,333 customers to be in similarly dire straits. Unless they're a blatant pyramid scheme (like subprime mortgages or dot-coms), the chance of that is much less than the chance of the first occurrence.

My perception may be colored by dealing with hedge funds, though. Hedge funds tend to "blow up" instead of reducing spending - you rarely have to worry about them stopping usage of your product, but you have to worry about them going out of business entirely. If it were 3 irrevocable contracts with GE, Wells Fargo, and Coca-Cola, I'd be much less worried.

<comment><USER11> If I can get a clarification, how well does the law of large numbers apply to a non-random sample?

In other words, 10k paying users are self-selected into the service, which would include biases in measurements. Thus, depending on the variation of the user population, it could theretically be possile for small stimuli having large effect to a user base. If the users are similar, but are part of a niche, if that niche gets hit, the business could be wiped out.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't. If your sample is non-random, it's quite possible for you to lose your 17,333 users in short order, if some external force acts upon them all.

That's basically what happened with the subprime crisis - a lot of supposedly "independent" homeowners all defaulted at once, which played havoc on the computer models for valuing CDOs. They all had the unknown common factor that the loans were based on permanent home appreciation, and so couldn't be sustained on income alone. So when house prices started declining, bye-bye subprime loans.

How secure this makes your customers depends on why they're choosing your service. It's very unlikely that 37signals or FogBugz would lose all their customers at once (unless a great new competitor sprung up), because they're all separate, independent businesses with their own reasons for purchasing the product. It's fairly likely that Twitter or FaceBook could lose all their customers, _if_ there was some reason for an exodus to start, because most of their users are only on the service because their friends are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Josh, what are your thoughts on this?

</comment><comment><USER13> Blogga please. No one knows how the next year will pan out. Can we have a moratorium on blanket statements?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a library or a package that converts a web page to JSON? - <AUTHOR> I am living in a country where open data is a very alien concept for the public and government. Except for a handful of civic hackers who find it very difficult to create apps or services due to lack of open APIs or datasets. Data is available on government websites but its not technically open (as in a RESTful API). I am thinking about writing a library that can crawl all over a page and convert the HTML into JSON that can be consumed over REST. Is there something like that out there already? What are some of the things I need to consider before I start writing this? <comment><USER2> Back in the day Yahoo Pipes would have been something I'd have recommended as being a tool in this space. Here's a blog post that lists some alternatives to Yahoo Pipes and some of them look interesting for your use case, though I don't know that any of them is exactly what you're looking for.

[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-best-yahoo-pipes- alternative...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-best-yahoo-pipes-alternatives- look/)

Also, CloudScrape:

[http://cloudscrape.com/](http://cloudscrape.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: What should I use for authentication (WebID, OpenID, Password)? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm writing an web app for kicks that appeals to quite a small niche. I don't expect MAU to ever go above a thousand. I'm still dedicated to providing a good service though.
At one point I intend to add login functionality and was wondering what the "best" mechanism is.
Login with social networks is probably the easiest for users. But I'm a bit kooky and don't want to support Facebook's hegemony so that's out of the question.
Basically I see three alternatives.
1. Login with password. Another account to keep track of, but it works.
2. WebID. github.com/solid/solid appears to be going with WebID, but it's not exactly simple. And it requires that the user understands what a private key is and why they shouldn't lose it.
3. OpenID. Is this the technology of the future? From what I've read adoption is slowing down and the largest independent OpenID provider closed down a while ago (MyOpenID).
So, is there a method of authentication that is both open, decentralized and simple for the end-user? <comment><USER2> User name and password plus hardware token. Currently only U2F meets the requirements (supported in Chrome and Firefox with an extension) but soon enough Web Authentication [0] (successor of U2F) will be natively supported by all major browsers. The benefit of this approach is that you don't need complex passwords (4 digit pin will suffice) as the hardware token provides strong security.

For bearer tokens use secure, httponly cookies that have names starting with __Secure- [1]. Check Origin header to protect against CSRF. Optionally consider using token binding [2] so that cookies cannot be exported at all.

[0]: [https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5669923372138496](https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5669923372138496)

[1]: [https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/4952188392570880](https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/4952188392570880)

[2]: [https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5097603234529280](https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5097603234529280)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually quite cool. The use case in the spec indicates a really smooth user experience while providing great security. [https://www.w3.org/TR/webauthn/#use- cases](https://www.w3.org/TR/webauthn/#use-cases)

I'm definitely going to keep track of this standard, but as I understand it no browser has released it yet?

Edit: I didn't properly read your reply, so disregard everything after "quite cool". :)

<comment><USER2> Edge has Web Authentication support but only a draft version. The generated keypair is stored in TPM so after authentication credentials are basically bound to user's device.

Web authentication is indeed quite cool. You can also drop passwords altogether and just rely on the token and the username (caveat: someone knows your username and physically steals your token is a threat) or even drop usernames at all! As U2F tokens generate new keypair per origin you'd only need the token to authorize. Of course if someone steals it and tries to login to your site... It's like physical key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I still have an independent openid server, but the only sites that still take OpenID are StackOverflow and Python's Pypi. Slashdot and Woot use to support it, but have since removed it. Freecode.com used it, but it's gone now.

My suggestion is as follow: always allow signups via e-mail/registration. If I go to a site and the only options are "Login with Facebook/Google/Twitter," it's not worth my time. I never used those walled gardens as identity providers.

There are a number of people who do login with their social network, so if you want to get that segment of the population to try your app, you do need to support login via 3rd party providers. Usually two should be enough (Facebook, Twitter, Google).

Under the surface, most providers use either OAuth or OpenID. Most web frameworks have plugins that support a variety of authentication types. Pick a framework with a good auth plugin that shows frequent commits and a large userbase. You want something that is actively developed, so if security problems are found, they can be patched quickly.

I totally understand not wanting to allow FB logins. If your audience is mostly the HackerNews types, then you could authenticate with GitHub as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the most open (and perhaps "easiest for users") is still just using email and password. It's the baseline, and unless social features or real- world identity verification is a core part, email/password is available as a signup method.

It's also open (two text strings), decentralized (you can use whatever password manager you want), and simple (people have been using it for ages). So before implementing anything else fancy, I'd highly recommend doing email/password first.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to admit I'm a little confused about the relationship between OpenID and OpenID Connect. At any rate, OIDC is a restricted, but still standards conformant, profile of OAuth 2 designed specifically for authentication:

 _Whereas integration of OAuth 1.0a and OpenID 2.0 required an extension, in OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 capabilities are integrated with the protocol itself._ ([http://openid.net/connect/](http://openid.net/connect/))

I can't find any direct assurance on the OpenID Connect website that a conformant OIDC implementation will by definition be compatible with a compliant OAuth2 implementation, although I suspect this is due to the open- ended nature of the OAuth 2 standard (i.e. I'm not sure if you could confidently say any particular implementation of OAuth2 would be compatible with another implementation). FWIW, you can implement an OIDC 'relying-party' directly on top of google's social auth OAuth 2 endpoint, if I'm reading this correctly: [https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OpenIDConne...](https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OpenIDConnect)

Unless much has changed in the past year or so, it's also very easy to do a relying-party implementation, which I think matches your scenario. For example, I wrote a (probably insecure) relying-party implementation straight from the spec in a bit less than a day, and I'm not a programmer by trade.

It worked when tested against one of the django OIDC libraries floating around out there, which came as a bit of a shock. This might suggest the standard is 'tight' enough to ensure interoperability between independent implementations. Then again, it's only one data point so YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you don't want people to have to keep track of another password you could implement a sans password login system.

1\. In the login form, ask for an email.

2\. When a user inputs an email, send an authenticated link to their email. This link contains an authentication key that can be used to perform a one time login (or several) to an account associated with the corresponding email.

3\. If a user has logged out or needs to login from another device, simply enter your email again and receive a new authentication link (or use the email you received in the past).

4\. If a user logs out, invalidate all the previously generated login URLs.

Notion[1] uses this system and I like it

[1] [https://notion.so](https://notion.so)

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't confuse OpenID 1 and 2 with OpenID Connect.

OpenID Connect 1.0 is a particular set of narrowly defined workflows on top of OAuth 2.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think what you are looking for is here with Blockstack: open, completely client-side and decentralized, and for the user you don't even need to use a password...experience is like login with facebook, except without supporting the hegemony :) [https://blockstack.org/blog/serverless-sign-in-with- blocksta...](https://blockstack.org/blog/serverless-sign-in-with-blockstack- auth)

</comment><comment><USER9> Go with 1. Login with password you'll hit the maximum number of users that way.

</comment><comment><USER10> oauth to the person's email account. Authorisation to use someone's email is sufficient authentication.

<comment><USER11> Doesn't that assume their email host supports oauth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sqrl "squirrel" looks promising. Probably need passwords too though.

<comment><USER12> [https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm](https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm)</comment></comment>


Bitcoin nears $8,000 as 'FOMO' traders pile in after crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-nears-8000-as-fomo-traders-pile-in-after-crash-2017-11-17 <comment><USER2> I know it's cool to hate cryptocurrencies, but the whole "FOMO" part of this article is almost entirely made up.

Even if it's true, the author has no way to know that for sure, and anecdotally I haven't seen it.

Most of the people that I know that are buying right now are doing so because for the first time in a while (unfortunately) Bitcoin is in a fairly stable state. There are no (serious) forks coming up, no massive scandals like a major exchange going under, the mempool is back to a reasonable size, and there are some really cool things on the horizon like lightning network, and even further out possibly schnorr signatures.

Coming from the past months of forks, infighting, contentious upgrades, and lots and lots of FUD, whenever I was asked about bitcoin I'd gladly talk their ear off about it, but would end with a warning that it's a very iffy time to be getting into things with how much was happening. Now it's starting to be in a state where I would feel comfortable introducing people into the space.

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin is not in a stable state. Price rises every time Tether decides to fabricate 20-30 million dollars they don't have, which coincidentally happens every time bitcoin starts to lose steam and the price drops a little.

> no major exchange going under

Not yet, but every exchange trading Tether will probably sink, along with the price of bitcoin, when Tether (aka Bitfinix) can no longer keep up their fraud.

<comment><USER4> Can $20m really push up the price that much, when talking about a $125bn market cap? Seems like a pittance.

<comment><USER3> It's 20m every couple of days now. over 200m printed in the past month.

<comment><USER4> Which exchanges does one use if you want to avoid Tether? Gemini? Gdax?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


1989 NASA Clean Air Study - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study <comment><AUTHOR> The original paper is here: [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/199300...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073077.pdf)

I highly recommend getting a Sansevieria to keep around in the space you spend most of your time. You don't need a green thumb to take care of it-- in fact, it's nearly impossible to kill out of negligence. It's a great accent for modern spaces too.</comment>


How I Built a $700/mo Income Stream (correct link) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ibliskavka/how-i-built-a-700-mo-income-stream-ad63c9a9ec12 <comment><AUTHOR> Super awkward - I posted this 3 days ago with the wrong link...

<comment><USER2> What did you use to develop it?

<comment><AUTHOR> C# targeting Windows Universal Platform. Using AWS for server-side: S3, CloudFront, Route53, Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, API Gateway. Using HockeyApp for crash analysis.</comment></comment></comment>


Go version 1 proposal - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1ny8uI-_BHrDCZv_zNBSthNKAMX_fR_0dc6epA6lztRE&pli=1

<comment><USER2> The future's looking bright for Go.

I've recently been looking at some new languages: Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Node.js etc. Go was the _only_ site to put code samples (live ones at that) on their front page.

 _Language/framework creators take note_ : The first thing I want to see on your site is what the code looks like. How to install it is a distant second (I can look it up once you've convinced me it's worth installing)

<comment><USER3> I have never _ever_ understood the desire to make installation details and lists of requirements the first thing I see on software docs. I come across all these tiny packages or full-blown applications and I have to literally spend minutes to figure out what they actually _do_.

Being open source is not a real advantage any more, but it takes so little effort to summarize your project at the top of the README, so please do it so I can fall in love with your stuff.

<comment><USER4> I've noticed that this problem exists even beyond software documentation. It's often hard to figure out what a company does by looking at their web site, for instance. I wish every such document started with "Product Foo is ____. It does ____."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> very happy to hear about the "go" command on the timeline. While I haven't really had much trouble building Makefile this has seemed one of the least elegant parts of development with Go

Checkout the usage for ./go so-far here: [http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/cmd/go/script....](http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/cmd/go/script.txt)

<comment><USER6> Makefile fussing was driving me insane with Go. I was trying to build with directory local packages to keep bits of code separated cleanly and it was a pain to get working.

I discovered <http://code.google.com/p/go-gb/> and haven't looked back. It makes building Go code SO much nicer. If I just want to try something quick in Go I just make a directory, place my whatever.go file in it, type 'gb', and run my program.

I really hope they make this 'go' tool as easy as 'gb'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go 1 is a good idea. I just hope Go 2 is not considered harmful.

<comment><USER8> oh, my. If Google doesn't capitalize on that when Go 2.x DOES hit the streets, I'll be very disappointed.

Well played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The Go 1 release will be available in source and binary form for at least these platforms: ... Windows (2000 + later): amd64, 386"

I develop primarily on a Windows machine, so this is some good news.

<comment><USER10> Recent releases are already available for Windows, see <http://code.google.com/p/gomingw/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have only skimmed the page, but this caught my eye:

        Close is intended as a way for a sender to signal
        that no more values will be sent.

        Go 1 will disallow close on receive-only channels.

Why, then, would one still call this 'close'? Wouldn't "done", "dontexpectmore" or "sendEndOfData" be better names?

<comment><USER10> Yesterday in #go-nuts we were discussing better names for close() which currently causes so much confusion, my suggestion was end(), but done() is a good one too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's currently quite a pain to get the most-recent Go release installed, and integrated into your development environment. I'd like to see Go v1 be more distribution-friendly. This is the biggest show-stopper for wider Go adoption.

I'd also like to see a built-in IDE analogous to Python's IDLE to lower the barrier-to-entry. IDLE is great for education.

I also think that Go needs to establish some sort of independent entity for the future development of the language. People need assurance that Go isn't going to go away if Google gets bored with it. Go hasn't crossed that rubicon yet, and this is another big barrier to adoption.

<comment><USER10> There are Go packages for Debian and Ubuntu at least ( <http://go- lang.cat-v.org/packages> ) plus a binary distribution for Windows, and installing in other systems is quite trivial:

      $ hg clone -u release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ go
      $ cd go/src
      $ ./all.bash

<comment><USER13> Last I checked a few months ago, if you want to use a distribution's version of Go, you must install all later libraries as root - there's no place for "my local libraries".

<comment><USER10> That sounds like a problem with the packaging for your distribution.

If you install Go the way golang.org instructions indicate, you can install everything as a non-root user just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Submitted yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3080027>

<comment><USER15> I certainly missed it in the wall of Steve that was HN yesterday. ;)</comment></comment>


Communities experimenting with mesh networks - <AUTHOR> http://technical.ly/2015/04/06/12-communities-experimenting-mesh-networks/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have any opinions on how this could grow to replace traditional ISPs? What's the difference between a mesh network and just putting a big WiMax antenna up in my neighborhood and giving everyone free internet access?

<comment><USER3> The idea of a meshnet is that, as the name implies, it's a _mesh_. It usually involves intelligent rerouting over other peers if a previous route is no longer available.

If you were to put up a big WiMax antenna, you are the single point of failure - you could spy on the traffic, you could banish specific clients, and if you were to disappear, everybody in your neighbourhood would be without internet.

A mesh network allows none of these (in theory), because there is not one single point of control.

<comment><USER4> Mesh is a topology, not a belief system. A mesh network can still be administered by one entity who can monitor traffic, manage configuration, and restrict access to authorized users, but they would do so using a distributed system rather than the control panel of a single piece of equipment.

It's different from what you describe in that a typical WiMax antenna setup mirrors the star topology typical with network switches. Clients are connected to a piece of infrastructure, which is in turn connected to a larger piece of infrastructure, and so on up the tree.

In a mesh network, clients are connected to each other without using infrastructure as an intermediary. Every node relays traffic for its neighbors, and you reach distant points by hopping through many of your neighbors (or you don't, if they don't happen to currently be arranged in a way that facilitates that).

A good mesh network system has intelligent routing algorithms that are some combination of fault-tolerant, efficient at finding the shortest path, equitable in distributing load, and designed well in terms of incentive structure (so that people do not freeload by acting as clients but not relays).

If you are using a mesh network to reach the internet, you are still dependent on the nodes that route between the mesh network and an actual ISP, which presumably pay for the privilege and want to recoup costs somehow. However, it can be a decent way for a community to roll its own last-mile infrastructure, provided it can purchase wholesale transit somewhere within the mesh, and drive enough participation that there is sufficient capacity between you and the backhaul most of the time.

The more interesting uses are for meshes that are not (mostly) about Internet access. There is experimental work on protocols for messaging and durable document storage/publication (think Wikipedia but without web servers) that work well on meshes, providing pretty good internet-like capabilities to areas where access to the actual Internet is impractical. (Some of this is embedded in OLPC/XO).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> java-man What I think might contribute to success of mesh networks as ISP alternatives is incorporation of micropayments for bandwidth/storage into the system.

There should be an incentive for individuals to participate. A thread of catastrophic communication system failure (as in case of a natural disaster) is not enough to stimulate the deployment. But the promise of income is.

Would you be inclined to install a mesh node if it gave you a small income stream?

<comment><USER5> How would the income system work? (..cryptocoins?)

What goods/services can people buy with your "income stream" system?

<comment> java-man Storage, bandwith, voice.

The problem, I think, is distributed accounting - in the presence of untrusted and malicious nodes. Micropayment transactions need to work faster than existing systems like BTC, to be able to support fast call set up, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this stuff.

I am taking a good Coursera course "Fog Networks and the Internet of Things" that covers edge networks. I am also planning on including a section "IoT and Edge Fog Networks" in my new book I am writing.

There is a lot that can be done at the edge (collecting and processing local data, sharing computational resources, etc.) without needing LTE/core or the cloud.</comment>


Flickr Is Getting a Major Makeover - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2012/02/21/flickr-is-getting-a-major-makeover/ <comment><USER3> Everyone here is completely missing the most important point of this makeover: it's not the design, but the fact that this means Flickr isn't being killed off.

With the sorry state that Yahoo!'s been in recently, the killing off of several interesting projects and websites, etc. Flickr dying was the number one concern for its users.

Stagnation is the death of any website. _Any_ attention it receives from corporate, any money sent its way, any sign of time and effort being put into keeping it alive means they're not ready to chalk it off just yet - <USER2> means you don't have to worry just yet about migrating your thousands of photos (and far more importantly, the associated metadata) from Flickr to one of the alternatives.

This makeover is an infusion of life, and is first and foremost an attempt at extending the life of what could have been a dying website (from a corporate point of view). For this reason, and this reason alone, I both welcome this news and hope it accomplishes at least something.

<comment><USER4> Then there are yahoo properties that have been in death throes for years. There's this message on upcoming.yahoo.com:

        Upcoming gets a new look!
        December, 15, 2010
        Check out our new Upcoming Beta

And a link to <http://upcoming.yahoo.com/news/archives/2010/12/15/upcoming/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes Finally!

I can't wait for this. I'm a heavy heavy flickr user. 100+ hours just these last 2 weeks, every day hours and hours. (I use flickr to look for creative commons photos for my websites).

1) Flickr currently wins the award for the worst search results. I've spend dozens of hours looking for specific photos with flickr returning the most irrelevant results you could ever imagine. Sometimes the results have absolutely nothing to do with what you searched for. It was funny for a while when page after page of Asian Children turned up when I was searching for nature photos. But after

2) Flickr's flow is broken. There's something very unnatural about the way search results, pages, streams, and download pages are set up. Common, it's a photo gallery with comments, I'm not sure why they had to complicate it.

3) I should not have to right click on an image to go to it's download page.

4) Flickr has a serious quality problem and is a terrible place for Photographers. Why? Becuase Flickr is a place for shitty family photos. People upload them by the room full. And I do NOT want random people's portraits in my search results. Any good photography that has potential to be licensed or commented on is lost in the jungle of family vacation photos. Yes I know flickr is a photo hosting site, but what people are really trying to use it for are to showcase and host their photography, which is actually useful. So these 2 groups, average consumers and pro photographers are both using Flickr in two different ways and that really hurts the site.

So I'm very excited at what the redesign is going to look like. I just hope they don't turn it into some laggy ajax nonsence where effects pop up every time you hover over a photo or all the photos are dynamically grouped using javascript after they're loaded (which again, makes scrolling laggy).

</comment><comment><USER6> I am certain Markus Spiering is a talented designer, and having not seen the final product or the research involved, I have no idea whether the new interface will better serve their customers. So I have no desire to attack this makeover as a poor design decision.

But it is sad to see the famous Flickr aesthetic so substantially changed. Flickr was one of the first web apps, but it made itself easy to use and approachable by looking deceptively flat like a webpage. It communicated not with gradients and flashy buttons, but with tightly-written copy and a very precise visual hierarchy emphasizing white space.

It was also, recently, pretty fast. The previous rewrite in YUI3 emphasized speed and I strongly hope they didn't revert back to the previous performance problems.

As someone who designs and builds webapps, I find this a sad day. I aspire to build something as simple, flat, and creatively-written as the Flickr interface.

<comment><USER7> _I aspire to build something as simple, flat, and creatively-written as the Flickr interface._

<http://500px.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flickr is one of the very _very_ few services on the Internet I've ever taken my wallet out to pay for when asked (there are simply too many free alternatives)...and I've heard the same from other people.

All the recent rumblings at Yahoo have made me very nervous and it was obvious that the Flickr site was starting to get a little old looking. Some of the backend photo management stuff, while brilliant for 3 or 4 years ago, has been superseded by better, newer approaches -- and certain things were never good enough (geotagging photos in some areas was really hurt by the aging map interface and low quality imagery). And the photo views were getting far too small on today's modern displays.

So I welcome this change, even if I feel nitpicky about some of the particulars. It means that Yahoo is stating their intentions to keep Flickr going -- I suspect this is in no small part to the paying customers.

Now I only hope two things:

1) This isn't a one off, that they continue to work the design so that it doesn't die right out the gate, and long standing problems don't get left around.

2) They update the flickr uploading app. The ancient app is positively ancient, and a buggy mess, but it's still better than the web interface. There's not a whole lot that needs fixing, but it does need to get fixed.

</comment><comment><USER9> A facelift, basically. As an ex-Yahoo! the problems which plagued Flickr run deep. They need to perform open heart surgery on that sucker, not put some make up on it.

Disclaimer: I work on The OpenPhoto Project :)

<comment><USER10> Does openphoto have albums yet? Last I looked was maybe 2 months ago, but their lack made OP a non-starter for me.

<comment><USER9> We'll have albums in the 1.4 or 1.4.1 release (3-5 weeks).

We had a lot of going back and forth on how tags and albums should co-exist. Glad to say we've resolve all that now just have to add the feature in.

Next major milestones are mobile apps for iOS and Android in the 1.4 release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't envy the person who has to do a make-over for flickr. It works pretty well as it is (from a design perspective), and it feels as if it's hardened into concrete over the years of passivity, which makes it harder to argue that flickr needs to evolve its design like regular websites.

But Yahoo! can blame it all on themselves. How about they make sign-in and registration less of a pain in the ass for people with no interest in Yahoo! accounts.

<comment><USER12> Well, you don't need a Yahoo! account for flickr. Hell, you can sign in using your google or facebook account if you prefer. Only way to make it even easier would be to also support open id i suppose...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I want this to be a great new start for Flickr, but I'm worried it won't be. What Flickr is really missing in 2012 are more advanced community features: Its user base is brimming with talented photographers, but the dusty old pool system doesn't encourage the kind of individual curatorial approach that has propelled the likes of Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram to their present heights.

Pools are big buckets that anyone can throw a photo into. They can be moderated, but rarely are, and so tend to be a broad cross-section of a theme rather than a gallery of excellence. I rarely use them; most of my viewing on Flickr is browsing the photostreams of contacts I've added because I like their tastes.

Flickr could actually go a long way toward fixing this with a fairly simple addition: Give me a feed of favorites by my contacts. Flickr has individual curation; it's just hidden in dark corners of the UI.

</comment><comment><USER14> This makes me kind of nervous.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about the social aspects of Flickr or the quality of the search, or most of the other things people here are complaining about.

I don't use Flickr for random people to see/find my pics. I use it so that I can organize and find my pics, so I can share them with my friends and people I know, and every once in a while post links to them in some of the forums I frequent. It's easier to use Flickr than it is to host it myself. All of my pictures are creative commons licensed and open to the public, but my primary concern is _my_ ability to organize them and view them.

The current interface isn't the best, but it's "good enough," and I've been satisfied with it. It's nice to know it's not being killed off, but I'm worried they'll screw it up.

</comment><comment><USER15> Please, please, please make the mobile version use the full screen width for photos. I can't believe that it's been like this for so long.

</comment><comment><USER16> Goes from looking very "Flickr" to indistinguishable from so many small-time competitors or even Google Images.

</comment><comment><USER17> A major makeover? Great!

Not addressing the terrible Cut/Paste "From Yahoo!" logo?

Big mistake.

</comment><comment><USER18> Too little, too late. People have moved on, it seems, judging from my unscientific poll.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, that guy is completely self-absorbed.

 _Yahoo has been paying attention to Flickr all along, Mr. Spiering insisted, and has made a lot of improvements since it bought the site in 2005._

As a paying Flickr customer for several years, I can say that no, Yahoo has not been "paying attention" to Flickr. At least, not in a way that is meaningful to any one other than the product manager.

 _He pointed out that the photo page was redesigned as recently as the summer of 2010 ... started integrating Flickr across its products ... Yahoo weather app ... integrated into Yahoo Mail soon..._

Wow. _None_ of that means anything to me at all. Flickr hasn't improved in any meaningful way, in terms of my end-user needs, in as long as I've been using it. A few painfully obvious examples are: 1) give me multiple photostreams. Seriously, my eBay photos go into the same stream as my carefully selected landscape photos? 2) Give me an uploader that doesn't consume massive resources and error-out regularly.

<comment><USER20> Since using Flickr for hosting your eBay photos is likely against a strict reading of the terms of service, I'm not surprised they aren't considering it -- especially if you are hot linking to them.

<comment><USER19> Pretty sad, if that's the case. It sure as heck isn't worth $25/year to host my family snapshots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This might just be too little, too late. Flickr has been in bad need of a makeover for 5-6 years now. Sites like f.e. 500px.com - with its unfailing focus on photographers and their photography - ran past Flickr long ago.</comment>


Building Better Software with Info-Ops: An Interview with Daniel Markham - <AUTHOR> https://programmingzen.com/building-better-software-info-ops-daniel-b-markham-interview/ <comment><USER2> Author of the book here. If you have any questions, let me know. Happy to help any way I can.</comment>


FDA Suddenly Bans Drugs That Have Been On The Market For Decades - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110324/02181913605/fda-suddenly-bans-drugs-that-have-been-market-decades.shtml <comment><USER2> Without exaggeration, I bet it goes something like this:

Big Pharma: We need to you ban x,y,z now that we are selling something similar.

FDA: No problem, anything else?

I mean how else can you honestly explain fish oil being banned, the FDA doesn't have the time and money to do the research to find all the unregulated competition that has been on the market for years.

It's like the department that regulated oil drilling, they allowed the corporations to fill out their own inspection reports and the regulators just signed it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not HN material imo.</comment>


Gmail is getting a brand new inbox  - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2013/05/a-new-inbox-that-puts-you-back-in.html

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I have "labels" setup in gmail that match this system very closely, and i use "rules" and manual filtering to deal with it. I wonder if Gmail will automatically mark the emails for the right tab accordingly or if there'll be some scope to customise/tune the system.

Either way, it's a welcome step forward.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they're just formalizing the power-user label pattern to make it more accessible for new users/non-tweakers

<comment><USER5> formalizing and automating. having your messages automatically filed into one of those tabs (without having to set up any rules) is a lot more exciting than the fact that the tabs exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People who want their email under control already have something similar - <USER2> instance, I have filters and labels and folders for Newsletters and offers, one for Family and friends, University and so on.

People who haven't taken control of their inbox yet won't be bothered to do that now.

Loved the music in the video though.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady They've actually done this for a while without any user interaction. They automatically have setup forums, notifications, and bulk labels for me. They've just moved them too the top. Hopefully they've refined them too cause they never worked too well for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> This won't help me. The only pain point I experience in my GMail workflow is the inability to mark-as-read or delete emails from my status tray. I end up opening one-line emails and spam just so I don't have to track them down and mark them as read later.

<comment><USER8> Keyboard shortcuts make this very easy, in particular '[' (archive and move to the next one).

<comment><USER7> I was referring to the Android app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks really, really great! I can't wait.

</comment><comment><USER10> Gmail should just get a brand new "Compose Email" that's not an infuriating fucking tiny half-baked pop-up.

</comment><comment><USER11> Look Google just invented mail filter rules!

<comment><USER12> _automatic_ mail filter rules

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate the box look all the companies are going for. It's like the fucking 80s/90s all over again....

<comment><USER14> ...or the box look with the pinterest double-column BS.</comment></comment>


Show HN: "hello world" over Bittorrent - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twobucks/bittorrent-example <comment><USER2> Very simple and to the point.

Quick question, how did you generate the magnet hash?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the good question. I'll add it to the FAQ section of the readme.

Magnet hash is generated with create-torrent and magnet-link, like so:

      create-torrent message | magnet-link

and then appending the other params like download name and tracker to it. So the above command gives us magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b8e8adbee320fc312e5fd71479329c3d53c40aea and we append more params to it so it uses our tracker on port 8000: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b8e8adbee320fc312e5fd71479329c3d53c40aea&dn=message&tr=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A8000%2Fannounce

You also get the same magnet link printed to the console if you run the seeder first with node seeder.js.</comment></comment>


Reproducible machine learning with PyTorch and Quilt - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paperspace.com/reproducible-data-with-pytorch-and-quilt/ <comment><USER2> Oh, this resonates with me so much! I'm running 4 different DeepSpeech models right now, each using a differently processed version of LibriSpeech dataset (mfcc/fbanks/linear spectrograms, deltas? energy? padding? etc). Because the original DS papers didn't bother describing it, and every implementation I found uses completely different methods and libraries.

Not to mention every one of those implementation packages their preprocessed version into a different data format, and then creates a different data pipeline (and I only looked at tensorflow implementations)

<comment><USER3> Why don't you use STFT + Conv2D like Deep Speech 2 did. It works well in my case.

<comment><USER2> The DeepSpeech2 paper does not include any details about audio processing. I see an older Baidu-Research implementation of DS1 that uses "log of linear spectrogram from FFT energy". Also, there's a pytorch implementation [1], where they use Librosa's STFT, is that what you're referring to?

That's two more implementations that I haven't considered. I'm sure most of the processing steps under the hood are the same or similar, but as I'm not an audio processing expert, I can't tell which method is better (and why).

And it's hard to tell if it "works well" because or despite the way I processed the files.

[1] [https://github.com/SeanNaren/deepspeech.pytorch](https://github.com/SeanNaren/deepspeech.pytorch)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case you missed it, here's a link to the full training example that you can run yourself: [https://www.paperspace.com/console/jobs/jvqssfqawv5zn/logs](https://www.paperspace.com/console/jobs/jvqssfqawv5zn/logs)

Inference example: [https://www.paperspace.com/console/jobs/js4mqzm91fj2lg](https://www.paperspace.com/console/jobs/js4mqzm91fj2lg)

Disclosure: I work on Paperspace

</comment><comment><USER5> A step in the right direction for machine learning in science, but they could have done some more research into naming conflicts:

$ apt-cache show quilt

Package: quilt

[..]

Description-en: Tool to work with series of patches

Quilt manages a series of patches by keeping track of the changes each of them makes. They are logically organized as a stack, and you can apply, un-apply, refresh them easily by traveling into the stack (push/pop). . Quilt is good for managing additional patches applied to a package received as a tarball or maintained in another version control system. The stacked organization is proven to be efficient for the management of very large patch sets (more than hundred patches). As matter of fact, it was designed by and for Linux kernel hackers (Andrew Morton, from the -mm branch, is the original author), and its main use by the current upstream maintainer is to manage the (hundreds of) patches against the kernel made for the SUSE distribution. . This package provides seamless integration into Debhelper or CDBS, allowing maintainers to easily add a quilt-based patch management system in their packages. The package also provides some basic support for those not using those tools. See README.Debian for more information.

$ zcat /usr/share/doc/quilt/changelog.gz | tail -n3

Version 0.26 (Tue Oct 21 2003) \- Change summary not available

<comment><AUTHOR> i hear you. on pypi the name is uncontested so, at least in the python eco- system, there is only one quilt. that said, for future revisions we'll try for a unique name because it can indeed be confusing, e.g. in the apt-get case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was not aware of Quilt for hosting datasets. Is it the go-to in this area? What other alternatives are there?

<comment><USER7> You can use AWS to host open datasets: [https://aws.amazon.com/opendata/public- datasets/](https://aws.amazon.com/opendata/public-datasets/)

These are some other people working in roughly the same space: [http://datproject.org/](http://datproject.org/) [http://www.pachyderm.io/](http://www.pachyderm.io/)

But it does seem like Quilt is a go-to, if you are looking for a "Github for data" host.

<comment><USER8> I use Quilt pretty much daily and while I like AWS open datasets I don't think it is as actively developed on as Quilt is. DAT project on the other hand I really do like as a way to simply transfer large amounts of data between contributors, that said, if you are just trying to get data out there and have people use it freely for their own work I think Quilt presents the solution due to searchable and easily understood python (and I think an R repo) usage of datasets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems to me like the machine learning algorithm here is mostly learning how to add JPEG compression artifacts to images.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't quilt just bluring the pixels to an extend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quilt isn't doing the inference (the PyTorch model is). But, in any case, no. Super-resolution is more than blurring, it's pixel inference. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.05158](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.05158)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please please please don't kill our favorite plot device. Make sure the process takes exactly 3 days.</comment>


Tell HN: Google Maps know where I'm at when tethered to my phone (in Chrome) - <AUTHOR>

This seems like some sort of magic to me.
I'm tethered to my iPhone 3GS (I have dev account, using SOCKS proxy) and I pull up google maps in chrome.
I click the "My Location" button, and it pinpoints me 20 ft from my house, which I just moved in to today (hence the tethering)
If I was on my phone this would make sense... but I'm on a laptop using a 3G connection from a phone and receiving no other information from the phone. <comment><USER2> I don't know the reason, but I could guess that:

\- Your phone has an IP address

\- Your IP address is assigned to a cell tower

\- Google knows where each cell tower is located

<comment><AUTHOR> Except for the fact that it pinpointed(!) my address and showed an error range of ~30 feet. Unless there's a cell tower on my roof that I'm not aware of, it still doesn't make sense.</comment></comment>