Software projects written in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://serokell.io/blog/top-software-written-in-haskell <comment><USER2> At Channable, we have had a great experience introducing Haskell for our infrastructure projects. We have written a few blog posts about this which you can find on our tech blog[1].

\- Jobmachine, an advanced job-scheduling system with dynamic dependency resolution[2]

\- Vaultenv, a small open-source tool to get secrets from Hashicorp vault[3][4]

\- alfred-margaret, a blazingly-fast Aho-Corasick implementation written in Haskell[5][6]

\- Sharkmachine, our in-house replacement for Apache Spark[7]

[1]: [https://tech.channable.com/](https://tech.channable.com/)

[2]: [https://tech.channable.com/posts/2017-02-24-how-we- secretly-...](https://tech.channable.com/posts/2017-02-24-how-we-secretly- introduced-haskell-and-got-away-with-it.html)

[3]: [https://tech.channable.com/posts/2017-07-06-introducing- vaul...](https://tech.channable.com/posts/2017-07-06-introducing-vaultenv- keeping-your-secrets-safe-with-vault-and-haskell.html)

[4]: [https://github.com/channable/vaultenv](https://github.com/channable/vaultenv)

[5]: [https://tech.channable.com/posts/2019-03-13-how-we-made- hask...](https://tech.channable.com/posts/2019-03-13-how-we-made-haskell- search-strings-as-fast-as-rust.html)

[6]: [https://github.com/channable/alfred- margaret](https://github.com/channable/alfred-margaret)

[7]: [https://tech.channable.com/posts/2019-10-04-why-we- decided-t...](https://tech.channable.com/posts/2019-10-04-why-we-decided-to- go-for-the-big-rewrite.html)

<comment><USER3> I could not find jobmachine on your GitHub page, am I correct in assuming it's not open source?

We are currently in the process of building something similar and it would have been interesting to see your approach in more detail.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you are correct. We have not open-sourced Jobmachine yet, since it is still pretty specific for our workload, but I hope we can generalize and open- source it in the future.

<comment><USER4> Don't wait to fix it. If you want to release it ask for it to be released. Doing anything else is being fake-open-source; the real reason you don't want to release it is because of some value you think it has, not that it would actively hurt other people through its design (how...?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This leaves out my favorite project written in Haskell: Pandoc.

[https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/)

Pandoc is an amazing piece of software that can convert between all kinds of document formats.

<comment><USER6> It's amazing it's done in Haskell. I never knew this. I used it couple of times to convert docs. I also installed it many times with the gem bundler system for my rails, middleman app projects.

<comment><USER7> when you think about it, not toooo surprising. Haskell's undeniable killer app is parsing and compilation, so pandoc was pretty much a project destined for Haskell if I ever saw one :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is my experience with haskell:

I work for a small data science consulting company whose major components of a machine learning pipeline were written in haskell. The company got bought by a large corporate and shortly after, all the haskell developers left, leaving a handful of people (including myself) who didn't know how to use or maintain the major components of a multi million dollar acquisition. It is in the process of being scrapped and replaced with a more typical software stack.

Hilarious times.

<comment><USER9> They can't afford a few thousand for training, so spend more thousands rewriting? The original Haskell devs had to learn, too.

<comment><USER10> You can't just train any software developer to code in Haskell. It's not an easy language to learn and a lot of programmers don't want to learn it. And even if they managed to train up the current staff, they will either have to continuously hire Haskell programmers or continuously hire people who don't know Haskell and hope they're able to learn it.

<comment><USER11> > _[Haskell is] not an easy language to learn_

To be fair, purportedly "easy" languages such as Java aren't actually easy. True, a lot of people can write (or copy paste from online articles) crappy Java code full of bugs and performance issues and nobody will notice since this low quality seems to be some kind of industry standard. But there aren't that many _good_ Java developers either.

A similar argument used to be made about PHP: anyone can use it. To write poor software, that is.

As for Haskell: it's different enough to Java-like and C-like languages that it's difficult to wrap your mind about it if you come from those languages. But if you start fresh, it's not that hard. Some years ago someone here on HN posted pretty good results when teaching Haskell _to kids_. Young kids pick it up surprisingly fast. It's not _inherently_ difficult, and in fact some of its concepts may be easier to grasp than traditional imperative languages. (And no, you don't need to understand category theory at all in order to program with Haskell).

<comment><USER12> _As for Haskell ... if you start fresh, it 's not that hard._

I'm going to respectfully disagree with that.

I do understand the point you're making. In fact, my own experience of having taught beginners without preconceptions to program is consistent with that point.

However, the "scale" of a language (including all the strange edge cases) is very relevant for production use and particularly maintenance. Even if you stick to a core of widely understood language features and libraries yourself, you might still have to maintain code written _by someone else_ that uses more obscure features or complicated interactions between features.

For Haskell, that "scale" is usually determined in practice by GHC plus whatever language extensions anyone has turned on plus whatever libraries they've found from Hackage or elsewhere. Those language extensions are numerous, and they can not only add new language features but also change existing code to behave in different and potentially unexpected ways. As a platform for research and development of programming language concepts, that is a benefit. As a practical programming language for production use, it is a _huge_ liability.

<comment><USER13> The scale of Java is also insane. The standard library is huge. The commonly leveraged frameworks, also huge. And the abstraction...my God, the unnecessary abstraction.

How many people, offhand, know the difference between a Runnable, Callable, Function, Consumer, and Supplier? I include all of them because literally the only meaningful difference between them is whether they take an argument or not (Function and Consumer do), and whether they return an argument or not (Callable, Function, and Supplier do).

How many people know the difference between a Future, a CompletableFuture, a RunnableFuture, a ScheduledFuture, a ScheduledRunnableFuture, and a FutureTask? I've done async code in Java; I still can't keep them straight.

<comment><USER14> I'll give a shot at the last one:

Future is something that will eventually produce a value.

CompletableFuture is a Future that you can register a callback on for when it completes.

RunnableFuture I'm not completely sure on, but I'd guess it's a Future that will complete but won't produce a value (basically a Future<Void>).

ScheduledFuture is a Future that you can specify when it should run in the future.

ScheduleRunnableFuture is a RunnableFuture that has a defined time it should start running.

FutureTask is a RunnableFuture you can cancel. OK, so I cheated on this one, I didn't actually know what it was and had to look it up.

Edit: I looked up RunnableFuture and I was half right. It's something that's both a Runnable and a Future, so it has a run() method that causes the future to be evaluated but doesn't return its result at that time. It actually seems pretty niche and probably only useful if you already have some API that's expecting a Runnable, otherwise it's exactly equivalent to calling get() on a Future then ignoring the returned value.

<comment><USER13> Cool; next question - you have a library that returns Futures. You have another library that takes CompletableFutures. How do you feed the output of the first into the input of the second?

Also, as a note, FutureTask is the only implemented class out of those; the others are all interfaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is a growing number of stories in the wild of companies who were burned for using Haskell. Common patterns of struggle are emerging. You aren't reading about them because people aren't eager to share their failures with the world, just yet. Proceed with caution, especially in the startup realm.

<comment><USER16> As a counterpoint - at CircuitHub, we migrated from NodeJS / Angular to Haskell / Elm and couldn't be happier.

I think a core reason for our success is that we built our team from experienced developers that had built large applications in other languages. Then arrived at Haskell as a better solution.

I have heard some negative experiences that I would attribute to a few different factors.

1\. Lack of Haskell experience in the early team. 2\. Lack of experience building large real-world applications (too academic) 3\. The startup/group didn't achieve product-market fit, and Haskell was scapegoated.

None of these problems are Haskell specific, just run of the mill team issues.

<comment><USER17> How common is it for the same person to have both strong Haskell experience _and_ experience building large real-world applications?

I've tried to find a way to use Haskell (lacking strong experience there, but with lots of large app experience), and I've not managed to find a situation where pulling the trigger makes sense because of the risk of getting "stuck" with a poor path out.

<comment><USER18> In tech world languages are like a religion. Their choice does not really have to make sense. Hence unless it is 100% total proven failure the affiliates will try any means to protect/advocate/spread whatever language they like.

<comment><USER19> This is an inconvenient truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While we're at it:

\- [https://postgrest.org/](https://postgrest.org/)

\- [https://www.shellcheck.net/](https://www.shellcheck.net/)

\- [https://xmonad.org/](https://xmonad.org/)

\- [https://www.costarastrology.com/](https://www.costarastrology.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://hasura.io](https://hasura.io)

<comment><USER22> I considered Hasura but went with postgraphile ([https://github.com/graphile/postgraphile](https://github.com/graphile/postgraphile)) because it's written in JavaScript with a plugin architecture, meaning I can easily add my own plugins into the system down the road. Creating a JavaScript plugin sounds much less daunting that looking into a mature Haskell codebase.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, that looks great. Was recently struggling to add custom graphql functions to hassura (preferably in python). But I guess js is a fair trade.

<comment><USER23> Hey, have you seen the preview docs of hasura actions? It has a small example of integrating python (or for that matter, any language) for custom mutations.

<comment><USER21> Hi! Thanks for following up.

I can't find anything specifically called "hasura actions". Found this[1], but that has nothing to do with language integration.

[1] [https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/guides/auditing- ta...](https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/guides/auditing- tables.html#auditing-actions-on-tables-in-postgres)

<comment><USER23> Sorry, it is actually in preview and not officially released yet. You can get the preview image, docs, etc in the PR: [https://github.com/hasura/graphql- engine/pull/3042](https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/pull/3042)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For me, one of the biggest non-starters is a slow compiler, or rather a compiler that doesn't scale well. When people talk about how smart their type system or their compiler is, it immediately rings alarm bells for me.

This is one of the things that you may only learn the hard way, as your project grows in complexity. Nobody advertises how slow their compiler is.

So, my question is, how does GHC fare these days? How does it treat people that switched from a dynamic language, who are used to quick iteration?

<comment><USER25> For quick iterations, you have ghci. You just edit your files, type :r and it will recompile only necessary files, which is really quick (and I miss it in most other REPLs). Similar with incremental compilation. But if you need to compile huge project always from scratch, of course, you will suffer.

There have been work on making haskell to have deterministic build to speed up compile time, and compare to scala, I find it way faster (in my current company, we use scala). But note that if you start using stuff like template haskell, your compilation will slow down.

<comment><USER24> Can you define "really quick" a bit better? Less than a second?

<comment><USER26> To give you a single data point, our Haskell code base at ITProTV is about 50,000 lines of code. Reloading the project after a change in GHCi takes slightly less than one second. We haven't spent any significant effort on speeding up compile speeds, for what it's worth. It's fast enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Also: [https://github.com/facebook/duckling](https://github.com/facebook/duckling)

</comment><comment><USER28> > Haskell is like that smart, funny but shy girl totally outshined by her more > popular classmates - Python and Java

Come on. Why picking a girl specifically?

</comment><comment><USER29> While there are benefits of learning Haskell as a developer. I am curious about the professional benefits versus the time and effort required to master the language to the extent that you are employable and command a good salary compared to just focusing on mainstream languages where you probably have a lot more competition but also a lot more opportunities.

<comment><USER30> I have been looking around for Haskell jobs for a while because I would love to program in Haskell professionally, and what I've noticed that there are very few opportunities and the salaries are quite low. You can expect to make much more as a Scala programmer, for instance.

The effort of learning Scala vs Haskell as at a professional level would be more or less equal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting: as soon as you look into real SW instead of academic examples, Haskell is just as messy as any other language.

<comment><USER32> IMO, only when trying to get loads of performance. It's just messing with the compiler...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Imagine being able to list all the software projects written in C, C++, Java, or C# on one short blog post!

<comment><USER34> To be fair, most asked questions about Haskell that people always have is if Haskell is so good and not just purely for academics then where is Haskell used in industry? Or is there really huge and complex software projects written in Haskell?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is the fixation with Haskell?

<comment><USER36> People that learn it tend to not want to use most other mainstream languages anymore, and thus want very badly it to grow.

<comment><USER37> Could it be because learning Haskell was such a major effort for them that they now don't want that to go to waste?

Learning Haskell (well) is a big investment. If you make that investment, of course you are going to argue that now we should reap the benefits of that investment.

It makes sense from the point of someone who has already made the investment of learning Haskell. But, choosing Haskell for a project means that other current and future programmers must make that same investment in leaning Haskell too, rather than learning something else perhaps. Or using what they already know well.

<comment><USER38> As someone who has hired many developers at a large Investment bank, I always found that people that knew Haskell or some other functional programming language tended to be far more productive in standard OO languages. I know of many other technical leads and hiring managers that look at Haskell as a market signal. As someone who does code in F# and Haskell in my spare time, I don't expect to get job using either of these languages, but knowing these languages got me a foot in the door to do some of the most interesting work I have ever had (many years ago). From those in the Haskell community that I do interact with, most people do not expect to code in Haskell for their day jobs, and most of them would continue writing Haskell code outside of work regardless of whether Haskell becomes a commercial success or not. For me, Haskell is one of those languages that is just worth knowing, simply because it gives you a different perspective on the world and a new set of mental tools. If you haven't as yet played with a strict functional language, then you really should give it a try.Not because you expect to use it at work, rather because learning new things is fun and it will make you better at your job anyway as a side effect. If the logic you used in your argument holds, then we should really be coding in assembler.

<comment><USER39> I've found the exact opposite. People i've worked with who are keen on Haskell have tended to be keen on building castles of unnecessary abstraction. People i've worked with who are not keen on Haskell are less so.

(Giuseppe, if you're reading this, you're the one exception!)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Square could be one of the greatest Trojan Horses in recent tech history - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrishexton.com/?p=41

<comment><USER2> With that title I was hoping to read a good conspiracy story about Square running some form of malware stealing users' data: I'm disappointed.

Change the title. Or make up a malware story to go with the tone of the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feared that it might be misinterpreted as such. I'll consider that. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article is mostly nonsense.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the card infrastructure is too old. Unless Square plans to replace it from end to end, it won't be going very far and will likely end up as a large acquisition for Visa.

See [http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Paying-With-Your- Phone-...](http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Paying-With-Your-Phone-Is- Awesome-Because-Its-Not-1960-Anymore-In-Reply-To-Farhad-Manjoos-Paying-With- Your).

<comment><AUTHOR> Aaron,

I have read your Quora post and I agree that the credit card system is antiquated, outdated and leaves a lot to be desired. I certainly feel this as credit card user and as a member of the startup community who knows the possibilities that are out there. I wrote the article considering the perspective that when Square started I was rather skeptical, it felt like a bit of a gimmick, yet their latest update suggests they are moving away from merely providing a piece of hardware that allows a merchant to accept credit cards and considering a more holistic system.

The new direction is at least interesting as the introduction of Card Case means they could the a customer's identity and credit card to their mobile phone and I can't see why down the road they couldn't use a variety of fund sources, i.e. not just credit cards.

I do think Square has a long, long way to go.

Where they started has given them some traction to date and I think that's because at this point in time, albeit antiquated, credit cards are well understood. In my opinion it's good to see Square adding extra features to their initial offering as I think it will need to in order to survive.

<comment><USER3> Hi,

I compete with Square, so I'm admittedly biased, but I know something about this space.

We've built a full-featured POS system and API from scratch that runs in a web browser. "Full-featured" is an important descriptor because it means a lot of things:

\- working with spring-loaded electronic cash drawers

\- working with RS-232 serial line printers of various types

\- handling nested products and product versions

\- tracking hours for payroll

\- working with all kinds of industries, not just coffee shops

\- handling inventory

\- integrating with accounting software (our own)

\- handling business transactions

\- working with existing legacy POS systems

Square doesn't do any of this right now. With enough money and resources it could eventually do some of it. However, there are competitors out there who can do more and who can do it for less money because they're not as tied to the existing infrastructure.

It's also somewhat amusing that we came out with FaceCash Register in March (Square Register?) and adopted "Pay with your face" as a motto ("Pay with your name?"). We made this image in 2010 (<https://s.facecash.com/images/home1.jpg>) and they posted this one last week ([http://media.bestofmicro.com/square-card- case,S-T-293933-13....](http://media.bestofmicro.com/square-card- case,S-T-293933-13.jpg)). Such is life in the Valley.

Anyway, maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but I don't think I am. I've bet a lot on it. Square is a really nice product, but as I've also said before, I think they just made the most beautiful eight-track player the world has ever known.

Aaron

<comment><USER4> I find it a bit perplexing that you feel Square is building a solution that is already outdated and yet the system you've bet a lot on, on paper, sounds like existing legacy POS systems that have been around for years with the sole exception of being web-based. I won't deny that credit cards are antiquated, but the article's title and main point was talking about how the card reader and simple app was their "trojan horse" to get into the small merchant market and then build on the install base with other offerings, including payment systems. That kind of renders the credit card argument moot as Square could just as easily adapt to new payment methods as a traditional POS could. Not to mention, cash (to me) is far more antiquated. Of course that's probably not the best argument as I don't see cash disappearing anytime soon, but I certainly believe credit cards (as they exist now) could be replace within a decade.

As for your other points, I agree that they're essential features in a traditional POS system. My only experience with using a POS was at a local pizza shop in Ohio and we used all of those features on a daily basis. However, there's no reason we couldn't have went with a pure digital solution except for maybe receipts. Some customers just want that paper receipt. But I do agree that Square has a long way to go before it becomes capable of being such a system and there will be many businesses who just like doing things the "antiquated" way with a traditional POS. I think there is room for both in the business world.

<comment><USER3> FaceCash is nothing like the existing payment system. It's a lot more than a POS; it's a unified payment and accounting system capable of storing and organizing more payment information than any other system in the country. As part of that it has a web-based POS and API, but that's just scratching the surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No it will never be a major player. It is neither necessary nor enough to have cheap POS to run small business.</comment>


Tesla Motors hiring talent for developing self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.efinancehub.com/tesla-motors-inc-nasdaqtsla-seeking-to-hire-an-adas-controls-engineer-to-develop-autonomous-driving-technologies/122963.html <comment><USER2> This is an attempt to pump the stock price (interesting to note that it was efinancehub.com and not a tech site that reported this).

ADAS isn't just about the self-driving cars that Google is testing. ADAS includes systems like:

\- Warnings if you drift out of your lane (Mercedes has been advertising this for four years)

\- Warnings and stops if the car predicts an accident may occur soon (Infiniti has been advertising this for years)

\- Automatic parking (Ford has been advertising this for years)

\- Blind spot detection (many car companies have it)

\- Cruise control that maintains minimum distance to the car in front of you (BMW and Audi mid and high-end cars had it since 2010)

It really looks like Tesla is trying to develop those features for the Model S and future cars.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking about Tesla Driving Data today:

I was wondering what data they were gathering, and what they would do with it, and how it could be useful to other drivers:

What if you have a Tesla driver profile and you could see your driving habits ranked amongst all other tesla drivers (anonymously) to determine your rank as the most safe, efficient, slow, fast, whatever driver.

To see where you stack among others would have an effect on your driving. To see how your particular car performs against all others - its mileage vs age against others etc...

I think that there is a whole other layer that could be added onto the Tesla experience that other car manufacturers are far too old and less nimble to do appropriately.

<comment><USER4> Your driving habits could also significantly impact your insurance premium too...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a blind person I get excited about this until I think of just how much the first models will cost. I guess I should save what would now be a car payment if I could drive in hopes that it will be enough of a down payment that I can afford one of these when they come out and pass all the regulatory hurdles.

<comment><USER6> It is conceivable (even probable?) that self-driving cars would be subsidized for the visually handicapped.

<comment><USER5> They may be subsidized but I could see myself making enough money where I wouldn't qualify for the subsidy if it was income based but not making enough money to be able to easily afford one if they were six figures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The incumbent car manufacturers are struggling to keep up with Tesla's first offerings, they're going be beside themselves if Tesla can pull this off.

<comment><USER8> The incumbent car manufactures, by which I assume you mean GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, and the like, are operating a far different market segment. They face a much more difficult market, where profit margins are tighter, because they by default aim to the mass market.

Tesla is operating in the upper luxury end of the market, where margins are fatter, where vehicles sold can be lower but the margins maintained. They are making very large cars, even their follow up model to the S is the same wheel base. Why is that? Most likely because Musk knows they cannot deliver the range needed at cost and more importantly, a size, that a smaller car will be.

There are many self driving efforts going on in the market, both Mercedes and Infiniti have vehicles on the market that offer some limited form of self driving. Mostly lane departure and the like but they are pushing distances.

Tesla should be the one who worries most, because they have a unique product only for a short time and they won't get into the smaller sized car market because the technology path they have followed is not progressing fast enough.

If they made a car the size of standard midsized car, lets pick Fusion or Accord, the wheelbase shrinks by ten inches on average, width comes down too. All that shrinkage will take away from battery capacity, hence range. That is one reason many of the offerings by the incumbents have less range. Many use a battery solution not all that different, just restrained by size and technology.

There was a reason Musk went for the price point he did, it allowed larger vehicles which current technology requires. Never bet on the incumbents sitting still, Musk certainly is not. It just comes down to, can Tesla execute well in the mid size market, should they ever get there. Who knows, he made cede that space by licensing tech to let other people work the small margin sales

<comment><USER7> It depends what market segment you're looking at. If it's the 'Electric Car' market, Telsa are pretty much the leaders in this segment apart from a handful of super-micro city cars. If you mean the 'Performance Car' market, apart from one or two niche offerings and prototypes, the usual manufacturers should be spooked by Tesla's potential to realise and implement new technology.

Musk makes no secret of his positioning in the market and going for the price point that they have. But there are hundreds of different cars at the same price point of the Model S, none of which are even in the same ball park.

The necessity for the incumbents to appeal to the mass-market is exactly why they should be worried, they're business relies on so many manufacturing synergies to reduce price, adapting all of those chassis and systems to cope with electric drive and self driving is going to be a challenge if they're to sell to their exist mass-market customers, at a price they expect. Tesla doesn't have that problem.

<comment><USER9> Tesla leads the electric car market in technology, but not in volume; there are many more LEAFs on the road today than there are Teslas. Total sales for the LEAF are about 65,000.

<comment><USER10> For those interested in the numbers:

Tesla is delivering 550 cars per week[1], which is about 2357 per month. In August Nissan sold 2420 Leafs[2]. So seems like sales are just about equivalent. Except that Tesla is supply constrained and sells direct to consumers, so that 2357 underestimates actual sales. And many of those Leafs are sitting in dealerships, while none of the Teslas are.

Now Telsa only sold 5k cars in 2012, so it's doubtful they have on the road more than half of the 75,000 Leafs that have been sold[3]. But the Leaf started shipping in December 2010[4] whereas the Model S started shipping in June 2012[5] so it's not exactly a fair comparison.

The Chevy Volt actually did better than either in August, with 3351 sales[2]. Although their year-to-date sales were the same as the Leaf (14k) which suggests they had some late resurgence.

[1] [http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-talks-all-things-europe- and-u...](http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-talks-all-things-europe-and-us-and- mars-in-quirky-dutch-interview-video/)

[2] [http://green.autoblog.com/2013/09/04/chevy-volt-nissan- leaf-...](http://green.autoblog.com/2013/09/04/chevy-volt-nissan-leaf-both- set-new-montly-sales-records/)

[3] [http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/21/nissan-leaf- production-...](http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/21/nissan-leaf-production- increase-slowed-by-electrodes-ev-china/)

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

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

<comment><USER9> You're comparing US LEAF sales with worldwide Tesla sales. Worldwide LEAF sales are around 4,500 a month. In the US, at least, LEAFs are in high demand. In Atlanta dealers have only 120 hours of supply. Before the Model S, Tesla sold the Roadster, but the numbers were so low they don't affect the comparison.

At this point one can only talk about installed base as both Nissan and Tesla cannot meet demand. Nissan makes its own batteries but cannot make them fast enough. And of course the markets are fairly different. The LEAF is much, much cheaper, and is in no way a luxury or performance car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tesla should find this team:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial- intel...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial- intelligence/cmu-autonomous-car-doesnt-looks-like-a-robot)

Videos here:

[http://rtml.ece.cmu.edu/Shuster/video.html](http://rtml.ece.cmu.edu/Shuster/video.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Will we get to the point where people will be giving the finger to anyone _not_ in a self-driving car, because it messes with e.g. optimum traffic flow?

<comment><USER13> No, why would you pay attention to the road?

There might not even be windows in the self-driving car of the future.

<comment><USER12> Well, opening the door to view the awesome forest fire in the distance is probably inconvenient. Plus you know...the billboard lobby ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honest question: is there harm in competing self-driving schemes? I really don't want to shop "safety." By that I mean, paying more for stopping in the rain well or having one competitor hold the patent for driving in the snow properly. I imagine it will be properly regulated, but I'd love it to be an industry-wide initiative where everyone shares and maybe even uses the same codebase.

<comment><USER15> What you are looking for is basically what happened with 3-point safety belts:

 _" The three point belt was developed by Nils Bohlin who had earlier also worked on ejection seats at Saab.[15] Volvo then made the new seat belt design patent open in the interest of safety and made it available to other car manufacturers for free.[16][17]"_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Three- point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Three-point)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Talking about self-driving cars, a friend said:

"They will have to be proven as perfectly safe. One accident and people will go crazy."

And though that's true, it of course made me think about the countless accidents involving human-driven cars through distraction, drink/drugs, weather, medical issues, confusion and whatever else.

We haven't proven our driving abilities as perfectly safe, not by a long shot!

<comment><USER17> I highly doubt that. What's way more likely is that even if they are just slightly more safe, you will be able to get cheaper insurance for them. Eventually, over time, this will push all self directed cars off the road.

There is even a disruption potential: Put together a new insurance company that only insures self driving cars and make it meaningfully cheaper. The ones that still insure self directed cars and self driving cars both will have a tough time to compete because their blended economics don't allow for the super cheap rates.

<comment><USER16> I don't think many people will necessarily own their own self-driven cars. Why have something there idle when it could be doing other work? More likely it will operate more like a taxi or by subscription. Or even own your own, but have it used in a pool to recoup costs, a bit like swap-n-go gas bottle refills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I live near tesla hq. I saw some Audi cars with radars on top of it around. They are tesla people I guess. Because google cars are Lexus.

<comment><USER19> Stanford has a group called "VAIL" which is an acronym for the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab. [1] As you probably know, Audi is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Auto Group. AFAIK, this group was borne out of the DARPA Autonomous Car challenge, where the Stanford team partnered with VW to win the challenge. [2]

They've produced several different VAG-based models including several Audis that mainly focus on self-driving and similar AI. One of their more high profile recent examples was an Audi TT that climbed Pikes Peak without any human input. [3]

Some pretty cool stuff, and likely the cars you saw.

[1] [http://www.stanford.edu/group/vail/](http://www.stanford.edu/group/vail/) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge) [3] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y88...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y88zRmOpA7Y#t=40)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really hope they partner with Google on this, at least I can't think of any reason not to.

<comment><USER21> I was thinking the opposite. Competition is good and there isn't any obvious competition to Google in the self-driving car space.

<comment><USER22> There is actually a reasonable amount of competition within the autonomous car space. A lot of people online only ever hear about Google's initiatives, but Audi, BMW et al. are building driving systems, some of which approach 100+ km/h.[1]

I definitely agree that more competition in the area is good. Hopefully as more players build these systems, they'll continue to improve and be commercialized quicker.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s)

<comment><USER21> That's why I added "obvious", because even though there are a lot of autonomous efforts (large and small) from other companies, Google seems to be getting all of the attention.

<comment><USER23> Well, Google did hire the people who won the DARPA Grand Challenge(s): [http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Team-Behind-Google-s- Auto...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Team-Behind-Google-s-Autonomous- Cars-Project-and-Details-About-the-Experiments-160321.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They may be looking to buy Google's technology, and this is just a negotiation tactic: a threat to do it themselves to keep prices down.

</comment><comment><USER25> Driverless cars are the future. anyone thats missing that will stay behind at some point

</comment><comment><USER26> Why don't they tie up with Google?

</comment><comment><USER27> The article reads like it was translated into English. So many bizarre word choices. Anybody else notice? Self-ruled cars. Features owned by other cars. Sovereign driving. Systems (that) have congregate functional safety. I stopped reading after enough little phrase bombs like those.</comment>


Ask HN: Uptime monitor for mobile apps? - <AUTHOR> Friend's B2B SaaS company has a lightly-used Android app. The login screen stopped working, and nobody knew about it for several days.<p>I know there are plenty of uptime monitors for servers / websites, but are there any uptime monitors for mobile apps? Something that lets you say "here's our app store URL, here's a dummy account login - can you make sure you can download the app, log in, and access all the menu options?" <comment><USER2> Uptime monitors like [https://www.pingdom.com](https://www.pingdom.com) let you form your own requests to test if your api or w/e is still running.

Your friend's company could also find or create ways to incorporate the app into employees' workflows so there's some sustained, mutual dependence on it that keeps it on track. Sometimes called "dogfooding": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food)</comment>


Hole 83 in Desert Golfing - <AUTHOR> http://www.hiwiller.com/2014/09/04/level-design-hole-83-in-desert-golfing/

<comment><USER2> I think the levels might be algorithmically created but then hand-vetted by the author (I can't remember for sure). Episode 94 of Accidental Tech Podcast had a discussion and they linked to an interview with the creator: [http://atp.fm/episodes/94](http://atp.fm/episodes/94).</comment>


EFF Asks Supreme Court to Review Bad Interpretation of Computer Crime Statute - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-supreme-court-review-dangerous-interpretation-computer-crime-statute <comment><USER2> This should be of interest to anyone working on any application that requires authorization from users but not necessarily from the service. Here's an analogy of the problem with "authorization" from _Facebook v. Vachani_ :

"Suppose that a person wants to borrow a friend's jewelry that is held in a safe deposit box at a bank. The friend gives permission for the person to access the safe deposit box and lends him a key. Upon receiving the key, though, the person decides to visit the bank while carrying a shotgun. The bank ejects the person from its premises and bans his reentry. The gun-toting jewelry borrower could not then reenter the bank, claiming that access to the safe deposit box gave him authority to stride about the bank's property while armed. In other words, to access the safe deposit box, the person needs permission both from his friend (who controls access to the safe) and from the bank (which controls access to its premises)."

EFF thinks "authorization" shouldn't be defined only by computer owners (the bank in the analogy)--especially when the purpose of the computer crime statute was to address crime, not limit the evolving technological ecosystem. For practical purposes, however, it probably makes sense to get authorization from both sources while this gets sorted out.</comment>


Ask HN: Is anything like TotalSpaces possible again with macOS? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You can still run TotalSpaces on 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra: [http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/elcapitan](http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/elcapitan)

TotalSpaces is still being actively developed.</comment>


NSA Tailored Access Operations ANT Catalog (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://leaksource.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/nsas-ant-division-catalog-of-exploits-for-nearly-every-major-software-hardware-firmware/ <comment><USER2> ...and the NSA can't/won't help the FBI with the iPhone?

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Not surprised to see iPhone on the list. No details how it is vulnerable. Impression is that it is a long term so maybe back door or signing key?</comment></comment>


Solution claimed for Navier-Stokes equations, one of the millennium problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.inform.kz/eng/article/2619922 <comment><AUTHOR> It appears that the same comment is being made over and over again, so it's worth putting a brief summary of the answers:

No, this is not yet peer reviewed. This is breaking news, and it's not had time to be assessed by experts in the fields, or even people who are tangentially acquainted.

However, unlike P vs NP, this problem does not have a long history of a "proof" per day by cranks, and a paper every year or so by established mathematicians. It's unusual to see a paper claiming anything substantial about this problem.

If you're interested, here's a link to the actual paper:

[http://www.math.kz/images/journal/2013-4/Otelbaev_N- S_21_12_...](http://www.math.kz/images/journal/2013-4/Otelbaev_N- S_21_12_2013.pdf)

It's in Russian. If you can read Russian, and are acquainted with the math involved, then feedback would be most welcome. In the meantime this might be the solution, it might be an ultimately flawed but useful advance, or it might be nonsense.

It is, however, news.

 _Added in edit: This comment looks useful, but is not encouraging:_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7042941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7042941)

 _Having said that, if it has been solved by someone who is primarily in a teaching (as opposed to research) post, then it 's plausible that they would spend some time (12 pages? Hmm) setting up the problem and notation._

<comment><USER2> In the paper he mentions that he's been interested in pursuing this problem since 1980. A list of his selected publication is available here: [http://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?personid=29899&option...](http://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?personid=29899&option_lang=eng)

His paper may contain errors, but he's not a crank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A long time ago, I started working on an approach that never panned out, attempting to prove that such solutions could not exist. I will briefly mention it here in case anyone would like to comment or continue the strategy.

In [1] I learned that it is known that certain differential equations associated with embedding manifolds in R^n possess no smooth solutions. And in [2] I asked if it was possible that the Navier-Stokes equations were of this nature, since if this was the case it would create a clear path towards a negative solution. There was no definitive answer given, but the community (of mathSE) did seem to agree that it would turn it this is not the case.

[1] [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/8586/what-is-an- exam...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/8586/what-is-an-example-of-a- second-order-differential-equation-for-which-it-is-known) (See Willie Wong's answer)

[2] [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/9085/manifold- interp...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/9085/manifold- interpretation-of-navier-stokes-equations)

</comment><comment><USER4> The PDF (in Russian):

[http://www.math.kz/images/journal/2013-4/Otelbaev_N- S_21_12_...](http://www.math.kz/images/journal/2013-4/Otelbaev_N- S_21_12_2013.pdf)

There is a small summary at the end in English, although it only seems to cover the problem:

[http://i.imgur.com/fVqVBiE.png](http://i.imgur.com/fVqVBiE.png)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll believe it when I see the prize get awarded. Until then, I'll file this beside that guy who writes a 'solution' to P=NP every month on arxiv.org.

<comment><USER6> I wish people who submit links to HN would think before doing so.

<comment><USER7> Would you rather see more of 'why I dont eat lunch at my desk' stories?

<comment><USER6> If this article had a link to the actual document "Existence of the strong solution of Navier-Stokes equations", then we could have an actual discussion about the mathematics.

Incidentally, the google results for "Existence of the strong solution of Navier-Stokes equations" are the article and some links which point to this HN post: [http://i.imgur.com/2pf8kMa.png](http://i.imgur.com/2pf8kMa.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't take much effort to find the actual article. Here you go:

[http://www.math.kz/images/journal/2013-4/Otelbaev_N- S_21_12_...](http://www.math.kz/images/journal/2013-4/Otelbaev_N- S_21_12_2013.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Link to CMI's Millennium Problems:

[http://www.claymath.org/millennium- problems](http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems)

Relevant summary:

"Navier–Stokes Equation: This is the equation which governs the flow of fluids such as water and air. However, there is no proof for the most basic questions one can ask: do solutions exist, and are they unique? Why ask for a proof? Because a proof gives not only certitude, but also understanding."

<comment><USER3> There are already a large number of solutions to Navier-Stokes that are known. The millennium problem asks to prove existence or non-existence of _smooth_ (infinitely differentiable) solutions that are valid for _all time_ See pg 2, here: [http://www.claymath.org/sites/default/files/navierstokes.pdf](http://www.claymath.org/sites/default/files/navierstokes.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At this rate they'll all be solved by mid-century. Weren't these supposed to last us like a millenium or something?

<comment><USER10> "Weren't these supposed to last us like a millenium or something?" Why would you think that?

<comment><USER9> I was making a joke about the name...

<comment><USER10> Ah okay, guess I misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder, if true, how it will change CFD. That is, will it change at all.

<comment><USER12> Well, if it is true, then it could indeed change CFD. Imagine that the computational stencil can solve itself using a closed-form equation. A strong solution implies that you don't have to form matrices to couple the linearised equations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, just to put it in some context. The paper was published in the Eurasian Mathematical Journal, of which the author is the editor-in-chief.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to this article, he claims to have found a strong solution. My prediction was/is that the types of solutions asked for by the millennium problem were not going to exist, so my first instinct is to not believe this, but clearly that is not a good reason. So, at the risk of being wrong, I will make the following not so bold prediction: there is a critical mistake somewhere in the paper and the approach will ultimately not pan out.

<comment><USER14> The prize is awarded either way. You have to prove that a solution exists _or_ doesn't exist. [http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/rules- millennium...](http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/rules-millennium- prizes) _In the case of the P versus NP problem and the Navier-Stokes problem, the SAB will consider the award of the Millennium Prize for deciding the question in either direction._

<comment><USER15> Precisely. In the case of the NP-hard example I presented below, the researcher (who's name eludes me) attempted to prove that a solution did not exist.

From a computer science perspective, this would be favorable, as a solution for NP-hard would render a lot of crypto useless overnight. =P

<comment><USER16> Why do people keep repeating this notion? P doesn't mean fast or even tractable within the expected lifetime of the universe. "Polynomial time algorithms are fast" is an extremely vague statement for intuition, and not actually true except if you define carefully what you mean (that is, that they are faster as n->+inf...)

If crypto relies on some algorithms that are O(n^100000000000) where n is key length, I'm not very worried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kinda strange, I cannot find the manuscript and not even his homepage ([http://otelbaev.com](http://otelbaev.com)) is updated.

Wouldn't one expect this to be reported either after a successful peer review or after publication of a preprint?

His citation index is not very convincing either [http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CU2sU8YAAAAJ](http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CU2sU8YAAAAJ)

Smells fishy.

<comment><USER18> Basing opinion on citation index is like saying if this person is not widely cited he is likely to be wrong. From what I know, it is common for researchers in US and EU to cite each other. However work from say China or other Asian/African nations is not cited as often.

I know many (well-established) professors who don't bother updating their webpage. In fact some of them wouldn't have eve bothered keeping a webpage had it not been for the courses.

That said I will take this news with a grain of salt because it is not an easy problem and definitely needs a through review.

<comment><USER17> >Basing opinion on citation index is like saying if this person is not widely cited he is likely to be wrong.

No, it does not say that.

Having published for 40 years with only very few citations means that his works were either irrelevant or only found extremely limited circulation. Both makes the claims less trustworthy. However, on the other hand, Perelman...

<comment><USER19> Perelman wasn't an academic nobody. He was a Miller fellow at Berkeley, and had visiting positions at the Courant Institute and Stony Brook. When he left the academic system, he had job offers at Princeton and Stanford.

TL;DR People who work on geometry knew Perelman pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have started to translate the paper so that English speakers can explore it. I've only had time for the abstract, introduction, and main result statement, but that already gives an important part of the picture. Any further contributions are welcome. [https://github.com/myw/navier_stokes_translate](https://github.com/myw/navier_stokes_translate)

</comment><comment><USER21> Any implications for computational fluid dynamics methods?

</comment><comment><USER22> Remember physics does not work like maths: physic is the art of solving an equation without calculating it.

Usual tricks are: \- reducing one degrees of liberty per symmetry (this can involve creating abstract symmetries); \- making 2 coupled dimensions uncoupled by introducing perturbations that tends to 0; \- making weired assumption on the form of the solution (definite, continuous, and derivable in all points) because if you are not in quantum mechanics, your solution rarely accepts discrete change of values);

Thus I am intuitively thinking the navier stockes solution cannot be found by a mathematician. I was pretty much expecting an approximation of the solution by a physicist because it requires the kind of free spirit accepting to make hypothesis that normally makes a mathematician have an heart attack.

The physical solutions tends to be a subset of the mathematical equations. Physicists tends to discard solutions that would involve the world exploding every time a fluid is flowing (I don't know why).

Am I the only one that noticed that Maxwell Equations are looking like a weired simplified sets of Navier Stokes equation in a case of a very weired perfect gaz? (viscosity = 0, compressibility = 0, and a weired twist about vortex (rotational seems related to vortex), and at the opposite of NS a time dependency on two fluids (E and B) that are kind of independent but dual (rot and div meaning seem to be swapped in their role for B and E), and a ... weired kind of coupling on B and E over time?)

DivE = is expressing the compressibility RotE is expressing the vorticity of E ...

And the funniest of Maxwell law is that at the end they seem to be relativistic (c is appearing in the equation of propagation and is the limit)

Man, I so would like to see a geometrical interpretation of the maxwell equation as a dual space coupling, so we can use intuition instead of math to solve it.

I so wish I had time to study this... I would really try to solve NS by first solving Maxwell. :)

I am betting the solution as for relativity is involving at least one non euclidean geometry. In fact since it involves "time" I could call it not a geometry (wich is time agnostic) but a dynametry :)

The equivalents of formal axiom of geometry describing formal solutions of canonical "dynamic space" that would be attractors of stable solutions and rules to transform them.

<comment><USER23> >Am I the only one that noticed that Maxwell Equations are looking like a weired simplified sets of Navier Stokes equation in a case of a very weired perfect gaz? (viscosity = 0,

Faraday's original approach was the "flow" of the field ( that was later mathematized by Maxwell).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's funny how seeing this paper written in Russian makes me want to learn the language. The Anglosphere is only part of the story!

</comment><comment><USER25> Clay Mathematics Page still lists it as unsolved. I know of dozens of "solutions" that have not been accepted. Do we know if this is just submitted or actually accepted by the scientific community.

</comment><comment><USER26> Translation to English has been started ([https://github.com/myw/navier_stokes_translate](https://github.com/myw/navier_stokes_translate))

</comment><comment><USER27> Does his proof involve Hilbert & Fourier spaces? How about Hilbert-Schmidt superoperators?

<comment><USER22> Fourier would be acceptable if and only if there were only linear solution to the problem. No?

My reasoning is the following : NS also describes non linear behaviour (turbulent flows that are sensitive to the initial condition thus that may result in solutions that looks like white noise).

Linear algebrae can't be used to solve non linear phenomena and thus if a solution is looking like temporal noise, I guess the fourier of the time serie would also would like a solution with a density of probability that would be constant on all spectrum of frequencies that are compatible with the physics (no energy travel faster then the speed of light, hence, there is an upper limit to the frequency).

Am I stupid to expect non linear algebrae involved like Liouville theorem ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> great success! now we can calculate optimal trajectory of nuclear missile bomb to destroy assholes uzbekistan

</comment><comment><USER29> Wawawiwa!

<comment><USER30> Very nice.</comment></comment>


McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Security Questions for Single, Childless People - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/security-questions-for-single-childless-people

<comment><USER2> _What is the color of the fur of the cat who will be the first one to start chewing on your leg after you die alone at home and leave all of your pets without any food or water for days?_

That one made me pause. For any single people with pets (like me), please sign up for [http://DeathSwitch.com](http://DeathSwitch.com) or a similar service.

</comment><comment><USER3> McSweeneys.net has been down all day, anyone know what is going on?</comment>


Show HN: Help me writing a list of tools for a decentralized web - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/decentralizedweb/decentralized-tools

<comment><USER2> [https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative- internet/blob/...](https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative- internet/blob/master/README.md)

[https://github.com/digital-dreamer/blockchain- programming/wi...](https://github.com/digital-dreamer/blockchain- programming/wiki/Platforms-and-protocols)</comment>


Amazon as an Antidote to Life Inside the High Technology Bubble - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazon-antidote-life-inside-high-technology-bubble-glenn-kelman

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to work at Redfin. Not sure how I feel about this.</comment>


Full third-party cookie blocking and more - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocking-and-more/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused about if this means that IndexedDB will always wipe data after 7 days. That seems like it would prevent storage from being used for user data in PWAs.

<comment><USER3> > after seven days of Safari use _without user interaction on the site_

If it's a PWA that's regularly used you should be fine. But if not, yeah, that's going to be very annoying.

<comment><USER4> If this is really about protecting users and not about kneecapping web apps shouldn't Apple also wipe user data in native apps that haven't been used in a week?

<comment><USER3> Native apps don't really have the problem of third-party ad networks storing data intermixed with app data in this way, though.

<comment><USER2> Why not though? It seems like third-party SDKs could be included by the developer and stored on my local device.

<comment><USER4> Every iOS app I ever built for a client had Facebook's SDK and tracking installed, at the client's request. Often Google's and Twitter's too and the user has no awareness of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The 7-Day Cap on All Script-Writeable Storage is troublesome: if I don't log into a computer for a week 'cause I'm on vacation then you wipe my saved data? I have local storage based utilities I've written that I sometimes don't touch for weeks, but whenever I go back everything I put in there is STILL THERE.

Seems like a great way to drive less use of local browser storage options and promote greater use of cloud storage solutions. Cynical me says "YAY iCloud".

<comment><USER6> The day count is days of active browser use, not calendar days, so what you describe is unlikely.

<comment><USER5> Ah, that would be an improvement: just re-read the article and I can't find any reference to "active use" vs "calendar". Can you point out where that is?

<comment><USER7> I think om2 means this from the article:

"seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site"

It's not immediately obvious the way it's phrased but they couldn't be calendar days if there are days you don't use Safari; it's only counting a day as one where Safari is used and you don't visit the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had third party cookies blocked for years in Firefox. It doesn't break much.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. I don't see why they should be allowed in the first place. I also block first-party cookies and while that does break more sites, it's still pretty manageable.

<comment><USER10> Do you use any sites which require any kind of authentication?

<comment><USER11> Firefox users can turn on privacy.firstparty.isolate which I believe will scope third party cookies to the top level domain you are on. It is off by default, but I've been using it for sometime without issue (except very persistent re-captcha).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Safari continues to pave the way for privacy on the web, this time as the > first mainstream browser to fully block third-party cookies by default

Too bad Safari isn't my default browser anymore, ever since they essentially killed it when they neutered extensions.

<comment><USER13> I initially felt the same way, as I relied on ublock origin, but the loss of that extension forced me to switch to pihole, which I think is an overall better approach to ad blocking. It works for all devices on your network, so you get ad blocking on devices that you normally wouldn't like your smart tv and the apple news app.

<comment><USER14> Being DNS based, pi-hole cannot block specific paths of otherwise-acceptable domains nor can it do any cosmetic filtering. It is not necessarily a better approach for web browsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You know what I'd really like from Apple: a per-site option for disabling JavaScript and another for blocking even first-party cookies.

<comment><USER16> The number of people who care about blocking Javascript in 2020 is minuscule.

<comment><USER17> Miniscule, and growing. That site that shouted at me that I'm filthy lowlife scum for running an adblocker? Pphhht. JS disabled; nastiness averted.

<comment><USER18> It wouldn't be that difficult to build a JS-free version of the same nag. If global JS support somehow goes down, the nags will just adapt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Rather than wiping indexed DB data after 7 days, could you not just make it an opt in thing, like the camera or mic? For example, ask users "Allow myapp.com to store app related data on your computer?". If they allow it, then give access to indexed DB API. That way we can still have fully local PWAs.

</comment><comment><USER20> Still dreaming of a way to block cookies per-domain

Edit: someone just told me you can do it with osx adguard, in the user rules you can set "||domain.com^$cookie" to block all cookies from domain.com

<comment><USER21> You can do this with uMatrix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I might be misremembering, but didn't Safari block third-party cookies by default before all this tracking protection stuff started?

<comment><USER23> I was thinking the same, and a image search revealed the old preferences dialog for Safari: [https://www.howtoisolve.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/Browe...](https://www.howtoisolve.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/Brower-setting-for-Cookies.jpg). So yes; you could block third-party cookies before ITP was introduced. So it seems like they're now backtracking on ITP and just default to blocking third-party cookies by default?

Although maybe ITP is still involved, as Google implemented workarounds to be able to set third-party cookies regardless of this Safari setting, costing Google $22.5M. [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2012/08/googl...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2012/08/google-will-pay-225-million-settle-ftc-charges-it- misrepresented)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there any legitimate reason Chrome doesn't follow suit other than they like ad revenue? An answer from a Googler here would be great. And a real answer, not corp-speak.

Blocking third party cookies seems like overall a good thing for security. Security is good right?

Edit: 2 years is a long time to wait for a security improvement that is literally flipping a switch.

<comment><USER25> I'm a Googler who works in ads, speaking only for myself.

If Chrome blocked third party cookies today we'd see something between these two outcomes:

a) Publishers lose about half their revenue because ads aren't personalized anymore: [https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third- pa...](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/disabling_third- party_cookies_publisher_revenue.pdf)

b) Advertisers figure out how to keep personalizing ads through fingerprinting (non-cookie tracking)

Since (b) is worse than the status quo (users can't reset their fingerprint) I think "a security improvement that is literally flipping a switch" doesn't fit.

Chrome's approach (as described in [https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private- web-...](https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path- towards.html)) is:

* Block fingerprinting

* Figure out how to let advertisers personalize in privacy preserving ways ([https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox) primarily FLoC and TURTLE-DOV)

* Then remove cookies

I'm skeptical about the approach, since I think blocking fingerprinting and server-side correlation of requests is very difficult, but I think the people working on this are very good and have thought a lot more about it than I have.

<comment><USER26> In other words the Chrome team doesn't care about users, it cares about ads. If it put users first, as it should, third party cookies would have been blocked a long time ago and they would be working on blocking other fingerprinting techniques now.

This is a great reason to not use Chrome.

<comment><USER25> Users don't care about ads, but users care about the things that ads fund. If publishers go out of business, users will be worse off.

Do you think the browsers should block all ads by default?

<comment><USER27> Yes.

(i am a user; i don't presume to know what is best for others; speaking as a user that talks to others like me; i don't need to speak about 'users' as a third party entity; i am a significant sample of the set)

<comment><USER28> Are you ready to pay every website you visit, then? With actual money that you yourself own?

<comment><USER27> As if ads is the only possible business model on the web.

At best the ad revenue is taking money away from other web business models by instituting that kind of mentality that drives people away from donations and paid accounts.

Please, consider a paid account/membership when you read the guardian, the intercept, or look for the donation page of quality content articles in wikipedia or any of the loads of blogs written by authors with patreon accounts.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, people will not collect subscriptions to content publishers like they collect emojis on their phones.

Estimate how many websites you visit each month; people would need dozens of monthly subscriptions if such a system was set up.

Instead, they will rather go to and pay google news, facebook press or apple information to get all their news content. Where would money be taken away then? Content publishers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The list of addons I consider essential for privacy just keeps growing. Here is another great addition: [https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie- AutoDelete](https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete)

Does what it says on the tin.

<comment><USER30> What's more on yr list?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > this time as the first mainstream browser to fully block third-party cookies > by default

Third party cookies have been blocked in Firefox since September 3rd (2019) [1]. They mention Brave in the article, so surely Firefox being large than Brave should be included in "Major browsers", but not a single mention was made in the article. It really reminds me of the meme "what do you mean you've seen it?".

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox- bloc...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox-blocks-third- party-tracking-cookies-and-cryptomining-by-default/)

<comment><USER32> Blocking cookies from a blocklist of "trackers" as your link clearly describes is not the same as disabling them completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are there efforts to cloak third party cookies via the first party domain?

<comment><USER34> The point of third party cookies is cross-site tracking, which doesn't work with a first party domain.

<comment><USER35> There are perfectly valid use cases for third party cookies that do not involve tracking. Our business offers an appointment scheduling widget, it needs cookies for user sessions, and those cookies are third party because the widget is commonly included on a web page inside an iframe. That widget now breaks in the new safari preview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> meh. i mean ok yes this does kill the tracking (although i can imagine how to be more devious) but i already _very_ easily do this with ghostery.

i suppose it's great for the 90% of "default settings" users.

because a solution (many) is already available for tracker blocking , i'd rather see effective html5 video and popup blocking. is that infeasible?

</comment><comment><USER37> Soooo... like Firefox has done be default since June 2019 then [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox- bloc...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox-blocks-third- party-tracking-cookies-and-cryptomining-by-default/) ?

I guess later is better than never, but this seems like something they could have done long ago.

<comment><USER32> The blog post you reference clearly describes a limited blocklist. As the submission says, no other mainstream browser has blocked _all_ third-party cookies yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So much for the advertisement-powered web. Congratulations, privacy people: you win. I hope the new web is everything you hoped. If it isn't, you have only yourselves to blame. Enjoy the paywalls.

<comment><USER39> "So much for the _tracking_ -advertisement-powered web"

I'm looking forward to it. Seriously. I know you're intending to be facetious with this, but everything you listed sounds good to me. Either charge for your service, or include ads that don't follow me around the Internet.

Somehow advertising worked on radio, on TV, and in print without correlating data about each viewer with all their other habits. I see no reason why that can't be the same online.

<comment><USER40> Do you want 7 minutes of ads for every 23minutes of web browsing, like TV?

Did you not notice that print is dead?

<comment><USER39> No. That's why I pay for Hulu and Netflix, and DVR other content.

Print as a medium may be dead, but journalism is still here. And it's possible to provide without invasive tracking, just like it has been for centuries. The transition from ink to pixels doesn't rely on analytics to succeed.

<comment><USER41> You reckon Hulu, Netflix, et al, are just sitting on all the user data you are giving them, totally respecting it... definitly not monetizing from it? When was the last time you read T&C?

<comment><USER42> It's one thing where a business is using data you provide them to make better decisions, just like a store would use sales numbers to decide how much of an item they should stock up.

The problem here is when data is collected by third-parties I do not know, do not trust, and do not need. They collect data for _their_ benefit without providing me anything of value, only ads aka spam.

Online ads are also nothing like print or TV ads. The latter has a barrier to entry and some minimum criteria they must meet like the laws on what's allowed to be broadcasted and they are at the discretion of the publisher. This makes it less likely that a scam or malware would be promoted for example. Online? It's the Wild West, anyone can advertise anything (fake tech support numbers for example) for a few hundred bucks and targeting means they can make sure only the people most likely to fall for the scam would see the ad, while flying under the radar of anyone savvy enough to recognise it as a scam and report it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I sold $104,754 worth of videos and PDFs in 4 months - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dvassallo/i-sold-104-754-worth-of-videos-and-pdfs-in-4-months-6527c0c3429b <comment><USER2> Posting the same twice a day is too much, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037443)</comment>


Poetics: The first native implementation of CoffeeScript on the Rubinius VM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brixen/poetics

<comment><USER2> I'm starting to wonder if Rubinius could be a fourth entrant in the emerging platform race.

Anyone know if there are any (other) serious language implementations using PEGs? Coffeescript itself is based on @zaach's jison (a port of Bison to javascript) so that part is as impressive to me as using a native VM.

Edit: I remember that Cucumber (or, more specifically, gherkin) used TreeTop before Aslak moved it to the Ragel parser.

<comment><USER3> CLR, JVM... what's the third?

<comment><USER4> Parrot (<http://www.parrot.org/>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice! Execution will of course be slower then running the translated coffeescript on the v8 vm. But for some use cases this will not matter.

</comment><comment><USER6> This could be a good opportunity to add fibers natively. That would really clean up the language.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why Rubinius VM? Why not V8 or spidermonkey?

<comment><USER8> Beyond already compiling to Javascript as udp mentioned, the author (Brian Ford) is a frequent contributor to Rubinius and has already written other languages on top of it. Makes quite a bit of sense, in that regard.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any advice tuning a landing page for a new iPhone messaging app? - <AUTHOR> Hello.  My team and I are launching a new iPhone messaging app, and are having pretty mixed results getting sign ups on our preview landing page[1].  We had extremely poor results with paid Facebook advertising, and slightly better results with BetaList[2].  Any advice from the HN community on improving our conversion rate?  Is getting a healthy pre-launch email list really that important, or are we better off expending our efforts elsewhere?<p>[1]: nudjapp.com?ad=h<p>[2]: http://betalist.com/startups/nudjapp <comment><USER2> prelaunch list + invite codes = well worth it imho</comment>


Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing – ICLR 2017 Discoveries - <AUTHOR> https://amundtveit.com/2016/11/12/deep-learning-for-natural-language-processing-iclr-2017-discoveries/ <comment><USER2> A few brief notes:

Not at all sure the recommendations system papers should be grouped with QA papers. The techniques used aren't that closely related.

FastText(.zip) continues to be a weird project.

 _LEARNING A NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACE WITH NEURAL PROGRAMMER_ \- yeah, that's something. The neural programmer and related stuff seems like something out of sci-fi, even more so than normal neural networks.

<comment><USER3> > FastText(.zip) continues to be a weird project.

What is weird to you about the project? I haven't looked at the details, but the motivation seems pretty obviously to be able to run deep learning models on people's phones without seriously impacting UX.

Hell, even running a large vocabulary model on a server can be annoying when these models take ~10GB to just store the word vectors.

<comment><USER2> Well, it isn't deep learning for one thing.

Basically it's a reappraisal of early 2000-style manually engineered features. It's good work, but doesn't add much over VopalWabbit.

I haven't read the .zip paper in depth, but the mobile angle doesn't seem convincing to me. Text models generally just aren't that big! Drop the number of dimensions in W2V and it's really pretty small, and still expressive.

Don't get me wrong - I like FastText. But it suprises me it remains a research direction - almost everyone else is working on trying other approaches to get an AlexNet like breakthrough on NLP tasks. It's pretty clear that breakthrough won't come from the FastText approach.

<comment><USER3> > Well, it isn't deep learning for one thing.

You know, I didn't actually realise that. I had only glanced at it and assumed they were applying these ideas to deep models.

> Drop the number of dimensions in W2V and it's really pretty small, and still > expressive.

I don't think it's crazy to want to be able to do get better performance with small memory targets though.

They're working on other directions too, but maybe this is useful for their product groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I provided a write-up of interesting ICLR submissions, primarily for NLP, but have also provided a small snippet explaining why I thought the paper was important or how it fit with other recent relevant papers.

[http://smerity.com/articles/2016/iclr_2017_submissions.html](http://smerity.com/articles/2016/iclr_2017_submissions.html)

I'd also strongly recommend people read through all the submissions themselves as every person seems to select a different set of papers depending on what they're interested in. My write-up has very few papers discussing CNNs for example as I'm focused on RNNs for the most part.

[http://openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.cc/2017/conference](http://openreview.net/group?id=ICLR.cc/2017/conference)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Error establishing a database connection"</comment>


Save Your Startup 85% On Health Insurance In 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.simplyinsured.com/?p=795

<comment><USER2> Call now and save money! simplyinsured.com!

This reads too much as a blatant advertisement, with little actual content.

<comment><USER3> Especially since it seems likely the advice is based on their prices and CAs health market.

<comment><USER4> Actually - the guide to deciding which plan works in any market (those options are available nationwide).

Using our decision guide could save you thousands on health insurance - assuming you pick the right combination of tax-credits, subsidies, and exchanges.

If it's still unclear - send me a message, and I can help you navigate for your state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here in IL the BCBS individual insurance offerings are ~25% lower than equivalent group policies.

Our agent says this is the first time this has happened, but it is likely to continue for the next few years as Obamacare sorts itself out.

Since a portion of your medical expenses (including premiums) can be tax deductible anyways at the end of the year, the "pre-tax dollar advantage" isn't what it used to be.

In addition, our group plan (United) instituted 48 age bands (up from 10) which drastically increased the premiums for all the older people.

We wound up dropping the group coverage altogether and went with individual BCBS plans.

Obviously the new law forcing individual insurance to accept any pre-existing conditions and not be able to drop your insurance _at-will_ also made this option more attractive than in the past.

</comment><comment><USER6> Save 100%, move to Canada.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Insurance products sold by Vivek Shah, CA LICENSE #0I14828" the actor?

<comment><USER4> The founder.</comment></comment>


Apply HN: 925 – Job Search Assistance via Text Message (not a chatbot) - <AUTHOR> 925 (text925.com) is a phone number that you can text for free assistance in your job search. A real human replies immediately and helps you find opportunities that are tailored specifically to your needs. Your assistant continues working with you until you find a job. Down the road, we plan offer more in-depth job-search assistance to candidates, including reviewing resumes, offering interview coaching, and submitting applications.
Why use this instead of...
—Job boards: it's overwhelming to search through the morass of listings on public boards. Good opportunities are hard to filter out from garbage, the search engines suck, and the entire process is time-consuming and impersonal. We provide instantaneous, high-quality customer service, are experienced at finding quality listings, and will work with you until you find a job.
—Recruiters: most third-party recruiters are employed by a small number of companies and will work to steer you towards those (so they can collect referral bonuses). It's also much more of a pain to work with one, requiring lengthy phone calls and meetings. We provide unbiased service and are always available via text.
Traction: We launched our public beta four weeks ago and have over 300 sign-ups, and have exchanged over 4,000 texts with our job-seeking users. Some of our first batch are progressing through interview processes that we helped setup. We talk to our users every day, by nature of the product, and they love it! (Unprompted customer testimonial: "You guys are so fantastic. I know I speak for thousands when I say THANK YOU")
Team: I left business school to teach myself iOS development, and have been coding for the last 3 years. My cofounder is a Javascript/full-stack developer. We both have suffered through horrible job searches, and want to help people in our position.
Would love to hear your feedback. <comment><USER2> How will you be unbiased when you start to monetize this? Are you planning to find a way to be compensated that is independent of whether someone gets a job using your service?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's two ways we think this could go:

1\. We make money from companies via recruiting fees. In this scenario, our goal would be to present listings that we make money from via "sponsored links" a la Google search. As we grow our pool of job-seekers, we'd concurrently be able to expand the number of companies we have recruiting agreements with, thus making our implicit incentive to be biased towards a small number of companies weaker and weaker. If we got a significant portion of all job-seekers using our service, we'd probably be able to introduce a standardized recruiting agreement that companies could sign onto online in a self-serve fashion, minimizing our need to do "on the ground" sales.

2\. If that approach doesn't work, we'd hope to offer services to job-seekers that they're willing to pay for, such as resume reviews, interview coaching, and the like. There's also the possibility that we could come to some agreement with seekers for a (very small) percentage of their signing bonus/salary at a new job that we help them find. Obviously we have to provide excellent service to earn this, but that's what we aim for!

<comment><USER2> Approach #1 sounds like many that of existing recruiting firms. Until you achieve scale, you will be influenced by the same incentives that haunt this industry.

Approach #2 is more interesting. You're basically acting an "agent" for a job seeker. It's an idea I've seen discussed a fair amount (including on this site), but I don't know of anyone who's succeeded at it at scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points in both cases. For approach #1, I do think the Google example is somewhat analogous—ideally we'd survey all existing options more and more effectively, and explicitly call-out our "sponsored links." The incentives are more clearly aligned with the seekers in approach #2, but we're still in the early stages of exploring the willingness-to-pay or willingness-to-revenue- share of our users.

Our near-term goal is to grow the pool of seekers as quickly as possible and test the viability of both approaches. Having worked on some products that people like-but-don't-love, this one is much easier to market because the users genuinely love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having dealt with recruiters who simply scraped the web and job boards, I'm curious about how potential positions are discovered, evaluated, and acquired.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, this is mostly the service we offer, although we have done some extra work for our early users (resume reviews, interview prep). But the listings are hand-picked by a competent human, we do it for free, and we aren't trying to push you into companies that we are hired by. Going forward, we're hoping to expand the pool of job-seekers and companies we work with so that we can offer job opportunities that aren't publicly available.</comment></comment>


Simpson's Paradox is Back - <AUTHOR> http://matloff.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/simpsons-paradox-is-back/ <comment><USER2> Simpson's Paradox is deeper than conventional analyses suggest. I'm going to use the pilots'-late-arriving-flights data:

name | delay% alice | 30% bob | 20%

So Bob's flights are delayed less often, he's the better pilot, right? Yet:

name | night | day alice | 7/25 | 1/5 bob | 3/10 | 3/20

So now Alice looks like the better pilot!

But wait, what if the pilots are responsible for scheduling their own flights? Bob's individual batting averages might be somewhat worse than Alice's, but he's making better decisions about when to fly.

But wait, what if Alice and Bob fly out of the same airport(s), and they've agreed to let Bob fly during the day... (this is not meant to be an accurate representation of air traffic control)

When faced with a Simpson-like situation, a correct analysis usually requires considering the chain of causation, in particular, whether any stratification of the data depends on the independent variable being tested. If the stratification is a result of the test variable, it usually isn't a good one. In the Berkeley example, this possibility is the highly unlikely situation that applicants were automatically assigned to departments with gender taken into consideration -- so the stratification was valid.

<comment><USER3> In the past, I've considered Simpson's paradox to be nothing more than an amusing quirk of statistics. But, the parent example has helped me to see that Simpson's paradox is frighteningly inevitable.

For example, a conclusion like:

"People taking a particular drug have worse outcomes."

doesn't reflect on the efficacy of the drug _at all_ \- because people choosing to take the drug are presumably in greater need.

Same in the piloting example above - Alice is scoring worse only because she has the more difficult assignments (perhaps because she is indeed the better pilot).

<comment><USER4> It really is a particularly pathological special case of "correlation does not imply causation." Often the key is the presence of a confounding variable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand how Simpson's paradox is different from missing an explanatory variable and confusing correlation vs. partial correlation.

In Wikipedia's article header chart, what I see is the projection on a plane of a 3D problem, where the 3rd dimension has been overlooked. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox)

In Bob vs. Alice, I see also that the night/day flight dummy wasn't accounted for hence resulting in the so-called paradox.

<comment><USER6> It's just a special case of omitted variables with categorial variables. So instead of parameter estimates being biased up or down x amount (to the extent covariates are correlated with error terms), with Simpsons's paradox the mean effect is completely wrong due to improper grouping. This often leads to flipping signs on estimated parameters -- 'surprising' results that gets papers published.

My favourite explanation: [http://vudlab.com/simpsons/](http://vudlab.com/simpsons/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This blog post by the same author looks pretty good too. "What Can Go Wrong: My Favorite Example" (27 April 2014)

[http://matloff.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/what-can-go-wrong- my...](http://matloff.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/what-can-go-wrong-my-favorite- example/)

<comment><USER8> Tying those two posts together:

Linked post: "Everything is significant in large datasets." Certainly true, and why people should be suspicious if they see a p-value without an effect size.

Original post: "To me, one of the most unfortunate aspects of log-linear analysis as it is commonly practiced is that it is significance testing- centric, rather than based on point or interval estimation."

I like this fellow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like him too. It's dangerous, as I could see pissing away a weekend reading everything he ever wrote. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the article:

> We'll use the log-linear model methodology. Again see my open-source > textbook if you are not familiar with this approach

Anyone have pointers to the textbook? I found one on parallel programming, but that doesn't seem like the one he's talking about here.

<comment><USER10> It's near the top:

"Much of the material here will be adapted from my open-source textbook on probability and statistics [0]. I'll use R code to perform the analysis."

[0] [http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/probstatbook](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/probstatbook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Matloff has a blog? Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can not be the only person who thought that this article would have something to do with Groundskeeper Willie!</comment>


Apply HN: EventCast – the simplest event planner - <AUTHOR> EventCast is a simple, mobile application for event organization. In this era of app-fatigue we've sought to create a frictionless, bare-bones tool that satisfies the major needs of event organizers and guests (big and small).
Download EventCast and the first thing you will notice is that it is (relatively) anonymous. We never ask for a username or email. We track a device ID out of necessity. You can start using EventCast immediately, though.
Let's say you are organizing a soccer tournament (or a wedding party, pub crawl, conference, festival). Create (+) an event and give it a unique HASHTAG code (or EventCast will do it for you). Then build out the agend. Team Alpha against Team Drumpf on Field A at 9:00am; Team Beta against Team Tesorio on Field B at 9:15am; etc. As an organizer, you're done. You can share that hashtag code as you please through any media you like.
If you are attending the event, simply subscribe to the agenda using the HASHTAG code. You are then synced with the schedule. Any changes the organizer makes will automatically flow to all subscribers. It's great for pop-up, surprise-location events, too. Once you've synced the agenda, you can customize the agenda to get notification for only those items you are interested in attending. Are you part of the Team Drumpf family? Just select those games and you'll get notifications 15 minutes before the start of each of those games. The notifications will also provide directions from wherever you are to the destination.
Interestingly, we think, this is an application that you may never open after subscribing. You may "live" in the notification windows on your smartphone, which we think is pretty cool.
We look forward to your feedback:
Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eventcast
App Store - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eventcast-simplest-event-planner/id1069897109?mt=8
Demo - https://youtu.be/nFIDUYobQF4 <comment><USER2> Interesting take on social networking

How will you prevent abuse?

How will you make money? Buy the app? Pay for catchy hashtags?

Hashtags probably won't be unique, how do you control who gets what? What happens if user A and user B both use #soccer for their neighborhood game, but they aren't in the same neighborhood?

Must people use your app to subscribe? If not, how will you grow your userbase? If so, why would people bother?

<comment><USER3> \- abuse is a concern. I'm hoping the disposable nature of the experience limits it. \- there is a monetization strategy dependent on the user base. We want to offer helpful services (deeplinking or otherwise) that are location/context specific. \- there is a white-labeling feature too for a smaller cash-flow. Let's say Red Bull wants to use it for a Fleugtag (sp) weekend of activities. \- we're hoping the disposable nature of hashtags will allow for enough of a namespace. \- You have to subscribe through EventCast. Growing the userbase will be THE challenge as this is a tool useful when you need it but otherwise dormant.

The early users, though, found it to be their go to app at the 4AsTransformations conference, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Franze is a good friend an partner on this project. I've done a lot of the Android front-end and another friend, Lucas has built the iOS version. It has been a labor of love.

As an example, my family and friends are using EventCast this weekend at the USA Disabled Hockey Festival in Detroit. You can subscribe to #USADHFPatriotC, #USADHFAmericanC, or #USADHFYouthSledC for live examples.

If nothing else, I hope it helps someone have a wonderful event. We're also talking to some tourism folks to have a perpetual event. You could setup #VisitPhillly and the owner could continually update new items. Think of it as a "fun things to do feed".

</comment><comment><USER4> Will you allow organizers to charge for events? For casual / free events, what's your vector of competition against Facebook event listings?

<comment><USER3> So we're thinking about an integration to EventBrite and TicketLeap as optional features after composing an event. Neither company's API (actually, I don't think TL has an API) considers sub-event data. So EventCast can essentially serve as an event authoring tool that can be pushed over to EventBrite (optionally) to enable ticket sales and other EventBrite features.

Competing against Facebook...If you are only inviting through the graph, it might be hard, but I think there are plenty of situations where organizers and guests are less well connected. Hmm.. LinkedIn...we're open to chatting :).</comment></comment>


Disk activity LED used to exfiltrate data from an air-gapped computer - <AUTHOR> http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/advanced-cyber/ <comment><USER2> You can exfiltrate data from air-gapped computer by any means that leaks signals. Some are obvious (wi-fi !?!), fun begins when you use means that aren't normally considered.

If I remember correctly (and I'll try to find links afterwards), these were already used:

1 - Heat from the CPU/GPU (link: [https://www.wired.com/2015/03/stealing-data- computers-using-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/03/stealing-data-computers- using-heat/))

2 - Fan noise/speed (link: [https://www.wired.com/2016/06/clever-attack-uses- sound-compu...](https://www.wired.com/2016/06/clever-attack-uses-sound- computers-fan-steal-data/))

3 - audio from the speaker (link: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet- security/1049...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet- security/10490846/New-computer-virus-secretly-leaks-data-through-air.html))

4 - audio from the HDD activity (link: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/15/air_gap_breached_by...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/15/air_gap_breached_by_disk_drive_noise/))

5 - electromagnetic radiation ([https://www.wired.com/2015/07/researchers- hack-air-gapped-co...](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/researchers-hack-air- gapped-computer-simple-cell-phone/))

And some ways that I didn't see yet, but might be possible:

6 - monitor (by changing part of the screen, the colors, or something like that, creating subtle patterns)

7 - keyboard lights (flickering in high speed, perhaps)

8 - power consumption

edit: added electromagnetic radiation

<comment><AUTHOR> Other intentional sources:

1\. vibration from haptic feedback devices

2\. modulation of an optical mouse's light

3\. infrared LED plugged into headphone jack

Unintentional sources of leakage:

4\. ultrasonic vibrations from power supply components (capacitors) correlated with CPU instructions

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting because the disk activity LED is _covert_ , not clandestine. There's no need to try to hide the activity; communication is buried in the normal busy activity of the hard disk.

</comment><comment><USER2> Being a father who suffered watching those Frozen princess many times, I found LED-it-GO very amusing...</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite tools for simple website development? - <AUTHOR>

Most talk around here revolves around complex web development issues, so I thought it might be interesting and informative to reexamine simple projects.  I'm curious, with so many choices at your disposal, what's your favorite toolset for simple website development? For clarification, simple might mean something along the lines of a small business website for a client or a blog for a friend. <comment><USER2> A blog - wordpress.

Anything that is slightly blog like - wordpress.

If something needs to be customised a lot - Django.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like codeigniter for simple websites and as for blogs its between wordpress and silverstripe

</comment><comment><USER4> I like Espresso(IDE) for Mac. You can see instant changes in the preview(even the javascript)</comment>