Accused of underpaying women, Google says it's too expensive to get wage data - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/26/google-gender-discrimination-case-salary-records <comment><USER2> In litigation, there is the expectation that parties shouldn't be expected to bear discovery costs that are out of proportion with the value and relevance of the requested data. "It'll cost too much" is thus a stock answer to discovery requests. Google can absorb the $100k cost--they'll likely spend tens of thousands to just to litigate over the discovery dispute. But they're entitled to hold the government to it's burden of articulating why that data justifies the cost.

Obviously the real reason is that Google doesn't want to hand over the data. But you should never just hand data over to the government. Government lawyers can get pretty creative with spreadsheets of numbers.

<comment><USER3> Google is a federal contractor. These documents are being requested because they do federal business, not because of any civil or criminal inquiry. Now of course these documents might lead to a civil case, but it's within the bounds of each agency's Office of Civil Rights to request this data.

<comment><USER4> Would that apply to all of googles employees though? I assume that people working on nongovernmental products would not be included.

<comment><USER3> As a legacy of modern civil rights gains, any company that does federal business has to comply with a stricter set of civil rights law. Of course, if they don't want to that's their prerogative, but they can't receive federal funds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's the legal team's job to push back on any new requests for data. Obviously there _is_ a reasonable limit of what the government can ask Google to provide. This particular cost is obviously far less than that limit ought to be given the stakes involved and the size of Google, but again, Google should push back too early and the government should ask for too much, and the judge should find the reasonable middle ground. That's fine, that's how our legal system works, and I suspect this article is overblowing a typical procedural step in the process.

All of that said, Google is not coming out looking like the good guy by fighting this case so hard. Their compensation analysts ought to be running these sorts of reports themselves. If they truly aren't, then that in itself is evidence (in my opinion) that Google is willfully neglecting its responsibility not to underpay its female employees.

<comment><USER6> If they aren't making efforts with their women employees, it would follow they aren't doing much to help out their black/Hispanic employees either.

<comment><USER7> Asians are apparently "paid too much", so er, docking wages for being Asian, anybody?

<comment><USER8> White males are certainly paid too much! They should make half of what minority employees do!

<comment><USER7> I think you've been down-voted because your humour is too subtle.

>White males are certainly paid too much! They should make half of what minority employees do!

It certainly feels like this won't stop until that's the case.

<comment><USER9> Its not about bringing down white males. Its about bringing women and minorities to the same level. The comment is in poor taste

<comment><USER7> Firstly, do we agree it was in jest?

>Its about bringing women and minorities to the same level.

I'm not sure I understand the difference? And I'm not sure other people do either. You're measuring from the average, so moving either moves the average which you're measuring from.

From my understanding, you cannot tell the difference, therefore:

"bringing down white males" == "bringing women and minorities to the same level"

>The comment is in poor taste

Personal perception. Nobody is telling anybody what to like or dislike. I had to read it twice to understand it, I think a little more obvious would have been better. But again, personal perception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So Google can organize the worlds information, has AI good enough to categorize and automatically tag my pictures, has some of the most brilliant minds on earth, but can't do what would be a simple SQL statement for most companies?

<comment><USER11> If Google released such wage data, they would have to pay people more, and that would cost a lot, and so collecting wage data is too expensive. Get it?

<comment><USER12> This is the truth.

Total Cost = Cost to acquire data ($200,000) + Back pay to employees ($20,000,000)

<comment><USER13> My respect for Google has gone down significantly. I would not work for Facebook and Google even if I was offered a million dollars.

I predict that the Golden years of FB and Google are right now, they will slowly head into a plateau

<comment><USER14> I never really understood the Google worship. "Don't be evil" was an ingenious PR move which earned them an army of useful idiots willing to defend their every move, but never actually applied internally as far as I could tell. I think the reality was "see how much evil we can get society acclimated to".

As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

<comment><USER15> Google is [was?] a geek company. You could get a good pay by being really good at coding. Most companies out there, the only way to get a high compensation is to play Games of Thrones on the management ladder. Actually doing any work is shunned upon.

<comment><USER16> > Actually doing any work is shunned upon.

You clearly don't understand what a manager does if you believe what they do isn't work.

<comment><USER15> There are indeed many definitions of work. I'm using "something produced or accomplished by effort, exertion, or exercise of skill", [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/work](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work).

But then again, managers are very skilled at power games, and the ultimate sign of power is taking credit for what your subordinates produced.

<comment><USER10> You're working for a bad manager. I appreciate the management at my company. They keep the lights on and take care of all the stuff I would never want to do and I can concentrate on development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone explain how they would be able to get away with paying women less than men?

And if your answer is: "They just pay them less."

1) Why? What is the purpose of them doing this?

2) Why don't they also just pay men less as well?

3) Wages trend, in a competitive market, towards marginal productivity of labor. What is preventing competitors in the market for engineers from poaching all of the underpaid yet equally talented women at below market costs, say half the gap Google is assumed to be creating? Surely this would be a clear path towards extra profits, no?

<comment><USER18> Wages are set by supply and demand. Systematic discrimination results in less demand for women, which results in lower wages.

There is some profit opportunity for companies who take advantage of this, but it's not enough to erase the difference.

Consider, for example, how pervasive racial discrimination was (and still is) in business despite the fact that accepting minorities as customers and employees would be financially advantageous.

<comment><USER17> Why don't the people (like you) that exist in different businesses (don't tell me you think there are 0) hire the underpaid women, either for a small raise, or a complete gap-eliminating raise? Surely you don't think you're a lone voice supporting wage equality.. just look at this thread.

They'd either be doing a purely altruistic social good righting the injustice of sexist wage discrimination and/or making more money. That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear. Why isn't this happening? When Bezos said "Your margin is my opportunity"? Did he secretly imply an asterisk to that statement carving out the unspoken rule that he and his competitors certainly would not compete for the underpaid women labor?

You use the example of racial discrimination. So, is Silicon Valley filled to the brim with sexist hiring managers?

Are there no whistle blowers courageous enough to out their bosses that refused to pay equal rates when confronted with the discrepancies? The tech industry is one of the most progressive... are you telling me these progressive minded people are standing idly by at best or actively carrying out this travesty at worst?

<comment><USER18> "That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear."

But it doesn't. You can talk about "should" all you want but ultimately you need to look at the world.

I don't have answers to all of your questions. Certainly some companies _are_ being hurt by this, and others take advantage. That doesn't eliminate the problem unless you believe in perfectly efficient markets with no friction, barriers to entry, etc.

<comment><USER17> Those are all questions that naturally follow from the assumption that men (women too?) are discriminating against women against the best interests of the companies they work for because .... well I'm not sure you've spelled out the motive... but essentially "sexism"? It doesn't sound plausible when everywhere you look you have people shouting on the rooftops about how women deserve equal pay. So who the hell isnt paying them equally?

<comment><USER18> They're great questions, and important questions. But if you're asking them rhetorically to argue that sexism doesn't affect pay, you've got things backwards.

Start with the data. See how men and women's pay stacks up. Once you know the outcome, _then_ start asking questions about how it happens. (Note that I'm not saying what answer you'll find, only that you need to find the answer by looking at what happens, rather than making basic economic arguments.)

There are only two possibilities here. Either there is a wage gap, or there is not. If there is not, then you're being awfully strident about something where you could instead just point out "hey, this doesn't actually happen, here are the numbers." And if there is a gap, then your rhetorical questions don't eliminate it, so either the implication is wrong or there's something else going on.

I find arguments from economic efficiency and profit motive to be highly unconvincing. If stuff actually worked that way then you wouldn't have, for example, store brand products next to identical name brand products selling at a higher price, or a million other economically inefficient human behaviors we see.

<comment><USER17> Have you looked at the data? Here's a sympathetic-to-the-cause article, one that fully endorses the issue that there is some problematic pay gap:

[http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay- gap](http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap)

What do we make of this statement, buried somewhat deep in the article (I would have made this the first line of the post):

"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."

I've seen similar from other studies, including a Harvard study that gets cited often.

I'm strident because I 100% think this is a political issue. It's gender politics. It's perhaps a lot of things. If the issue doesn't exist (certainly to the extent of "77% gap oh my!"), why do so many people get caught up in proclaiming the issue is a crisis?

I think it is a purposefully divisive issue who's propagation has serious consequences for women who are instilled with the idea they are being actively discriminated against, and who are lectured constantly that the only way they can be respected in modern society is by joining the workforce and being equally as career minded as the average ambitious man.

This social advocacy is perfectly fine. People can have a position on what they think the ideal role of women or men or whoever in society is. But be honest about it. And be tolerant of other viewpoints (namely, that perhaps many women _would_ be happier at home, and those who otherwise would not be highly motivated to move up the corporate ladder shouldn't be shamed into having to do so.)

And damnit, be explicit about what you mean by "gap". Equal job, equal experience, equal "apples to apples" the gap is 2%.

If you don't see the obvious fact that people not explicitly stating the actual gap instead of disingenuously fooling people into believing it is 23%, then you won't understand why I'm strident about the issue. Those pushing it are without question strident about it, are they not?

<comment><USER18> Why not just post that study and be done? I think you've missed the point of my comment, which is that making these vague economic arguments is completely pointless. They tell us nothing about what's actually happening. If you want to point out that the wage gap isn't very big then say it's been measured and isn't very big.

I don't mind that you're strident about it, I mind that you're strident about pushing a bad argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Funny with the context of how much, for example, Levandowski was compensated.

It also makes you wonder about their statements that they have no gender pay gap. If you can't get the data together, how do you "know"?

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant > _Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it > universally accessible and useful._ ¹

Yet this particular bit of information is too expensive to make accessible and useful. They have this giant correlation machine, and they don't use it to know as much as they can about their own company? How _convenient_.

I know, "one does not simply", but still: aren't you supposed to keep salary records anyway. Wouldn't you keep them even if you didn't have to, just in case? Wouldn't you run some statistics over them, just to see the trends?

Obviously, as rayiner says, Alphabet have other reason not to hand over the data.

[1]: [https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/) (meta description tag)

<comment><USER14> Google is a strong proponent of privacy, for Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The issue of possible underpayment aside, It has to be in the interest of the company to provide as little information as they can.

It's a court case. The attorneys wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't use every legal means at their disposal.

And they may in fact have a point (to an extent). Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case. The fact Google "makes a bunch of money so no big deal" (which is what the .gov attorneys are apparently arguing) is irrelevant to that principal.

<comment><USER21> _Government shouldn 't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case._

First of all: when you sue someone, you _do_ get to demand exactly that. They also get to demand it of you! It's called "discovery", and it's a bog-standard basic normal everyday part of lawsuits.

Second of all: if you have a look through the reporting on this, Google was being audited for compliance with equal-pay laws and refused to supply records the government said were relevant to the audit. So the government is now suing to force Google to hand over the records. Auditors are allowed to do that, and being required to assemble and hand over information is pretty much the literal definition of an audit.

<comment><USER20> This isn't a civil suit though.

And fishing expeditions (at the firms cost) shouldn't be allowed. We'll see what the court decides.

<comment><USER21> An audit isn't a fishing expedition. Being audited for compliance with relevant laws is part of being in business; if it's an unbearable burden, your options are

1\. Get out of business, or

2\. There is no second option.

<comment><USER20> Any reasonable audit also has clearly defined limits though. Like I say, we'll see what the court decides.

<comment><USER21> Your comments strongly advocated for the "limits" being that no company could ever be compelled to compile or produce information for an audit at its own expense. Have you now recognized the error in your earlier position, since you seem to be trying to walk it back?

<comment><USER20> I've tried to figure out how I can walk back on something nowhere near what I stated in the first place but haven't come up with a solution yet.

So until I do I'll have to answer "no" to your question.

<comment><USER21> _Government shouldn 't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case._

Direct quote of you.

This is exactly what the government is allowed to do. This is exactly how an audit works when they think they've found something.

The government needs the information to determine whether the company is in compliance. The company has the information. How else would you solve this, besides the government having the power to compel production of the information?

<comment><USER20> So, your second statement isn't what I originally stated at all.

This isn't how an "audit" works at all, an "audit" and an accusation are two different things entirely. Your bias has apparently led you into reading things that aren't there. A common fallacy so don't feel bad.

"The government needs information"

I'm not sure it really does to this extent, but assuming you are right, how much legal responsibility does Google have to provide it?

And this is exactly what we are going to find out from the courts. Back to the original point, the attorneys for Google have no duty, and in fact, every duty, to minimize the amount of information provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How can a corporation like Google that handles Peta bytes of data on a daily basis say it is too hard for them to keep track of their own employee payments?

If they were honest enough, they would have found a way to comply. This is just their attempt at lawyering out of the situation.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apparently, their payroll software for North America is something called "UltiPro": [http://www.ultimatesoftware.com/UltiPro-Solution-Features- Pa...](http://www.ultimatesoftware.com/UltiPro-Solution-Features-Payroll- Administration-Tax-Management)

From a job listing for the North America Payroll Core Operations Lead: [https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/north-america- payroll-...](https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/north-america-payroll-core- operations-lead-google-JV_IC1147431_KO0,42_KE43,49.htm?jl=2420728831) _" Advanced scripting and extensive UltiPro knowledge"_

</comment><comment><USER23> Err, too expensive for Google? And pardon my only partially feigned ignorance, but if you're paying them based off the position and not gender, why do you need additional wage data?

<comment><USER7> >And pardon my only partially feigned ignorance, but if you're paying them based off the position and not gender, why do you need additional wage data?

Aren't Asians "overpaid" in the US tech industry? Any investigations into this? Of course not. This stinks of hidden agenda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What other individual traits and axes (apart from gender) are "protected from pay discrimination" in the US?

I'm genuinely curious -- is there an official enumeration?

I ask because there's no limit to the number of ways you can slice and dice a human population, based on a million facets each person has. So I wonder, where did the legislators draw the line? And why? Why not somewhere else?

<comment><USER25> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class)

<comment><USER24> Thanks. That seems a fascinating topic, the emergence and evolution of these "protected classes" over time.

I'll try to descend into your links once I have more time, but a TL;DR discussion on "why we drew the line here, not there" would be great too.

Is it mainly a function of how vocal or powerful a subpopulation is? Something else? What other subdivisions will become privileged next? Where is this trend headed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If google doesn't have this information readily available it is pretty hard to believe their claim that they analyze salary data every year and definitely don't have a wage gap.

<comment><USER27> If gathering salary data was high cost they could still address the question of having a wage gap with random sampling.

And that's what they'd have to do anyway -- salary data wouldn't tell you if they had a discriminatory wage gap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Salesforce can do this, but Google can't?

[https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/04/salesforce-equal- pay...](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/04/salesforce-equal-pay- assessment-update.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> "Too big to comply", now that's an interesting term.

Shouldn't all this data be in a single consistent database anyway? I mean, Google can manage all historic payments people do via their payment processor, but can't manage all historic wage payments automatically?

<comment><USER30> Through a family connection I know quite a bit about how salary data is analysed inside silicon valley companies. That analysis, in turn, is largely driven by the need to comply with various DOL regulations.

Based on what I know I find it inconceivable that Google doesn't have this data in a spreadsheet that could be emailed in a few seconds to whoever needs to see it.

</comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1209 Standard strategy. Google has the info, they data mine this to death on a yearly basis only to find that when confounding factors are accounted for there's no "wage gap". That's not something you can publicly say though, if you don't want to be lynched by an angry mob. The only gap they could find was that women are less likely to nominate themselves for a promo, and they've been encouraging them to self nominate for many years. Not a heck of a lot the company can do if you don't want more responsibility though.

</comment><comment><USER31> Couldn't the government paint a pretty accurate picture using IRS data? Title and earnings via W-2 is at least a start.

<comment><USER21> That would require the Department of Labor to have that data. They don't have that data; the IRS has it, and they'd probably have to get a court to order the IRS to hand it over, and the court might well not do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Microsoft can do it: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/04/11/ensuring- equal-p...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/04/11/ensuring-equal-pay- equal-work/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Suppose that there's compelling statistical evidence that Google underpays women, but no evidence of any specific intent to do so (which, IIRC, is how these things usually play out). Beyond the immediate legal remedies, how do they they fundamentally fix the processes that led to that outcome? Would they even really know where the leaks are in this machinery that admit such biases? How many other companies have the same fundamental problems that go unexamined because their outcomes happen to not suggest a legal issue (e.g. a bias based on alma mater, favorite movies, shared hobbies, etc.)?

</comment><comment><USER34> Google hires in the top echelons of talent for software engineering. Due to forces of society or biology most of that talent is male.

By forcing the company to first hire more women it follows that you have to find women who are not in the top. To pay them the same is then just downright naive.

tldr Should we not be solving this at the bottom rather than top down, by placing the burden unfairly on the companies?

</comment><comment><USER35> Given today's demand for engineers, it's hard to see how Google systematically underpaying a group of them is sustainable.

<comment><USER36> Not really. A woman at Google can be paid well above industry average, and still be paid less than her male Google peers. In that case, she would have no incentive to leave for higher pay elsewhere (since few places beat Google pay), but Google would still have broken employment law if that pay discrepancy is pervasive.

<comment><USER35> Industry average doesn't really apply. What the Silicon Valley local market is does apply, and if there are places that pay better, they'd go there. Why stay at a place where you're underpaid relative to your peers when another place down the street offers more money? I wouldn't.

Besides, I've read that there's a lot of job hopping going on in SV for better pay, and that includes googlers. It's hard to see how one could make systematically underpaying a group of people work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was interested to learn about the "Yes at Google" anonymous mailing list for Google employees to report in work sexism etc. is this list discussing this topic too? Are there other internal anonymous lists at the company that would be discussing this?

</comment><comment><USER38> Has anyone ever experiment and come up with a fair compensation calculation model?

I want to start with base compensation for every seniority and every job title. Then adjust according to both inflation, location, as well as guaranteed yearly growth of salary.

</comment><comment><USER39> The only way to fix this is to pay everyone the same pay regardless of job title / history / experience.

If you are hiring the best you need to offer the best pay across the board. Google does this already.

</comment><comment><USER40> What happened to "Don't be evil"

</comment><comment><USER41> Sorry legal punks, but the RICHEST company in the world can't use that excuse.

Also, this is a systemic issue: Stop paying women less.

No wonder people can't get ahead.

</comment><comment><USER42> Their attorneys probably cost at least 1000 an hour. Would be cheaper to release the data than to fight this.

<comment><USER20> You know what happens if you give up your lunch money to a bully once?

Maybe better in the long run to not be seen as an easy mark, even if it causes some short term pain.

<comment><USER14> Are you really trying to imply that poor little Google is being bullied here?

<comment><USER20> No, I'm suggesting perhaps Google's attorneys understand the general principal of the undesirability of apparent weakness while being cash rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> You cant google this information?

<comment><USER14> Google doesn't like being Googled. Remember what happened when some journalists Googled Eric Schmidt?

[http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/](http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Fortunately, with AlphaGo rising, the pay will be optimized by AI, based on what you do and you need (based on history of web searches).

<comment><USER45> I hope this will help in reducing bias in the recruiting process, but your statement is a prime example that we just want to move the problem somewhere else in the career pipeline.

We won't achieve parity in the workplace simply because there is no parity in STEM programs (and particularly in Computer Science).

So, if everything was done w/ IA, I would just force a 50/50 split for employees to encourage girls to take up coding classes (at the _tiny_ expense of coding abilities).

<comment><USER44> I was absolutely and totally cynical here :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess Uber is no longer the popular tech company to rip into. I've seen some articles surfacing about Facebook, they'll probably be the next people to hate for a little while.

Everything about this is so wrong. It all comes down to laundering money out of Google, thinly veiled with this false idea of "justice" from incorrectly used statistics.</comment>


Forget DTV; FCC now planning "all-IP" phone transition - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/fcc-plans-for-death-of-circuit-switched-phone-networks.ars

<comment><USER2> IP was never designed for real time reliability. If they want a packet switched phone network, fine. But a new protocol, not IP.

A protocol where you request a channel and are guaranteed a certain bandwidth. A protocol where each packet takes the same route, so jitter is minimized.

A protocol where the real time nature of packets is known, so routers can intelligently decide which packets to send first, and which not to bother delivering at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about we get the telcos to provide the decent bandwidth they promised first... <http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm></comment>


Show HN: Easy-to-use Gesture Recognizers for Leap Motion in Objective-C and C# - <AUTHOR>

Upon getting a Leap Motion and wanting to hack the ever-loving crap out of it, we decided to make some gesture recognizers that allow listening and handling motions such as:

  Did swipe right with x fingers, y hands
  Did pan on screen with x fingers, y hands
  Did tap with x fingers, y hands
  Did rotate with x fingers, y hands
  Did pinch with x fingers, y hands
 These libraries make it easy to create a WPF or a Cocoa Mac OS X application for manipulating and using the Leap Motion. These are built on top of the Leap SDK, and a level of abstraction up. We hope that this can be the foundation for a community driven, gesture recognition abstraction layer for the Leap Motion.
Here are the links:
https://github.com/uacaps/MotionGestureRecognizers-ObjC
https://github.com/uacaps/MotionGestureRecognizers-CSharp <comment><USER2> Here are the clickable links.

[https://github.com/uacaps/MotionGestureRecognizers- ObjC](https://github.com/uacaps/MotionGestureRecognizers-ObjC)

[https://github.com/uacaps/MotionGestureRecognizers- CSharp](https://github.com/uacaps/MotionGestureRecognizers-CSharp)

And the nuget.org link

[https://www.nuget.org/packages/MotionGestures/](https://www.nuget.org/packages/MotionGestures/)

</comment><comment><USER3> great work!</comment>


Introducing Data Version Control – Iterative Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://dataversioncontrol.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Blog Post announcing the tool, and the motivation behind iterative ML and DVC : [http://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/05/data-version-control- iterat...](http://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/05/data-version-control-iterative- machine-learning.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Intern or freelance - which is better on the resume? - <AUTHOR>

If you had a choice of interning at no pay for a respectable firm or getting a freelance gig at a similarly situated company what do you think would look better on a resume if your goal was to get a permanent job later on? (not necessarily at the same place) <comment><USER2> If the option to get a paid internship exists I'd do that. I've always had problems with the idea of big companies offering unpaid internships, however depending on the industry/competition, I get why they exist.

But to echo baggins, employers have rarely cared about my freelance work.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience looking for work, almost no one I've interviewed with asked or cared about my freelance work.</comment>


Show HN: My side project about side projects - <AUTHOR> http://sideshowhq.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made Sideshow because:

1) I always wanted to start a daily digest/newsletter of some kind and I'm super passionate about side projects.

2) I wanted to learn more about JavaScript, Node.js and Redis.

And there it is. It's built with ~300 lines of code of Node.js + Express + Redis, has an admin area to manage links (I called it 'Backstage'[1]) and MailChimp API integration for automated newsletter sending (both daily and weekly).

[1]: <http://i.imgur.com/rkwiMAm.png>

My learning resources:

\- JavaScript: [http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript- properly...](http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript-properly/) (I'm on week 3-4)

\- Node.js: <http://www.nodebeginner.org/>

\- Express (and Redis): [http://javascriptplayground.com/blog/2012/06/node- express-to...](http://javascriptplayground.com/blog/2012/06/node-express-todo- app-redis)

 _P.S: Notice that there weren't any sexy AJAX stuff on the site. It's because I haven't learned one of those front-end MVC framework yet (Backbone/Angular/Ember), which should be my priority this week._

<comment><USER2> Awesome idea and love the design! Although, I think you should of posted this earlier in the day. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Kale! I did wish to post earlier but gotta fix some last minute bugs that popped up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a coffee table book about coffee tables.. And it _is_ a coffee table too :)

Nice idea. Just submitted my side project: <https://pigshell.com>

<comment><USER4> currently returns a 502

<comment><USER3> Hmm. Works for me. Possibly a temporary Cloudflare hiccup?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool. I have a side project to submit, but I don't meet the criteria yet... (My app is not quite working yet =)

I've bookmarked to come back in a week or so and submit it when it's in a usable state.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool idea. I have submitted my last weekend project, a price tracker for fantasy premier league managers. <http://insidefpl.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> same concept as <http://sidebar.io/>

</comment><comment><USER8> find hot local cats in your area. so tempting.</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't there a Swiggy for Hardware in India? - <AUTHOR> I love getting deliveries for food through Swiggy but if I need to buy some hardware like PVC pipes, MDF boards or aluminium rails. These are either too long or too heavy, i need a truck to haul them to my place.
Sometimes I just want 10 liters of wood glue delivered to my place.
You can't buy these from Amazon India.
Why isn't there a startup which takes care of hardware delivery? <comment><USER2> Such a solution would be Uber for Pickup Trucks, or alternatively the stores you are buying from (Home Depot or Lowe's in the USA) offer delivery for some items like that.

Running such a business requires not just an app but also capital risk: what happens if the driver doesn't deliver $1000 worth of construction materials? Who absorbs that cost? The business would need to negotiate insurance contracts for such a problem.

So yeah, until someone has the courage to start a biz like that and acquire all the resources needed to run it, it will remain just a dream and the Home Depot will just tell you "get your own pickup truck and drive over here and buy it and take it home yourself, sorry!"</comment>


The Automatic Statistician: An artificial intelligence for data science - <AUTHOR> http://www.automaticstatistician.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool!

A small feature request: I uploaded data with a combination of continuous features and discrete features (which happened to be coded as numbers—2 or 1—with negative numbers used to indicate various cases was missing). I'm pretty sure the model interpreted the discrete features as continuous. I think it'd be good to add a detector for numerical fields that take on a small number of values, and convert those to binary features.

Likewise, non-linear models. I know my data has a lot of internal structure and so a tree, neural network, etc. would capture a lot more of the variance.

</comment><comment><USER3> > By submitting data to this demo you are agreeing that we can do anything > with the data. We may store it, process it, make it public, anything.

This makes it difficult to do much in the way of assessment.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty cool, but looking at their sample reports, it doesn't actually seem to tell you anything about what the data _means_.

There's a lot of "We identified a time series variation as shown below..."</comment>


Things Every Learner Needs to Know About Effective Learning - <AUTHOR> https://thestempedia.com/blog/things-every-learner-needs-to-know-about-effective-learning/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't really say anything about effective learning, it kind of just talks around it.

As an elementary school teacher and a MSc Psych student, I can tell you that spaced repetition is the best way for learning facts. And it's not just my fancy - here's one of the many studies that prove it:

"Practice tests, spaced practice, and successive relearning: Tips for classroom use and for guiding students' learning." [http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-13426-004](http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-13426-004)

You can google the paper and get it free online.

While we're at it, learning styles are not a real thing: [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/03/another-nail-in-the- cof...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/03/another-nail-in-the-coffin-for- learning-styles-students-did-not-benefit-from-studying-according-to-their- supposed-learning-style/)

If you need more proof, just read the papers in the references.

If someone asked me what the two most important things for an average person to know about learning, it would be that 1. Ebbinghaus's "Forgetting Curve" is real, and you will forget most things that you learn within 30 days if you don't review them properly and 2. Spaced repetition, especially aided by software such as Anki, is the best way for the average person to learn and retain large amounts of information.

[https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)

Now, if one is keen, you can upgrade you learning with the use of mnemonics, both mental and visual, and drawing things helps immensely: [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/11/22/the-act-of-drawing- some...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/11/22/the-act-of-drawing-something- has-a-massive-benefit-for-memory-compared-with-writing-it-down/)

But for the average person that won't put in the extra effort, 1. Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve and 2. Spaced Repetition are probably the most important things to know about.

<comment><USER3> I think you guys might like this personal research tool I launched about a month ago:

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

It's actually designed for this use case around spaced repetition and it's designed to be a knowledge manager AROUND spaced repetition tools.

I should have cloud sync support in the next release (1-2 weeks) which will allow you to keep your data in the cloud and sync it between machines. Initially it will just support Firebase but I have plans to support other cloud providers via plugins.

I'd also like to support end to end encryption so that you don't have to worry about people reading your data.

There's a huge Hacker News about Polar here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960)

It also supports PDFs, text and area highlights, comments, flashcards and sync with Anki.

The initial response after our release has been amazing. The user base is really engaged with thousands of monthly active users and contributors.

Anyway. Take it for a spin. It's free and Open Source.

<comment><USER2> It seems that Polar might be a natural complement to Zotero, or at least it would be cool if the two could talk to each other; right now, I use the Zotfile plugin to extra PDF annotations, but I would much prefer to use Polar to do my studying.

If I had imagine a way in which the two could work together, it would be for Polar to be able to read from the Zotero library.

Are you guys on speaking terms with the Zotero team?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Impossible to read on mobile. Try this link instead:

[https://thestempedia.com/blog/things-every-learner-needs- to-...](https://thestempedia.com/blog/things-every-learner-needs-to-know- about-effective-learning/amp/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello Keiferski, Please use updated link for AMP [https://thestempedia.com/blog/things-every-learner-needs- to-...](https://thestempedia.com/blog/things-every-learner-needs-to-know- about-effective-learning/amp/)

<comment><USER4> Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Impossible to read on an iPad.

<comment><USER6> Safari reader is there to help you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just sent a screenshot of this page to my friends as an example on how awful modern websites are. There is one gigantic banner about their black friday sale that covers the top, a cookie notice that covers the lower left, a floating "can I help you?" window that covers the a third of the screen on the right on my 12" screen, and a blocking "Black Friday Deal is ON" banner that blocks all of the middle. I don't see a single character of content.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Checked the site, closed some stupid dialogue, scrolling a bit and then a full page ad, then the chat dialogue opened. It's crazy how many sites like this there are. Total crap. I didn't bother to read the content.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate my site - <AUTHOR> http://www.tech-rants.com I plan on archiving the best programmer and techie rants here.  Any feedback welcome. <comment><USER2> No offense, but you can't be serious? This is just a standard install of drupal. No design, no dev. Hard to rate at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, with only 3 posts (one of which appears to be a placeholder...) it's hard to give much of an opinion.

It's a neat idea, not sure if new rantworthy content would be "released" frequently enough to keep the site fresh and compelling.</comment>


Chinese Hackers Break Into Unclassified White House Network - <AUTHOR> http://freebeacon.com/white-house-hack-attack/

<comment><USER2> Holy Hyperbolic Link Bait! How does the article lead with:

"Hackers broke into one of the U.S. government's most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident."

And five or six sentences later quotes a White House Official:

"This was a spear phishing attack against an _unclassified network._ "

Since when are unclassified networks the most sensitive networks?

EDIT: While reading the article I was questioning the lack of professional writing (how many times do you want to introduce and explain the WHMO) and credible reporting (Why you no linky to other "reports" and "disclosures" regarding the attack?). After slogging through the article again I decided to see who exactly "the free beacon" is. A lot of of my questions regarding the poor writing and lack of credible sources were answered on the "about us page." There is a reason why this article on cyberwar does not read like a piece by Markoff or Sanger and it is the same reason that you will not see George Will or Chris Wallace discussing this article next Sunday on the news shows. This has very little to do with journalism:

"The Washington Free Beacon, a project of the 501(c)4 Center for American Freedom, is a nonprofit online newspaper that began publication on February 7, 2012. Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day,"

I do not wish to start a debate over the politics of big media. I am mentioning the background of this website so that you may put this "reporting" into a larger context.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Hackers linked to China's government broke into one of the U.S. government's > most sensitive computer networks

> U.S. officials familiar with reports of the White House hacking incident > said it took place earlier this month and involved unidentified hackers, > believed to have used computer servers in China

So even though their source is saying they are unidentified, the reporter is concluding Chinese government...

Do we honestly believe that Chinese wouldn't proxy their efforts? or even hack from different physical locations from different parts of the world?

</comment><comment><USER4> Struggling to wrap my head around the nature of the issue. If the White House has nuclear football data in the same network that handles the president's communications, then we have major network segmentation problems. There's a lot more insecure traffic that's going to flow back and forth between the president's scheduler and outside parties.

Still, I bet that email traffic is going to tighten up a LOT at the White House after this.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"It is not clear how such a high-security network could be penetrated. Such classified computer systems are protected by multiple levels of security and are among the most "hardened" systems against digital attack."_

half a page up...

 _"An Obama administration national security official said: "This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network.""_

Seems pretty clear to me. People are usually the weakest leak in security.

</comment><comment><USER6> This story doesn't sound plausible on two fronts: 1. Would the "system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands" really be externally accessible - directly or indirectly? 2. I did a Google News search on this and didn't find any other sources. News scoops don't last that long on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER7> >Hackers linked to China's government

How they know that? they hacked them back?</comment>


Cutting the Cord, American Snipping Cable - Half a Million Cut  in Q3 Alone - <AUTHOR> http://www.appmarket.tv/opinion/810-cutting-the-cord-american-snipping-cable-new-teevee-reports-half-a-million-snipped-in-q3-alone.html <comment><AUTHOR> Not only are our friends at NewTeeVee reporting the ax wound with US cable bleeding, 500K+ Subscribers Lost In Q3 - but Steve Rubel, VP of the world's largest PR firm Edelman - also quoted some interesting analyses recently showing that Big Cable is in Big Trouble. With some 13% of Americans intending to pull out the scissors to cut the cord in the next 12 months, according to a report from Strategy Analytics - a market research firm. ABC is also reporting similar dire symptoms. And the tanking US economy is not helping according to the NYTs. Cable is not cheap.</comment>


Poor quality sleep could increase Alzheimer's risk, research suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/10/poor-sleep-increases-risk-of-alzheimers-research-reveals <comment><AUTHOR> Submitted because of previous discussions of alternate, eg. polyphasic, sleep patterns seen here.</comment>


Artificial Intelligence Learns to Learn Entirely on Its Own - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/artificial-intelligence-learns-to-learn-entirely-on-its-own-20171018/ <comment><USER2> Researchers matched AlphaGo Zero against the earlier champion-beating version of the program. AlphaGo Zero won 100 games to zero.

What's novel about AlphaGo Zero is that instead of just running the tree search and making a move, it remembers the outcome of the tree search — and eventually of the game.</comment>


Time Warner Charges Guy $16.4 Million For Cable - The Consumerist - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/2011/03/time-warner-charges-guy-164-million-for-cable.html <comment><USER2> Links through to [http://www.daytondailynews.com/business/time-warner- charges-...](http://www.daytondailynews.com/business/time-warner-charges- wright-patt-engineer-16-4-million-for-cable-1117224.html)

>" _An employee typed in the wrong number for the amount owed, which caused the company's automated system to generate the letter._ "

This is probably just bad reporting but I really can't see that they bill people this way?!?</comment>


Your IP. In JSON - <AUTHOR> http://jsonip.com/ <comment><USER2> Whoa. I wrote jsonip a few months ago and never expected it to get noticed. What a pleasant surprise!

Here's the original post with some usage details. <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1896015>

This is actually running on node.js. If anyone finds a bug or has some suggestions, email me or leave a tweet @geuis.

<comment><USER3> If there's a ?callback=something in the query string, you could wrap the JSON in that callback so the service can be used with JSONP.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Some suggestions:

Make jsonip.com dual stack IPv4/IPv6 and work for IPv6 addresses too. Return some other useful IP information, such as the PTR, the domain name part of the PTR, and the country code and name.

Example: <https://grepular.com/ipinfo>

EDIT: Don't use that URL for your own stuff or I'll block it. I only put it there as an example of how the JSON should be returned.

EDIT2: Might be useful if it included the IP addresses from any X-Forwarded- For HTTP header too.

<comment><USER4> This brings up something I'm waffling on. Whats the correct content type for JSON?

in your example returning "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8" which is nice because FF knows to render it in the browser (good for debugging atleast).

But votes on SO seem to indicate it should be "application/json"

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/477816/the-right-json- con...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/477816/the-right-json-content-type)

<comment><USER5> The correct content-type (MIME type) is indeed "application/json" ( _edit: downcased JSON, not sure why I made that typo_ ). <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627>

Additionally, if no encoding is specified, UTF-8 should be assumed when dealing with JSON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> {ip: "192.168.100.2, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"}. Why not change it to {ip: ["192.168.100.2", "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"]}?

Also, while I don't know any practical use, IPv6 support would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's clever and useful. Thanks. I've used <http://checkip.dyndns.org> for this problem for years, but this is an improvement. Checkip:

        >>> url = urllib2.urlopen("http://checkip.dyndns.org")
        >>> url.read()
        '<title>Current IP Check</title>Current IP Address: 192.168.0.1\r\n'

Details here: <http://www.dyndns.com/developers/checkip.html>

It's not as easy to parse as JSON, but nor is it very difficult. The format has not changed in years; I've got a regex running I haven't needed to adjust since day 1.

<comment><USER8> You could also use: <http://www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp>

<comment><USER9> What a convenient URL to remember.

<comment><USER10> For a while, <http://whatismyip.org/> returned your IP in plain text, but no longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://whatismyip.akamai.com/>

Pretty reliable.

<comment><USER12> Parsing text is too hard. It'd be easier if it was in JSON.

<comment><USER13> Oh I see! This is what you are looking for: <http://www.showmyip.com/xml/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it is minimalist, it would be even more minimalist to just return the ip with no json wrapper.

</comment><comment><USER15> add a jsonp callback option like <http://jsonip.com/?callback=alert>

<comment><USER16> its there already: <http://jsonip.com/nameofcallbackfunction>

<comment><USER17> You should probably include the ?callback= functionality anyway. A great deal of libraries assume it will be a get variable, and cater for it specially

i.e. jQuery with <http://jsonip.com/?callback=>?

<comment><USER18> I actually made something like this a while ago.

<http://demontunes.com/api/?g=ip> // plain ip

[http://demontunes.com/api/?g=ip&format=json](http://demontunes.com/api/?g=ip&format=json) // in json

[http://demontunes.com/api/?g=ip&format=json&callback...](http://demontunes.com/api/?g=ip&format=json&callback=hello) // with a callback

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great idea by the way! I don't know what for... yet... but great idea! For some reason I have a strange urge to combine this with <http://openkeyval.org/>

<comment><USER20> Openkeyval is kind of cool except that it uses Memcache as the storage platform--i.e. no guarantees of persistance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> i am missing something here. why does everyone here seem to think this is cool?

<comment><USER22> Could anyone list some practical uses ?

<comment><USER23> I built some WebSocket code that calls back to the server. I can't hardcode the "server" ip address because I want to deploy it to different places at different times. Sometimes I'm working on my laptop, sometimes its running on Amazon EC2, etc. So, with something like this I am able to build my Javascript so it always knows how to get back to the server.

<yea, I know there are lots of ways to do this, but this is the one I chose. :) sue me. >

<comment><USER24> So myipinjosin returns the server's IP address? I thought it would return the clients IP address. (Link is broken atm).

For your use case, relative URLs seem the better solution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> if you need geolocation information through javascript, you can use maxmind's free one:

<http://j.maxmind.com/app/geoip.js>

<comment><USER26> Outputting javascript code instead of something parseable (json probably) seems like a very bad idea. Are you really willing to eval code from a site outside your control?

A simple line-by-line regex loop should be enough to parse this though.

<comment><USER27> This, I think:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#JSONP>

 _Under the same origin policy, a web page served from server1.example.com cannot normally connect to or communicate with a server other than server1.example.com. An exception is the HTML


TurboTax's 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Their Taxes for Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free#168905 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281411)</comment>


Ask HN: System76 Laptop with Pop _OS as an Alternative to a Macbook for Dev? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the market for a new development laptop. I've been doing my development on MacOS the last few years and originally was very happy with this. However, I develop mostly in Python for work, and C for some personal projects, and development environments on MacOS have been deteriorating on both ecosystems over the last few years. The Python which comes preinstalled is approaching end of life, and Homebrew has steadily become less and less "plug and play" with Python packages, requiring me to manage an increasingly complex balance of pip, homebrew, and conda, with unclear boundaries as to which should be used to install packages. But the real killer is that Valgrind still doesn't work on the latest releases of MacOS, and there's no sign of this changing. So I'm looking at other systems.<p>I've played around a bit with System76's Pop!_OS, and in short-term use it looks like a viable replacement. The OS/hardware integration seems similar, the apt packages are fairly up to date, and all the tools I use seem to install smoothly from apt or pip. However, I'm lacking long-term experience with using it, so I'm soliciting opinions from the HN community. <comment><USER2> This is what I use. Even if I didn't dislike OSX, it would be far too limiting to give up valgrind and rr.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm using one and I like it. I got the huge one with 4K display, 64GB RAM, and a GTX 2080 GPU. It's definitely big to carry around. The desktop environment (Gnome + Wayland) is adequate. And not having to write portable code between Mac and Linux makes my life easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'm looking at the Galago Pro, the Apple laptop I'm replacing is the Macbook Air. The Galago comes in a similar size and with an aluminum case I'm hoping is similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i have to ask what exactly draws you to them specifically? im not familiar with their OS but i assume its just a debian based linux. the systems themselves dont look particularly impressive if you ask me, the casing looks chunky and a bit dated on most of them (they remind me of the sort of thing Acer were knocking out about 5 years ago)

i may be biased as ive had a preference for them for some time but id argue youd get a much better experience spending that money on a thinkpad, you get the best keyboard available on any laptop, solid build quality and a very good warranty program

<comment><AUTHOR> > im not familiar with their OS but i assume its just a debian based linux.

It's Ubuntu-based (so, indirectly Debian-based) but they've done a lot of hardware integration work to make sure that device drivers not only work, but are fairly optimized. My impression so far is that they do a better job than Windows on that (which isn't really impressive until you compare it to hardware integration on other Linux systems). Most reviews seem to back this up--stuff like fan speed and processor management are pretty well-tuned according to most reviewers. My biggest fear going back to Linux from MacOS is that I'll be stuck with software that never quite works well on the hardware, which is how things were when I used Debian/Ubuntu variants from maybe 1998-2008. I _can_ fix my computer, but I'd rather not have to. So something with tight hardware/software integration like Macs have is a big selling point for me.

> the systems themselves dont look particularly impressive if you ask me, the > casing looks chunky and a bit dated on most of them (they remind me of the > sort of thing Acer were knocking out about 5 years ago)

That's true for some of them, but some of them (i.e. the Galago that I'm looking at) have aluminum cases and what looks like pretty nice trackpads.

> i may be biased as ive had a preference for them for some time but id argue > youd get a much better experience spending that money on a thinkpad, you get > the best keyboard available on any laptop, solid build quality and a very > good warranty program

I have an older Thinkpad and while I agree with you on the keyboards, I've never liked their trackpad, and I find the little nub thing annoying. I also would prefer an aluminum case, though that's not a dealbreaker if there were other factors. Maybe there have been some improvements since the last time I used Thinkpads, though, so I'll see if I can find one to play around with in the store.

<comment><USER4> as i say im somewhat biased (i currently have an X61, T420, X1C1, X1C6, P52s and a Thinkstation S20) there is a difference of opinion online but i personally think the glass touchpad on the X models is one of the best touchpads you can get, im not so much a fan of the version on the lower T/P/E models though but some people love them

case wise i kind of get, it metal is nice but im also a pretty big fan of the sturdy yet light carbon shell on the X models, it never feels weak and has no flex like metal but its much lighter, i always have my laptop with me so having something lightweight is a real boon as im always on the go

the only other laptop i considered during my last upgrade last year was the Dell XPS line which are also a damn fine device

as for linux its come a LONG way generally most everything these days just works, even gaming on a linux system is pretty easy these days, if you use a major distro with a debian/ubuntu base youll likely have few issues. Again coming back to thinkpads lenovo have started allowing you to choose linux over windows on the latest P series laptops, which if your budget will stretch can also have a 4k OLED display which to me would make the P1 pretty attractive if i werent averse to 15" laptops. but for reference i installed debian on my P52s with no problems at all, even the Quadro GPU just worked

also if youre still a little uneasy about the switch to linux you could consider either making your upcoming system a "hackintosh" or run OS X in a VM

its all personal preference at the end of the day though, the right system for me may well not be the right one for you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I mean for myself a recent Chromebook that supports Android/Linux containers is good enough for my Vim/Python/Go work flow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I spend ~40 hours a week on my laptop. The only things I spend more time are is my bed/sheets/pillows/etc. So there's really no reason for me to spare any expense on my laptop--the per-hour cost is negligible. So really the concept of "good enough" doesn't apply here--if it can be better I want it to be.</comment></comment>


How we built Lanyrd's foursquare integration - <AUTHOR> http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/foursquare-tech/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had no idea Foursquare's API had matured so much, loads of opportunities to build interesting things. This write up has some great insights into some of the challenges of implementing against it.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the connected apps thing really is a joy to integrate with. They've had the push API that sends you checkins for a while but they only added the in- app integration points a couple of weeks ago, and it's those that make the whole thing really interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Step one: matching up the venues" - for your interest Bopgig uses a Google search on foursquare.com to obtain venues, seems to work decently and is automated. The 4sq api seemed to return too many errors when last tested.

<comment><USER2> I've been using that technique (site:foursquare.com name-of-venue) as a backup, but we've been taking the opportunity to fix obviously incorrect lat/lon data on our venues at the same time so we avoided full automation.

<comment><USER4> We're you scraping google for that, and did you have any problems with that ? (i.e. Google tend to block automated queries)

<comment><USER2> I normally just provide the human who's going through the crowdsourcing interface with a link to that search on Google in a new window - no need to scrape anything if you do it like that :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flexible Format Strings in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://bytbox.net/blog/2012/05/format-haskell.html

<comment><USER2> This gives me an idea for a scanf-like QuasiQuoter...</comment>


New Record for the World's Strongest Resistive Magnet (41.4 Teslas) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-set-a-new-record-for-the-world-s-strongest-resistive-magnet <comment><AUTHOR> And this is my favourite part:

"And how strong is 41.4 teslas? Going back to the fridge magnets, you'd need more than 4,000 of them to achieve the same force."</comment>


Visual Studio does not copy assemblies of transitive dependencies (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/652785/visual-studio-does-not-copy-referenced-assemblies-through-the-reference-hierarchy <comment><AUTHOR> Just got bitten by this, and the "bug" seems to be around for 6 years now. Might be worth being aware of.</comment>


Ask HN: Help finding Blog Post - <AUTHOR>

I apologize for the self-serving post but I've tried everywhere to relocate this with no luck.
There was a story here a few weeks ago about a YC startup that might have recently gotten acquired. The story was about how they went to Boston for a trade show and didn't receive their T-Shirts in time, had to get it delivered to an investor's residence and picked it up from there. The T-Shirt had some clever slogan on it.
Could you provide any info on it or bump me up so that the right persons on HN can provide info please?
Thanks much fellas. <comment><USER2> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6921893.stm>

"We designed and printed off a few hundred t-shirts in San Francisco and had them shipped to our investor Paul Graham's house in Boston at the last minute."

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks a bunch.</comment></comment>


26th century C (void.h macro headers) - <AUTHOR> http://w11.zetaboards.com/frozenbbs/forum/4210247/ <comment><USER2> see also 22nd Century C - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12471681)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually sumbitted that headers link just because that "22nd century C" seemed too simple for me. C can do much more than some syntax sugar.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The key to understanding the macros is in varmacro.h and types.h</comment>


Cortex – An ML model deployment platform that runs in your AWS account - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cortexlabs/cortex/tree/v0.7.0 <comment><USER2> You should be using Terraform as your configuration management language. Please do not invent your own. Pretty much your yaml is a pseudo-configuration management language.

That will become one of the biggest blockers because of the amount of automation that already exists.

By leveraging Terraform, you will also have the added benefit of getting all the other pieces of AWS/GCP/azure components for free - and is rock stable and production tested.

<comment> fake-name You should be using _an existing scripting language_ as your configuration language.

Seriously, Every single fucking stupid infrastructure-deployment- tool/"platform" whatever has it's own, dumb in-house language that winds up basically re-implementing the programming language the tool is written in _badly_.

      - Puppet: Has a stupid ad-hoc config language.
      - Terraform: Has a stupid ad-hoc config language.
      - SaltStack: Has a stupid ad-hoc config language.
      - Ansible: Has a stupid ad-hoc config language.

If you're even _considering_ implementing a tool like this, use a goddamn existing language for your configuration files.

You don't need to use the _entire_ language, but at least use the language's lexer/parser (cf. json/javascript). That way, _all existing tooling for the language will work for the config files_ (ask me about how saltstack happily breaks their API because you're not "supposed" to use it, despite the fact that they have public docs for it). Additionally, people won't need to figure out all the stupid corner cases in your terrible piecemeal configuration language.

Additionally, by making your configuration language an _actual_ language, you also simplify a lot of the system design, because the configuration can act directly against your API. This means using your tool from other tools becomes much more straightforward, because the only interface you actually need is the API.

<comment><USER2> You are right - Terraform does have the ecosystem, but the new kid on the block is Pulumi.

Pulumi = Terraform in Typescript. That's good as well - but i was not sure if the OP is familiar with Pulumi

<comment><USER3> Pulumi made the mistake of immediately making remote state a paid-only feature. Even if it's not, from all the recent marketing I looked at everything useful required payment; for getting started with a project that's a non-starter.

On top of that, most of the worst parts of Terraform are no longer an issue with 0.12.

<comment><USER4> Its completely possible to host your state in S3 or a filesystem; it takes a bit of setup and there may be a few rough edges, but the effort or subscription is completely worth it. The secrets management alone makes it worth it, but their programming model is definitely the future. I think the fact that AWS just released their Cloud Development Kit is strong validation of the approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man I can't way to pay for a ML dev service that handles the infrastructure dev service that I pay for to host my ML dev services.

<comment><USER6> We're actually building infrastructure to serve ML as a Saas and would love to get your input.

<comment><USER7> _whoosh_ ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A comparison with AWS's own offering (SageMaker Model Serving) would be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> We solve a similar problem to SageMaker but we are focused on developer experience and flexibility.

\- Deployments are defined with declarative configuration and no custom Docker images are required (although you can use your own if you want)

\- You have full access to the instances, autoscaling groups, security groups, etc

\- Less tied to AWS (GCP support is in the works)

\- We are working on higher level features like prediction monitoring, alerting, and model retraining

\- It's open source and free vs SageMaker's ~40% markup

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Compare and contrast with Seldon on Kubeflow?

<comment><AUTHOR> My understanding is that Seldon and Kubeflow are more geared towards infrastructure engineers. Our goal is to hide the infrastructure tooling so that Kuberentes, Docker, or AWS expertise isn't required. Cortex installs with one command, models are deployed with minimal declarative configuration, autoscaling works by default, and you don't need to build Docker images / manage a registry.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

I bet you could get Cortex running on Kubeflow pretty easily since it's all K8s anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I definitely think it's doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone used this? It looks useful!</comment>


The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?hp

<comment><USER2> It's a pity that this major article seems to have fallen through the cracks here.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. Folks, read this one.

It starts off with an anecdote about how greed torpedoed the meeting of industry leaders to deal with the health issues presented by their products. From the article, an extraordinary admission by one of the would-be reformers:

> Mudd then did the unthinkable. He drew a connection to the last thing in the > world the C.E.O.'s wanted linked to their products: cigarettes.</comment></comment>