SICP Goodness – A deep dive into square root procedure - <AUTHOR> https://www.lvguowei.me/post/sicp-goodness-sqrt/ <comment><USER2> I wish people who use acronyms (like SICP) would define it at the beginning of the article. I hate googling all the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> something bothers me about a person referring to themselves as "Thinker"</comment>


Hansoo's Legacy: Passion, People and Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://founderdating.com/hansoos-legacy

<comment><USER2> Wow what a touching post. Hansoons passion and vision is so inspiring. It just goes to show how the sum really is greater than its parts. Sounds like Hansoon and Bhavin had a great relationship. Having the right cofounder who can help you see things you couldnt on your own and who can help you expand your thinking and grow, is invaluable.

<comment><USER3> We did have an amazing relationship. Hansoo embraced being outside his comfort zone, and pushed me to do so as well.

<comment><USER2> i literally cried when i read that post - thank you so much for sharing about your experience with Hansoo and your experience starting a company. its really great to hear about such a personal experience and now his legacy will most certainly live on.</comment></comment></comment>


Scanning Stephenson's Rocket - <AUTHOR> https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/scanning-stephensons-rocket-40916fdb4d20 <comment><USER2> Actually I have tight connections to a computer museum and thought about the same idea (digitizing exhibits). However, just going from a 2D photo to a 3D photo of the surface sounds easy to me. What about really scanning the 3D volume? Dreaming a bit, I would love to have volumetric imaging methods from medicine (like CT or MRI/MRT images) for technical devices such as vintage computers. If these scanners had a good resolution (say sub millimeter) and allow us to distinguish the different materials, we could extract circuit diagrams from scans of old computers (thinking of the 1960s where a millimeter scale is fine, e.g.), probably even emulate the machines. In any case this would be way beyond scanning the 2D surface.

Anybody having knowledge of such imaging techniques? Is it possible to build such a machine with a reasonable budget? Clinical devices are at >1e6 EUR/USD, I rather thought about something at the order of 1e4 EUR/USD.</comment>


Ask HN: AWS vs. self-hosted for collection of small apps - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
Curious about your thoughts on paying the $10-15/month for a small AWS instance (t1, t2) vs. a self-hosted server.
I have a small collection of apps I run, maybe 3 right now, that need to be available to the outside world, but that do not (and probably won't) see much traffic ever. The apps revolve around a small amount of users intentionally. The apps themselves are small, but a couple do require a database.
Should I just throw these on a machine, open a port, and self-host them, or should I grab a small EC2 instance and pay the small monthly fee?
Any benefits or cons to doing either? <comment><USER2> It sounds like you already have the infrastructure, and your requirements for scalability/uptime/etc. are not very high. In this case I would just go with the self-hosted solution.</comment>


How to Write Unmaintainable Code - <AUTHOR> http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmain.html <comment><USER2> The funny thing to me is how unreadable that site is...</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone made the jump from tech to finance? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in going from tech into finance.  The issue here is strictly related to compensation: I want to make more money, in cash, every year.  Has anyone made the jump?  I'm extremely strong with math and with web development, but I don't have any C++ or R experience. <comment><USER2> When you say finance, do you mean you want to do tech in finance, or you actually want to trade? Those are two different (though related) questions.

2 years ago I moved from the games industry into the finance industry. My role now is varied and would probably come under either quant-dev, e-trading or algo-trading, depending on how you look at it. I was hired with zero financial knowledge, on the basis of my maths and computer science skills, and it has so far gone very well.

I was lucky in that I had contacts in the industry; without that it is probably harder, but it is definitely doable. If you've got strong maths + computing skills then there are a lot of possible roles for you.

Web skills aren't terribly useful (although not worthless); a lot of things are different in the financial world where for example correctness, latency, etc. are much more important. Financial software tends to be written in either low-level languages (e.g. C++ for execution stuff), or high-level functional languages (Scala, Haskell, OCaml - see e.g. GSA, Standard Chartered, or Jane Street). Some places use Python for analysis stuff, though R/Matlab are very common too.

If you want to into an actual finance role (Trader, or to a certain extent Quant (as opposed to Quant-dev)), that's possible but you'd probably have to go via a technology role. That's your way in.

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of Line of Business apps written in Java and C# as well, including risk management systems. The core quant libraries will probably be C++.

I've seen a tiny bit of Scala, but not mainstream adoption. Python is pretty popular in a few banks especially (EG BofA).

A lot of banking jobs ask for "Banking Experience", but not all. Also, I would think doing a few finance/quant courses on Coursera wouldn't hurt.

<comment><USER2> Only one datapoint, but my current job is 90%+ Scala (Fixed Income, a multi- national bank). GSA definitely use it and I believe Goldman are moving to it as well.

It's not mainstream, but it's also not niche either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you considered exploring opportunities that unite the two? For example, in recent years, high frequency trading (HFT's) have been big business, as well as the meteoric rise of automated investment services (AIS).

Betterment, Wealthfront, SigFig, even RobinHood... all are companies that bring tech into the financial industry.</comment>


NewsDabbler: T-Mobile Calls and Data Outage, Tower Problems Happening Worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://newsdabbler.blogspot.com/2010/12/t-mobile-calls-and-data-outage-tower.html <comment><USER2> Pretty thin gruel for a post.</comment>


Interview with Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-edward-snowden-about-his-story-a-1286605.html <comment><USER2> > a guy who was supposed to be teaching me...sometimes...would spin around in > his chair, showing me nudes of whatever target's wife he's looking at. And > he's like: "Bonus!"

And that's just a lackey... this only worries me as to what a determined, calculating person is capable of with these tools.

> The most important part of the Rubik's cube was actually not as a > concealment device, but a distraction device...I really gave Rubik's cubes > to everyone in my office as gifts and guards saw me coming and going with > this Rubik's cube all the time. So I was the Rubik's cube guy. And when I > came out of the tunnel with my contraband and saw one of the bored guards, I > sometimes tossed the cube to him. He's like, "Oh, man, I had one of these > things when I was a kid, but you know, I could never solve it. So I just > pulled the stickers off." That was exactly what I had done -- but for > different reasons.

Love this, totally poetic at the end there. This really does read like a kid's spy thriller.

Can't wait to read the book.

<comment><USER3> > this only worries me as to what a determined, calculating person is capable > of with these tools.

What do you think they would do that they haven't been doing for decades? This target has a court-ordered wiretap on them. The police can request everything up to and including bugging a target's house in these cases, as long as the judge approves.

You seem to believe they can get this data for anybody, but the company that has the data will not hand it over without a court order

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a terrible title, which would be better as "Interview with Edward Snowden".

"You can be sure I was pushed" is an aside, and has little of the connotation the title has (that Snowden truly believes he's at risk of being assassinated); rather, it's a tossed-off comment about the fact that he's not suicidal, despite reports that he's been depressed.

<comment><USER5> I totally agree that it is a terrible title. Der Spiegel does very high quality reporting, but I got the impression that German journalist like to use sensationalist quotes as the title even more than English speaking ones do.

That said, I genuinely got the impression that Snowden is concerned that he might get assassinated and that his history of depression might be used covered it up.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing wrong with the title. It's a direct quote from the interview. Also, the article literally has "Interview with Edward Snowden" above it with a picture of him. Just because it entices you to read doesn't automatically make it clickbait. I do think that the subtitle "Interview with Edward Snowden" would be a much better title for the HN submission. The current title without any context (picture + sub title) doesn't provide any information if it just appears in a list of text links.

<comment><USER4> "Terrible title for HN" captures more precisely what I meant to say, thanks. I don't so much care how publications choose to tease articles in their own pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I always find striking is that Snowden is very good at articulating himself on the fly. He doesn't always "sell" the general audience, as he gets too technical. However, he's extremely good at providing solid answers consistently to pretty much every question.

<comment><USER8> I thought it was kind of surprising at first then I realized it's because he already thought deeply about everything he's been asked.

After careful deliberation he made a moral choice to leak information at great risk to himself. This makes him not only good to talk through the technical implications of his choices but also moral ones.

<comment><USER9> Please consider alternative narratives.

He acted selfishly, not morally. Like a startup founder he wanted to disrupt an existing infrastructure, with a one-sided view of the trajectory his impact would have on the domain. Any collateral damage would be easy to hide in the personal narrative memory hole.

Deep thoughts and intellectual defenses are not so hard to construct, should not be uncritically accepted with significant corroborating evidence, and should certainly not be taken in any way to imply morality, as shown by the growing list of deep thinkers who supported and participated in Jeffrey Epstein's schemes.

With Snowden we have very little corroboration, so best reserve judgement. And if he does wind up dying as many other Russian actors have...

<comment><USER10> > Please consider alternative narratives.

No.

> He acted selfishly, not morally.

No, he acted morally.

> Deep thoughts and intellectual defenses are not so hard to construct, should > not be uncritically accepted with significant corroborating evidence, and > should certainly not be taken in any way to imply morality, as shown by the > growing list of deep thinkers who supported and participated in Jeffrey > Epstein's schemes.

No. It's simple. Snowden = Good. Stop trying to "muh Russians!" this.

> With Snowden we have very little corroboration, so best reserve judgement.

No. His documents appear sufficiently authentic to be acted upon. I, and people I know, are not reserving our judgements.

> And if he does wind up dying as many other Russian actors have...

We all will know exactly what sort of people run our government.

<comment><USER11> _> No. It's simple. Snowden = Good._

Sure, if you only read his side of the story. Anyone looks good if they get to make up their own narrative about themselves.

The fact is that anyone with half a brain should have known decades ago that the US government, like all governments, does all kinds of surveillance and classifies all kinds of information, and not all of it is going to be pretty. When you tell the government you want it to protect your security and stop terrorist attacks, it's going to do whatever it takes to do that. For Snowden to talk as though he just found all this out when he got access to NSA's super sekrit systems doesn't show that he's good. It just shows that he was ignorant.

Also, while it's perfectly reasonable for ordinary citizens to question what level of surveillance is justified and what kind of information the public should get to see in order to hold the government accountable, it's _not_ reasonable for an individual to just decide on his own that it's OK to violate the law and the agreements he signed up to when he got his security clearance. That is exactly the kind of personal hubris and lack of accountability that we are trying to _stop_ in people who have privileged access to government secrets. We have processes for holding our government accountable: we have FOIA requests, we have lawsuits, and ultimately we have elections. Those processes don't always work well, but that doesn't mean it's ok for one person to arrogate to himself the right to bypass them all.

<comment><USER12> > The fact is that anyone with half a brain should have known decades ago that > the US government, like all governments, does all kinds of surveillance > [...]

Before Snowden you could say that TLAs were surely reading everything, but no one took that seriously -- "what a tinfoil hatter" might have been their internal response.

After Snowden we all know that TLAs are reading everything.

> Also, while it's perfectly reasonable for ordinary citizens to question what > level of surveillance is justified and what kind of information the public > should get to see in order to hold the government accountable, it's not > reasonable for an individual to just decide on his own that it's OK to > violate the law [...]

Indeed. Yet it _happened_ , and now we have to decide if what Snowden did is good or bad, and that's not as easy as it is to determine that he broke the law.

Another case like Snowden's that of the former head of the NSA, Admiral Rogers, who visited the President elect to tell him (many presume) that he was being wiretapped. Was that breaking the law? Almost certainly -- surely it must be illegal to tell the target of a secret FISA warrant that they are being monitored, though in this case it wasn't the President-elect, but someone in his campaign, but still, telling must have revealed things which it would not be legal to. Was it _good_? That depends on a great deal on your political views. And even if what Admiral Rogers did turns out to have been legal, you might still think it was bad.

Snowden clearly broke the law, perhaps even committed treason as defined by the U.S. Constitution. But so did the Founders (they inarguably committed treason against the Crown). Breaking the law is not necessarily enough to make an action bad, and sometimes it's more than enough to make it good. As to Snowden, I think the metaphorical jury is still out.

<comment><USER11> _> Before Snowden you could say that TLAs were surely reading everything, but no one took that seriously_

If this is true (I'm not sure it is, "no one" is a pretty strong claim), why not?

 _> it happened, and now we have to decide if what Snowden did is good or bad_

No, we don't. We only have to decide if, given this additional information we now have about what the government is doing (if it was additional to you--it wasn't really additional to me, I had for years assumed that something similar was going on even if I didn't know every little detail), we should do something about it. That doesn't require us to pass judgment at all on Snowden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >The class of which I am a part of, the global technological community, was for the longest time apolitical. We have this history of thinking: "We're going to make the world better."

I think a lot of people in the tech community need to come to grips with the fact that you can't be apolitical in a democratic country. Refusing to engage in politics is an abdication of your role in a democratic society. You certainly have the right to do that, but that abdication can't be apolitical. It is instead a tacit endorsement of the status quo. How good or bad that is depends on your personal politics and whoever happens to be in political control at the time.

One example that I think most people on HN can agree on is climate change. You can either work to fight climate change or you are allowing our current path of ignoring the problem to continue. Think of it like inertia. If we don't interact with a political issue, it will keep moving unchanged forever. The only way it changes is when we apply political force to it.

<comment><USER14> Please stop this. You're just buying into the false narrative, pushed specifically by media companies, that "you can't disengage". This specifically serves their purpose of creating content for the sake of conflict, in order to make money off your attention.

You can disengage. In fact, I highly encourage it, and one's mental health greatly benefits from it. You're not more "enlightened" or "wise" if you follow along the twists and turns of every silly development, most of which can ultimately turn out to have no impact on daily life. Forest for the trees and all that.

Trust the system you live in, and for most HN readers, from developed western economies, things will self-correct. If you have specific ideas and a platform that you feel isn't represented, jump into the political arena yourself, it's certainly your right. But please don't force the rest of us to tag along.

<comment><USER15> That is a highly privileged position from someone who benefits from the current system, or at the very least isn't actively harmed by it.

I realize I know nothing about your station, but understand that being able to make that statement is inherently privileged, and one millions of people around the world cannot proclaim.

If you have access to benefits and advantages in the system that others do not, then if you are not actively working to improve that system, you are COMPLICIT. Plain and simple.

Nothing happens autonomously or through self-correction. It happens through the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice of others (including those as privileged as yourself) while you disengage and offer nothing.

<comment><USER13> People hate the word privilege nowadays (and that is probably why you are being downvoted), but I really can't think of any other word for the idea that something like civil rights for LGBTQ+ people happens out of some type of "self-correction". People fight for that. They literally die for that. It doesn't just happen automatically.

To quote Desmond Tutu:

>If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

<comment><USER16> Did Desmond Tutu participate in all conflicts in the world, or only the selected ones?

Because people can care about many things, and yet your favorite cause may not be among them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I respect Snowden's ability to clearly articulate his position. I look forward to his book. And unlike the somewhat polarizing discussions of others, I found his statement on the difference to between intelligence and the actions of covert action, propaganda, and influence to be quite reasonable. In much the same way that accounting systems suggest you firewall the people who can sign checks from the people who can enter legitimate expenses to prevent embezzlement, the 'rules' in an intelligence agency have to firewall the collection and analysis of intelligence from the operational abilities on the other side.

We see this is civil intelligence agencies where police officers (who are the operational end of law enforcement) are given direct access to intelligence sources (from places like Palintir) and then abuse that relationship to collect intelligence on enemies (like ex spouses) in order to inform how they can operate against them.

A more effective system is to put a strong firewall between the intelligence and the operator so that there is always documentation when operations requests intelligence information and the justification given for that collection. It creates an auditable paper trail that allows for a prosecutorial effort to be mounted against bad actors.

As one person put it, watching the watchers only works if you have a record of everything they have done that can be authenticated. Such a system would log every piece of intelligence an analyst received, and with a check in place to validate a 'need to know' for things like a target's spouses nude photos, your auditors could weed out bad actors in the pipeline. That is the sort of structure that makes institutions stable and more difficult to corrupt. Processes that survive execution with a number of bad actors.

</comment><comment><USER18> > if I had wanted to live a safe life, I would still be sitting in Hawaii in > paradise with the woman I love collecting a huge paycheck to do almost no > work.

Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity.

People that sacrifices their safety or lives to help a good cause are the ones I respect the most. I hope he will be able to visit his country safely sometime.

p.s. Please fix the title, it is clickbaity and almost unrelated to the actual article/interview.

<comment><USER19> > Regardless of if he is a hero or villain, he does have integrity.

Edward Snowden became an international celebrity because of what he did, and traded a comfortable life in Hawaii for a comfortable life in Moscow. Please don't speak of him in the same vein as, for example, a disappeared Chinese dissident who has actually sacrificed everything for what they believe.

<comment><USER20> > traded a comfortable life in Hawaii for a comfortable life in Moscow

A comfortable life in Moscow that was never guaranteed beforehand, and could be arbitrarily taken away with no notice. Being fortune enough to end up in a decent situation does not change what he sacrificed.

<comment><USER19> > Being fortune enough to end up in a decent situation does not change what he > sacrificed.

It really bugs me that people who defend him for ideological reasons cannot admit that he had benefited from the entire ordeal. He bemoaned the lack of respect at CIA (being the IT guy isn't high up on the totem pole) and now he can skype into a conference in Geneva with thousands of people hanging on his every word. He has a twitter account with a headshot of him doing his best impersonation of a greek philosopher with millions of followers.

To a lot of people, people that don't feel respected in the life and work, that type of celebrity is priceless. Money and a beach house is nothing compared to that.

If you don't think people like Assange and Snowden have a hero complex, and are only motivated by "truth" and "justice", you are kidding yourself.

<comment><USER20> None of the things he has was guaranteed when he went public. There was a good chance he never made it out of Hong Kong as a free man, and a decent chance of death. Even if he did desire the fame, which I do not personally believe, he risked everything for it.

<comment><USER19> I don't think I ever insinuated his move was without risk. I said it was calculated to shield himself from any consequence, and maintain the narrative so he could enjoy his new-found power and celebrity.

Like I said, you want a real hero search in the political prisons of Iran or China. Or Russia, the place Snowden now calls home (under circumstances we will never know).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Let's assume you could simply poke an icon and all the hidden activity would > stop, would you do that?

> DER SPIEGEL: Of course.

That I think is the crux of the issue - our consent is not real.

<comment><USER22> No, that doesn't seem quite right. I think the issue is that people don't understand just how valuable their data is.

Technically, it's posed as an exchange. People "pay" their data to get these services. People so freely give their data/privacy so much that at this point, it's a required part of using most of humanity's technology. The icon exists, it's called the power button, because if you stop paying, they don't provide the service anymore.

Don't get me wrong, it's a terrible state of affairs, and plenty of people don't even realize they're "paying" like this (likely on purpose, data is much more valuable when people don't realise the data is being collected). But there's no competition, no alternate provider of free maps & guidance that is as good as google maps and protects privacy.

So yes, of course. For the same reason that if I could simply poke an icon and receive $1000, of course I would do that.

<comment><USER23> _> people don't understand just how valuable their data is._

My data isn't valuable. Your data isn't valuable[1]. The data of all HN users is of some value. The data of all Facebook users is highly valuable. But no single FB user has any claim to having valuable data; not even in proportion.

The value is in having a collected, curated, normalized, and cross-tabulated dataset. One that can be queried at scale and with good certainty to accuracy. The value is emergent, a property of the whole graph; it's not merely sum of all the parts nodes[2]. This is one of the reasons "databases" are a separate protected category under IP laws. Come to think of it, the value was created by Facebook, by collecting, managing, and processing the dataset, rather than by users collecting the individual datasets.

We may need a whole separate branch of jurisprudence and legislation, dealing with situations where value (or harm) is an emergent phenomenon in a dense network, not only not attributable directly to any singular node, but also much greater than straightforward sum of nodes' values.

There's a similar (if of destructive value) case for vulnerable "internet of things" / "smart devices". Any singular such device being vulnerable to remote exploit is barely notable. Together, a vast army of vulnerable small "smart devices" easily become a botnet in hands of criminals, with power vastly larger than mere sum of parts. Question arises how to handle responsibility & culpability of vendors (or owners).

\--

[1] aside of being directly useful to you.

[2] possible edges = n(n-1)/2, thus value = O(n* *2)

<comment><USER24> > We may need a whole separate branch of jurisprudence and legislation, > dealing with situations where value (or harm) is an emergent phenomenon in a > dense network, not only not attributable directly to any singular node, but > also much greater than straightforward sum of nodes' values.

The basic concepts already exist in current jurisprudence, like class actions (many people aggregating together) and punitive damages (damages exceeding cause and effect losses). Don't think these concepts require a sea change, just a modern-day upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Let's hope it doesn't come to... defenestration!

<comment><USER26> > Defenestration

The act of throwing out of a window. Early 17th century from modern Latin defenestratio(n-), from de- 'down from' + Latin fenestra 'window'.

<comment><USER27> always reminds me of one of my favorite plants, the succulent fenestraria, that basically has a super cool adaptation to survive in dry spells by using leaves that are basically fiber optic cables to deliver light to chloroplasts underground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm turned off by typos, especially one in the subject's name so early into the text -- "Snwoden"

</comment><comment><USER29> If you were working against police as a group, you may have no escape. No one will ever know.

</comment><comment><USER30> Probably worth calling out, since we're apparently supposed to believe Jeffrey Epstein broke his neck by kneeling too hard.

<comment><USER31> why does this get downvoted ?

Epstein dying in his cell is a major scandal.

<comment><USER32> Because it's completely unrelated.

<comment><USER33> Is it? People killing others in secret to avoid information getting out but framing it differently.

<comment><USER34> The really dumb title for this submission is distracting from the better parts of the interview. That quote wasn't Snowden implying he thinks he's in imminent danger of being murdered; he was just rebutting people saying that he was suicidal.

The interview itself has zero relationship to the whole Epstein thing (of which I find many of the details to be scandalous).

<comment><USER35> > That quote wasn't Snowden implying he thinks he's in imminent danger of > being murdered

Probably not, but it's pretty clear he believes that secret services killing someone and making the death appear a suicide is a common occurrence. And I doubt he doesn't have the Epstein case in mind, as the most recent example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chupa-chups Spiegel has become one of the worst propaganda magazines (not for the government, but for highest bidder) in Germany. It was once famous for investigative journalism, nowadays the most relevant question is who paid most for the article.

Sorry for this rant.

Still, occasionally you'll get a really good article. This is probably one of those.

<comment><USER36> Sorry, no sorry for your posting.

That wasn't a rant. It was more a failed attempt to spread FUD.

If you have actual information how and when companies regularly bid/paid for articles, you should tell us. Who bid/paid for the articles in the current edition, with the main article about the car industry?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The defenestration of Snowden.

</comment><comment><USER38> He comes off as a guy with integrity. But what about Julian Assange? The consensus in the US media now seems to be that he just wanted to hurt Hillary by helping Donald Trump, and thus was working for team Russia?

<comment><USER9> The ad hoc but exceedingly purposeful collaboration between Wikileaks, Russian military and civilian agents, the Trump campaign and other actors is documented extensively in the Mueller report. The Report[1] podcast does an excellent job of making it more accessible. Longtime US intelligence community players eg [2] have made explicit claims that Wikileaks is in part a Russian intel operation. Those claims should be taken with some salt, all is not spy novels and deep state games, but it seems clear that motivated and intelligent "transparency" actors like Assange and Snowden can- want to- cause asymmetrical chaos, so are useful to support.

1\. [https://www.lawfareblog.com/introducing-report-podcast- serie...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/introducing-report-podcast-series- lawfare)

2\. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/20committee.com/2015/08/31/wiki...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks- is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/amp/)

<comment><USER39> If you can prove knowledge and intent, you can charge under a whole variety of crimes.

Has the US criminal justice system gotten so weak from prioritizing easy wins for the sake of getting hired at a private law firm that they don't even know how to prosecute or even ask Congress for transparent mechanisms to prosecute?

What is even the end goal beyond giving US intelligence a bad day? Your allegations do not pass muster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is Snowden publishing a book at the same time there is some confusion about voting in Russian elections? I'm a big fan of Snowden and don't want to insinuate malice. Is this just a mere coincidence?

[https://www.newsweek.com/russia-novosibirsk-sergey-boyko- nav...](https://www.newsweek.com/russia-novosibirsk-sergey-boyko- navalny-1459145)

<comment><USER41> It's an English-language title, and publishers typically schedule things months or years in advance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Of course the US would not push him through a window but someone that wanted to damage the US international image might...

<comment><USER43> If you read American history there are all kinds of shady things that the CIA have done. You might be surprised to learn the lengths they will take to protect American interests.

<comment><USER42> Maybe it wasn't clear from my comment.

My point was not that the US/CIA don't "push people out of windows" but that they wouldn't do it because Snowden is such a public figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I do wonder which specific philosophical objection to suicide Snowden ascribes to?

<comment><USER45> If I were afraid that I might be hurled out of a window against my will, I think publicly going on the record as philosophically opposed to suicide would be a very good idea.

<comment><USER46> If I were a trolling or narcissistic prankster considering suicide, I might do the same. (No suggestion or accusation about Snowden is implied.)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any devs here working for Twitter I can contact? - <AUTHOR>

I've got a geolocation based Twitter application in late alpha right now (functional and designed) that has a direct monetization scheme for businesses using Twitter. As far as being semi-specific, the application utilises Twitter's Search API to retrieve tweets from potential customers nearby. That really is just the tip of the iceburg as far as application features go. I have a grandiose plan for this thing; think Groupon meets CoTweets.
I have put in over 2 full months of development time (full-time) with additional sweat equity on nights and weekends. The problem is, I'm having a hard time convincing my employer to allow me to finalize development due to the trade-off of not bringing home the bacon on client projects.
I'm really interested in having a point of contact at Twitter to try and get this thing off the ground running. I have high hopes for this application and believe I've got the makings of a great product offering. My boss is actually open to ideas on what to do with this project, whether it be angel funding or giving someone else rights to the codebase so it never hits the deadpool.
Please help. You can respond here or email me (in my profile).
- Corey <comment><AUTHOR> Nobody?</comment>


The Assault on Privacy (1970) - <AUTHOR> https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/712228-1970-newsweek-coverstory-privacy.html#document/p1 <comment><AUTHOR> Direct PDF link: [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/712228/1970-newsw...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/712228/1970-newsweek- coverstory-privacy.pdf)</comment>


How to Craft a Killer API Demo - <AUTHOR> http://news.mlh.io/this-is-how-you-craft-a-killer-live-api-demo-07-07-2015

<comment><USER2> If you're in to learning from the best, you've come to the right place - really helpful/valuable/legit insight from folks who are really good at this stuff.

Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER3> Rad to see some Twilio love in this! I can confirm that an unthinkable amount of time and thought goes into those 5 minute demos!</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any good online communities for UX design? - <AUTHOR> I'm wondering where i can find good online communities for front-end design. There's too many 'graphic design' forums but I can't find any good places to get feedback on GUI design. <comment><USER2> Forrst: <http://forrst.com/>

<comment><USER3> Also invite only?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Root is amazing, you will not find a more talented group of people. A couple of us post here on HN. It's invite only but getting in is just a matter of having a connection (you do) and an impressive portfolio (do you?)

<http://www.theroot42.org>

<comment><USER5> So if we are interested in joining do we send an email to ben (at) carbonfour.com, or do we talk to you?

<comment><USER4> We can talk, sure.

And yes, pxlpshr speaks truly--Ben is a great designer, the founder of the root, and he was the first rooter to work for FB.

<comment><USER5> I don't have a huge claim to fame, just the design work that I am doing for my as of yet uncompleted web app. To make a long story short I don't consider myself to be a really professional web designer, but I would like to learn and get feedback on my design efforts.

I can send you an email with examples of my design work. Should I send it via the contact form on your site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I caution you here, the problem with UX design groups is that you can become a product of group think. You have to remember above all else, that you users first and foremost are the greatest experts on UX design. While professionals can teach you theory, they can also become dogmatic about sticking to the principals (some, not try to generalize here).

My point being is relying on UX patterns and human factors theory does not negate the most important UX principal and that is A/B testing. Users may not be able to vocalize what they want but their actions and conversion rates speak volumes about what is intuitive and what is not. Employing this simple technique can teach you volumes about intuitive interface design.

Now with that being said these communities are great for inspiration and as a support network when creativity or ideas fade. When you hit a creative block they provide a plethora of talented people that can be extremely helpful.

Just remember, if you A/B test something and it goes against conventional wisdom, stick with what works avoid the dogma. Always do what works, not what is supposed to work.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://dribbble.com>

<comment><USER8> so, assuming that you're a dribble user, how do you rate the experience of using the service? How does it compare with showing screenshots to your friends over aim or talking at each other's desk? I'm intrigued, but i always find the more immediate, non-crowdsourced techniques have worked really well.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I don't actively use dribbble myself. I recommended it based on the opinion of a very good graphic designer, who swears by it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Interaction Design Association has a pretty active community: <http://www.ixda.org/>

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://undrln.com/> exists, but it has been pretty dead lately.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://Pick.im>.

While Pick.Im isn't exactly a community, it's a pretty fine resource for getting your name out there (or finding developers); I just used it the past week to find a bunch of great local (Denver) UI designers that I'm interviewing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Konigi: <http://konigi.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd add UX Bookclub, and the UX Freelancers group on LinkedIn.

I'd also look at Product Management groups as UX is a specialism within that, so ProductCamp and ProductTank for starters.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stack Exchange for UI -> <http://ui.stackexchange.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> For SF Bay Area => <http://www.baychi.org>

<comment><USER16> I visited the site. I couldn't stand the design. I left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> boxesandarrows.org is way to go :)</comment>


How Google is remaking iteself as a machine learning company - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/how-google-is-remaking-itself-as-a-machine-learning-first-company-ada63defcb70 <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11954988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11954988)</comment>


How Webshrinker works (ML-based domain categorization) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dnsfilter.com/blog/webshrinker-website-categorization/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, I wrote this and it's about our AI/ML engine at DNSFilter, but I wrote this post to shed some light on how exactly Webshrinker works and the way it's been programmed to categorize domains.

<comment><USER2> Email email@example.com if you want and I can give you some tips about how to present this in a way the HN community is more likely to respond to.</comment></comment>


Chief Executive of Sonos Steps Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/business/sonos-john-macfarlane-ceo.html <comment><USER2> Talk about honesty - "I tried Echo in the beginning and wrote it off. I had too many distractions at that time. I wasn't playing at the level I should have been playing at in all frankness."</comment>


The history of wave-powered boats - <AUTHOR> http://www.wavepropulsion.com/

<comment><USER2> The 'Waveglider' [1] by Liquid Robotics employs a variation of this. Tethered to a buoy on the surface, the main underwater vehicle is propelled forward by the wave's upward force acting on spring loaded foils.

[1] [http://liquidr.com/technology/waveglider/how-it- works.html](http://liquidr.com/technology/waveglider/how-it-works.html)</comment>


Serpent.AI – Game Agent Framework (Python) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SerpentAI/SerpentAI <comment><AUTHOR> My goal with Serpent.AI is to lower the barriers to entry when it comes to using games as sandboxes for code experiments. It unlocks your entire existing game library (Steam, DRM-Free etc.) to be used as potential game agent environments and it does so natively! No Docker containers, No VNC. It is simple enough for beginners & hobbyists to dabble in, but also powerful enough to drive serious machine learning and AI research. The framework provides structure and conventions so you can focus on your experiment exclusively. It also doesn't try to dictate how you solve your problems. Your game agent is your canvas!

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow this is impressive! Def going to try it out!</comment>


How a 20-year-old kernel feature helped USDS improve VA's network - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/how-a-20-year-old-kernel-feature-helped-usds-improve-vas-network-33109cbcb2e6 <comment><USER2> I probably would've started at the TCP layer only because I've been bitten at that layer many times and it always has these sorts of strange symptoms. Some examples:

1) Connections hanging over a frame relay network that one day started dropping packets over a certain size. Work-around was adjusting the MTU until I was able to convince the frame relay network operator that something was broken in their network. Initially it was confusing because an interactive telnet session over the network would work fine till you did something like "ls -l" or tried to read a man page which generated enough text to send a full size packet, then the connection would hang.

2) Unable to reach a Verizon e-mail paging gateway but only when connecting from a Linux box. An OS X box on the same network as the Linux box could reach the gateway fine. Turned out Verizon had a firewall rejecting connections where the ECN bit was set. Linux was setting ECN, OS X was not.

3) Solaris box A could initiate a connection to box B, but not the other way. After A talked to B, B could then talk to A, but only for a short period. Someone had deleted A's own MAC from A's ARP table, so A wasn't replying to ARP requests for itself. But if A connected to B, B would keep A's MAC in its own table till it timed out after which B couldn't initiate connection to A any more.

4) All manner of misconfigurations over the years where you learn to recognize the symptoms: misconfigured netmask size; misconfigured duplex; duplicate IP address on same network. You rarely see these any more.

5) The infamous 500-mile e-mail. :-)

6) And my favorite - [https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/the-discovery-of-apache- zooke...](https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/the-discovery-of-apache-zookeepers- poison-packet/)

<comment><USER3> I agree. I'd probably look at it from TCP layer shortly after initial failures to diagnose if not from he start. Especially when dealing with communication between a cloud provider and on-prem gear and infrastructure. However, it's tempting to exhaust all other avenues depending on how likely the on-prem ops folks are to punt the issue.

<comment><USER4> I actually did look at the TCP layer early on. However, I didn't pay close attention to the TS Val. From the packet dumps, it just appeared that the TCP window had stopped sliding. I couldn't conclude that NSOC's router was at fault.

Getting NSOC on-board is a big deal. After all, they deal with the entire VA network with 100,000+ employees. If you think about it from their perspective, why is USDS' TCP connections so special?

<comment><USER5> Network level troubleshooting is incredibly difficult, especially for individuals who don't have a networking background. Even showing someone how to read wireshark often isn't enough.

I just wanted to politely point out though, in this case, I think there should have been an indications of a network failure in this analysis early on, from the standpoint that TCP frames were sent to the server which were not acknowledged. This would depend on the point where you capture the traffic naturally, but the lack of acknowledgement would be a strong indicator that traffic is not reaching the server, or that replies are not reaching your capture point.

So while the TS Val may be the cause of the drops, I think the packet drops should have stood out when seeing the traffic being black holed, and likely the same segments getting re-transmitted continuously.

And for anyone out their who thinks this is easy to catch, I'd say this is very easy to miss, because you need to have a good understanding of how TCP works in the first place, to know what not working looks like.

<comment><USER6> True, but Wireshark will highlight dodgy TCP frames (retransmits, dups, etc) which should give a small clue to look further. I agree that it is necessary to understand how TCP works (or have access to someone who does) in order to run Internet services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some people might not have realized USDS is still around since it was best known for the Healthcare.gov rescue under Obama. But it's still here, and still hiring people to work on problems like this www.usds.gov/join

<comment><USER8> Hmm.... I apply every 6 months or so and get the thumbs down. Not sure what they're looking for. I've got 30 years of every kind of experience (dev, DBA, network, security, product mgmt, analytics/data science, business mgmt, and more) with good credentials and they never bite. I wish I knew more what the ideal profile was; I'd love to help out!

<comment><USER9> I wonder if the environment of experience is significant? USDS positions itself like a startup (even their page has a section on "dress code" which mentions being like "any other startup"). Someone whose experience is primarily enterprise or BigCo might be less appealing. It would be interesting to see a roster of current USDS FTEs and their backgrounds (I didn't see a "Who's Who" on their page, but didn't look extensively).

<comment><USER10> I think that startup mentality might bite them in the arse.

I saw "React on Ruby" and winced.

There is nothing wrong with that platform as a "We are in a market where things will change radically in two years" but for the VA? Where things might change once a decade, that's a recipe for pain.

Look at where the Web was 5 years ago (hell React didn't exist) never mind 10.

Angular is 7 years old, KnockoutJS is 7, jQuery is the grandaddy at 11, React is 4.

Not a criticism (they are clearly doing important impactful work) more a concern.

If someone said to me "You will have to support this for at least 10 years" the choices I made would be extremely conservative.

<comment><USER11> To me, this looks like the bigger potential problem:

>U.S. Digital Service members join us for what we call a tour of duty. We are seeking candidates interested in joining the U.S. Digital Service fulltime, ideally for at least 12 months. In some cases, we can accommodate candidates who can only commit to a shorter amount of time. Three months is the minimum time commitment we can accommodate. All members of the U.S. Digital Service hold "term-limited" positions, which means that at the end of a prescribed term, the candidate's employment with that agency must end.

You have to move to DC -- without relocation assistance -- knowing that you're only going to work for USDS with an expiration date? Seems like that'd really shrink the net of candidates to me. I know it kind of kills my interest, personally.

<comment><USER12> What also concerns me about that is maintenance. You're constantly bringing in new people to build new things who have no knowledge of what people in previous "tours" built. The overheard of all the handoffs and knowledge transfers that needs to happen seems unfortunately high.

<comment><USER13> While the USDS does build things, the model is to have them partner with career civil servants and contractors and get them to implement industry best practices. So there is still overhead when handing off between tours, but the bigger problem is finding capable contractors and vested partners at the agency's who can champion the new way of doing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really hope USDS can help introduce interdepartmental digital transfers within the federal government.

To give an example of how frustrating it can be... I went through the visa -> green card -> citizenship process. No two departments talk to one another, and when they do they seemingly transmit information on paper which is then transcribed by hand introducing errors/typos.

For example USCIS does not talk to the SSA digitally at all. I filled in a single form which was used for both my Visa/Green Card and to apply for a Social Security Card on my behalf, my name was spelt correctly on the visa, but got typo-ed during entry into the SSA's system (then the emphasis placed on me to prove their error, even though other US government departments don't have the typo, including any official ID I hold or naturalisation certificate).

Additionally when you earn citizenship the USCIS won't tell anyone. You have to get your piece of paper and physically go tell each department one by one about the change, otherwise nothing will happen.

Why doesn't the federal government just have a big database? Or failing that, why does one department not electronically transfer records to another department? Why are people still hand re-entering information already held digitally?

<comment><USER15> > Why doesn't the federal government just have a big database?

Because that tends to end very badly. I've been in Fed MIS systems since I joined the USAF in 1981, and it's the same just about everywhere except for a few of the research labs.

Remember the OPM data breach, where the background check info for over 20 million people went walkabout? I was one of the lucky winners, and it's a result of the management-by-spreadsheet mentality that's everywhere in the government. On paper, they were fine. In actual fact, not so much.

If the security checklist says "you must have an audit system in place", and you have the system installed and running, you pass. Nothing is said about ever looking through the logs for atypical behavior that might indicate a breach.

You want to buy new software? If it's not Oracle or Microsoft, good luck. If there's not a contractual vehicle in place to use for the purchase, forget it. Whether or not the software is fit for purpose has no bearing on the matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I found this article very interesting, I feel like something is missing here.

So linking this issues to a Cisco bug is very interesting, that dropping connections would cause the application to lock up / crash, while all the connections to the database were dead.

My question is why would the application lock up and the servers would crash?

I don't see it very often, but when striving for high availability and strong resiliency (which isn't reasonable for everyone), issues need to be looked at in great detail. So I would be trying to look at the second side of the story, which is why was there crashes encountered under these circumstances, and are there other plausible triggers that could cause a similar set of circumstances.

Disabling timestamps does avoid the Cisco bug, but a similar set of triggers could be encountered anytime the VPN connection dropped, or if the firewall failed over without the state tables in sync, or any number of other network conditions.

And don't take me wrong, I don't know if the OP did this, but based on the article, I would lean towards disabling timestamps as a workaround, and this might still be an indicator that something in the app isn't behaving correctly when the database is unavailable.

<comment><USER4> You are dead on. We do have a bug where we are not recovering the Oracle connectivity correctly. It is on our radar to address the issue. [https://github.com/department-of-veterans- affairs/caseflow-m...](https://github.com/department-of-veterans- affairs/caseflow-monitor/issues/15)

However, There is actually another 50% of the story that I never posted. VACOLS is a really old Oracle DB (from the 80s) that is out of our control. Somehow, it has a "feature" where you can only make one TCP connection to it every 2-3 second. So if we lose connection to the database, it will take many seconds to recover. At that point, our ELB health-check would've fired and restarted our EC2 instances. This is why recoverability of the database connection is not an immediate priority.

Here's how we preallocate the VACOLS connection pool to workaround this throttling feature. [https://github.com/department-of-veterans- affairs/caseflow/b...](https://github.com/department-of-veterans- affairs/caseflow/blob/master/config/initializers/warmup_vacols.rb)

The infrastructure we operate in are very challenging (and interesting) because of legacy systems. That's why common sense engineering often may not apply in USDS.

<comment><USER5> I also bet, those challenging legacy systems in many case are way better built than what "modern" systems would provide. Sure there will be whacky things to work around, but I've seen my share of whacky engineering in brand new systems too. Common sense engineering seems to be few and far between these day's.

Kudos on having something interesting to work on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its amazing to see how "solving" the problems can often not solve the problem. Immediately when faced with a error that happened after five minutes I might just put a sleep(301) in the startup script, but that totally would have masked the issue for others. Also amazing foresight by the kernel team to think ahead and make this wrap explicit.

<comment><USER4> Author here. Completely agreed. My jaws dropped when I saw the INITIAL_JIFFIES. The kernel developers really saved our butt.

I could not imagine debugging this problem if INITIAL_JIFFIES was randomized. It may takes days/weeks/months for this bug to appear.

<comment><USER16> Similarly, Unreal Engine 4 offsets platform time (a double) by some large value so if it's stored in a float, accuracy errors will be exposed almost immediately. Looking it up, the offset starts out large enough that the epsilon is two seconds.

<comment><USER17> Do you have a link with more info? I'd love to read more about this.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, no. It's not something documented other than a cryptic comment in the source code ( FPlatformTime::Seconds() ) assuming some knowledge of floating point number gotchas.

Edit: Here's a more detailed post o made about the specific gotcha if you're interested: [https://community.gamedev.tv/t/why-is-fplatformtime- seconds-...](https://community.gamedev.tv/t/why-is-fplatformtime-seconds- already-past-6-months/9701)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love bugs like these. Make it crash is often the hardest part of solving any bug and without this you'd have never known. There is one nasty bit to this story though: the NSOC was running outdated firmware on their Cisco's and wouldn't have known about it if an outside party had not alerted them to this fact. That's pretty sloppy on their end.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I think the fact Cisco routers fail to route TCP packets bothers me even more.

/you had one job

<comment><USER19> But it did route those TCP packets over.

For exactly 5 minutes.

It just means you need to route everything faster, and then kill your connection, and restart it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just wanted to say that I love these type of postmortem stories. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER21> It's like a 2017 version of the 500 mile email bug

[https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html](https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The Jiffies root cause leads to an interesting idea: an Glossary of Magic Constants where all kinds of important constants, limits, and overflows are tracked to aid in debugging. You could imagine a search engine where "tcp connection drops after 5 minutes" lists every piece of software and firmware with 5 minute and 300 second constants.

<comment><USER23> So OEIS for programming? Largely seems covered by Google: punch in an oddly specific number and someone will probably have discussed it on Stack Exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of trying to debug long-lived SSH tunnels which would fail every 2:11:15 hours. Right down to the hardcoded value in net.ipv4.tcp _

</comment><comment><USER25> Would this (disabling TCP Timestamps) affect TCP Performance with other OSes in regard of their respective TCP Window Auto Scaling Implementations? I believe Linux uses DRS (1) and doesn't necessarily depend on TCP Option TS for TCP Window Auto Scaling and FreeBSD has got this (2) commit ~ 2 Months ago.

(1) [http://public.lanl.gov/radiant/pubs.html#DRS](http://public.lanl.gov/radiant/pubs.html#DRS) (2) [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=31667...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=316676)

<comment><USER4> Yup, it would. Disabling the TS option was just a stopgap measure to make our deployments stable for the time being.

<comment><USER25> Of course, setting priorities.. I was just wondering how different OSes would behave under these circumstances. For instance AWS S3 also doesn't support TCP Timestamps and this had a rather big impact on e.g. FreeBSDs TCP Performance until recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A team at Veterans Affairs is my customer. They have been tasked to integrate with some AWS hosted intranet system. Other than points of integration, we know very little about it. This article seems to be a big clue.

</comment><comment><USER27> I had the pleasure of meeting and working with many amazing USDS engineers. Lots of talents, many are truly dedicated to the higher purpose and truly believe in the mission of serving our country. It's a shame that because of the current administration, people are less and less interested in the government.

<comment><USER4> The government's current IT infrastructure crisis is not caused by any one administrations. The root cause goes back decades. Things like "Improving Veterans' lives so they don't have to wait 5-10 years for an Appeals decision" shouldn't be political.

I can honestly say that the projects I've been involved with in USDS are the most impactful and meaningful projects I've worked on in my entire life.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Spaced-repetition flashcards linked to your learning materials - <AUTHOR> https://www.iDoRecall.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN friends,

iDoRecall cofounder and 67 y/o entrepreneur here. Today's version of iDR is a total rewrite of our MVP. iDR began as a digital solution enabling the cognitive science strategies that I used to graduate #1 in my med school class back in the analog 70s [1]. iDR takes spaced-repetition flashcards beyond the bounds of well-known solutions. Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., creator of Coursera's Learning How to Learn [2], uses iDR for her own lifelong learning. Recently she became our Chief Learning Science advisor.

Upload your learning content into iDR: PDFs, Word files, PowerPoints, images and many other file types. Add videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo and other sites to your iDR library. Read, watch and listen to your content on iDR.

Create flashcards (we call them "recalls") that are linked directly to the concepts, facts, formulae or whatever you want to remember in your learning materials.

When you practice memory retrieval with your recalls, if you struggle with the answer, you're one click away from seeing the exact spot in your content where you created the recall so that you can quickly refresh your memory in the original context where you learned it. Stop wasting time rereading. Read once. Watch once. Listen once. Abstract and curate what you want to remember into recalls and use spaced-repetition memory retrieval to remember everything you learn. Rereading, highlighting and rereading highlight have been proven suboptimal tactics for remembering what you've learned [3].

Metacognition training wheels, Pomodoro timer and project management tools for learners included. Create study groups with classmates and collaborate sharing recalls and content. Teachers can create classes in the app.

We have reference docs on our self-hosted Notion [4] and helpful videos on our YouTube channel [5]. I write about learning on Medium and Better Humans [6]. Please let me know if there is any way that I can be helpful to you.

[1] Medium/Better Humans [https://bit.ly/32RNRVR](https://bit.ly/32RNRVR) [2] [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) [3] [https://makeitstick.net/](https://makeitstick.net/) [4] [https://learn.idorecall.com/LEARN- iDoRecall-96fd209b3b294337...](https://learn.idorecall.com/LEARN- iDoRecall-96fd209b3b294337bebde697f1b1d79b) [5] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdsHy47vKKsEylCoT- JT6tA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdsHy47vKKsEylCoT-JT6tA) [6] [https://medium.com/@iDoRecall](https://medium.com/@iDoRecall)

<comment><USER2> Hey David, looks really impressive. And so nice to see some older enterpreneurs out there!

Strange that there's just another spaced repetition show HN just next to this one. What are the odds?

I'm a co-founder of Kenhub[0] and we use some spaced repetition techniques in our quizzes. But it's quite different still. The bigger difference for us is that we create and curate the content. I'm wondering if there's some opportunity for collaboration. See contact details in my profile if you'd like to chat some time.

[0] [https://www.kenhub.com](https://www.kenhub.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. I just sent an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nifty. As an Anki user, I see this as a feature I really wish Anki had. This is an area where I am more than willing to spend money for an excellent product (which Anki strangely fails to capitalize on). Good luck, I hope this grows.

Obligatory HN cynacism: I don't think I'll end up using it due to the massive investment I've already made in Anki + switching friction. Plus, it's not open source, so if the service ever went away I would be crushed (which is really important to me since some of my cards have 10y+ intervals).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks James, You can export Anki Flashcards and import them into iDR as recalls. The catch for now is that only .txt format exports work for the time being. Also, in a few weeks we'll offer self-serve export of all of your recalls in a CSV file which then be uploaded into Anki or Quizlet.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the update. This is an important feature for me, too, for a different reason. I've discovered that, with Anki, oftentimes the fastest way for me to bulk edit a deck is to export it, manipulate it with a Python script, and then re-import it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome!! I would like this to be my portal to the web. My current portal to the web is my browser, but it doesn't allow me to create notes/cards/recalls on youtube videos I watch or on articles I read.

I think it would be good if the main content appears on the center (I see pdfs showing on the right side of the screen).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement. Shortly we will be improving the layout and making the document viewer much wider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do like the feature where the flashcards are linked to the place in source material where they came from.

Something I didn't like about anything less trivial in Ankhi was that there was a lot of overheard in trying to write a card knowing that I would never reconcile it with its source again. So I would encumber it with context.

</comment><comment><USER7> > An internal error has occurred. Please contact technical support to resolve > that issue

FYI - I tried logging in with facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We'll sort that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this work with DRMd content like digital textbooks?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it doesn't. Even when we add an EPUB reader in the coming months, it won't open DRM protected files. Unfortunately Amazon and Apple don't offer APIs for their ebook readers. The only solution is copy|paste or screengrabs... very suboptimal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you plan to enable linking cards to web content?

My biggest desire is to create flash cards directly linked to software documentation.

<comment><USER10> Having spent a lot of time making a similar tool this is pretty difficult. Two issues: (1) highlighting and annotating across (partial) XML with rendered output is very hard without some understanding of the rendering, you can't really just say that a particular highlight is a fixed bounding box or interval; and (2) obviously, web content can change, so even if you could do the above what happens to your annotation highlight from character 5 to 10 when the document shifts?

Personally, I gave up and just converted the web page in question to PDF, and annotated from there. Then you get easy document position markers and no changes over time. I would also be very interested in a system that could do proper webpages natively, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Holy webdesign jesus, this one has cookie popups, chat popups, auto-changing black text on dark background, slow animations that get triggered by scrolling.

All I want is really Anki with manual intervals. Life would be so good :|

<comment><USER12> You could try using steps(new cards part) for setting up your own intervals. I don't know how much it is fit for your purposes though. What do you not like about Anki's current scheduling, s9w?

<comment><USER11> I think the entire theory about the intervals is overcomplicated and too much of an overgeneralization at the same time. If users could just have buttons with "110% of last interval", "+2 days", "1 week" that would be the best way. I've written a web app like that many years ago but js development has since outpaced my motivation to keep up.

Steps is just manual entry of the first intervals, right? That's very static.

<comment><USER12> > Steps is just manual entry of the first intervals, right? That's very > static.

You can choose as many steps as you want, so if all your cards have a single card setting, you can choose the schedule you like once and for all. But I don't know if using Steps in this manner is any good. Just an option.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PageRanking species for predicting extinctions - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/googlefoodwebs/

<comment><USER2> Report from the BBC here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=805184>

No discussion ...

</comment><comment><USER3> Eigenvectors, eh?

</comment><comment> onreact-com I'd propose some SEO for endangered species then.</comment>


Science Is Broken - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceisbroken.org/

<comment><USER3> Skimmed around the site for all of 30 seconds and saw this [1]:

> Only 0.1% of published exploratory research is estimated to be reproducible.

Which sounds downright _absurd_. Only one in one thousand studies are _even in principle_ able to be performed again? So I followed the reference.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't say that. Based on skimming the reference[2], I think the 0.1% number comes from the section "An Example: Science at Low Pre-Study Odds".

It is not talking about reproducibility, it is talking about p-values. It is not talking about studies in general, it is talking about a specific type of study (whole genome association). It assumes statistical mistakes are made on purpose, as opposed to estimating how often this is done in reality, and that the prior probability of a given association being true is 10^-4. The example- of-a-bad-study study barely moves that probability to 1.5 * 10^-4 (that's why it's a good example of a bad study), which the quote rounds back down to 0.1%.

The quote is an egregious exaggerations, especially for a site criticizing a method of gaining knowledge. Hopefully the whole site is not like that.

1: <http://www.scienceisbroken.org/posts/30> _edit_ : it appears that the fact changes every time. I don't know how to link it.

2: [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

<comment><USER4> Science is broken is broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are some funny quips here (like "#WhenIGraduate I'm going to work for McKinsey because the hours are better"), but I like how each is paired with a pretty sobering 'fact'. For instance I was surprised that a postdoc scientist makes roughly the same as a McDonalds Store Manager (~$39k).

<comment><USER6> > _For instance I was surprised that a postdoc scientist makes roughly the > same as a McDonalds Store Manager (~$39k)._

The joys of supply and demand.

<comment><USER7> The McDonald's Store Manager is helping feed people. What is the average postdoc doing for the world? (I say this as a postdoc)

<comment><USER8> Idk about 'average' (what does the average [insert any classification of person] do for the world?), but here is an example of a postdoc feeding the world

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug>

edit: i just realized there is a "billions served" joke in there somewhere...

<comment><USER7> actually, no. Borlaug went straight from his PhD into industry (worked for DuPont), then did some wartime stuff. The "postdoc" as a career stage did not exist at the time, most PhDs went into industry or straight into academic research as a professor. The postdoc, I think is an emergent phenomenon that is resulting from the broader academic bubble, largely fueled by several countries' nationalistic fervor to "produce PhDs" as a measurement of national greatness. The consequences have been quite bad.

<comment><USER8> whoops, I stand corrected. Thank you. He is still a good example of science working well for the world. (even if it is born out of industry)

<comment><USER7> yup, I completely agree, but I think since that era the structure of science research has changed to the point where examples like him are liable to be few and far between.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Science _is_ broken. It's just this site is redonkulous.

</comment><comment><USER10> Serious question:

What is the point of this site?

<comment><USER11> Classic science was conducted to gain knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Modern 'science' is conducted to serve an economic purpose. Classic science is on the decline in favor of result-driven studies.

<comment><USER10> Arguable, but let's assume that is true.

It still doesn't tell me the purpose of this site. Are they trying to raise awareness? Affect change? Is it a feeler probe to test a niche website? Are they religious fundamentalists who want to decry science in the name of god?

I don't know, so I asked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the purpose of this website. Yes, universities, the government and certain institutions fail at science (we all are aware of the publishing rat race and countless instances of misplaced priorities). However, scientific progress is incredible & undeniable and to discredit it due to the angst of certain people is weak. If you love science and are sick of academia, you have options, or make your own options. I have a problem with this website because its simply a bi%$#fest.

</comment><comment><USER13> I once saw a research group leader talk his head off, why what his group was doing was innovative, even though the committee thought otherwise - <USER2> though most of the people in the room knew he was just trying to secure funds and the work they've done wasn't nearly as revolutionary as it was advertised. Not the most uplifting experience, but reality I guess.

</comment><comment><USER14> Immediately reminded me of #stillnotsignificant:

[http://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not- signific...](http://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not- significant-2/)

(see also the hashtag on Twitter)

</comment><comment><USER15> "We want free government money" -Everyone

Science may be broken, but a lot of these sound like first world problems. Academic books aren't purchased for me either!

</comment><comment><USER16> to be able to break science, you need scientific methods, talking only is not enough.</comment>


Easy AngularJS Forms with angular-formly - <AUTHOR> https://scotch.io/tutorials/easy-angularjs-forms-with-angular-formly

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're using AngularJS, I highly recommend you look into angular-formly. This is a fantastic introduction to angular-formly. There's a lot more power/flexibility behind angular-formly than this article covers, but as the author of the library, I can say it's very good. Learn more at [http://learn.angular-formly.com](http://learn.angular-formly.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thats some beautiful documentation

</comment><comment><USER2> Some beautiful documentation!</comment>


The Promise and Confusion of USB Type-C - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/01/20/the-promise-and-confusion-of-usb-type-c/ <comment><USER2> "Eventually, most of these connections will likely become wireless."

I have my doubts. It takes a lot of effort to enable 10GB/s wireless transmission. The spectrum is physically constrained by bandwidth, noise and interference, and it becomes evident in wireless. While a fairly cheap piece of ethernet cable and router will enable several Gbit/s (up to 400 Gbit/s soon, that's simple impossible in the 2.4Ghz band due to spectrum and current interference situation. So you need to use a less overcrowded, shorter range band with multiple physical antennas of large size, and you get beautiful monstrosities such as this:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016EWKQAQ](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016EWKQAQ)

And the only way up from _there_ (about 10Gbit/s) imo, is to move to other frequencies entirely, and lose many aspects that make wireless convenient, like wall penetration and long range.

So I think wireless isn't a very elegant solution for high bandwidth. What would be ideal I think is that every outlet would have a Type-C port that you could plug your device and get both power and high speed internet.

Keep WiFi and other wireless technologies low power and low bandwidth (actually improving the interference situation), like browsing, reading remote sensors and controlling appliances -- for things/situations that are _meant_ to be remote, wireless.

Note: this was already addressed in some comments here... I'll leave this for my own reference :)

<comment><USER3> Those antennas are just for show.

There are plenty of short-range wireless technologies currently under development that use the SHF/EHF bands to send data at very high speeds. There is plenty of bandwidth up at 60GHz. Furthermore, the processing power of affordable chips is very high, so they can control an array of antennas that send the signal exactly where the other end of the connection is (WiFi is starting to do this, and cellular networks have done this for a while). For connecting your hard drive and monitor to a nearby laptop, I think this will work fine.

The big "problem" with these bands is that they don't propagate through walls, or even your hand or a sheet of paper. But with beamforming they can go around your hand, so it's not a problem for things like connecting to monitors, in theory.

Wall penetration is a big problem for WiFi. WiFi's very limited bandwidth is shared among all stations that can hear each other. When walls block the signal, it's like you're creating a brand new Universe free of other stations and interference, and so you get free bandwidth. This is why corporate AP deployments turn _down_ the power of their access points, so they only cover a small area, thus allowing the system to have more total bandwidth.

Ideally the clients would also turn down their transmit power, but they don't because that's bad for benchmarks and reviews, so they kind of ruin this by bleeding their signals intended for the nearby AP into the range where other clients that can't hear that AP are. Fortunately things like beamforming and MU-MIMO are fixing this, by allowing receivers to move a null in their receive antenna system to where the unwanted device is, thus providing isolation from nearby devices and increasing the total bandwidth of the system. We've been promised this for years but it's still in what I think are the early stages.

(As for the use case of "I want one WiFi router to cover my whole city!" we're not there yet. You need an AP in every room, with a wired backhaul. Meshing might solve this... but it is also in the very early stages.)

<comment><USER4> The antennas are not just for show. Having multiple antennas allows you to increase bandwidth, reliability and range.

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

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

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

<comment><USER3> The post I replied to linked to this: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016EWKQAQ](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016EWKQAQ)

You do not need your antennas to look like that, that's pure marketing.

Here's an access point with 12 antennas: [https://on.google.com/hub/](https://on.google.com/hub/)

<comment><USER2> Oh you're right you can pack them more discreet, but that should have a worse performance than the one I showed. That's because the coherence length of wireless is fundamentally related to the wavelength -- so to get independent signals you need a certain physical separation, no matter how clever you are with their placing.

<comment><USER5> Antenna length and placement certainly is a huge factor in wireless performance. But those specific antennas on the linked router are thick and huge mostly because of the plastic decoration around them. As the GP said, it's marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The crux of the problem is that not all USB Type-C connectors support all of > these different capabilities and, with one important exception, it's almost > impossible for an average person to figure out what a given USB Type-C > equipped device supports without doing a good deal of research.

A Google engineer has been reviewing USB Type-C cables on Amazon, in order to resolve some of the confusion[0]. His reviews have since been collected in a spreadsheet[1].

0: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/google-engineer- leave...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/google-engineer-leaves- scathing-reviews-of-dodgy-usb-type-c-cables-on-amazon/)

1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus6P/comments/3robzo/google_spre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus6P/comments/3robzo/google_spreadsheet_for_usbc_cables_with_benson/)

<comment><USER7> Bensons reviews aren't really about capabilities. He's warning people against poorly designed A-to-C cables which identify as high-power sources, permitting the USB-C device to draw up to 3A from a USB-A port which is only required to handle 0.5A.

It's a sad state of affairs that so many cable manufacturers can't get a simple ID resistor right.

<comment><USER8> Can't the owner of the USB copyright mark revoke and sue them for using it in a non-standard implementation?

If you don't follow the spec, and nobody punishes you, don't be surprised if more people follow suit...

<comment><USER9> Many cables don't include the symbol because it is expensive to get and requires passing tests they might fail. Go look at your cables, I bet you'll find ones without it, even ones that came with more expensive products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Just because a device has USB Type-C connectors does not mean it supports power or any other alternate mode, such as support for video standards DisplayPort or MHL (used on some smartphones to drive larger >In fact, technically, it's even possible to have USB Type-C ports that don't support USB 3.1, although in reality, that's highly unlikely to ever occur."

This is actually a bigger problem than the author theorizes. Both the Nexus 6p and the Nexus 5x support USB-C on USB 2.0 rather than 3.0 or even 3.1. When USB-C computers become more prevalent, people might be sad to see their fancy device lacking the promised bandwidth they associate with the connector rather than the protocol.

<comment><USER11> I care more about symmetrical plugs than I do about bandwidth. Hallelujah! My prayers have been answered!

<comment><USER12> It's my favorite thing about the nexus 5x. The 3a charger ain't bad either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I may get downvoted into oblivion for this, but i do much prefer to pay and use Apple's Lighting Cable with MFi for charging.

The amount of absolutely terrible USB cables alongside with disastrous Charger are simply insane.

I hope there is a USB-C Certification, or Heck rename it as USB-D or something, that provide guarantees to speed ( USB3.1 ) and Power Delivery etc.

Personally I dont see much confusion with the USB -C cable, as long as you use it to plug into the same Logo Shown on both side it should be ok. The Logo being a display of Whether it is using HDMI / Thunderbolt etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> First we had mSATA and M.2 types A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, and M with profiles S1, S2, S3, D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5. Now we have USB Type-C which may-or-may-not support a handful of other standards, speeds, and wattages.

What happened? Did the hw/cable vendors take over the standards bodies and "growth hack" in some defensive differentiation?

</comment><comment><USER15> +1 for "Virtualization" for physical port insight.

What we need now is a logo for each supported protocol on the back of every device or on top of the port (if available) - power / displayport / usb / thunderbolt.

<comment><USER16> Don't worry, they'll all be there on the back of your game console in raised black on black plastic.

If it's not on the back, it will be printed in special low contrast gray paint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Okay, I'll admit it — it's not exactly the sexiest topic in tech."

I actually find USB-C one of the most "sexiest". As the author himself puts it, it's a "Virtualization" of connectivity ports. But I think it virtualizes "power" delivery too. With a high powered adapter (e.g. 80 watts) and USB PD (Power Delivery) support on both ends, I can use a single adapter with many devices. Wait a while and you'll see adapters with multiple USB-C ports on them each supplying difference voltages to connected devices. The possibilities are mouth watering.

I'm currently researching to build a DC-DC converter and I'm thinking of providing a USB-C output with PD support.

<comment><USER18> "I can" More like "you could".

The point of an insanely complex protocol with zillions of shipped variants is to benefit top to bottom silo manufacturers (apple, etc) while destroying the market for non silo manufacturers.

USB 1 really could charge off almost any port and almost any port could access almost any flash drive. That is being eliminated other than in silo'd ecosystems.

My favorite part of type C is the high voltages, its going to be fun watching Chinese grade cables short and utterly fry and ignite USB connected devices. Much like the fire department inspector gets out of whack about seeing extension cords plugged into extension cords, the inspector of the future is going to condemn office buildings where USB cables are present, of any sort, due to USB-C contamination.

<comment><USER17> x86 and Unix are insanely complex too and a big part of that complexity has to do with backward compatibility. I've scanned through the specs and I haven't seen any complexity just for the sake of it. Care to point out any specifics? Also note that some of the added complexity is to support new features, such as power provider/consumer switching and power safety.

As for the substandard Chinese grade products, they've always done that and will continue to do it. Bulk of existing USB chargers you find have horrible ripples and have power factors that seem to have been engineered to be embarrassingly low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Even the standard C-C cables aren't all the same: some are wired for USB 2.0 (with 6 wires) and others for USB 3.1 (with 17 wires).

As one might expect, the 3.1 cables are thicker, more expensive, and pretty much impossible to find in lengths greater than 1 meter.

<comment> X-Istence USB 3.1 has a huge issue that it pollutes all over the 2.4 Ghz/5Ghz space thereby reducing Wifi/Bluetooth to almost useless.

Longer cables exacerbate the issue and make it worse because it now is a nice long antenna.

<comment><USER20> Not really. Once it's longer than 1/4 wavelength at the frequency in question (about an inch at WiFi frequencies) it doesn't matter how long it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> With the new MacBook it seems like Apple is moving towards USB C as the does- everything connector, including for charging.

However on the iPhone and other recent mobile devices they seem to really be behind Lightning.

Is there some reason why the iPhone and MacBook couldn't or shouldn't use the same?

<comment><USER22> USB-C is too thick to fit in the (thin) iPhone, so Apple must use something else.

<comment><USER23> That's a myth. With lightning you additionally need space for pins in the device. With usb type c the pins lie in the inside of the port.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In March 2015, Karsten Nohl is quoted wrt type C in the context of BadUSB:

'"The additional openness and flexibility of USB Type-C comes with more attack surface," says Karsten Nohl, one of the researchers who first discovered BadUSB. "No solution for BadUSB is in sight even with this new standard."'

(source: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/16/8226193/new-apple- macbook-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/16/8226193/new-apple-macbook-usb- type-c-security-risk-badusb) )

Any new developments or new information available on that, other than, say, iOS prompting the user on 'Trust This Computer'?

<comment><USER5> I'm certainly not excited about the idea of all the random USB devices I plug into my machine having a PCIe lane with DMA capabilities available to it. Random vendor-provided USB mass storage sticks being able to read all the system memory? What could possibly go wrong?

In theory, IOMMU can mitigate these risks. In practice, barely any OS actually enables those protections, and AFAIK the CPU manufacturers (at least Intel) are still using availability of IOMMU as a differentiating factor for high-end CPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I recall being utterly astonished to read[0] that the USB C cable that comes with the latest MacBook only supports USB 2 speeds!

"You can also use the USB-C Charge Cable to transfer data at USB 2.0 speeds between your MacBook and another USB-C device."

[0] [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204360](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT204360)

</comment><comment><USER26> OK, so if I have this straight:

* USB Type-C is the physical connector, and in practice usually implies USB 3.1 gen-2 support

* USB 3.1 gen-2 is a signalling specification which depending on the device will support some combination of USB 3.0 data transfer, advanced power/charging capability, video signals, and PCIe lanes

* USB 3.1 gen 1 is just USB 3.0

* However, Type-C devices can fall back to USB 2.0/1.1 speeds if they don't support super-/hi-speed transfer, or if the cable is not wired with the extra pins for 3.0.

Allowing Type-C cables to be sold with only the 6 wires for 2.0 instead of the 17 wires for 3.1, in particular, is a real head-scratcher.

Also, renaming 3.0 to 3.1 Gen 1 is a bonehead move since they're totally different. One is a data transfer standard while the other is a Thunderbolt- style multi-stream connector. In practice that makes the "USB 3.1" designation entirely meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's not the cable that matters rather what kind of "controllers" on each end of the cable are connected and that causes a lot of confusion as people think of all those features as being "cable" based rather than controllers.

</comment><comment><USER28> The progression of USB Type-C is simply going to continue to split the web of port connectors as we enter into a season where Thunderbolt 3.0 is already confusing everyday users vs Thunderbolt v.1&2.

What we need is a single identifier for a wireless standard, not the continued progression in port and the problem with icon design. USB was supposed to the universal port, but even what the author suggests will be the dawn of a new era of connectivity, what we really should be relishing are new steps in wireless methodology.

<comment><USER29> Wireless is a pipe dream. You can't power something wirelessly over any reasonable distance with any reasonable power draw... furthermore, the bandwidth capacity needed just keeps increasing such that even _wired_ standards have a hard time keeping up. Ever tried running a 4k monitor over HDMI? Older versions couldn't even do it.

So, you need a cable for power, and you need that cable for video, you might as well make it bring over all your data, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Speed is an issue too. The 2015 MacBook has USB-C with 3.0 speeds (which is considered USB 3.1 gen 1 or something, it's not the new high speed mode 3.1 adds, see: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/what-the-usb-if-is- do...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/what-the-usb-if-is-doing-to- clear-up-confusion-about-all-these-usb-specs/))

</comment><comment><USER23> > Also, full-bandwidth Thunderbolt 3 cables can be expensive, because they > require active electronics inside them.

So far all thunderbolt cables needed active electronics. Now you can use cheap full-featured usb-c cables for thunderbolt (at reduced speed).

> it's even possible to have USB Type-C ports that don't support USB 3.1, > although in reality, that's highly unlikely to ever occur.

The cited macbook doesn't support 10Gbit/s

</comment><comment><USER31> How I wish there were some nice diagrams in this article explaining which standards are superset of which and how the different connectors look like.

</comment><comment><USER32> I haven't gone searching for answers, but purely from speculation, the sturdiness of the USB Type-C ports seems like a regression with comparison to USB 1/2/3 ports. I love how rugged USB ports have felt in the past (that is, before type-C).

<comment><USER33> Funny, because data says otherwise:

Original USB: 1,500 connect-disconnect cycles

Mini USB: 5000 cycles

Micro-USB: 10,000 cycles

USB Type-C: 10,000 cycles

[0] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector- speci...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8377/usb-typec-connector- specifications-finalized)

<comment> shawn-furyan Connect-Disconnect cycle performance doesn't have much to do with a cable's "rugged"-ness, i.e. robustness to normal stressors encountered during normal use. I've destroyed a million percent more Micro-USB cables than previous USB standard cables because the connectors are prone to irrevocably deforming when stepped on or when the cable gets lightly tugged up or down when plugged into a device.

Simply put, connect-disconnect cycles aren't the biggest threat that USB style cables encounter in normal use, and so this metric has little to say on the topic of cable ruggedness.</comment></comment></comment>


Is visiting HackerNews like Smoking? - <AUTHOR> Do you feel a little better or does it give you sense of peace while coming to HN? And when you leave after long time, feel regret? <comment><USER2> The inequality can sting if you compare yourself to others.

HN is probably the largest general purpose public forum frequently visited by multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires, so there's always somebody blabbing on about their "investments" or humble bragging about exiting or buying a tesla or some other rich person nonsense.

The onslaught of dumb can sting when you realize most people just forcefully repeat the opinions of others without much original thought.

If you read for "what's new" information, it can be marginally useful. But, the "what's new" is filtered through the bubble of what isolated nerd people think matters (containers! go! san francisco! google upgraded their toilets!) and not necessarily where the biggest opportunities or impacts can be had in the world these days.

But, even with all that, there's still a lot of good information people provide. People will chime in and kindly offer their experiences and personal knowledge about specific or esoteric things with the rest of us who don't know as much as they do.

<comment><USER3> > _there 's always somebody blabbing on about their "investments" or humble > bragging about exiting or buying a tesla or some other rich person nonsense_

Is that true? I don't see much of it.

<comment><USER2> It's just casual life differences accumulating over time. They may not even notice it's strange to others since it's just how their life works now.

Somebody who has been an employee at 4 successful startups over 10 years has different life patterns ("yeah, I'm an employee, but I'm also an LP in some VC funds and I angel invest on the side and take advisor shares every few months") than someone who has also worked at startups for 10 years but every previous startup they worked for failed or no longer exists.

"Oh, you cashed out some stock during your startup's latest funding round and now you're complaining your Tesla order is being delayed by two months? I'm _soooo_ sorry. What's new with me? Thanks for asking! I got a yearly salary increase of 0.5% again this year, which doesn't in any way cover the 15% yearly rent increase on my apartment. Enjoy your new $100,000 car while I scrape together another $300/month for rent I don't have."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes it is addictive, I have an everyday urge to check what's going on HN, I also feel I'm earning some IQ points here, of course I loose these points later, but that has to do with me ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> I tend to use [http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com) to get a summary and check ask and new now and then when I am taking a break. It can be addicting

<comment><USER6> Or even more minimalistic: [http://www.daemonology.net/hn- daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it addictive? For me yes, because I get to read about such a plethora of topics. It's fun to read people's views about a lot of things..

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like the content submitted has been on the decline, particularly in comparison to content submitted even just two years ago. I must be on the HN- decline equivalent of a nicotine patch.

<comment><USER9> There was a page evaluating submissions from 2, 5 and more years ago, and they ended up deciding it had not declined that substantially.

You can check out what Hacker News looks when they remove "new" accounts here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic)

(created by pg to measure exactly that)</comment></comment>