NYC Mesh Begins Broadband Expansion in Brooklyn - <AUTHOR> https://www.nycmesh.net/pressreleases/Release19-06-13 <comment><USER2> Anyone working on a Chicago based one? Chicago is quite flat with many taller- than-other buildings scattered throughout that could act as access points.

There's [https://www.reddit.com/r/ChicagoMeshnet](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChicagoMeshnet) that gets some posts but it doesn't seem that anyone is active on it.

<comment><USER3> Chiming in to agree. I was disappointed when I found out the sub wasn't very active when I checked a while back, I'll pop in again.

<comment><USER4> reddit is not a good place for anyone pushing for decentralization, they'll come for you real quick the moment one government decides you are detrimental to society

"too big to protect" is coming

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People may find it hard to believe but Detroit is the leader in mesh networks. They've assisted other cities all over the world in setting them up. I've met these folks and the amount of good they do for the money spent is unbelievable.

[https://www.alliedmedia.org/dctp](https://www.alliedmedia.org/dctp)

<comment><USER6> Maybe not too hard to believe if you think that one of the main drivers for mesh is the lack of available traditional infrastructure

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Damn they're growing fast. Last September I tried to setup it up but there was no service because the trees in Tompkins Square Park. Will have to give another looksie.

<comment><USER8> We have 2 new hubs near Tompkins, one on Ave A and another on 7th St

<comment><USER9> Has there been any work or thoughts on what to do for long distance city-to- city hops? Like say you wanted to connect the NY Mesh to Boston (not sure if they have one, just an example)?

I live in Phoenix - I don't think we have anything, or if we do, they are all small projects, nothing widespread. We are fairly flat, and there are probably mountains and buildings that could be used for APs (getting permission might be tough, though - because most of them are already used for comms systems - not sure how easy or difficult it would be to piggyback on to a mast).

But we are a good distance away from other metro areas in the state itself (Tuscon and Flagstaff mainly), and connection to say, Los Angeles or San Diego (or even Palm Springs) seems like a virtual impossibility to me.

I'm just curious if anyone has considered how to bridge these long-distance spans in a low cost manner?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this project, and I dream of participating in it in my building that is wired for Optimum and Optimum only. It would be a great way to break out of that monopoly.

But I do wonder, how will the rollout of 5G affect projects like this? It's a non-profit so I'll always favor it as a community project, but once Verizon comes knocking with a home 5G router capable of fantastic speeds it'll tempt many, I'm sure.

<comment><USER11> My cell service on LTE in the US is about as fast as my cable modem. But I can't just cancel my cable internet and tether instead, because every telco performs severe rate-limiting once you use up a bandwidth quota -- there's no truly unlimited data option.

So perhaps you're assuming that 5G will result in unlimited data and the obsolescence of cable internet as a result, but that's not obvious, at least to me.

<comment><USER12> Fun Fact: Some carrier throttling works by throttling packets with an unexpected TTL. Android has a default TTL of 64.

You most certainly shouldn't set the default TTL of a tethered device to 65, because then your carrier may fail apply proper limits to that traffic.

<comment><USER13> Here in Asia, if my data plan is reached quota, I'll be charged by bandwidth: $x/MB and it's much more expensive than the normal data plans. So I still have full throughput but pay significantly more for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll have to research how this program is funded later, I haven't lived in NY for a few years now but between Lower Manhattan and this section of Brooklyn it seems like richer neighborhoods are getting access first. Do the two supernodes need to be within a certain distance of each other?

<comment><USER8> Supernodes are connected by fiber so they can be any distance apart.

The two main areas we have connected are the Lower East Side and Chinatown in Manhattan (mixed income) and in Brooklyn our main hub is in a low-income housing association building, definitely not a "richer neighborhood". It is a priority of ours to get to the neighborhoods that need us the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For anyone investigating setting up a local mesh network in their community checkout the Althea project: [https://althea.net/](https://althea.net/)

<comment><USER16> I was interested, until I saw 'blockchain'. Supporting anything that energy- hungry is just flat out.

<comment><USER17> In fairness, it appears to use proof-of-stake[1] which has issues of its own, but doesn't use the TWh of electricity that proof-of-work does.

[1]: [https://althea.net/whitepaper#blockchain- overview](https://althea.net/whitepaper#blockchain-overview)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Shout out to the lonely node on Smith and Douglass! Howdy neighbor.

<comment><USER19> I believe that's one of the LinkNYC kiosks on Smith St. I wasn't aware they were part of this mesh, although the nycmesh site says they've "become unreliable":

[https://docs.nycmesh.net/installs/linknyc/](https://docs.nycmesh.net/installs/linknyc/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there anything equivalent in SF?! I love the idea of this and would love to get something similar!

<comment><USER21> Not SF technically but check out People's Open Network in Oakland: [https://peoplesopen.net/](https://peoplesopen.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It'd be really helpful if they could come up with some sort of packet of information for renters to give their building owners.

<comment><USER23> Does [https://docs.nycmesh.net/organization/outreach/](https://docs.nycmesh.net/organization/outreach/) have what you're looking for?

<comment><USER22> Yes that is exactly it. Didn't see that, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How does dhcp work in this environment? I assume something like shorter term assignments. That way if you shift DHCP every day without extensive logging you have a good expectation of privacy. We need this in Seattle.

<comment><USER25> Seattle used to have one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Wireless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Wireless)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Man, I wish they would just expand over the Hudson by a few miles.

<comment><USER27> Well build a link yourself, that's half the point of a community ISP.

Use the method described here to determine line of sight to an existing node.

[https://youtu.be/3eq1Xs-Ahkc?t=126](https://youtu.be/3eq1Xs-Ahkc?t=126)

Then reach out and coordinate. All in all it shouldn't take more than a few hours of actual effort, but probably a few weeks of IRL time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's the ping

<comment><USER27> Each wireless point-to-point hop will add about 10ms.

<comment><USER29> Try with 1500 byte packets.

<comment><USER27>
      root@OpenWrt:~# ping -s1500 220.127.116.11
      PING 188.8.131.52 (184.108.40.206): 1500 data bytes
      1508 bytes from 188.8.131.52: seq=0 ttl=61 time=8.467 ms
      1508 bytes from 18.104.22.168: seq=1 ttl=61 time=5.832 ms
      1508 bytes from 220.127.116.11: seq=2 ttl=61 time=6.458 ms

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does NYC not have something like SF's monkeybrains.net? This seems sorta-kinda like it, but not?

<comment><USER20> Have you used monkeybrains before? I'm trying to find a good ISP in SF and would appreciate any advice!

<comment><USER30> Writing this via MB as I, err, write. No complaints here, either! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How's the bandwidth?

<comment><USER27> 100mbps isn't unreasonable to expect out of the gear, but I don't know what they get in practice considering the high RF noise environment.

<comment><USER32> Just for context, 100mbps is fast. That's like local wired LAN speeds from 15 years ago.

<comment><USER33> 100Mbps was fast 15 years ago. These days it's the bare minimum. And remember that you'll be sharing this capacity with all your neighbors who sign up, and since it's wireless you can't just expand the capacity by adding more cables.

And, as jkilpatr mentioned[0], the latency will make it pretty much useless for a lot of applications (such as real-time multiplayer games, or anything that creates a lot of short-lived TCP connections such as web browsing).

The _only_ way to build out decent Internet infrastructure is to dig. Even if they come from the best intentions then these WISP efforts ultimately just end up poisoning the well.

Then again, maybe it'd be a good thing to keep connectivity at a point just before garbage like Stadia becomes viable.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320949)

<comment><USER34> No way, 100Mbps is fast today for _most_ people.

This 8K youtube video is 5m38s long and 850MiB large: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1La4QzGeaaQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1La4QzGeaaQ)

Do the math on that and you need 21Mbps to stream that video without buffering, assuming a uniform bitrate: [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=850MiB+%2F+(5+minutes+...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=850MiB+%2F+\(5+minutes+%2B+38+seconds\)+to+Mbps)

100Mbps down is _fast_ for _most_ people. What do you think the average user is doing that needs more than 100Mbps down?

<comment><USER35> How is that an 8K video? It seems like it's only available on YouTube as 1080p (60fps). It was shot originally in 8K sure, but it does not look particularly impressive on my 4K monitor.

<comment><USER34> Check it with `youtube-dl -F`, a 8K stream is available, but may not be presented to you in the browser UI:

        format code  extension  resolution note
        272          webm       7680x4320  4320p60 32524k , vp9, 60fps, video only, 850.48MiB

If you want, you can download it for yourself like this (the +251 part adds an opus @160k audio stream):

      youtube-dl -f 272+251 https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=1La4QzGeaaQ

Incidentally some videos also have VERY low bitrate encodes that also aren't shown to most users by default. This particular video goes down to 256x144, but sometimes you see _even smaller_ , particularly with a reduced framerate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is interesting.</comment>


New Google default wipes users' location, web history after 18 months - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-privacy/new-google-default-wipes-users-location-web-history-after-18-months-idUSKBN23V2KX <comment><USER2> I'm sure the data is still there on a server somewhere for legal/marketing reasons, but now the show_history_to_user field is just set to FALSE.

<comment><USER3> I don't think they have the balls to pull something like that.

If a manager suggest this in a meeting, the legal folks will eat him alive. If it comes from higher upps, then someone will leak this and that will be the end of Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't want this! Google location history is a constantly useful part of my life.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what do you use it for? I turned mine off after learning about how Google gives the info to police, and the only thing I miss is being able to set my home location in Google Maps.

<comment><USER6> Do you really think turning that setting off stops google from collecting it and giving it to the police?

<comment><USER7> Yes, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I really want is the ability to turn on GPS without allowing Google to see any data, not even "to improve our services" which is legal speak for "it's ours now, we can do whatever we want".

I am pretty sure Google is not following GDPR in this regard. You cannot force people give you data just because they provide an unrelated service (search) on the same platform.

Edit: to clarify, I want to remove Google maps, install Here or Bing maps it whatever and that should be enough to not send a single positioning sample to Google.

<comment><USER8> So you just need "Maps" app from F-Droid?

<comment><USER3> I think you missed my point.

GPS is so entangled in the OS that as soon as you enable it ten different Google services will record and send your positioning data to different departments at google. But I have ZERO interest in giving anyone my location. I don't care what cool service you have, not interested sorry.

The problem is that as soon as you _enable_ GPS on Android a dialog is shown telling you Google will use your data. If you don't agree, GPS will be turned back off.

(This by itself is a clear GDPR violation, by the way)

<comment><USER8> I see. Then you need to escape Google with a GNU/Linux phone like Librem 5 or Pinephone.

<comment><USER9> That compromises your security (and therefore privacy) by not taking advantage of the secure HARDWARE that Google offers,

which is incredible when decoupled from their proprietary spyware and just used with Android Open Source Project (AOSP), or a variant, like GrapheneOS or CalyxOS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IEX Fader: come to the dark side – IEX promotes new dark quote fader strategy - <AUTHOR> https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/04/iex-signal-or-iex-20.html <comment><USER2> I had no idea IEX had got so complicated. What happened to good old fashioned time precedence at price level limit order books?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully such simple days will come back with basic limit orders for all so we can comprehend and deal with the mkt beast without years of study of arcane order types just so we can place a basic trade with no disadvantage</comment></comment>


Visual Studio Code 1.7.2 - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/updates#_172-recovery-build <comment><USER2> The speed at which they release updates is at least impressive.

Visual Studio Code and Typescript have completely changed the way I look at MS.

Kudos to the team.

<comment><USER3> > The speed at which they release updates is at least impressive.

How so? Many companies and projects iterate this fast, many even faster.

<comment><USER4> > Many companies

True, but that wasn't the case with your grandpa's MS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome!

In the next release we'll hopefully have the "hot-exit" behavior like Sublime, where you can close the editor without having to save files, and they're back where you left off when re-opening.

Apparently, the PR for this got merged only 2 weeks ago [1]

[1] [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/101#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/101#issuecomment-260210042)

<comment><USER6> Given the recent increase in Windows' no-you-can't-stop-me update restart behavior this seems more important every week, at least on my Windows 10 guinea pig system. Being able to just throw some text into a blank buffer and not lose it in Notepad++ has made that my scratch pad of choice these days.

<comment><USER7> How can anyone work on an operating system that behaves that's way?

Complain about MacOS we might but at least it doesn't restart without us being able to stop it.

<comment><USER8> It actually isn't this way. In the control panel you simply tell the updates to install when you're not using the computer. The only time it forces you to update is when you have ignored or disabled the updates for a period of time.

<comment><USER6> Yes and no. It'll wait until you're not using the computer to install overnight, when you've been away for a while, whatever.

What it won't do as far as I've seen is allow applications to block the restart if perhaps they contain unsaved data. Your unsaved data is not Windows' problem, and after the restart it won't be yours either - if the app doesn't support hot exit/autosaving of modified buffers/documents then _recreating_ unsaved data will be your problem (but still not Windows' problem).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think these "recovery builds" are inevitable with the cadence they are maintaining on major releases.

Fastest moving MS project I've seen.

I'm really curious how big their team is that works on this. 2-pizza sized?

<comment><USER10> I'd be willing to send the team a couple pizza's for their work on this... It's my favorite product to ever come out of MS.

<comment><USER11> I believe they're in Switzerland, so you may want to be careful with that – or VSCode may become the most expensive software you're using this year :)

IIRC, there was/is a frequent stream of pizzas being delivered over the German-Swiss border because of the price difference – it got so much that they actually started to set up customs checks.

<comment><USER10> Okay, I'd be willing to order two U.S. typically priced large pizzas for the vs code team, assuming a reasonable option is available...

Void where prohibited, quantities limited, some restrictions may apply, batteries not included.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish they would consider changing the name of it, it's all but impossible to search for any internet wide resources on it.

<comment><USER13> I find VSCode usually does the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish they would start working on a auto-update feature for linux installations

<comment><USER15> I've never seen that on Linux I think there are some technical limitation for that feature, Chrome doesn't have auto-update either.

<comment><USER16> Well, I'd be fine with apt-get upgrade... It's what Chrome does, as well.

<comment><USER17> The problem with this is that if they support apt, where should it stop ? should they support portage, pacman, homebrew, Nix, Guix, yum, dpkg ?

I don't think it is Microsoft's job to provide packages for every manager. They should make an executable and then anyone who uses a package manager can package the program.

Here's where you can get a community PPA for VSCode: [https://github.com/tagplus5/vscode-ppa](https://github.com/tagplus5/vscode- ppa)

<comment><USER15> APT and YUM are the standard tbh, the rest is up to the community.

<comment><USER18> They are no standards.

And both DEBs and RPMs are often distro specific.

Linux releases should be done source only making it as easy as possible for packagers to compile using libraries present on the system; or using a tool like AppImage and packaging everything yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have this and Sublime installed...until the editor gets rid of fuzzy fonts when scaling resolutions, I unfortunately have to stick to Sublime even though I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally like VS Code.

<comment><USER20> What do you mean with "scaling resolutions"?

<comment><USER19> I have a 4k screen, but like to set resolution scaling to 150% on Windows. MacOS also does this for the retina displays. It looks fine for the most parts, and fonts render _fantastically_ with Sublime but VSCode fonts in the editor are blurry and make it harder on the eyes for reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why does this point release require ffmpeg?

<comment><USER22> How does it require ffmpeg?

<comment><USER23> [https://www.chromium.org/audio-video](https://www.chromium.org/audio-video)

<comment><USER24> The HTML Audio and Video support is probably all not used in Code. However I guess it could be hard to compile chromium (and electron) without these, if they didn't invest the additional effort to put them behind a compile flag.

<comment><USER23> It is, you can watch videos at the extensions marketplace.

<comment><USER25> Those are animated GIF's, not "real" videos.

<comment><USER23> Oops, my bad

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Will it bring npmjs down again? Is there any hidden new upgrade to npmjs recently?

<comment><USER27> Considering they've been working together with NPM since the previous recovery build, I highly doubt they would have released this unless both parties were really sure this will cause no problems.

<comment><USER28> Yes, I believe it uses [https://www.npmjs.com/package/types- registry](https://www.npmjs.com/package/types-registry) now, going by [https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/blob/a8ef77c3/src/se...](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/blob/a8ef77c3/src/server/typingsInstaller/nodeTypingsInstaller.ts#L59)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Term Sheet – A Startup Thriller Novel - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Term-Sheet-Startup-Thriller-Novel-ebook/dp/B0112ODRU2 <comment><USER2> Genuine question: Did you write this book? If the answer is yes, then my next question is do you have it in an audio format? If the answer is yes then my third question is, can I get it at audible.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I did write it. The audiobook is being produced right now and will be out before the end of the year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> > The audiobook is being produced right now and will be out before the end of > the year.

Thanks for the response. Duly noted and will check it out in the audio format.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read an early version of this book by my friend Lucas Carlson, super interesting thriller combined with an inside view of the startup world.</comment>


Dart 1.9 - <AUTHOR> http://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-19-release-youve-been-await-ing-for.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is imho the most exciting release since 1.0 :)

In a nutshell:

        * async/await
        * generators
        * enums
        * Dart Analysis Server (accessible through IntelliJ/WebStorm & Sublime)
        * New RegEx engine, 150x speed up in Dart VM
        * …

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately yesterday's announcement about stopping development of Chrome Dart VM has put a dampener on things for me. I'm not particularly interested when there are other projects like TypeScript which also transpile to Javascript.

It's also making me question the long-term viability of Golang, given Google's history of shutting down projects abruptly.

Are any important teams inside Google using Golang for heavy-lifting? At least Dart talked about the Google Ads team using Dart. One of the goals behing Golang was go have C++ programmers move to the language, but instead it's Python and Ruby programmers picking it up. So if C++ Googlers aren't using the language, it might imply that no critical systems are being built with Golang.

Also look at the resources that were initially put behind Dart. Meanwhile look at Golang, after all these years there is no official IDE. You would think that if Google were serious about Golang they would have put more resources into developing the ecosystem. It seems like Google want to have their celebrity employee, Rob Pike, in order to attract worker bees to apply for the grunt work at Google. Much like yesterday's post about Bjarne Strostroup working at Morgan Stanley.

<comment><USER3> All is pretty fine with Golang, especially inside Google. Tweet to illustrate: [https://twitter.com/rob_pike/status/575853496592826369](https://twitter.com/rob_pike/status/575853496592826369)

And I think all will be fine with Dart too. Today's release is very interesting for server-side development. In both cases, on the server and on the client side, people will use Dart when they prefer Dart to JS. And difference not only in syntax or amount of sugar, but in "how the whole system works" (don't know how to say it). And when you know that most profitable web project in human history is committed to Dart, then you can be sure, Dart is here to stay :)

<comment><USER2> That tweet has no information - why is it of any significance?

<comment><USER3> Maybe because Rob Pike (one of Go authors) works at Google and many Google developers often write how they glad to write things in Go for Google needs. Next step is up to you - use search engines to get more information :)

<comment><USER3> Last what I remember: [https://blog.twitter.com/2015/handling-five-billion- sessions...](https://blog.twitter.com/2015/handling-five-billion-sessions-a- day-in-real-time) (not Google, Twitter, but still big company).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> dartlang.org has two articles on async/await support by Gilad Bracha. The Stream and generator support is particularly awesome.

[https://www.dartlang.org/articles/await- async/](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/await-async/)

[https://www.dartlang.org/articles/beyond- async/](https://www.dartlang.org/articles/beyond-async/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the biggest release since 1.0. Async/await and generators are a welcome addition. Shareable server sockets and better isolates are also nice to have.

Enums are currently rather disappointing though. They went with the simplest possible implementation... _minus_ 1\. You can't assign integers. Which is a problem because you can do that everywhere else. Naturally, there are many protocols and formats which use ints to represent specific enum values.

I hope they'll fix this in the future.

Speaking of the future, there are a bunch of other interesting things on the horizon such as null-aware operators, non-nullable types, and union types.

The upcoming "Fletch" runtime for iOS and similar restrictive environments is also very exciting. It might turn Dart into the perfect language for video game scripting. It's small, fast, and it supports atomic program changes via a wire protocol.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anybody knows if async/await is supported by dart2js yet? [https://www.dartlang.org/tools/dart2js/](https://www.dartlang.org/tools/dart2js/) says that it's not, but I'm not sure if that page was updated or not.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Dart2js in v1.9 supports async/await.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for clarifying! Since you work on Dart, could you please update the dart2js page as well?

<comment><USER7> Will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to play with the Dart language - really nice having a client and server project in one code base and in one language.

BTW, it seems odd that Dart is not supported server side on AppEngine. Sandboxing problem? You need to use a compute engine.

<comment><USER4> You can use it on App Engine Managed VMs:

[https://www.dartlang.org/server/google-cloud-platform/app- en...](https://www.dartlang.org/server/google-cloud-platform/app-engine/)

App Engine decided to go that route to add new languages, rather than sandbox each language individually like with Python and Java (The Go backend was created by the Go team before Managed VMs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never used Dart before, but since this is the exact pattern that C# follows I may have to five it a whirl in the future. I'd love to see more languages adopt this pattern.

<comment><USER10> There are a few differences. Here's a fairly theoretical article about the details:

[http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2747873](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2747873)

Skip down to: "While async functions may remind us of the async/await feature in C#, note that there are differences."

The first author is Erik Meijer who worked on C# (among other things) at Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> This is a really excellent article. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who gave a tech talk on Dart and how awesome it is, I wish I could back it as a tool of choice for web projects.

However, I even abandoned PHP for its fractured community in the past couple months. I don't see how I can back Dart when its creator is so publicly disinterested.

I apologize if that seems harsh, but it's just how I feel.

<comment><USER12> As someone interested in DART for web projects, I wish I could try it out. But it's tied to the Chrome ecosystem (it installs a local copy) and Chrome is not one of our corporate standards.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand this complaint. Dart is not tied to Chrome at all. The local copy of Chromium is just an optional development tool included with the SDK download. You don't have to use it.

You can use Dart with any modern browser. Use it with IE if that's your standard.

<comment><USER12> It may be a circular dependency problem, but when I start DART I get an error from my local workstation nanny that Chrome startup is blocked and then DART exits. So if there's a way to set DART to another tool than Chrome I can't seem to get there.

I haven't tried it with DART 1.9 so maybe that problem is no longer there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CA startup sees entrepreneur-ship as visa solution - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/16/national/a010118S36.DTL&tsp=1

<comment><AUTHOR> "visa solution". If the problem is a lack of modern-day slavery in the tech world, then, yeah, it's probably a solution to that problem.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you refer to a patent on your resume? - <AUTHOR>

Just got word the two patents I assigned to my current employer (per my contract terms) have gotten approved. There's nothing that says I can't mention my role, but outside of Google I don't know if anyone would care I had them or not. Used to have a section with my publications (five books, some professional articles, etc) and was counseled to drop that as "no one is interested". Perhaps this is the same? <comment><USER2> As someone who's hired people before, I'd be much more intrigued to see the patent on your resume (especially if you include the number so its easy to search for). The second a resume makes me stop and look for a second, then you've already beat 97% of the competition.

</comment><comment><USER3> Inventing something, and having a patent issued on it is one of those things I consider a "stripe" or "merit badge". You should be proud of it. Not everyone can claim to have done so.

When I read resumes and see "I was issued 3 patents" or "Inventor of 3 issued patents" it really doesn't mean all that much to me; just another (generally positive) data point.

In general I think you would be doing yourself a disservice by NOT mentioning them. Just don't over do it.</comment>


Replacing a Thinkpad X60 Bootflash Chip - <AUTHOR> https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/replacing-a-thinkpad-x60-bootflash-chip.html <comment><USER2> The idea of booting OS from ROM has been around for a long time; in the PC world, there's servers with a hypervisor in the BIOS. Interesting to see this being done as a mod, however.

16MB may not seem like a lot of space compared to gigabyte-sized distros, but if you look at things like TinyCore or even more extreme, the (non-Linux) MenuetOS, you can still put a lot of functionality in there.

With [http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo- thinkpad-x60-c...](http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo- thinkpad-x60-coreboot/) and now this, and an (unofficial) schematic available, it seems the X60 is becoming a great platform for hardware hacking. I've noticed the prices for a used one have been going up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get a cert error when trying to access the site.

<comment><USER4> This is a self-signed cert. Pretty normal stuff for pages by hackers for hackers. Do you care who is running that site? Are you going to provide them any personal data? Were your browser hardened by you? If you answered no, no, yes then you are pretty safe.

<comment><USER5> How kind of them to setup the site in a way which is indistinguishable from a MITM, so that its a common and usual thing and when there actually is a MITM against other sites you use you'll suffer from none of that uncomfortable alarm.

<comment><USER6> How is that different from a plain HTTP site? It's just that your browser has chosen to interpret it in a misleading way.

<comment><USER5> The difference is that authentication was expected here. If you don't get authentication when it was expected and asked for that should be a red flag that something is amiss.

Effectively this creates a chicken little situation where attacks are indistinguishable from common configurations. This lowers the costs of attacking because it reduces the risk of detection, it also makes attacks more successful because it trains users to click through the warnings.

<comment><USER7> This is not a misconfiguration, it is actually better to use a self signed certificate if you want to ensure authenticity even in the face of world power adversaries.

<comment><USER8> If one wants an opportunistic encryption, there're tcpcrypt or IPsec for that.

If one wants to encourage others to blindly accept untrusted certificates from whatever server decides "to hell with authorities" \- that's not a good idea. When those World Power Adversaries will consider messing with the site, visitors will already be trained to accept the certificate (hah!)

If one really insists on self-signed certificate, there should be at least an HTTP (i.e. accessible without accepting anything!) page describing the reasoning behind the whole situation and providing means to validate the certificate. Like, say, a PGP signature of certificate in question, signed with a key that could be traced to site owner with reasonable level of trust. Or at least TLSA DNS records (dig says there're none).

<comment><USER5> > If one wants an opportunistic encryption, there're tcpcrypt or IPsec for > that.

And HTTP/2.0 thankfully. OE is a good improvement, indeed, but it's not worth teaching users bad practices for the authenticated stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of course, I am not a fan of violating firmware standards like UEFI/ACPI and dislike it when x86 Chromebooks did this. Having different firmware for different OSes defeats the point of firmware standards. I think it is possible to run UEFI as a payload in coreboot.

</comment><comment><USER10> why are you disabling the card bus, firewire and sd card ports?

<comment><USER11> At least 2 of those interfaces support DMA to host RAM.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack)

<comment><USER10> D'oh. Somehow missed the fact that you were hardening the machine against attack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Noted this at the bottom of the page:

 _You 're currently helping people in censored regions with FlashProxy. Thanks!_ [1]

I just think that users/browsers should be aware of what activity a site may incur.

\--

[1] [https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/options.html](https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/options.html)

<comment><USER13> Now you're on a terrorist watchlist.</comment></comment>


A Year After the Middle Class Tax Cut, the Rich Are Winning - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tax-plan-consequences/ <comment><USER2> >The tax law limits or eliminates dozens of itemized deductions, including for SALT, mortgage interest, home office expenses and fund management fees.

Wait, they got rid of mortgage interest?

Since the internet told me to see a CPA, I did. And I was not happy at how limited his knowledge base was. I corrected him a few times during our meeting. We had a conversation about Mortgage Interest and this never came up.

Isnt the point of the certification to be the expert? I'm just a math guy that can read.

<comment><USER3> For primary residencies, you can now only deduct interest on up to $750,000 in debt (i.e. your mortgage principle) rather than the $1,000,000 if you had bought your home before 2018.

In short, most people won't be affected, unless you own a mansion or a home in an overpriced market such as SF or NYC.

Keep in mind that the standard deduction also doubled, so depending on your own situation, you may not even need to itemize your deductions, such as your mortgage interest.

<comment><USER4> This seems backwards to me. Wouldn't a better option be to deduct interest on any house worth less than 750k or some lower number as that would help the middle class much more while also encouraging smaller home purchases and affordability?

<comment><USER3> Correct. The $750k number is the cap on the debt for which you can deduct paid interest from. So, if you borrow 1 million dollars to buy a house, you only get to deduct 3/4 of the interest now, instead of the full amount. Interest on smaller loans continues to be fully deductible.

Doubling the standard deduction may have a perverse inventive against borrowing less (or simply buying cheaper homes) as, depending on your situation, it may be better than itemizing.

I think it's debatable whether the mortgage interest deduction really plays heavily into a noticeable amount of people's decision to buy or not; unless you are having a hard time deciding to buy or rent, there are a lot of other, larger factors.

Finally, I believe that doubling the standard deduction and eliminating a number of other deductions is a small, first step towards creating a simpler tax code- such a code wouldn't be as useful for social engineering (help middle class buy more small homes) but there are plenty of benefits, too.

<comment><USER5> It certainly factors into what people are willing to pay each month, which is the actual thing they think about when they are figuring out how big a mortgage they can handle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it really a "middle-class tax cut" when, "one in 20 families face a higher tax burden this year... [but] 7.3 percent of middle-income groups."

That means that the middle class have a 146% chance of having a tax increase relative to the median. Of course you could claim that the upper middle class got more $ cut than the lower middle class or some such thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> With any tax cut, the rich will benefit the most because they pay most of the taxes.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't have to be true.

Examples:

1) A credit of $1,000 per taxpayer.

2) Increase the standard deduction by $1,000.

And countless others.

Tax cuts benefit the rich by design, not due to some natural law.

<comment><USER9> Over 40 percent of Americans don't pay ANY Federal income tax.

So, by natural law, doesn't any tax cut not benefit them?

This includes most of the countries poorest citizens.

<comment><USER10> It's worth noting that 24 percent of Americans are under 18 and 15 percent are over 65. :)

<comment><USER11> That 24% under 18 are claimed by their parent/guardians.

<comment><USER12> That's only for determining who gets certain tax deductions. Minors still have to pay their own taxes and file their own tax return (if they make more than the threshold for filing) even if they are claimed on their parents taxes. The only way you can have multiple people paying or filing taxes together is if they are married.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > ... the rich are winning

sort of like saying "the winners are winning."

the rich are pretty much always winning.

<comment><USER14> Sorry people are downvoting you. I really hate this feature - I just want you to know I appreciate your comment and if I were in charge I'd kill this feature.

<comment><USER13> thank you kindly. i'm not a fan of HN down voting either. i try not to do it at all. (i think my total number of down votes can be counted on one hand.)</comment></comment></comment>


RideCombine - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I am looking for customer validation/feedback on a startup idea that I have called RideCombine. I posted a topic a while back on a kiteboarding forum about sharing rides to kiteboarding spots and got an overwhelming response from people looking to share gas money, rent cars together, etc to get to kiting spots that aren't easily accessible by public transit.
So I came up with the idea for RideCombine - basically it would be a website that lets you find a ride or give a ride - the AirBnB of ridesharing. You would be able to enter where you are leaving from, where you are going, and the timing. Then you could browse ride matches by their radius from you, listed price, and reviews of the driver or passenger. Passengers would pay for the ride on the site, and the site would retain a certain % of the price (e.g. 10%).
There are a bunch of competitors trying to play in this space (like Zimride and Pickuppal), but most of them are focused on long distance, city to city travel - whereas this would drill down further to the 'neighborhood to neighborhood' level. It would also connect users' Linkedin profiles to establish trust/legitimacy among early users of the site. Initially I would test it with kiteboarders and skiers (people looking to travel to off the beaten track locations), but then I would expand it further.
I would love to hear any thoughts you might have and any advice. Would you use it? If so you can sign up for early access at http://www.ridecombine.com. I come from a business background so my next step after this is to find a technical person to work with.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys! Thanks for the great feedback! Yeah I think that the people likely to use this are young, digitally savvy individuals that are becoming more and more comfortable with sharing things with strangers (e.g. using AirBnB / couchsurfing). To the second question, I'm doing some customer discovery on the kiteboarding forums I'm on, and so far the response has been quite positive. Because although a lot of people each other, they don't necessarily know who is going kiting on which day or to what location (and don't want to message 20 people).

</comment><comment><USER2> At the 'neighborhood to neighborhood' level, do you think you will find enough people to make it work? Or, said a different way, do you think the people into something niche like kiteboarding already know each other since they already live somewhat close? If that's the case, then those people wouldn't need your site to connect them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you think that the people you are marketing towards will be people who have Linkedin profiles?</comment>


Ask HN: What tools can I build to make your job/life a little bit easier? - <AUTHOR> Hi everybody. I've got lots of free time to write an App but I just have some preconditions
1. at least have some users
2. it has to be useful
3. challenging (optional)
4. ambitious (optional)
5. make some money through patreon or something (I hope)
I have some ideas myself but I don't know if they meet my preconditions.
1. a visual programming tool/environment like Opus Magnum or Factorio
2. a timeline widget that each frame count as a state in a State Machine (like in Adobe Flash) and you write your program by adjusting the timeline
   and write code in each frame and you can put the user input as a layer and time travel the whole state of your program like an animation
3. turn source code into a State Machine graph where each node is a state of the program and each edge is either a
   user input or time or some condition to make it easier to understand and modify the software.
4. transpile natural language to programming language. for example:

     sort the array [3, 1, 2] in ascending order and name it arr1.

   when we type that the compiler try to find a template that match that sentence for example:

     sort the array $param1:[]Int in ascending order and name it $param2:Symbol

   and there could be many implementation for this sentence in any programming language that we want
 5. I wrote PostgRESTui. it's postgrest + static server ( + auto generated admin backend, could be added )
6. generate backend for your frontend. for example you write your frontend like this.

     let productItem = (p) => `<div><a href="/product/${p.id}">${p.name}</a><img src="${p.img}"></div>`
     pages["^/$"] = (req, db) => `home page ${db.products.map(productItem).join("")}`

   and it figures out what you need for your backend.

 so do you think any of my ideas worth pursuing or do you having some idea of your own that you don't have time to work on but hoping somebody else does. please let me know. <comment><USER2> Here's my 2 cents...

        1. Have some users
        2. Be useful
        3. Be challenging
        4. Be ambitious
        5. Monetizable

These requirements are so general that they could literally be applied to any project. You should narrow these down to actual things you enjoy (for example; adventure games, language development, embedded systems etc...)

Your ideas; 1, 2 and 3 seem very similar so it looks like you have an interest in visual programming and language development. You should start there!

> _" 4\. transpile natural language to programming language..."_

This is particularly interesting and could be useful for speech-2-code programming, for people how are unable to type with their hands ([1] also discussed here last week)

Finally, it's much harder to stay motivated and make someone else app a reality. You might as well use your own ideas, anyone of them could be a fairly popular project leading to new opportunities.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497756)

</comment><comment><USER3> Something that creates a stronger boundary between work and life fore remote workers. Silo my 'work apps' on my phone/laptop to place friction doing work between myself and work things.

An example might be having to solve increasingly harder algebra problems to do work ;)

Conversely, the same friction between work things and fun things during work hours...</comment>


Rubber duck debugging - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging <comment><USER2> There's an RFC for that too: RFC 2321: RITA -- The Reliable Internetwork Troubleshooting Agent".</comment>


Webstrates: Shareable Dynamic Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.webstrates.net <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I am the first author on the Webstrates paper. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about the project.

The tl;dr: Webstrates persist and synchronize changes to the DOM of any page served from the Webstrates server to clients of the same page. Using transclusion through iFrames we can create (a dynamic) application-document like relationships between two pages.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's very interesting. I looked at the video and I'll try to download and make it run. I played a little with share.js time ago so I have great expectations.

I see that you support basic authentication and oauth is marked as experimental. Authentication is not the core of your project but it's very important if you want that people downloads and use your software for something real, collaborating over the internet instead of playing with it locally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your interest!

We are aware that proper security and authentication are core problems to solve for the idea to scale. However, it is also an open (research) question how to do this properly.

Currently we have per-webstrate access right, which means that if you give someone permission to write in one of your webstrates they can do anything with it, e.g. empty its body. It could be interesting if it would be possible to specify what operations you would permit from someone to a webstrate, e.g. "you can only add to this particular unordered list, and the added element must have following form".

Good ideas are welcome.

<comment><USER2> I think that Google got the permission system right with its Docs. The documents I work with are almost only technical documentation or meeting minutes on projects from customers, 95% text a few spreadsheets. I give editing permissions to the people I work with, view permission with the people I don't want to edit the document. It's not fine grained but I never needed more than that since I started using Docs in 2008.

On those projects we have designers who share their designs on Frontify or Invision. We only have the permission to view and comment. Even in this case is not fine grained, it's on the whole page.

I think this covers the 99% of business cases and possibly more, furthermore page wide permissions are something people is familiar with (least surprise principle) and a degenerate case of fine grained ones.</comment></comment></comment>


The Vestas Sailrocket becomes the fastest sailboat on Earth (65 knots average) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pipGWQmerEQ

<comment><USER2> Super cool. The "Sailrocket" looks very futuristic, too. Is this technology usable for commercial purposes? That is, could a wind-powered cargo or passenger ship be practical at 65 knots?</comment>


Ask HN: How can we protect our source code/IP? - <AUTHOR>

I don't mean ways to obfuscate the actual application code but, how can a company make sure employees do not bring the code home to later made UI changes and launch a copycat.
I have had all of my employees sign NDAs but what if they just copy the code and give it to a friend and s/he start a project using your IP?
Are there anyways to prevent this from happening?
What are google or facebook approaches to this risk? <comment><USER2> Trust them. Presumably you checked references and did interviews before hiring these folks.

[edited addendum] Any technical safeguards, like locking down their PCs in some insane manner, is just going to create an environment where nobody likes working for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, developers can have an impeccable track record, you could have checked all references they gave you and you can like them a lot personally (in my case, my employees are my best friends), but still how can you be sure you can trust them?

How can you be sure they are not looking for a quick way to be financially "successful" and maybe consider using your IP as a short path to achieve what they want?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The project is not just source code. I remember there even was article about that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't giving the code to a friend violate _non-disclosure_?</comment>


Racism on TV in the UK (1979 Documentary from the BBC) - cirrus-clouds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy57O9ZMENA <comment> cirrus-clouds Here's more about this documentary:

[http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv- people/4ce2b72f8384f](http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b72f8384f)

Although this documentary is 40 years old, it discusses the way the media uses interviews and statistics to frame a story about race that are immediately recognisable in modern-day reporting.

I hope people watching this documentary will find it thought-provoking regardless of whether they agree or not with the views presented. I found it fascinating and surprisingly relevant to current affairs today.</comment>


C++ Add-ons for Node.js v4 - <AUTHOR> https://nodesource.com/blog/c-add-ons-for-nodejs-v4/ <comment><USER2> Since NAN basically parrots the v8 API, I find it's easier to just code to the ever-changing v8 API, rather than the ever-changing NAN API. With the former approach you get readable and debuggable code. I'm not sure what NAN isolates you from if it doesn't have a strong API guarantee to protect you from future v8 API changes.

<comment><USER3> The article we're discussing answers this question - NAN gives you backwards compatibility with old versions of V8 (and therefore Node), while the V8 API doesn't.

<comment><USER2> Are you aware that NAN2's API is incompatible with NAN1's API? How is that backwards compatible?

<comment><USER3> The point is that NAN2 is compatible with old versions of Node and io.js, not that NAN2 is compatible with NAN1.

This is bolded in the article we're discussing:

> NAN's promise is to provide a single API to develop against, not a forever- > stable API, it was always anticipated that it would change and adapt to V8 > but do so in a way that you get to remain compatible with older versions of > V8.

<comment><USER2> I am fully aware of that. I had to port orphaned NAN1 code to the new v8 API which I found easier to work with than NAN2.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Things I found on GitHub: shell history - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/hacks/github-shhistory/index.html <comment><USER2> Together, vim and vi have over four times as many invocations as emacs. I like to think it's beacuse vim is more popular, but it might also mean that vim users are more likely to pop in and out of vim while emacs users run emacs once and then never go back to bash-land.

<comment><USER3> It might also mean that vim users are more likely to check their ~/.* files into a public Git repository. You really can't do that much with the information that vim was invoked more.

<comment><USER4> I'm a near-rabid Vim user, but I also came here to point that out. You can't draw conclusions about what people in general do from a sample of people who check in their history files.

<comment><USER5> The sample size of this experiment is also not very large. If you look at the axis on the graphs, we're not talking in numbers that would let you to create solid generalizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suspect ln is at the top of the man list because no one can ever remember what order the arguments go in.

<comment><USER7>
      ln -s target link

Easiest way to remember is that it's setup so that you can create multiple links to the same target. E.g.:

      ln -s /home/.bashrc {~user1,~user2,~user3}/.bashrc

<comment><USER8> This is bash specific and may not work in your shell. (fish for example)

<comment><USER7> Sorry, the {} part was just so that the line wasn't too long (causing the scrollbar to show up).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tip of the day: you can prevent embarrassing commits by using a global gitignore file: <https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files>

<comment><USER10> If you also find little or no use for .bash_history, you can do this:

      rm ~/.bash_history
      ln -s ~/.bash_history /dev/null

(There's probably some .bashrc setting that turns off history, but I'm making it a goal in my life to know as little about bash configuration as I possibly can.)

<comment><USER11>
        $ unset HISTFILE

The manpage for bash has many hidden gems

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Github is amazing. But I don't like how it's exceptionally hard to delete history of commits. I've looked around for a long time to delete commits safely and people say things like "you shouldn't be doing it anyway." A free software should provide freedom to the user to do anything they wish. I fee like I'm chained down when I want to delete very old commits.

I'm sure there are ways to delete commits, but it is just so complicated.

<comment><USER13> Github recently published this after the whole search debacle. You can use it to prune all existence of a file form your history.

<https://help.github.com/articles/remove-sensitive-data>

<comment><USER14> "Fortunately, git makes it fairly simple to remove the file from the entire repo history."

Sounds like they have a unique definition of "simple".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting stats. I'd be wary however, of prematurely drawing any hard conclusions.

For example comparing vim to emacs, one should rather look at whether the bash history indicates a _predominantly_ emacs or vim user, then _isolate_ or compartmentalize that as a single vote.

Even then we can't be sure that it supports any grandiose claim, but it should in theory be a little more accurate.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, also, for Vim vs. Emacs, most users of both probably use the GUI variants at this point, which leave no shell history. I still run emacs on remote terms, but then I don't make the mistake of uploading my bash history into a git repo.

<comment><USER17> Any reason you would think more people use the GUI version?

Although I obviously have a biases sample but everyone I know uses the shell version of both. The people I know who use the GUI use other editors.

<comment><USER11> OS Integration -- copy-and-paste works better, scroll works predictably (there are quirks in OSX terminal using mouse mode in vim and in emacs), sensical full-screen mode

Advanced features -- Certain things can't be done with the terminal. For example, Aquamacs lets you see inline latex previews: <http://aquamacs.org/latex.shtml>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On my Ubuntu, pico is a link to nano, and I usually type nano when I want to use it. I wonder what the editor results would show with nano thrown in.

I'm surprised so many people use apt-get instead of aptitude - the only time I use apt-get is usually to install aptitude.

Also surprised people use find so much. I use locate probably 80% of the time, find maybe 20% of the time or less. Operations like this are what caching was made for.

I did not know tmux was a popular as it is. That's interesting. I am not surprised sublime is gaining in popularity...

<comment><USER19> > I use locate probably 80% of the time, find maybe 20% of the time or less

Absolutely true. find is way too slow. I was hacking on some AOSP code recently and _finding_ a file took upwards of 1 minute. locate on the other indexes the files on your hard disk, so is generally much quicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Rubyist here; how does one install the BeautifulSoup module here (Macbook Pro with Mountain Lion)?

./ghrabber.py "path:.bash_history"

      File "./ghrabber.py", line 3, in <module>

        import BeautifulSoup

ImportError: No module named BeautifulSoup

I tried easy_install beautifulsoup but it gave a permissions error, so I ran it as sudo and that worked, but when I re-run the script it still throws the same error.

Does python lack 'bundle install'-like functionality?

<comment><USER21>
        pip install beautifulsoup

You might have to install pip with easy_install

<comment><USER20> Thanks! With Python, do you have to manually install each module and keep track of the versions?

<comment><USER22> If you are using pip you can type "pip freeze" and it will spit out a list of all modules and the version currently installed. Most write this out to a file called "requirements.txt" in their project root. You can then use this list to install modules via "pip install -r requirements.txt"

Same functionality as bundle install, just pythonic.

<comment><USER21> What s/he said. Although keeping track of new updates is a bit of a pain, since there isn't a service like the one Rubyists have to get information about new gem versions.

Pythonistas will have to use something like pip-tools < <https://github.com/nvie/pip-tools> >, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER23> Nice, I hadn't seen pip-tools before. There is also yolk (pip install yolk) that will list available updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This might be a little off topic but I'm curious how could somebody accidentally (or why would somebody intentionally) push .bash_history to GitHub?

<comment><USER25> There are some tasks I do infrequently enough I can't remember the paths, commands, and options... but my history always saves me. So when I know it's full of useful stuff, and especially when moving a bunch of files/functionality to a new place, I tend to create a copy of my .bash_history in another, non-hidden file.

Of course such renamed files wouldn't have been part of this analysis, so it doesn't exactly explain why files exactly named .bash_history are in Github. (For that, I'd surmise many people make an entire project-specific login directory git-versioned.) But it does hint why someone might intentionally want to remember their history in version control.

Done intentionally, it strikes me as a potentially valuable reproducibility, auditing, and training practice – documenting what was done around the time of other file evolution, making it easier for someone else to help out in a pinch with full context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised to see ssh-keygen being called more often than ps. Perhaps this is skewed by history files being sourced from development boxes?

</comment><comment><USER20> As always, I'm saddened to find how many people put their passwords out there in the plain...

Searching for wp-config.php yields way too many results

<comment><USER27> This is arguably the fault of Wordpress developers for creating a config system which forces or at least encourages you to fork their code to set your database location. This is why configuration shouldn't go in code, ala 12factor:

[1]: <http://www.12factor.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there any chance I could get a copy of your cleaned up data? I have an analysis I'd love to try running.

</comment><comment><USER29> "exit" is at position 5 in the list -> there seem to be many console users that don't know CTRL-D

</comment><comment><USER30> This is why I push my .dotfiles to a private repo.</comment>


Why Your Customers Don't Want to Talk to You - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/07/why_your_customers_dont_want_t.html

<comment><USER2> The hypothesis this article makes is that customers don't necessarily want a relationship with companies. I think that that's an overly simplistic view of the picture.

First, all of the examples given involve routine tasks large institutions. I don't generally get good service from airlines and banks aren't great either. I'd love to have an airline or a bank that treated me like a person (and I think a lot of other people would too), but the fact is that most of them really don't. Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship". Most companies aren't interested in relationships, they're interested in their bottom line. And usually, it's quite obvious.

You have to actually _try_ if you want to build relationships with your customers.

Second, the reasons many people prefer self-service kiosks are not actually all that mystical. Saving time is a huge one, but I think there's another reason that's maybe just as important: _people do not like other people seeing them make mistakes_. In any transaction, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. When I'm at a bank I might fumble with my wallet, drop something, forget to fill out exactly the right form in exactly the right way, forget to sign the check I'm depositing, etc. People make small mistakes all of the time and they don't like other people to know about them. If they're interacting with a machine, they can hide those. If they don't know exactly what they're doing, they can figure it out themself.

People like to look like they know what they're doing. When they don't, they don't like people to see that.

In my experience, people really like good customer service and being treated well. The thing is that you really can't half-ass it, and you shouldn't try to _force_ people to interact with you when they have no reason to. It's important to recognize that direct interaction often inconveniences people, even if the reason for that inconvenience isn't completely obvious.

If you want to build relationships with your customers, remember why they're there. They're not there to interact with you, they're there to get the service or product you're selling them. If interacting with you isn't helping them in some way, it doesn't matter how friendly you are: it's still a negative experience. Building relationships has to be mostly a byproduct of doing a good job, not the end goal in itself.

<comment><USER3> > Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following > a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship".

Exactly. I think the underlying issue here isn't so much automated vs. personal, it's just good service vs. bad service, or if you prefer, effective vs. ineffective communication.

Telephone service is usually the worst: tedious automated menus, up-front warnings about recording this and invalidating that if you so much as breathe during the call, long (or worse, unknown) queuing times, and then you just get to speak to someone who can't deviate from their script to help you, assuming you can even understand what they say if they're based in some far-away call centre where employment is cheap and accents are strong. Neither the automated aspects nor the personal ones are much good here, though I've noticed a trend in the past couple of years for some companies to make a marketing point that they do have local call centres with real people answering the phone and very short queuing times.

Personal favourite anecdote for poor telephone service: I once had to call a credit card company to notify them that someone had been acting suspiciously with my card in a restaurant in a foreign country and I thought they might be trying to double-charge me. The card company left me on hold for so long -- calling from abroad on a mobile phone -- that my phone battery was starting to die and I lost the call, though of course not the charge for it. Since they clearly don't take security seriously, I now use a different credit card.

In contrast, automated on-line services often work fairly well these days: all of the banks, investment firms, etc. I work with have decent web sites, they basically work, they're reasonably easy to use, and they let me do what I want to do quickly.

For some things, I would still rather use a real person, though. For example, I am quite tall, so if I'm booking seats for any sort of show in a venue I haven't been to before, I usually still prefer to call or visit the booking office and ask them about which seats have enough leg room, even if the company has an otherwise excellent web site for ticket reservations.

The most striking example of preferring personal service I know is that several of the supermarkets in my area have recently installed self-service checkouts, where you scan all your own items and pay at the end. Typically there are just a couple of store staff supervising a whole set of these, instead of one staffer per checkout aisle. However, unless you're just buying one or two things, almost everyone seems to have these infernal machines and will join a queue of half a dozen people for a staffed checkout in preference to using an immediately-available automated system. They are just too hard to use without the training that store staff get in all the little options and details, and they are too unreliable, frequently shouting (incorrect) things at you about putting unexpected items in the wrong places or not recognising your card/voucher/whatever.

Amusing anecdote for this one: the other day I went into the store, and in the time that one trained staffer got through six customers on a "basket only" aisle, one customer with a single basket was still trying to get one of those infernal machines to work properly, with three different store staff called over to help by the time I left.

Most important of all, though, is if anything goes wrong. Then I want to speak to a real person who is right in front of me, listening to what I say, and able to do something about it. No automated system is ever going to replace that, and I won't deal with companies that don't even try.

In short, if you want to build customer satisfaction, make the routine things easy, automate where it works, but always provide good personal service as a back-up.

<comment><USER4> I've had quite the opposite experience with automated check-out. I prefer it over a staffed check-out, but maybe the machines at the local store are simply easier to use.

The reason why I like them is that I don't have a to deal with another variable (staff). The process is automated, I have full control and can be out faster. So for me, automating this process is a superior experience, interacting with another person is unnecessary complexity.

<comment><USER5> The issue I always run into with the self check out machines, is that they frequently don't work right, so they require an attendant, anyway.

<comment><USER6> The problem is with the scanning of the bar codes. I think that the checkout clerks develop a technique for passing the items over the scanner quickly yet in such a way that the barcode is read on the first pass. In the self-checkout lane I often have to move the item back and forth, turn it a various angles, before it finally scans. I'm about 10x slower than an experienced checkout operator.

Then, if you're buying alcohol or anything in an aerosol can you have to have your ID checked which is another slowdown. If I'm buying more than about 5 items I will get in the regular checkout or "express" line rather than self services, even if there's no waiting.

<comment><USER3> It's not just the bar codes, though. The devices I'm talking about simply don't work very well. They complain about unexpected items in the bagging area because their weight checks aren't configured with sensible tolerances. (This is so irritating that it is now routinely parodied on satirical TV and radio shows.) They fail to scan credit/debit cards with annoying frequency. There is little space, so if you've brought some decent bags to put your shopping in but they've been buried at the bottom of your basket as you went around the store, you have to try and unpack everything to reach them but have nowhere to put it. None of these things is a problem on the staffed tills right next door.

I went over to the shop this afternoon, and while I was there, no more than three of the six self-service counters were in use at any given time, even though there were something like half a dozen people queueing for the one remaining manned basket-only aisle right next door, and despite the efforts of a staff member whose only purpose seemed to be trying (and failing) to convince people that the self-service counters really were worth the hassle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know why I use self-service machines for purchasing tickets and checking in at airports: repeatability and speed. I've memorized my interaction sequence with the German rail ticket machines to the point where I can get a ticket in 25 seconds. No desk service is that fast. Also, I don't have to deal with potential human unpredictability and communicating what I want. My interaction with the machine is already in muscle memory, and I don't feel rude when specifying things with extreme precision. Getting a specific seat on a plane is a multi-step operation at a checkin counter. Some clerks ask you if you want an aisle or window seat, but sometimes act offended when I ask for seat 3C. Some don't ask at all, and print out the boarding card before I can complain (not that it's a big deal where I sit, but it's a factor). Poking the 3C box on the self-service machine allows me to disregard the mood the clerk is in and get what I want. I feel more in control, and don't feel like I'm being a difficult customer. When I first moved here, I had a major language problem, so having machines with a language switch helped me a lot. But even now that I speak the language fluently, I still prefer automated experiences. The article has a point, there are a number of people in my life I care about, but bank tellers and checkin clerks are not important to me. I'll be nice to them when I encounter them, but I much prefer not having to interact with them. After all, they are entering the same stuff into the machine as I would, ideally.

<comment><USER8> Related point: at the same time that the machine allows me to be more efficient, and to be more precise without being rude, it also lets me be _less_ efficient without being rude. An automated kiosk doesn't care how many times I ask it the same question, and doesn't feel like I'm jerking it around if I cancel out of buying a first class upgrade when I'm at the final confirmation screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I prefer to self-serve because most of the time the human interaction is adding little value.

Go to Best Buy or the Apple Store and ask a basic question, you'll probably get a stumped look or a wrong answer and a pathetic attempt to sell you a $99 HDMI cable or a $29 DVI adapter. Call your cable or internet company and ask if you're on the right plan and you'll get excuses and transfers and have to give them information that they already have, multiple times, and likely get an unsatisfactory answer. These places treat customer service staff as low- skill/low-pay commodity positions, and the results are predictable. Therefore, I want these fruitless interactions minimized, so self-serve it is.

My realtor, on the other hand, answers every question I ask. Maybe not immediately, but he will definitely find the answer and will definitely call me back. He even offers proactive information and next steps. I don't want to replace him with a website. And as a bonus, because he's pleasant AND knowledgeable, I actually want to talk to him on the phone, not even by email.

Summary: If you want "relationships" with your customers, focus on how capable the people they're talking to are, or replace them with a website.

<comment><USER6> This is really the point I think: companies need to give front-line customer service reps more authority to resolve problems, deviate from scripts, etc. Of course this requires hiring people who are creative and can think on their feet, and probably paying them enough so they are motivated to be helpful. Which is why most customer service is staffed by low-paid scripted drones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use ATM's instead of walking inside because it's typically faster. I search websites for info before contacting because:

(a) I will usually get more information in a shorter amount of time.

(b) I don't have to navigate a phone menu system.

(c) I won't have to wait forever on the phone while listening to bad music.

(d) I don't like sales pitches and pressure tactics that often accompany simple price inquiries.

One idea for wannabe entrepreneurs - look for sectors where the existing competition doesn't list price on their sites. You could probably garner a good deal of business from those who hate the contact.

p.s., How do I do formatted lists on HN?

<comment><USER11> You could use the code-formatting feature to write a list that would be reproduced verbatim:

 _Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim. (This is intended for code.)_

<comment><USER12> IMHO, typing "^- " or "^\\* " (regexp) should really translate into a <LI>, inside an <UL>. The formatting system of HN is minimal which works well but lists are something so basic it's difficult to live without.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I avoid talking to people because most businesses don't have my priorities. I want to buy something because I need it, and they want to convince me that I want product features I won't use or to spend more money than I thought I did. Everyone says they want to "make the customer happy," but it seems like the only companies that actually make me happy are in the tech industry and the restaurant industry. Everyone else just spends their time bugging me.

When I was younger, I was influenced by salesmen saying, "Oh, look how awesome the frobulator is!" So I'd be excited about the frobulator, and then I'd get home and realize that I don't actually need one. Or I might also be too engaged in conversation to investigate problems in the product like I should have. But too late, I already bought it. I find this happens less as I age, but the instances are more subtle and more money is at stake

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe the author is right for routine tasks, but there are times (usually when I have some issue I need resolved) when I _really_ want to talk to a human being, and I will get _really_ angry if I can't.

<comment><USER7> I've had that experience too, and the end result is that I only talk to companies on the phone when there is an issue I cannot resolve myself. Usually this is a problem I want solved, or an error they made. I guess I'm now somewhat conditioned to expect a negative experience (since I'm usually unhappy about something when I call). Customer service at pretty much every institution I've had to call to resolve an issue has been a pain, further reinforcing the notion that if I have to talk to a corporate human, I'm going to be unhappy as a result.

<comment><USER15> I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Obviously no website UI can ever cover absolutely all cases and some queries will need to reach a human, but most companies don't even seem to try. Even if there's a form for other queries it's usually one big text box rather than the more specific questions staff would ask you on the phone. The worst part are the responses combined from canned text blocks, which tend to make no sense at all and don't solve any problems. Or even better, online queries being ignored altogether, or receiving an automated "please call" reply.

One exception to this (in my experience) is amazon. Their help section is pretty comprehensive, each shipment has associated actions you can take which are context (status) dependent and if you do have a specific request it's ridiculously impersonal but very efficient.

<comment><USER16> * Obviously no website UI can ever cover absolutely all cases and some queries will need to reach a human, but most companies don't even seem to try*

I completely boggled the other day at encountering a "Contact Us" web UI that had no "Other" option in their drop down menu. As my purpose for attempting to contact them was not remotely related to what the listed options covered, I just gave up.

All I wanted to do was suggest to them a totally minor change that would have opened up a whole new market for them. _shrug_ Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's an anecdote that might shed light on this from a different angle.

I used to work with some people who really enjoy coffee. We'd take coordinated coffee breaks and trek a couple of blocks to the local coffee shop. After going there a couple of times a day for a few weeks I started to have "relationship" with the staff. That was pleasant for a while - they knew my name and drink and I knew their names. But after a while the "relationship" hit a wall. We had exhausted the possibilities for superficial chit-chat, and had to either advance to actual friendship or acknowledge that we weren't going to.

But the coffee shop staff wouldn't do either of those things. They can't become after-work friends with _all_ their regular customers - nobody has time for that - and in many cases it could be construed as rude or unprofessional. On the other hand, they couldn't really abandon the "relationship" that they'd work so hard to build in the first place. It became obvious that this wasn't a real relationship, but a deliberate sales strategy. It would have been fine if they had settled for, "Hi Colin, the usual?" and left it at that, but they insisted on asking about my weekend, wishing me a good afternoon etc. That became annoying and I started avoiding the place.

The article deals with attempts by large corporations to build customer relationships, but I think the notion that customers don't _want_ relationships applies even at a small scale. Real interpersonal relationships take a bit of work to maintain, and I think customers will avoid that if the relationship provides no value to them.

<comment><USER18> > It would have been fine if they had settled for, "Hi Colin, the usual?" and > left it at that, but they insisted on asking about my weekend, wishing me a > good afternoon etc. That became annoying and I started avoiding the place.

This is why I keep going to a local coffee shop. It would be: "The usual?", except that I usually haven't decided on a drink and take 5 minutes. I've chatted with the owner and the different staff but there is no obligation to chat every time I go. If I need to get work done, I'm left alone without having to ask. :) (Now if only there was places open after 10pm!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article didn't even touch on the most obvious reasons people prefer the self-serve.

First, the ATM example. If banks in the US are anything like the banks in Canada you can use the ATM for free but pay substantial service fees if you go to the teller. So of course people wait in line at the ATM instead.

For the others dealing with a human, because of past abuse by companies, is typically viewed as having a lot of potential friction. The humans are trained to try and upsell you at every turn (would like like this as well? it's only an extra this amount) and the humans are much better at upselling than the machines so it's no wonder we go for the machines. It's much easier to ignore the upsells and just go with your regular routine.

For me, dealing with a human at a company is nearly always slow and aggravating with them going off on tangents I don't want them bringing me in. The best way of keeping them on track is to be rude which I don't like to do to humans but have no problem with when I'm dealing with a machine.

<comment><USER19> I was subjected to three different upsells during one visit to Little Caesar's yesterday.

"Would you like to try our ham and pineapple pizza?"

"No, just cheese, thank you."

"Can I interest you in some crazy bread or italian cheese bread?"

"Yes, I'd like some cheese bread, please" (was going to order it anyway)

"Would you like to add an order of crazy bread as well for just $1?"

"No."

<comment><USER10> This is why I don't go to Dick's sporting goods anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the main reasons they don't want a relationship with you is because they're generally less likely to be persuaded they need to pay more for the improved version of the service, or dissuaded from downgrading/cancelling

Conversely those people that enjoy building a relationship with companies are often those looking to negotiate a discount.

<comment><USER6> You mention downgrading/canceling... this is the ONE thing you cannot do on any customer service site I've been too. Verizon .. ATT .. Comcast... try to find a "cancel my service" button. You can order new services all day long, but to cancel you've got to call the customer service phone number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don't want a relationship with companies_

Ding ding ding. Especially when said relationship is just a thinly veiled excuse to upsell us, sidesell us, and/or nickel and dime us. Call it squeeze- fatigue.

Further, no one has a 'relationship' with a company anyway, that's just marketing speak. It's business, not personal, and companies won't hesitate to do what's in their best interests at the expense of customers (or employees), unlike a real friend or family member that you have a _real_ relationship with. Businesses don't make sacrifices for their customers the way real friends do sometimes.

Just because businesses won corporate personhood way back when doesn't actually make them people you can have an honest, agenda-free relationship with.

Using relationship in this context is just marketing koolaid.

</comment><comment><USER22> The worst case is when the company is trying to push a relationship on you that you don't want. There are certain types of stores where the salespeople are commission driven (in the US, at least) and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get the salesperson to go away in many of the places that these things are sold.

My personal least favorite is furniture shopping. Furniture (for me) is a very personal decision on artistic merit that is best done in quiet solitude. I want to touch, smell, examine, and test the furniture and I want to do it at my own pace and without a shadow who won't stop yammering in my ear. Look, I understand that this is a pressure sales job. I understand that you don't want your co-workers to steal your sale. Give me your card, I'll do my shopping, I'll find you if I have questions and when I want to buy something, I'll let you know.

</comment><comment><USER23> How about the concept of control? I would hypothesize that people prefer self- serve at banks, gas stations, and checkouts because they are in full control of the situation.

If they've been there multiple times before, they're familiar enough with the system that they can navigate it quicker than having someone else do it for them, and any inefficiencies they can only blame themselves.

Also, there is a certain effort that goes into human interaction, the smiling, greeting, small-talking, and being polite so you can (hopefully) get them to treat you better and do a better and faster job on your requests. Or you can just do it all yourself and save the trouble.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's true. I don't want a relationship with any companies. So long as their service works flawlessly as advertised, that is.

And if "self-service" involves a finicky IVR that is pretending to be a person and pretending to 'listen' to me by voice pattern-recognition, then I'd rather speak to a person, even if it's one person in a call center of 1,000 who deals with hundreds of customers every day and doesn't really care about establishing a relationship with any individual one. I'm a problem they have to solve, even the really friendly ones see me that way. Although I'd rather have had an internet service work properly the first time so that I didn't have to deal with any of that crap. Would I enjoy a real relationship with someone at the company? I don't know. No big company's "customer service" has ever achieved this, so I have nothing to compare.

Restaurants might be interesting to look at, though. Although my tastes are fickle: at 5:00 I might like the idea of a long, relaxing dinner where I interact with a cute and cheerful waitress after being seated by a friendly and professional maitre'd. 6:00 might roll around and I might have changed my mind, now I want to walk into a fast food restaurant and pay up front to have a bag of grub left on the counter for me to inhale as quickly as possible on my way somewhere else. And in the latter case, if I could just send a text of my order in advance and it would be waiting for me-- even better.

</comment><comment><USER25> This may be one component of the success of Google advertising platform versus other online advertising options. If you want to make a significant spend on advertising with a large publisher (or set of publishers) you pretty much _have_ to pick up the phone.

I know when I'm evaluating a service or software package, I'm much more inclined to go w/ an option that publishes pricing up front and allows me to "self-serve" my purchase, versus emailing or calling a sales-person to essentially negotiate the price.

</comment><comment><USER26> When trying to do routine tasks, many of us don't necessarily want to get into a social situation. We don't want to think about how to phrase our questions, or what impression we make on the other person. A machine does not care about that.

On the other hand, when it's not sure what can or should be done, a live chat or another "low overhead" communication line with a real human who can actually understand us is a blessing.

<comment><USER19> I don't mind getting in a social situation per se, as long as it's appropriate. I know this sounds terrible, but when I'm ordering something from a menu, or checking something out at the cashier, chances are I don't know the employee that I'm speaking to, and I'm certainly not their BFF. While I try to be as polite as possible, and appreciate some basic politeness in return, I find that sometimes the lengths that these employees are expected to go in order to act like my friend are awkward and inappropriate.

What's worse is, the employees know it. They don't _want_ to sing when I leave them a tip, or ask me if I have plans this weekend. They're required to, by their managers, who think that the general public gets off on employees who are subservient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Grocery stores figured this out years ago with self-checkout. Scanning each item can be tedious (looking up produce codes, etc.), and yet many customers prefer to scan their own items.

I do not mind at self-checkout when an employee helps to put everything into bags, though.

<comment><USER28> really? it's funny, I'm mildly human-avoidant, and I generally avoid the self- checkout unless the lines are significantly shorter because it takes me quite a bit longer to check myself out. First, I've gotta scan everything, and not being a professional, i'm slower than the checkout guy is. Next, the machenes just plain suck. "Unexpected item in bagging area" etc... it takes twice as long, at least, to get through the self checkout than to get the human.

Really, I think 70% of the problem is that the machines, as currently implemented, suck. The other 30% is that scanning barcodes quickly is something of a skill.

<comment><USER29> I find I tend to use the self-checkout only as a replacement for the express checkout, i.e. I only have a small number of items, that will probably fit in one bag, and that won't require keying in a bunch of product codes. I find in this situation self-checkout is the same or faster than regular. For large numbers of items, however, regular checkout is much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I prefer machines whenever there's no value-add of the human interaction (e.g. anything to do with booking, reservation, ATM, etc.)

Counter-example is health care (USA). Whenever I try to resolve a question about my insurance I try to get to an operator on the phone asap.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm going to go out on a limb and say I like having a person on the other end. Questions are (for me) more quickly answered by a person. I also think the way the employees treat you is a good indication of the quality of the business.

<comment><USER32> I think a good balance is necessary. That is, for example, what I really like about my bank. Each time I have a problem that cannot be solved via their web page, the person answering my call is competent, professional and quickly solves my problem. Even if I only have to call 2 or 3 times a year, the fact that I get great service those times is enough for me to not change banks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This article and its misleading title is a typical demonstration that the chasm between academia and the real world isn't getting any smaller any time soon. Who are you going to listen to, people who spent their lives building businesses around the premise of servicing their customers or people who want to tell you how to do that which they haven't?

OP makes the classic blunder of confusing misguided tactics (poor implementations of self-service) with wrong strategy (excellent customer relationships). And then comes to an absurd conclusion with its sensational title.

I'd prefer to stick with a simple adage I've heard so many times from successful business people:

"All things being equal, people would rather buy from a friend. All things being unequal, people would still rather buy from a friend."

<comment><USER34> I've spent the past twenty years with more computer interaction than human; the self service till _is_ a friend.

I'm suspicious of the other commenters who say the self service checkout is faster, but what it really does is follow the UI principle "don't make me think". I can go to, through, and out of, a self service checkout in the same mood and mode I went through the shop in. No switching to higher effort 'people' mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How to hack mobile with massage</comment>


Preserving the Sublime at One of the Darkest Places in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2016/07/night-moves <comment><USER2> As a society we really need to start reducing light pollution. It doesn't take much to shield the tops of streetlights and advertisements to at least make the majority of their light point downward.

<comment><USER3> And such a strategy could be sold as more cost effective - focus the light on the ground and reduce glare.

UK: The led based street lights that I have seen locally do have shields and diffusers. Still very blue though.

<comment><USER4> News articles on Calgary's transition have touched on those points [1]. The City's infographic really highlights the costs, too [2].

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/12/02/calgary-from- space_n...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/12/02/calgary-from- space_n_8692092.html)

[2] [http://www.calgary.ca/_layouts/cocis/DirectDownload.aspx?tar...](http://www.calgary.ca/_layouts/cocis/DirectDownload.aspx?target=http%3a%2f%2fwww.calgary.ca%2fTransportation%2fRoads%2fDocuments%2fTraffic%2fTraffic- signals-and-streetlights%2fStreetlighting-Program- Infographic.pdf&noredirect=1&sf=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just got back from a week observing at a very dark site - Pine Mountain Observatory in Central Oregon. SQM readings over 22, for those with sky quality meters. The Milky Way was literally staggering - I had to sit down to take it in. If you've never seen the night sky from a truly dark place, please try to do so.

<comment><USER6> Back in 2005 I took a trip to New Zealand for a couple months. Once of the places I stayed many times during the trip was Stewart Island [0]. The house I stayed at was on the shore of Horseshoe Bay, I don't know where on the scale of "darkness quality" it fell, but the sky was ablaze with stellar objects the like of which I'd not seen for many years.

At night we'd sit on the beach at around midnight looking up at a sky that was truly mind bending to behold. Also because this was my first ever trip to the southern hemisphere the sky looked totally alien. I'll never forget those nights.

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

<comment><USER7> To a lot of people in big cities, seeing the stars _at all_ is totally alien.

[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/04/local/la-me-light- po...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/04/local/la-me-light- pollution-20110104/2) (see the bit near the bottom)

<comment><USER6> > "We finally realized what we were dealing with," Krupp said. "The quake had > knocked out most of the power, and people ran outside and they saw the > stars. The stars were in fact so unfamiliar; they called us wondering what > happened."

Wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I highly recommend the observatory near Fort Davis, Texas for their star parties. Another one of the darkest places in the country, and ~7 hours from Austin.</comment>


Performance comparison of different data pipelines in .NET - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/mrange/09ba6d7541468de49426eeb81a8b660c <comment><USER2> Label your axes. It's not clear what any of your charts mean.</comment>