Auto Complete with Redis (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://oldblog.antirez.com/post/autocomplete-with-redis.html <comment><USER2> Hello! This article is serverely stale info. Modern versions of Redis with lexicographic ranges can do much better. Please check the following: [https://redis.io/topics/indexes](https://redis.io/topics/indexes)

Also you may want to check the RediSearch module from Redis Labs. It's AGPL and not part of the Redis project itself but it's very powerful. [http://redisearch.io](http://redisearch.io)

BTW using vanilla Redis with lexicographic ranges some time ago I published a demo where I indexed the whole Linux kernel code using a small amount of memory and performing many tens of thousands ranges per second. There are other systems out there that are designed just for search but in certain low latency cases Redis can be hard to beat, also if you want to change the index in real time.

<comment><USER3> _> This article is serverely stale info. Modern versions of Redis with lexicographic ranges can do much better. Please check the following: [https://redis.io/topics/indexes](https://redis.io/topics/indexes) _

Are you able to put a similar warning at the top of the article? Maybe something like, "[The following info is deprecated but is left for historical purposes. ... Please check the following: [https://redis.io/topics/indexes]"](https://redis.io/topics/indexes\]")

<comment><USER2> You are right, I usually always do that but this time I totally missed this. Thanks I'll do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While i deeply love redis and have used this exact article in the past to build an autocomplete— I'd really not recommend it to anyone. Using something like elastic search provides much better and robust results.

Yes it's more work to setup but the maintenance and tweaking will be waaaay easier and more timely in the long run.

<comment><USER5> IDK, having survived many ... MANY ES outages, I'd take REDIS in a heartbeat if it gives me the functionality I need.

<comment><USER6> it's amazing how every single person i know that used ES has had a freakton of bad experiences with ES. and it's still the only ok solution in this area.

<comment><USER7> What about Solr?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this not a perfect use case for a trie? Can you make a trie in Redis?

<comment><USER9> I have not implemented a trie myself, but apparently the problem is they take up a lot of space: [http://www.drdobbs.com/database/ternary-search- trees/1844105...](http://www.drdobbs.com/database/ternary-search- trees/184410528)

<comment><USER10> A trie and a ternary search tree are two very different beasts. Tries can are very memory efficient, as common prefixes in terms are bunched together, and nodes are not split on every letter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The good news, it more popular now than before... sigh. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Auto%20Complete%20with%20Redis...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Auto%20Complete%20with%20Redis&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER12> Can we please put [2010] in the title?

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad to learn of this, but note that it's from 2010.

<comment><USER14> OP should put 2010 in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> actually good idea</comment>


Ask HN: Who is Writing? (NaNoWriMo 2017) - <AUTHOR> It's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) [0] time again.
There have been some HN submissions over the years where people have posted NaNoWriMo-related software projects thay've made, like daily word counters [1], [2], ways to share progess [3], etc.
Any HNers doing their daily 1667 words? If so, what are you writing about? Do you have a NaNoWriMo strategy? Are you using any interesting tools?
[0] https://nanowrimo.org/
[1] http://www.amelyn.com/nanowrimo/nanowrimo_v2.htm
[2] https://github.com/WorldMaker/NaNoWriMoAtGlance
[3] https://tablo.io/communities/nanowrimo <comment><USER2> I'm doing the related National Novel Generation Month, which is a hackeresque twist to generate novels computationally.

[https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/](https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/)

[https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/60](https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/60)

<comment><USER3> I'm also doing NaNoGenMo.

I've finished four novel generators thus far this year:

[https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/54](https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/54) [https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/43](https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/43) [https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/3](https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/3) [https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/16](https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/16)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, but last week I did just finish the draft of my first book, a kids Sci-Fi novel

Now begins the editing and revision phase, which will be a ton of work, I fear.

On tooling, I used Scrivener. Interestingly, the last few months I've written about 50k words on the iOS version on my iPhone during my commute on the London tube.

<comment><USER5> 50k words on an iPhone is really impressive. I'm guessing you didn't find it too frustrating or you wouldn't have made it to 50k words?

<comment><USER4> It's not too bad actually. The Scrivener iOS app is pretty good too. Sometimes my thumbs can get sore (on a separate note I sometimes wish there was the option to have a keyboard on _top_ of the phone screen instead of bottom. More natural thumb angle I think)

I have about a 30 minute trip on the tube each way, so that's a dedicated session to focus.

I set a session word count target of 500 words and try to make something happen. The last couple weeks I was easily hitting 1000 words in total over both sessions. But like code, that's no indicator of quality

The tough times are when I really don't know what's going to happen, and try to come up with something. Other times I can really get in the flow, and stop thinking in words, but more in thoughts, and the words just form themselves.

Most days when I get to my stop, I'm in the zone and want to keep going. Maybe the forced stopping helps in some way to keep things fresh.

Repeat again on the way home.

But now that I finished the draft, I feel much less productive. The past week I've been reading and making minor tweaks, but I probably need longer editing sessions to ensure better continuity.

Btw, when I started, my target novel word count was 75k words, similar to the first Harry Potter.

I did about 45k on laptop. But then blew past my target and hit 95k.

Now I have to decide whether to do a lot of chopping, or keep the extra bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not doing NaNoWriMo, but thought I would mention FAWM - February Album Writing Month. It's like NaNoWriMo for songwriters. The goal is to write and record 14 songs over the month of February - that's one every two days.

</comment><comment><USER7> My wife and I are writing books based on the same prompt "living in two worlds".

My strategy was a brief outline beforehand then just write.

My main tool is Ulysses.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm actually looking to get into writing Sci-Fi, and this post is pleasantly relevant!

</comment><comment><USER9> Not this year, and probably never again. I did it in 2012 and 2010. It was as exhausting as it seems. My strategy? Be unemployed. What tools? Text editor and separate files for 1) The outline and 2) Each chapter

</comment><comment><USER10> Instead of a novel, I am trying to write a short story/essay each day of November. The idea is that I will have 30 different stories at the end of the month :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Just published my first blog post on sales advice today, actually. Aiming to make it a weekly event and eventually build into online sales courses and bootcamps.

<comment><USER12> I published my first tech blog post on medium today. Though it didn't quite get enough traction on HN. I am not much of a writer, though I enjoyed the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm writing on political satire.</comment>


37signals invests in The Starter League - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3241-37signals-invests-in-the-starter-league

<comment><USER4> Working with 37S will easily be the best thing that ever happened to Starter League. Perfect fit, the _creators_ of Rails, Chicago locals... etc. I'd love to see Chicago become the anti-silicon valley. A place for more practical, "get rich slowly" types of tech businesses. 37S is the perfect cornerstone. It just feels right with Chicago's blue collar roots (I am biased -- a Chicago native).

Separately, I love the fact that the name has been changed (CodeCademy conflict was awful), but The Starter League doesn't have the same instant semantic meaning as Code Academy did. Sounds almost like a startup incubator at first.

<comment><USER5> We definitely have an affinity towards our original Code Academy brand, but unfortunately we had some confusing overlap with another awesome company - Codecademy. Zach Sims and his team are great and he and I have been good friends since we've discussed how to resolve our name confusion. I'm happy that we'll be able to support each other going forward. We encourage our students to use resources like theirs and Treehouse in order to prepare for some of our in-person courses.

As far as the name change not having the same semantic meaning, I completely agree, however "teaching people to code" was never our only purpose. We wanted to provide a path for people who wanted to start change -- in their industries, in their communities, in their lives. To us, being a Starter means so much more than just being able to write code; it's about being driven to do something meaningful with it. A Starter is an innovator, a disruptor; someone who is burning to solve problems and is willing to bust their ass to learn what they need in order to do so.

We are also not a place that you visit for three months to acquire a skill and then leave. You don't just attend, graduate, and then disconnect. To be a member of The Starter League means to have earned a permanent place in a team of people dedicated to supporting one another in ongoing efforts to learn and build, to solve meaningful problems for ourselves and others.

We are not simply an academy for coders. We are a League of Starters.

<comment><USER6> "Zach Sims and his team are great and he and I have been good friends since we've discussed how to resolve our name confusion."

So I'm assuming by the above you mean you've become "good friends" after this:

<http://www.udrpsearch.com/wipo/d2012-0857>

Tl;dr

[http://domainnamewire.com/2012/06/21/codecademy-beats- code-a...](http://domainnamewire.com/2012/06/21/codecademy-beats-code-academy- in-domain-dispute/)

Was there an attempt to avoid the UDRP process before and if so why didn't it work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm here to if anyone has any questions about the partnership, the reasons behind the investment, the vision, or anything else.

<comment><USER8> jasonfried: You write, "this isn't a traditional investment. We're not looking to get out, we're looking to stay in."

I have to disagree with your choice of words: the investment you guys just made _is the truly traditional, old-fashioned kind_. Consider what John Maynard Keynes wrote about the difference between the way in which professional investors invest in a business, versus the way in which entrepreneurs since time immemorial have committed capital to business endeavors. Most professional investors, Keynes wrote:

      are, in fact, largely concerned, not with making superior long-term forecasts
      of the probable yield of an investment over its whole life, but with foreseeing
      changes in the conventional basis of valuation a short time ahead of the
      general public. They are concerned, not with what an investment is really worth
      to a man who buys it "for keeps," but with what the market will value it at,
      under the influence of mass psychology, three months or a year hence.[1]

Before the advent of financial markets, all investments were made "for keeps" by people looking to "stay in."

Congratulations on making a _traditional_ investment.

\--

PS. FWIW, Keynes accumulated a fortune by investing his own capital during his lifetime.

\--

[1] <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300071h/printall.html>

\--

Edits: added more context and clarified my key point.

<comment><USER9> > PS. FWIW, Keynes accumulated a fortune by investing his own capital during > his lifetime.

And FWIW: He also lost a fortune by investing in his own lifetime. (He was nearly wiped out in the 1929 crash, which he failed to foresee.)

<comment><USER10> +1

The Super Myth of Keynes as a Great Stock Market Investor: [http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/03/super-myth- of-k...](http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/03/super-myth-of-keynes-as- great-stock.html)

 _He was 83% long going into the downturn that resulted in the 1929 crash (p. 21)So how could Keynes be a great investor with such a bad performance? Because Keynes, the evil bastard, along with Bernard Baruch, talked FDR into confiscating the gold owned by all Americans. He then loaded up his portfolio with gold mining stocks and then urged FDR to prop up the price of gold._

...

 _Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, Keynes was a terrible investor, as shown by his pre-gold mining stock losses. The only time he made real money in the markets was when he traded on inside information about FDR's plan to drive the gold price up, and loaded up on gold mining stocks. Got that? The man who called gold a "barbarous relic" in his 1924 book, Monetary Reform, had 66% of his portfolio in gold mining stocks in the 1930s._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats to all parties involved! I was part of the Spring Dev Class at Code Academy and couldn't be happier for Neal, Mike, Jason and the rest of the hardworking folks who made this possible.

Particularly, I applaud the emphasis on using the Starter League as a springboard for starting a career and/or lifelong relationship with development. Too many programs sell the idea of launching a startup from 3 months of beginner coding which is ridiculous. Even the rebrand "Starter League" emphasizes the commitment...perfect. If anyone is interested in my perspective on the class, here's a post I wrote soon after: [http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/should-you-do-code- aca...](http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/should-you-do-code-academy)

</comment><comment><USER12> I was confused at first given that 37 Signals are famed for avoiding growth for growth's sake and a focus on not taking external VC style investment - <USER2> thought "damn, these guys just undid years of sound advice" and then I saw the key line

"This isn't a traditional investment. We're not looking to get out, we're looking to stay in."

Awesome, glad to see someone investing for reasons other than flipping a company

<comment><USER13> 37signals themselves have taken $10 million in external non-traditional VC [1].

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/20/37-signals-takes-jeff- bezos...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/20/37-signals-takes-jeff-bezos- investment/)

<comment><USER12> Well I never, you learn something new every day. In my defence I hadn't even heard the words Venture Capitalist in 2006... thanks for the link though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to hear how Jason or others feel this approach compares to online coursework which is arguably more dynamic and interactive than books (and often free/cheap). For example, Udacity's CS253 Web App Engineering course [1] taught by Steve Huffman which covers building a blog in App Engine.

I'll admit I had trouble staying focused in the coursework (and completed only ~25%) despite ASP.NET experience, and desire to improve my web dev skills.

1: [http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr20...](http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012)

<comment><USER7> Different people learn in different ways. There are lots of people - <USER3> included - who don't learn well from books or online tutorials. We need to be immersed in the environment. We want to be able to ask questions and get human responses. The Starter League is especially well suited people like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the other side of for-profit education, something that's been turned into a bit of a dirty phrase (not without reason in a lot of cases). The fact is non-traditional education that costs money and provides great results is alive in a whole lot of industries, and it seems like the tech industry is slowly starting to catch up a bit. That's great news. I think it's also great news because some of the platforms that outfits like Treehouse or Code Academy (the online JS school) are using are really really nice. A welcome breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER16> While it's great to read about the success, this part gets me:

> They put up a simple web site and announced that they were accepting > applications. And soon enough they had more applications than they had > spots.

Methinks there is more that was done between step A and B rather than just putting up a webpage and sitting back. Would you be able to give more specifics on what they did between those two steps to get all those applications?

<comment><USER17> I went to an IdeaMensch talk by Mike McGee (co-founder), and it was actually surprisingly little. They knew what they wanted to build (a physical school, great space, excellent teachers, etc) but one of their funding opportunities fell through right as they were running out of money.

They decided to see if they could bootstrap it by getting 30 students who were crazy enough to enroll when there wasn't any of the stuff promised in place yet.

There were way more than 30, and had to reject a number of applicants. They rented their first space (at Groupon I think) less than a week before classes started, and bought the iMacs just days before it started.

Long story short, they shipped, and it worked.

<comment><USER18> Pretty close @tg3! Glad I was making a little sense up there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great move by both of these companies. I had dinner with Mike McGee (one of the co-founders) a couple of months ago, and could hardly believe my ears when I heard his story of bootstrapping Code Academy. These guys generated serious revenue with nothing more than a static website, then figured it out from there.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am wondering, are there any studies with regard to how successful developers who "couldn't learn from books" are? Or who need encouragement to "make a definitive commitment to learn"?

This is just so drastically different to what learning programming was for me.

</comment><comment><USER21> Congratulations Neal and Mike. You're helping people make their lives better in a tangible way. I'm really impressed that you found a way to scale up and grow the company within Chicago through a route I doubt many other entrepreneurs there would have considered!

</comment><comment><USER22> This is great! But it also sounds suspiciously like a 37 Signals incubator. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, that would be awesome. There is room for incubators that are not investing to "get out" but to "stay in" and help build cash-flow profitable businesses.

<comment><USER7> This isn't an incubator. We're not making investments in the companies that might come out of The Starter League. Also, starting a company isn't required to attend The Starter League. You just have to want to learn how to build and ship software. You could use these skills in your existing job, get a new job, or, if you want, go out on your own. It's entirely up to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A truly amazing turn of events. How to get into the tech business without being techie. Neal's plight is not too dissimilar from many a tech entrepreneur learning to code, create, work or monetize their endeavours. The eureka moment for Neal is that he inadvertently realised he wasn't a coder, and became an event marketer. People like the glamour of coding, but it's anything but glamorous. There's a level of intense curiosity that's required to figure it all out, so if you're struggling to learn 'holed up' at home, chances are it's not right for you, and that's fine. Neal found his skill, that said, the skills he's selling might not be yours.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome!

One of my favorite things about programming with other people is when one of us has one of those magical moments where something just "clicks".

Sometimes it's simple like when someone finally understood OR in MySQL (I couldn't believe some of the things he had built without using it!).

I can still remember the time I first got the difference between server and client side code, and the first time the DOM really made sense - that one blew my mind, I felt like I could see the matrix!

You guys are helping people have those moments!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome. I spent the summer working from Excelerate Labs at 1871 Chicago, where Code Academy (now Starter League) teaches their classes. Neal and Michael are doing things right, and the Chicago tech/startup community has benefited greatly from it. Jason Fried was a mentor at Excelerate this summer and it's great that he's giving back to the Chicago community. Chicago is becoming a new hub for startups, and the Starter League has graduated many talented developers that are now working on their own startup or for others.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's interesting that the courses are on-site in contrast to 37S pro-remote working stance.

I definitely agree with the point their are limitations to learning on your own. (books vs. instructor)

But I'm a 100% remote worker and wonder how much better I could be learning from / with my colleagues in person vs. online chat.

I know that being in a real-life tech community is a huge asset over not, but personally I wonder how much better I could be if I were able to live in The Valley, Chicago, Austin...

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm glad to see these types of schools getting traction. I've never thought that CS was necessary to be a good programmer. In fact, the only parts of CS that legitimately helped me in my career were two courses: Data Structures and Discrete Math (covering amongst other things, big O).

If there's anyone in Portland Oregon interested in starting something similar, I'd be interested in talking with you.

</comment><comment><USER28> Really happy to see this partnership. It's definitely a perfect match.

My favorite line: "They built something for themselves on the hunch that there were plenty of people out there just like them. And they were right."

In a constant stream of articles about market research, fund raising, and investing, this is refreshing to be reminded what should be at the heart of all startups.

</comment><comment><USER29> Was looking at The Starter League's class work and I really love their Rails for Designers course outline. Does anyone know a meetup, online course or real course like it?

ref: <http://starterleague.com/rfd>

</comment><comment><USER30> This is awesome! This truly is the way forward with technical education. I feel exactly the same way as Neal did.

I'm enrolled at the debut semester of The Flatiron School, a similar program based in New York, and I'm super excited to improve my coding skills.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does the Starter League plan to expand beyond the Ruby stack at any point? Python...etc?

<comment><USER7> No plans right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am very happy for Neal and his team and, of course, 37signals. This is a great partnership and will lead to some great work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Man, I love 37signals. Read all their books.

<comment><USER34> No offense intended, but this doesn't really add to the conversation (IMO).

<comment><USER35> I didn't know you could fit so much "passiveness" into one sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


Kraft to Be Renamed Mondelez After Grocery Unit Is Spun Off - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-21/kraft-to-be-renamed-mondelez-after-grocery-business-is-spun-off.html

<comment><USER2> Cuz nothing says yummy like a company pronounced "Mondo Lays".</comment>


Awesometalk announces AwesomeHours - <AUTHOR> http://blog.awesometalk.com/post/79895943293/awesometalk-announces-awesomehours

<comment><USER2> How is this different from [http://clarity.fm](http://clarity.fm)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Multiple ways. First off, Clarity costs money and AwesomeHours are free. Second, Clarity has a very specific focus around business advice. The point of AwesomeHours is that any expert can host for any topic. For instance, people have contacted me to host hours for personal finance, content strategy, and fitness. There will of course be business-focused hours as well, but that's by far not the focus.</comment></comment>


Measuring data structures: Firefox (C++) vs. Servo (Rust) - <AUTHOR> http://njn.valgrind.org/measuring.html

<comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author of the post.

As others have explained, this is a draft, and wasn't intended for wide consumption. The easiest way I've found to show people an unpublished WordPress blog post draft is to just "save page as" in the browser and then put the resulting file up somewhere. I've done this before without problem, but this is the first time I've sent the link to a public mailing list. Lesson learned! Next time I'll send it privately to the relevant people and mark it clearly as a draft. (Or if anyone can tell me a better way to circulate a WordPress draft -- one that works for a blog that is aggregated on planet.mozilla.org -- I'd be happy to hear it.)

I've stripped out all the WordPress links and stuff from the draft post, because that was confusing lots of people. I've also added a big header at the top explaining it's a draft.

The final post, which won't be much different from this version, will go up on my blog ([http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/](http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/)) in the next day or two.

Apologies for the confusion!

<comment><USER3> There hasn't been much meaningful discussion in this thread, and I don't think it will hurt anyone to wait a couple days for your post to be ready. So we'll bury this one and invite you (or anyone) to submit it then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Uh, this was a draft, and wasn't supposed to be posted until it was put up on the research blog :/

<comment><USER5> His personal blog has a following too, it's in my rss feed at least.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but this wasn't published there either. Nicholas sent an email to the dev-servo list asking for review, but it's still an unpublished draft :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weirdly enough, when you go to this website, you appear to be logged in as Nicholas Nethercote: [http://imgur.com/2tg1rOG](http://imgur.com/2tg1rOG)

<comment><USER7> My guess is he's using a wordpress plugin that does static caching and it's being clumsy.

<comment><USER8> why is caching so hard to keep track of?

<comment><USER9> There are four hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, I've always heard the joke as "There are two hard problems....", which I find a little funnier because it starts the same as the original quote by Phil Karlton and just adds the joke at the end.

<comment><USER8> haha, thanks. I haven't heard of any of these. Sounds like a good opening for a presentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For what it is worth, this is just a draft.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is great to see, but I expect that once we have memory instrumentation implemented in Servo that we won't particularly like the initial results. :) I'm guessing that the language still needs some more work before we can start being fully competitive with Gecko, specifically in the areas of virtual structs and non-zeroing drop.

(I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though!)

<comment><USER13> Certainly, as njn has brought online each new memory profiling feature, he's discovered something ridiculous we were doing in Servo (e.g., copying things we thought we weren't; continuous memory leaks; poor use of underlying native gfx buffers, etc.). I suspect that in the near term there's plenty of low- hanging "Servo is doing something dumb" fruit to keep us busy while we log some Rust implementation issues for the smaller things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that the alignment between elements (at least in C++) is not being taken in account (or maybe I've misunderstood something).

<comment><USER11> The size of each individual object is determined by calling malloc_usable_size on the block itself, so this includes any internal alignment, as well as any padding from the allocator after the object proper.

So, you get the size of the object, using the callback. Then, if the object has fields that point to other objects, you call the reporter on those fields. Then those two quantities are totaled.

<comment><USER14> Ah, now I see, and it explains the two accumulators. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> `#[ignore_heap_size_of = "Because it is a non-owning reference."] pub image: Arc<Image>,`

Wouldn't it be possible to make the annotation smart enough to distinguish between an owning and a non-owning reference?

<comment><USER4> It's easy to do that, we can just put known_heap_size invocations for these.

The reason this is ignored is that we want to figure out how we want to handle things like this (and haven't yet). We can ignore them, count them as <size>/<refcount>, or count their entire size for each owner. Depends on which one is more important for tracing memory bloat.</comment></comment>


Metasploit Msfd Remote Code Execution – 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://threatqueue.com/2018/05/16/all-metasploit-users-vulnerable-to-msfd-remote-code-execution/ <comment><USER2> Is this a joke? This is a method of hosting an unauthenticated shell. Remote code execution is literally the point of that command.</comment>


Ask HN:Is Elon Musk the closest person we have comparable to Steve Jobs? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Why is this question important to answer? Rather than spending hours pondering whether "Superman can beat Mighty Mouse", let's figure out a way for people here to found the next big start-ups. Both of these men saw opportunity and ran with it. I'm not sure I can identify the seeds of their successes but they probably spent their energy on more important questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> steve jobs is just a salesman, elon has science

</comment><comment><USER4> Is Elon that bad of a human being?</comment>


Memory Models: A Case for Rethinking Parallel Languages and Hardware (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/8/96610-memory-models-a-case-for-rethinking-parallel-languages-and-hardware/fulltext <comment><USER2> Since this is about parallel languages, why don't they say anything about Erlang and related languages?

<comment><USER3> Erlang has a trivial memory model, so it isn't interesting in an article about the challenges of memory models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article says a lot about _concurrent_ programming, but little about _parallel_ programming.

The naming is misleading.

<comment><USER5> The naming is not misleading, because the article says a lot about _parallel_ processing.

It is talking about memory consistency models, for heaven's sake. If you have a uniprocessor, or any kind of concurrency without parallelism, it makes zero sense to talk about memory consistency models because you automatically have sequential consistency and don't have to think about it.

If you don't have a multiprocessor, you don't need to think about memory consistency models. If you have a multiprocessor without parallelism, that's your problem, not the author's.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately because of compiler optimizations, memory models are important even on uniprocessors.

<comment><USER5> Sure, and the article discusses that. I was thinking at the instruction level. I tend to think of convincing the hardware to do what you want and convincing the compiler to do what you want separately as an effect of writing code before the languages had specified memory models.

EDIT: Though as I think about it I'm having a hard time thinking of a system in which those compiler optimizations are problematic on a uniprocessor system. It is definitely true that optimizations that are safe on a uniprocessor break on a multiprocessor, but I can't think of any systems that don't (effectively) have a memory barrier when switching between threads. SMT wouldn't see a problem because both threads are on the same processor.

<comment><USER7> Imagine implementing a simple spinlock, but then substituting relaxed atomics for acquire/release synchronization. The compiler can reorder taking the lock relative to the protected operations and render the lock useless.

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think there are two ways forward; larger L1 caches or split memory between cores, both have their problems.

To solve what this article argues about though, you can use my internet platform: [https://github.com/tinspin/rupy](https://github.com/tinspin/rupy)

Java has excellent concurrency and non-blocking implementations.

Since it also has the only class-loader that is worth using, it's the only programming language you can use for server-side joint parallel future proof systems today.</comment>


An Eye in the Sky Could Detect Methane Plumes on the Ground - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/climate/methane-monitoring-satellite.html <comment><USER2> Curious. Methane leaks over undiscovered petroleum fields could lead to funding for environmental efforts.</comment>


CLaSH: A functional hardware description language - <AUTHOR> http://hackage.haskell.org/package/clash-prelude-0.5/docs/CLaSH-Tutorial.html

<comment><USER2> I did my bachelor's project on translation between functional HDLs that were also reversible, i.e. only describing total, bijective functions. The idea of functional HDLs goes back to at least the 1970s, and the coolest language I found was 𝜇FP by Mary Sheeran. It was an algebraic VLSI design language where logical gates as combinators are the only language constructs.

<comment><USER3> That sounds cool. I don't know anything about HDLs, but can you explain why you might want your functions to be bijective? What does that give you in hardware?

<comment> pseudonom- Maybe for reversible computing? [0]

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am hardware engineer in this industry. And I know Haskell and made my site with Haskell language. But I do not understand why Haskell is used to hardware design.

Designing hardware is much more important than describing hardware logic itself. IMO, VISIO and Excel are the tools to design hardware logic not Verilog nor like this CLaSH.

But, If this kind of HDL can be used along with Verilog, it might be helpful to build verification IPs.

<comment><USER5> Wait, so what are you using to describe the circuit on the logic or RTL level? Do you have VLSI engineers using Cadence or something? From my understanding, using Verilog in ASIC design (and not just verification) is pretty widespread in industry.

<comment><USER6> I think what he's saying is the architectural decisions outweigh the implementation language.

When I was taught Verilog for IP implementation, one thing I noticed is that people get caught in the trap of trying to abstract away the hardware or approach it from a higher level. Haskell/Verilog 2001/SystemVerilog all give us tools to do this. However, when trying to make real silicon, you need to understand what is actually getting built (i.e. know exactly how many flip flops you're creating and how they fan out) and then use the language to describe it. If you use a 'for' loop to try to do computation, as you might in a programming language, you could end up with something entirely unexpected or unsynthesizable.

Traditionally you first design your module conceptually on a whiteboard (or Excel, Viso, etc.), then implement it in an HDL. Because of the influx of software engineers trying to get into hardware (via FPGAs, etc.), there has been a trend in trying to obfuscate away the details of the implementation, and this can cause a lot of confusion.

That said, I've heard of projects that already translate native Haskell to HDL with some success. I'm not a programmer so I don't claim to understand if it's a good idea, but I still think understanding exactly what's being output is important to knowing if it can perform in a reasonable way, especially if you're doing something of any complexity.

<comment><USER7> How is this any different from compiling C to assembly? Why would higher level languages create unsynthesizable circuits? You trust the C compiler to create the proper instructions for your target architecture then I don't see why the same can't be done with a Haskell DSL that compiles to Verilog.

<comment><USER8> Higher level languages inevitably come with built in semantics that the programmer takes for granted, but can't be synthesized directly to hardware. In C, it's the function call stack. In Haskell it's higher order types and recursive data structures (and more). You could in theory create some runtime package that you'd compile to hardware for your program to be synthesized to, or "run on".....but then you'd just be making a straight up computer, wouldn't you. ;-)

<comment><USER9> None of these things are relevant in most HDLs implemented as DSLs in high level languages. The point of most of the HDL work in Haskell (for example Lava, and Bluespec) is to provide primitives to talk about hardware and to use a sane language as a way to manipulate them to build larger specifications. It is embarrassing that people use tools that allow you to write un-synthesizable code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's already a commercial functional hardware description language called Bluespec. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluespec,_Inc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluespec,_Inc).

<comment><USER11> Bluespec has a strange story: initially it was developed like Clash, as a subset of Haskell that could be translated to a HDL. However its users hated the Haskell syntax, so the Bluespec designers added a layer of syntax on top to make it look like more a HDL, and they also downplayed the powerful type system for adoption.

Since then, Bluespec has not become too popular, but Haskell has. Clash may have a chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In a former life (a long time ago), I used ELLA for designing processors. It was a pretty decent functional language. Great at abstracting components or subsystems and infinitely better than modelling stuff with C.

IIRC European Silicon Structures used to offer it as a part of their toolset when VLSI design was young and hot.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELLA_%28programming_language%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELLA_%28programming_language%29)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this meant for hardware people or software people? Because I'm a hardware guy and I don't know Haskell. None of my EE friends know Haskell either. I really don't see a serious hardware engineer using this over VHDL or Verilog, even if it is more beautiful or provably better or whatever.

<comment><USER5> Strangely enough, alternative HDLs embedded in Haskell seem to be a thing. Besides this, there is also Bluespec and Lava.

[http://wiki.bluespec.com/](http://wiki.bluespec.com/)

[http://raintown.org/lava/](http://raintown.org/lava/)

<comment><USER14> Tom Hawkins is probably around here somewhere.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_\(programming_language\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> without having looked at it in much detail, does anyone know how/whether this is related at all to bluespec ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluespec,_Inc.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluespec,_Inc.))?

<comment><USER11> It's not related to bluespec. (cf my other comment in this thread)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting language, I'll be interested to see how Clash develops.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think we have a winner for the most poorly named programming language of the last decade. I thought that "Go" and "Hack" were bad, but at least I could type those on my keyboard.

<comment><USER18> Seriously. I spent more time trying to figure out how to read/say it than reading about it. C(lambda)aSH? clambdaash? Oh, CLaSH.

<comment><USER19> Clam-dash. It makes your shellfish go fast, or your car smell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Clash? C-lambda-ash? C-lambda-a-ess-aitch? C-lash?</comment>


Cool Tools Review - CreateSpace: Self-Publishing via Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004304.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoolTools+%28Cool+Tools%29 <comment><USER2> 55% is kind of a big cut

<comment><USER3> Normal publishers give 15 percent or less. A traditional publishing contract is one of the gloomiest documents you'll ever set eyes on.

<comment><USER4> 55% is a large cut... for self-publishing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was offered co-authorship of a book from a somewhat big computer publisher, about a year ago, and the publisher's initial offer to me was 5% of the retail price. Granted, only co-authorship, and I don't have the leverage of a Stephen King.

Still, from all I've heard, getting as high as 45% out of a traditional publisher is pretty rare.

Plus the other benefit you get, in addition to the rather high royalty, is the ability to totally bypass traditional publishing process. It's just 'vanity publishing' but with Amazon behind it. Which is good and bad, of course, but can still be pretty attractive.

Another factor: yes, you could keep 98% if you truly self-published, digital only, rather than only 45%. But you get potentially a larger number of eyeballs, and they're making printed books, not just PDF's. Paper is cheap. Assembling and shipping a book, not so much. They have to charge something to break even, let alone profit.</comment>


How Indians use UbiSlate7+, an cheap Android 2.3 touch screen tablet - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/116599978027440206136/posts/2TCWbzV65UL

<comment><USER2> These are not UbiSlate7+ devices. Most of these have now become dysfunctional.

[http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article841152....](http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article841152.ece)

"This tablet-like PC, developed by Bangalore-based tech firm EAFT Technologies for this pilot project, will allow you to browse the Internet while on the move by connecting to a Wi-Fi network through central servers remotely controlled by the firm."</comment>


Researcher says we have Alzheimer's wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-30/do-we-all-have-alzhemers-completely-wrong-man-says-yes <comment><USER2> I'm a neuroimaging researcher and I can tell you that Roses' perspective is hardly new. Very few people researching neurodegenerative disease believe that Amyloid is the underlying etiological (causative) factor for AD (or other neurodegenerative diseases).

Also we know that APOE and TOMM40 are relevant in some sub-populations of patients but certainly do not account for all (or even the majority of people with AD/neurodegenerative disease).

Amyloid is one of a number of agents involved in a cascade of processes that ultimately lead to the clinical manifestations of AD. Some of these include: \- Amyloid deposition \- phosphorylation and deposition of Tau protein \- vascular factors including blood-brain barrier breakdown, reduced cerebral blood flow and hypoxia. \- neuronal dysregulation through multiple mechanisms.

If you're interested in a better understanding of this I would suggest reading a few nature neuroscience reviews.

<comment><USER3> I think the major problem being made is people assuming Alzheimer's is one disease. Look at the history of cancer research for a comparison - it started out with all the researchers thinking cancer was a single disease and each researcher had their own pet theories as to the cause. We now know that each cancer is an unique swam of related cancers and the best treatment is found by identifying and exploiting the particular mutational weaknesses the swam displays.

You might wonder why this matters - the problem is if Alzheimer's is more than one disease then it is very hard to develop effective treatments as any new treatment will only work on a sub-population of patients. This makes it very hard to prove to the FDA that your treatment should be licensed.

<comment><USER2> Yes, disease classification is a rapidly moving target.

First off, AD is one of several currently classified neurodegenerative diseases. Others include frontotemporal dementia, "Parkinson's Plus" syndromes such as Lewy Body Dementia, Multiple System Atrophy and Supranuclear Palsy.

Some people classify vascular dementia(s) as a set of separate entities such as multi-infarct dementia, cerebrovascular small vessel disease and so on. It is however becoming increasingly clear that vascular factors affect most (if not all neurodegenerative diseases).

These classifications are based mostly on clinical evaluation which is tremendously unreliable. Bloodwork, CSF, genetic studies and imaging contribute to the clinical diagnosis (mostly neuroimaging - most notably MRI and PET scanning).

All the aforementioned diseases overlap to some extent and have patient subgroups within each of them, sometimes based on clinic feature (such as tremor-dominant parkinson's) and some on imaging features (such as limbic dominant AD).

Newer imaging methods are moving us towards dividing patients up into different phenotypes based on for example, patterns of tau deposition. Increasing genomic knowledge will likely also have a huge impact in this regard.

<comment><USER3> Yes until we get the sub-populations sorted it is going to be very hard to get anywhere with AD. Combine that with poor animal models, late diagnosis, and the need for large and very long human trials it is not surprising almost all pharma companies are avoiding AD.

<comment><USER2> Um, what?

Pharma continue to throw billions at AD therapy.

<comment><USER3> From my understanding only one one major (Eli Lilly) now has a serious AD program - all the others have effectively walked away after losing tens of billions [1]. I have to say that Biogen's antibody [2] is looking interesting. If I had to invest my own money in AD I would spend it on better early detection/sub-population classification and then on developing monoclonal antibodies targeting each sub-population.

1\. [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/01/23/alzheimers_t...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/01/23/alzheimers_therapies_a_reasonably_gloomy_update.php)

2\. [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2015/03/20/biogens_alzh...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2015/03/20/biogens_alzheimers_data.php)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for this. Really interesting blog, hadn't seen it before.

I can vouch for the fact that at least two other majors continue to invest heavily in AD diagnostics and/or therapeutics. You're right though that all have thrown a ton of money at this without much ROI yet (apart from those producing diagnostic radio-pharmaceuticals).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ran across this story over a decade ago. See [http://forum.iwethey.org/forum/post/151431/](http://forum.iwethey.org/forum/post/151431/) for my thoughts then.

My conclusion then was that this is a case of conflict between two paradigms. Until believers in the hypothesis that beta-amyloid is critical run into crisis, alternate theories will have a hard time being funded and heard. No matter what the facts may be.

Sadly there is a history in science of people who were right being marginalized for decades before anyone else noticed. To name an example, Barbara McClintock in the 1930s managed to prove that genes can move around in the genome. She stopped publishing her work in the 1950s because it was too hard to convince other scientists to pay attention to her apparently impossible results. In the late 60s and 70s many other researchers replicated her results in different organisms and biology was finally able to figure out the mechanism. She began to get awards at that point, finally resulting in the Nobel in 1983.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's an image of a guy holding a brain.

If you want to donate your brain to this kind of research it'd probably be useful. Supplies in the UK are running low.

You might want to i) talk to your family about what your wishes are ii) document those wishes. This needs to be done on top of any organ donation (for transplant) stuff that you're doing.

[https://www.hta.gov.uk/guidance-public/brain- donation](https://www.hta.gov.uk/guidance-public/brain-donation)

[http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php...](http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=1103)

<comment><USER6> I honestly don't know a thing about all of this but wouldn't finding better ways to harmlessly map and study living brains provide more useful information? Maybe a chemical substance a patient could drink that would (really no idea here) excite neurons and make the ones that are having problems stand out more during the test?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the Amyloid hypothesis is wrong, why does this drug[1] seem to work so well?

I think everybody should humble themselves a bit and recognize that we don't fully understand the mechanisms of Alzheimer's yet. It's a complicated disease, and a lot of the techniques we use to understand it are still in development.

[1]: [http://media.biogen.com/press-release/corporate/biogen- idec-...](http://media.biogen.com/press-release/corporate/biogen-idec- presents-positive-interim-results-phase-1b-study-investigational)

<comment><USER2> (Full disclosure: I have been involved in MRI and PET imaging arms of industry-funded trials such as this one).

First off, there's no question that Amyloid plays a role in the development of AD.

It is however becoming increasingly clear that it does not play the primary causative role. Its exact role is currently unclear: its likely both a secondary neurotoxic agent and an epiphenomenon. It's also non-specific (ie. Amyloid deposition is seen in several other disease states as well as in many cognitively normal controls).

There are certainly other agents and mechanisms that are both more important in the development of AD and arise earlier in the time course of the disease.

This particular drug has a modest effect (From this study - it slows down disease progression, at least in the first year). The several dozen other anti-amyloid agents that have been trialled, at billions of dollars of expense, have either had little or no effect or demonstrated a modest effect in the first 12-24 months treatment before becoming ineffective again.

Its also worth noting that the manufacturers have a very limited understanding of the mechanism(s) of action of the drug. So, there's no guarantee that any effect is actually attributable to the reduced amyloid deposition, and not some secondary process.

<comment><USER7> What do you work on? I work on image processing algorithms for structural MRI.

<comment><USER2> I'm a neuroradiologist, so I mostly interpret images (MR, CT and PET mostly).

I'm involved in various research studies where I am involved in study design, sequence selection, image interpretation, clinical correlation etc.

Most of the techie stuff gets done by physicists and some of my collaborators in other areas of neuroscience but I do enjoy doing some of my own (rather rudimentary) pre- and post-processing of MRI data.

What sort of image processing do you program for? VBM?

<comment><USER7> I work for an imaging CRO, so I primarily work on imaging endpoints for clinical trials: hippocampus volume and atrophy, etc.

I've developed multi-atlas methods for segmentation, boundary shift integral (BSI) and Jacobian (TBM) for longitudinal atrophy computation, etc.

What kind of processing do you do? What tools do you use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting article and I unfortunately don't know diddly-poop about neuroscience, but this statement:

" _Yet, some researchers attempting to replicate Roses' work have failed to find an association between TOMM40 and the age of Alzheimer's onset. Roses has countered that these groups aren't performing his research correctly and that the work involves complicated diagnostic methods. 'Because TOMM40 [research] is not as easy to replicate as ApoE4 [research] was,' Roses says, 'the first thing they say again is the data is wrong.'_"

sets off my kook detector rather strongly. That is exactly the situation that many false claims find themselves in, and it's exactly the response that the investigators make just before the wheels start coming off.

From other parts of the article, I don't know or even believe strongly that Roses is wrong, but if you're a future scientist in an experimental field, be very cautious about saying things like that.

</comment><comment><USER9> While I don't have the expertise to know if this theory is potentially valid, I've long suspected that maybe we are focusing on fixing the symptom instead of the cause when discussing the biochemical basis of certain neurological conditions. In particular, ADHD and depression.

<comment><USER5> > maybe we are

So, the "we" there talks about wider society. People involved in health care mostly recognise that "chemical imbalance" is not useful for most people.

That's why national standards bodies recommend a talking therapy over medication for several types and severities of illness; and a talking therapy combined with medication for many of the others.

Here's the NICE guidance: [http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg90](http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg90)

NICE is an organisation that assesses the evidence base for treatments of all kinds, then makes recommendations on whether the cost of that treatment can be justified. Health trusts in England don't have to follow NICE guidance, but if they don't they need to carefully describe why they've chosen not to follow it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And the main message is:

"the biggest test of Roses' algorithm is a 5,800-subject, five-year, double- blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial currently underway through a collaboration between his startup Zinfandel Pharmaceuticals and Japanese drug firm Takeda Pharmaceutical."

[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01931566](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01931566)

"Estimated Study Completion Date: April 2019"

</comment><comment><USER11> Fascinating article! Buying people five years of extra clarity would be amazing for such a devastating condition.

I am confused about one point the writer makes though:

"But unlike other cells in the body, neurons can't reproduce."

I thought exercise had been shown to produce neurogenesis in the brain? Or is the writer referring to mature neurons' inability to replicate?

<comment><USER12> I also thought that the notion of the inability to grow new neurons had been shown to be false...

Anyone ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And here's a recent counterpoint: [http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/new-clarity- ag...](http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/new-clarity-against- alzheimers/)?

What do you guys think? Who is right? I guess the main quote is:

> We showed that if you use human neurons made from stem cells and you grow it > in a gel that mimics the brain, that indeed amyloid causes tangles. So now > there's no doubt. And if you stop the amyloid, you stop the tangles.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know if there's a way to donate some programming talent to these kinds of projects? It seems like something I'd like to do when retired.

<comment><USER14> Ask around at your local biomedical graduate program. Just got out of one myself. There are LOTS of 'easy' programming tasks that are being undertaken by very bright people with no ability/expertise in programming. It slows down the research they are good at. Each individual task is not difficult, but would take some time and investment in order to understand the problem correctly.

Or donate efforts to clean up and make nicer some of the major OSS scientific projects like uManager [1]. These efforts help towards learning about things like Alzheimer's way more than you'd expect. And though they're not specific to Alzheimer's, that's a good thing - they help ALL drug/disease related work.

[1] [https://www.micro-manager.org/](https://www.micro-manager.org/)</comment></comment>


Should people be off on Fridays? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21242782

<comment><USER2> There is an ongoing debate in France about children's school weeks between a 4-day week (full days) and a 5-day week (either a day off in the middle of the week, or only mornings on Wednesdays and Saturdays). I invite you to look for different opinions on this debate if you're interested in this article's subject. I understand children pace is barely comparable with grown-ups', however the arguments would be similar. Question is, when are our so-called modern societies going to achieve the transition between human-based and robot-based mass production, leaving people freed from Maslow's hierarchy of needs' lower levels, and (therefore?) from the tyranny of performing something all day long without any benefit for the mind...</comment>


Clearview AI helps law enforcement match photos of people to their online images - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html <comment><USER2> > His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition > app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos > of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system > — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that > Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions > of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United > States government or Silicon Valley giants.

This doesn't sound groundbreaking all and I'd be very surprised if FBI/NSA/DHS/Palantir didn't already have a system like that. Maybe they were just reserved for higher-value targets. Of course, NSA isn't gonna tell you what it has constructed until decades later, so claiming that this goes far beyond NSA capabilities is reckless at best and clueless at worst.

<comment><USER3> What's groundbreaking here is not really the technology but rather the marketing: Clearview is selling a relatively cheap product to law enforcement agencies who are desperate to solve cases at the lowest cost.

I think we (both here at HN and in the larger society) have this perception that police departments, etc., are part of a well-organized hierarchy of well- considered processes and technology that start at the FBI/NSA/etc and works its way down, all carefully vetted for technical and ethical standards, and disclosed to the public who is ostensibly their employer.

The reality that I've seen is quite different. As the article points out, individual police departments (and their officers!) often independently research and procure services, based on hearsay and questionable morals. Does the service help 'get the bad guys'? Then it's good. Does the service obviously violate copyright and ToS agreements? Not our problem.

I learned this when I built a scrappy little website for a one-man company who builds training kits for first responders. As low-tech as this site was (e.g., ordering the product entailed sending a purchase order by postal mail) I was struck by the apparent success of my client's product: he had dozens of endorsements by apparently top-level influencers in the field, and didn't have much competition. There were some certifications that he matched, but it didn't seem all that hard to sell a few thousand dollars of technology to small/mid-level LEOs. (This isn't a criticism of his product, which seemed fine and certainly didn't involve privacy or surveillance technology.) The numbers in the article about Clearview's services are in the same range — easy to justify if it's only a few thousand a year and apparently produces good results.

<comment><USER4> >>What's groundbreaking here is not really the technology but rather the marketing: Clearview is selling a relatively cheap product to law enforcement agencies who are desperate to solve cases at the lowest cost.

Exactly. This is a prime example of commoditization. The product doesn't have to be sophisticated. Just good enough to handle the most common use cases reasonably well, at a cheap price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been waiting to see this story and this company show up. It has felt inevitable and it's sad that it's being allowed to happen. How long will it be before the Ring cameras on every block feed into a real-time database where anyone can figure out where anyone else is, track their movements, and monitor their every moment?

Facial recognition is a bigger threat to our current way of life than just about anything else I can fathom other than climate change or nuclear war. The scariest part is that few people seem to recognize or care about the risk.

<comment><USER6> People freak out when it's based on cameras and faces because it triggers some ancient "being watched" reactions in us.

But when it's based on phone GPS, wifi networks etc., then people are fine with it. And that type of tracking is very possible for many years now through smartphones. But it feels less viscerally spooky.

<comment><USER7> It's because you can leave your phone at home but not your face.

<comment><USER8> Maybe this will lead to a Face/Off type scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "One of the odder pitches, in late 2017, was to Paul Nehlen — an anti-Semite and self-described "pro-white" Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin — to use "unconventional databases" for "extreme opposition research," according to a document provided to Mr. Nehlen and later posted online."

Giving hate groups a greater ability to stalk and harass their victims is also pretty scary.

</comment><comment><USER10> This illustrates hypocrisy of Silicon Valley.. don't be evil indeed

Peter Thiel funding this, while he demolished Gawker Media, through litigation for his own invasion of privacy.

Forget Silicon Valley, we urgently need federal regulation to limit this assault on our privacy (at the very least it can slow down our country's inevitable decline into a black mirror episode)

<comment><USER11> I don't think many people in the valley actually care about being evil.

<comment><USER12> I don't think many people in the valley think about it one way or the other.

Welcome to our brave new world: techno-utopian utilitarianism, exemplified by the sophomoric philosophies of Zuck and Thiel.

<comment><USER13> More insidious than they are simply sophomoric

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not okay with this - and you shouldn't be either. It's only a matter of time before it gets and misused/abused - to identify protestors, for law enforcement officers' personal uses, to identify those doing legal things deemed "immoral" (see: China), etc.

We really need regulation here. Urgently.

The US appears to have been the leader in such regulation in the past. The problem is, they don't do that anymore. They haven't passed any laws related to user rights or privacy in a long time, and are actively trying to make encryption illegal.

The same is true for the Australian government, and those of several developing nations. We can hope that the EU does something, but... the impact will be limited.

It's especially bad for people living in non-first-world countries like India where the citizens aren't educated on the consequences of law enforcement agencies using tech like this. Laws taking away the right to privacy are being pushed through regularly. Recently they've started using facial recognition to identify protestors: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are- using...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using-facial- recognition-to-identify-protestors-in-delhi)

I really wish that some leading tech companies would try and push regulation through, but that will never happen since apparently privacy erosion and constant user tracking is critical for revenue for seemingly all of them (except Apple, I suppose).

Also, even if somehow regulations were put in place that made it necessary for websites to try and protect user data and made it illegal to scrape PII, there's nothing stopping government agencies from developing tools like these for themselves. Aaaand we go back to the first paragraph of this comment. This is a sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER15> I'm okay with this. It's a long-standing principle that you have no expectation of privacy in public spaces. On what basis do you get to claim suddenly that it's "not okay" and on that basis slow technological development? Every new tool has benefits and drawbacks, when it comes to integrating computing into our lives, the benefits have always massively outweighed the drawbacks.

We don't need regulation here, urgently or not. This whole push towards banning things --- this company, the EU facial recognition thing, and so on --- strikes me as just another moral panic used as an excuse for a few to impose their opinions and power on the many.

I've yet to see privacy advocates identify actual undeserved harms that have come to people as a result of the technology that they want to regulate. Loss of "privacy" in public is only a harm if you already accept the premise of the argument, which I don't.

<comment><USER16> > It's a long-standing principle that you have no expectation of privacy in > public spaces.

There are limits to what we consider acceptable even in public spaces; for example, upskirt photos aren't ok even you're in a public place. I think it's still reasonable to consider that one day (maybe today, for many people?) it might mean that every single moment of their life outside is being recorded, which was literally not possible until recently. It's a valid thing to discuss.

<comment><USER15> What I'm against is this idea that X is okay as long as X is expensive, but the moment X becomes cheap, or democratized, or accessible, all of a sudden it's a problem, and we need a ban.

Example: it's already legal to keep tabs on people in public. There are businesses build on this idea, private investigators. A little sleazy? Expensive? Sure. But legal. If you want to be consistent, you should ban them too.

If X is what causes harm, X should be disallowed no matter the price.

<comment><USER17> In general I disagree (but would agree with you in certain cases, like something that was doable but gatekept due to cost).

Alot of X's aren't a problem until they can scale. It's not pragmatic to outlaw everything that might be a problem at scale but might never be able to achieve that scale.

We're in an era where we are discovering alot of abuses that could only be classified as an issue due to scale and efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can imagine the EU having a field day with this. Given the scraping of data from other sites, this is clearly processing of PII without explicit consent - it's effectively being used as a biometric identifier too so the rules around sensitive data also apply...

<comment><USER19> If they don't do business in the EU, the DGPR doesn't apply to them. Any more than Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws affect me.

<comment><USER20> It's my understanding that GDPR protects the personal data of EU citizens. Regardless of whether you do business in the EU, if you process this data GDPR applies to you.

My guess is that this company has no way to verify that they don't process EU citizen data. They almost certainly do if they're scraping so pervasively. And I don't think they can credibly claim users gave consent let alone all the other rules they need to follow.

Looking forward to someone challenging them on this and hopefully the EU taking action. This feels like exactly what GDPR should protect against.

<comment><USER19> The EU might want that, but just today my company collected and passed the personal details of a number of EU citizens to colleagues without their consent.

Since the company doesn't do business in the EU, the GDPR can go get knotted.

PS. My gay mates have also not decided to go straight just because Uganda outlaws it.

<comment><USER21> >> Since the company doesn't do business in the EU, the GDPR can go get knotted.

That's not how international law works though, especially when wielded by a large economic block. If the EU wants to put pressure on a company the pain is harsh. For instance they can blacklist the company and it's C-suite from international banking and ask any in-treaty country to extradite or arrest employees.

Also are you admitting to breaking EU law and moral/ethical codes on HN ?

<comment><USER19> The first yes, the latter no.

I also freely admit to breaking a lot of blasphemy laws.

None of them are laws where I live, so I won't ever get extradited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this unique? I feel like there are many companies providing this sort of surveillance/data-scraping aggregation and indexing functionality to law enforcement and TLAs. We just don't hear about them too often because we are not their customers.

Our government has abandoned us, and total surveillance is the future unless something radical changes.

Fun tip: get an old analog radio, like in an old non-connected car or a boombox or walkman or clock radio or something, go somewhere quiet and private, and listen to whatever you want. And realize that nobody knows what you're listening to—it's your secret. I find this to be a strangely powerful experience.

<comment><USER23> The Russians have had a service to find people on their Facebook equivalent since 2016 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Holy shit, this quote is crazy:

> While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, > a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They > soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were > talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this > case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.

<comment><USER25> Sadly, it reminds me of all the stories of authorities using databases for stalking women they're interested in, or people they have a personal grudge against, or whatever.

[https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police- databases...](https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police-databases-as- personal-dating-service-to-target-150-women-chief/)

[https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police- office...](https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-officers- abused-databases-stalk-lovers-journalists-enemies-ap-finds)

[https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap- acros...](https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-across-us- police-officers-abuse-confidential-databases)

<comment><USER26> This is a valid concern, it aleady happens and nothing stops if from happening in the future

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > That's because Facebook and other social media sites prohibit people from > scraping users' images — Clearview is violating the sites' terms of service. > "A lot of people are doing it," Mr. Ton-That shrugged. "Facebook knows."

The last kind of person on Earth I want making an app like this is someone that doesn't care about terms of service, morality, contracts, or upholding the law. It seems like he just got into it for the money, and has no compunction about unethical behaviour. "Everybody's doing it" is a cliche, and idiotic, response. Don't take any wooden nickels when you sell your soul...

<comment><USER28> i'm hoping this story prompts his company getting sued into oblivion. if i were running twitter or fb and suddenly there's a strong incentive not to post personal photos i'd be rightly alarmed.

<comment><USER29> Maybe their thinking if the things Facebook or Twitter does with your photos doesn't bother you nothing will

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Was not there a Russian app 4-5 years ago that did something similar? Its premise, if I recall correctly, was to trawl VK/dating app profiles based on photos of people taken on a street.

If we are to believe the tests journalists did, it was pretty good considering the app authors just pulled some VK/russian dating app photos

Edit: Thanks for downvotes. Here's the article: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian- photog...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian-photographer- yegor-tsvetkov-identifies-strangers-facial-recognition-app)

The app is called FindFace

</comment><comment><USER31> More background, including access to the public records requests that led to this investigation:

[https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2020/jan/18/clearview...](https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2020/jan/18/clearview- ai-facial-recogniton-records/)

</comment><comment><USER32> How is this not a massive copyright violation? When I upload a photo to, say, Instagram, I know I'm granting _them_ a perpetual license to do basically anything with my photo, but scrapers don't inherit those rights.

<comment><USER33> The article does say what Ton-That did violates most sites' TOS. It's now up to the sites to take legal action against him.

<comment><USER34> I mean, it's a search engine right? Google scrapes Facebook at global scale.

<comment><USER32> No it doesn't. Google honors Facebook's robots.txt, which excludes basically all the valuable data. It's why they blew billions trying to get us all to switch to Google+.

<comment><USER34> That's so weird because I see text and images from fb domains in google search results all the time. Likewise LinkedIn.

<comment><USER32> [https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/can- goo...](https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/can-google-crawl- facebook-pages)

<comment><USER34> Your link supports my statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> For an article seemingly about the dangers of such a product, it sound an awful lot like an advertisement. They mention several influential people involved, had law enforcement agencies rave about how well it worked, included the price point, and free trials are available!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Anyone who stands to benefit from this company's services are a few clicks away from a trial--and it does not seem they're particularly sensitive to how their system is used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is/was inevitable.

We all know that once technology allows a beneficial behavior you can easily get away with, nothing can stop it. See torrents, ad blocking, reverse- engineering, cracking, etc.

But even from a legal/moral perspective, it's not clear where the line is. The data is publicly available, uploaded voluntarily by the people themselves. The algorithms are freely available. People are allowed to take photos... Sure, the end product is creepy, but where along the way did we go too far?

<comment><USER12> Gathering up personal data without user permission, and then putting it to use in ways not originally intended by those users who provided it.

That's when we went too far.

This isn't hard.

Edit: And as a random aside, I'd be surprised if Clearview wasn't violating copyright law, here. When a person uploads a photo to Facebook, the user grants a license to Facebook.

So unless I'm missing something, Clearview is illegally copying and using these works without permission...

<comment><USER36> What precisely is "personal data"? Can a nosey neighbor look out their window and note passersby that they recognize?

Can one recognize people whose face they saw somewhere (on TV, on a dating app etc) without "permission". (e.g. "I'm pretty sure I just saw my tinder match going into a bar with someone")?

What if someone has a very good memory for faces and a curiosity to match? What if someone employ scouts to report when they spot certain people? What if someone automate these processes?

Where is the line between private informatio and publicly available raw data such as photons bouncing off people's faces?

<comment><USER12> At risk of violating HN's policy: it's this kind of sophistry that allows tech employees and entrepreneurs to justify their predatory behaviour... bend over backwards hard enough and you can find the logic to justify nearly anything.

Let's try it!

How do you define a biological weapon?

If I know I'm sick and I deliberately sneeze on people, am I a weapon?

If I pay people with an illness to sneeze on people, is that a weapon?

What if I cultivate smallpox in a lab and spread it with an aerosol sprayer instead of using human carriers?

Where is the line on what is a biological weapon? Where along the way did we go too far?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, > a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They > soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were > talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this > case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.

Like in the movies.

</comment><comment><USER38> If Clearview profits from having your photo in their database, don't you deserve compensation?

<comment> o-__-o What is the value of your photo? That is the compensation you deserve. So what's that worth, $2? It's the aggregate that provides value to the business

<comment><USER39> If two parties can't decide on the value, I would think it's only natural there would be no transaction.

If I set the value of my photo at $2 million and company X sets it at $0.20, am I forced to sell it at $0.20? If two people can't decide on a valuation it's only fair there's no transaction.

<comment> o-__-o Depends. If it is your photo, then you own the copyright and you entirely have the right to set a price or not share it at all (don't click 'I agree' on those TOS)

If it is not your photo, then unless you are a celebrity or otherwise a famous figure the law is quite clear that you do not have any recourse for your photo being used. You must use the courts to determine the valuation of your likeness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> We as a society are still experimenting with new new-found toys like this in a lawless territory. Similar to how car-traffic was largely unregulated until we realized that traffic rules are really necessary.

It is not clear how this will play out though. Is it even possible to hope for a state that doesn't spy on its citizens? I'm not so sure anymore (thanks, all you f-g terrorists). Maybe our struggle has to be to regulate and enforce _how_ the spying is done, and used, and live with the fact that it can be abused before it is corrected.

If anyone has a clear view of how such pessimism might be wrong I'll be happy to hear it.

<comment><USER41> Why are governments so interested in spying on citizens ? What's the real motive ?

<comment><USER42> Lots of reasons. Catching tax evasion. Stopping crime. Preventing themselves from getting overthrown by their own citizens.

The problem is there are good and bad reasons, but even the good reasons will be corrupted by bad people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> We have already reached the point of no return unfortunately. The only option at this point is to open source and normalize this tech somehow so that everybody has access to it.

<comment><USER34> Right. I mean, cameras are everywhere. Probably, computers will look at and parse their feeds, not just slow humans with eyeballs. Better this than Sensetime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This company has too much power to fake and manipulate things in different ways. It's just a matter of time for false positives that crush the already vulnerable people. The level of abuse people can (and will) be subjected to is going to be horrendous.

Without regulations, laws and audits, everyone is screwed. Oh yeah, even law enforcement is screwed if/when it blindly believes in these systems and considers them fool proof and beyond suspicion.

 _Creepview — now, that's my name for this company. It also makes sense that Peter Thiel put money into it._

</comment><comment><USER45> As this has been and will be inevitable given the tech, it's not a question of regulation as so many call for. Regulation will just put this tech in a small group of hands to imbalance the power of probably government versus citizen.

The only way to deal with this is to recognize that privacy in public spaces was a temporary concept in society available for a limited period. Allow everyone this information and let the cards fall in a more balanced way. Anything else would be oppression.

<comment><USER46> > privacy was a temporary concept in society available for a limited period

Maybe, maybe not. But it's an easy and incongruous thing to say from a throwaway account.

Even easier if your life and/or livelihood doesn't depend on a degree of personal privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Lots of discussion on ethics (important!), but little in actual metrics.

What actually are the precision and recall of systems that search over faces of the entire national population? I would have thought enough people look similar that precision would be inherently low (even as a human it is occasionally hard to tell people apart in photos), but the claims here (and in similar articles NYT has had on Chinese companies doing similar things) is implying near perfect numbers.

<comment><USER48> I remember reading how some Chinese company was using face recognition on livestock (chickens maybe?), which (although this might be human centric) seem far less diverse in appearance than humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would hazard a guess that this will lead to more anti-mask laws since politicians, who love appearing tough on crime, will view anyone wearing a mask as a likely criminal. Which will probably decrease crime but also effectively eliminate any checks on state power.

How has this guy not been targeted by organized crime groups already?

</comment><comment><USER49> Can we protect our selves by spacing fake accounts with our image? Could that confuse these systems?

</comment><comment><USER50> This loss of privacy is just another consequence of our perpetual focus on and devotion to competition against each other -- everything gets weaponized. Privacy hinders the real game-changer, the weaponization of you.

</comment><comment><USER32> Even if we ban it here in the US, there's nothing stopping adversarial foreign governments from building the same databases, and probably with a lot more computing power and technical expertise.

<comment><USER51> > Even if we ban it here in the US, there's nothing stopping adversarial > foreign governments from building the same databases, and probably with a > lot more computing power and technical expertise.

You make a good point, a simple ban of this technology isn't good enough. The ban needs to go further, to ban the kinds of things that enable the technology, like massive databases that aggregate people's personal photos or surveillance video.

<comment><USER52> The bans would have to be quite extensive. You could not allow networked security camera systems like nest/ring. No social networks could exist, no personal video sharing. Even governmental databases of photo IDs and company photo IDs pose a risk given this technology. Always a chance of a data leak or bad actor.

There does not seem to be a feasible way to stop this. We may simply need to accept that a face will be enough to positively ID anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I have often wondered if you form an LLC and sign over the rights to your DNA / looks / et al to said LLC contractually are you more protected in todays society ?

</comment><comment><USER54> The social media companies might be able to buy some good press by suing this company, its founders, its investors, and its employees into oblivion for terms of service violations.

On the other hand, it would push copycats into developing alternative business models to capture the demand while still hiding from civil legal action.

And there's wider societal costs from potentially chilling innovation like this through the social media companies acting like a trust.

</comment><comment><USER55> Ton-That was a scammer, reported on by Thiel's nemesis Gawker, and an HN poster (hi!)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hoan](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hoan) [https://gawker.com/tag/hoan-ton-that](https://gawker.com/tag/hoan-ton-that)

</comment><comment><USER56> I am waiting for a government that puts together all the tech we are developing right now and creates the perfect surveillance state. Even in the worst governments like Russia under Stalin, the Nazis or North Korea citizens still have/had the possibility to move around and do things without anyone knowing. That soon may be over.

<comment><USER57> Isn't this what the Chinese social credit system already is?

<comment><USER34> China + Face++ + Sensetime are doing this. The tech is out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> [http://archive.md/jQIrw](http://archive.md/jQIrw)

</comment><comment><USER59> the look that clearview has cultivated is at best clandestine and might even be criminal

it is telling about the attitudes of law enforcement that they skirt prohibitions of firstparty use of facial recognition by consorting with an entity such as clearview

</comment><comment><USER60> Oh I know Hoan. At least he isn't alt-right any more. I think he has matured and is a decent guy. It's just commodity technology, but it is going to make him rich. _shrug_ Cool.

</comment><comment><USER61> How did Clearview scrape so much of Facebook? Is this fundamentally hard for Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. to stop if someone determined wants to suck in photos for a tool like this?

</comment><comment><USER62> The only thing scarier to me than a government or a corporation performing surveillance is when they do it together.

<comment><USER53> Internet marketing companies already sell data to the govt. That horse left the barn years ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The counterpart to this dystopian future is other people taking photos/video without your consent. Just as a social norm I wish that was illegal first, and if it already is, enforced more.

Apple and android should blur faces by default until other people explicitly give consent to be photographed. That's the future I want to see.

</comment><comment><USER64> In their TOS 3,2

They specifically prohibit on their site the very Thing they're doing to others.

</comment><comment><USER65> The article summary pretty much highlights that anybody can aggregate public data for personal or commercial use, so Clearview AI is not the only player.

Data aggregation and transparency were supposed to be the foundation of open government, but it looks like the citizens (by way of consumerism/capitalism/communism) are the victims of legislated privacy violations by law makers that want nothing to do with transparency. It seems like a conflict of interest if business is pulling the strings of politics.

If the citizens pushed harder for a transparent government, other than encryption, what else can they legislate to turn the tables on that debate (ie. No privacy for government is a no go)?

</comment><comment><USER66> I guarantee you this has already been invented many times over by intelligence agencies around the world.

</comment><comment><USER67> My personal rule: Ignore any news story that uses the word "might".

Sure, something might happen. Anything _might_ happen. The news is supposed to tell us things that _did_ happen.

<comment><USER68> So, we must always be reactive rather proactive in our responses? I'm personally quite interested in what might be coming, particular ly if the article does a good job of describing driving forces and potential obstacles.

<comment><USER67> It's not news, it's speculation and should be noted as such. The opinion section would be an appropriate place for it.

If some journalist wants the world to know what their crystal ball says the world is going to be like, they should publish a book, write a blog, whatever. Don't pretend it's journalism.

Humans are _notoriously_ bad at predicting the future.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 7: The Best iPad Seller - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/windows-7-the-best-ipad-seller/

<comment><USER2> I've never had these issues with Windows 7. The initial complaints are due to the apps you want to use requiring Java and Flash, that's independent of the OS, and would be the case with any Operating System that could use Java and Flash. You could of course said no to the updates.

Furthermore, it's completely unnecessary to install Avast, you can install Microsoft Security Essentials, free, and it works great. Microsoft can't bundle it, since they would be charged with monopolistic practices.

Your OEM provider installed a Norton trial, that also has nothing to do with Windows. Windows 7 only creates 2 Program Files if you're using a 64bit operating system. The (x86) is the 32bit programs, whereas the Program Files are native 64bit, it makes it a bit clearer when uninstalling or organizing your system. Since you can technically have 32 and 64 bit versions of the same program installed.

I could go on, but essentially there seems to have been an issue with the game. I don't know if I would outright blame the operating system.

<comment><USER3> All your arguments are correct, however they miss the issue.

For this person, the overall Windows 7 experience is flawed compared to the Apple OSX experience. You can say it's because of the games, or because Microsoft _can't legally include something_ , but that doesn't change that, for this person, it's easier to use a Mac.

<comment><USER2> Not to nit pick, but he was describing the iOS and iPad experience, and not a Mac or OSX. I would say the OSX experience is closer to Windows than the iOS experience. He very well might have had similar prompts if he were using OSX.

<comment> X-Istence No Automatic Updates for Java or Flash on Mac OS X ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main point here is that the iPad is a strongly opinionated device. There are things you can do and things you can't. Windows machines are weakly opinionated devices. They don't venture to guess what you might want to do with them.

Most people don't want every option, they want the right option.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want to compare apples to Apples, try installing Java and Flash and a CD-Rom Game on your iPad.

</comment><comment><USER6> In short: the article bashes Windows 7 because of the terrible experience of managing security, OS updates and software updates.

The main thing Windows lacks is nice package management for external non-MS software and updates. Linux has been great at this from the word go. Steam did this for games on Windows, centralizing updates and keeping everything running smoothly. Apple's new App Store for OS X provides one place where all software you buy through the store can be simultaneously updated. Years ago I hoped Google Pack would expand to a full software distribution system to manage all this complexity for users, but it never happened.

<comment><USER7> To paint this as Apple vs Microsoft is to miss the bigger point. Regardless of how you trivialize the experience the author had with Windows, many people share it. Hell, a lot of the same is true for OS X; even with the app store. Likewise, the experience on the iPad is just as the author describes. The bigger question is, which will people prefer?

This is where it gets much broader. This isn't Microsoft vs Apple. This is space shuttle vs passenger car. One you simply get in and drive. The other you need a lot of training and a hell of an intellect to operate. I think it's pretty obvious which one your average person is going to prefer.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Its more of a ferarri w/ manual transmition vs toyota prius. While you can do some good shit to break that ferarri, the prius can break, but its simple, just drive, just gas and break, no third pedal no thinking, simple small quiet. Oh you can't race it but thats ok you drive the speed limit anyways, gives you a nice rear-view camera so parking is a breeze, low gas usage, YAY! For the price of an ipad I can buy a windows box with specs an ipad can only dream of. For the price of an imac I can buy a machine with enough power to let it degrade in performance for 5 years and still not approach the imac's performance.

I think its not a shuttle vs car analogy. More of a GM vs Tesla analogy. GM is dying because they stick to the old "what works", "were too big to fail" approach, while tesla is sticking to "were more expensive, but we make a damn superior product"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people are already stating that most of the mess documented in this post is not necessarily the fault of Windows 7. The OEM is at fault for not installing current versions of Java and Flash. The OEM is at fault for installing Norton crapware instead of a decent antivirus. The software developers are at fault for producing a buggy game, etc. This is all true.

BUT a non-technical user will not know any of this. They will see all of this as the experience they had using Windows 7. If Microsoft cares about the experience users have on Windows 7 they must prevent OEM providers from shipping it in this condition.

<comment><USER10> And this is why Apple won't license their OS to hardware OEMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What makes me laugh is how often we make the same mistakes.

For years computing has been a conflict between users wanting their computer do everything and their sysadmin telling them to limit it to essentials only.

The only reason the ipad is a success and vista a failure is due to expectations. If microsoft had developed the ipad rather than vista there would have been riots. Where's flash? What's this proprietary hardware bs? Why can't I plug in my monitor?

</comment><comment><USER12> People actually voted this blog post up?

How about me having to update itunes every other week and having to d/l 90M each time for a point version upgrade. Hasn't apple figured out how to do patches?

I end up updating my mac less because the updates are so freaking huge. Last update I did ended up being 1.2G. Yes, GIGS! And that was only after not updating for about 3 months. WTF?

</comment><comment><USER13> There is a sort of cultural blindness to these problems. Once you know how to work your way through the mess, you can fix it without any thought. You can do it with your eyes closed, accepting the pain as just the way things are.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just a typical rant on windows 7.

He could've _just_ install the game on a new iPad, and throw the notebook out of the _window_.

But wait! It's not in the app-store? The nice thing about old windows-games, they'll keep running on windows 8 too.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are better ways to make what is a valid point. Only geeks can forgive legacy baggage, but inevitably whatever MS do OS-wise is a balancing act. There's nothing new here.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, I am having trouble setting up this Linux server, so I might as well use this Gameboy.

</comment><comment><USER17> The same concept can apply to web applications in general, not just iPad.</comment>


A Haven for Spare Parts Lives on in Silicon Valley  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/technology/personaltech/05basics.html

<comment><USER2> There is one more here in Silicon valley, almost walking distance from Yahoo. Its called "WeirdStuff" (<http://www.weirdstuff.com>) - great fun scavenging there!

</comment><comment><USER3> In Houston there is a place called Electronic Parts Outlet (EPO) that does something similar. It's an awesome place to stroll around and poke if you have some time to kill.

The closest thing I can find in Seattle is Vetco on the east side. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd be _very_ interested.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, or for a while did NYTimes not force this login screen for most articles? I was kind of surprised to get it.

In any event, clicking on the link in Google seems to get past it: [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22A+Haven+for+Spar...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22A+Haven+for+Spare%22&aq=f&oq=)

</comment><comment><USER5> A store like this in Orlando FL is Skycraft <http://www.skycraftsurplus.com/>

And a once a month during the summer electronic flea market <http://w1mx.mit.edu/flea-at-mit>

</comment><comment><USER6> Might also be a good place for VCs to scavenge for unlikely startups, a place where Bob Ellingson said of two barefoot garage Steves, "I don't want to give these (young, scruffy-looking) guys any money."</comment>