Arduino Death Clock - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adamtait/ArduinoDeathClock <comment><USER2> A variation on this that I love is Tim Urban's "Your life in weeks" visualization.

[https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life- weeks.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html)

This is a progress bar, not a countdown clock. Personally, I find it super helpful in keeping perspective on the value of my time.

I do not mean to detract from OP's work (which is cool), I just thought others reading the comment might enjoy this other article too.

<comment><USER3> i will never forget when, in early 2016, i saw this for the first time. when looking at the visualization in terms of weeks, i simply cant believe it, even today. i just looked at it again now. it simply cant be so few weeks. it just cant. and yet it is. i cant believe all the time i wasted.

<comment><USER4> Here's a day version I saw in the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

[https://imgur.com/HnYCtlU](https://imgur.com/HnYCtlU)

Unfortunately it hasn't helped me do better with my time. I'd love to here more people's changes for not wasting the little time they have (like me spending hours a day on HN, FB, Netflix, etc...)

<comment><USER5> >like me spending hours a day on HN, FB, Netflix, etc...

If you enjoy it, or relax, or get inspired, it isn't wasting your time.

Can't be productive 100% of the time, and punishing yourself when you aren't makes you feel worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ATmega's EEPROM has a lifetime of 100k write/erase cycles. The program stores current time every 10 minutes, giving it ~2 years of lifetime. It looks like the clock will die long before you.

<comment><USER7> Totally off-topic, except for the EEPROM:

A colleague once told me about a bug in it's audi where it would write the current volume of the radio to an EEPROM after every volume change. So, after a few years, the car stopped remembering the last volume setting when turning the radio off and on, because the EEPROM died.

<comment><USER8> It's much worse: on every knob turn, modified value is written to EEPROM, and then real volume is set to value immediately read from EEPROM. So after some time volume control stopped working at all! (Audi Concert, Chorus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool - it'd be fun to wear one of these on your sleeve, and glare meaningfully at it when people start droning on about nothing in a meeting or whatever.

Although, it'd also be some embarrassing morbid irony if you run into an accident somewhere.

<comment><USER10> I essentially have something like this on my laptop (Chrome new tab) and it was awkward having to explain to the interviewer who saw that on my screen what it was counting down for.

<comment><USER11> ...did you get the job?

<comment><USER10> Lol no but actually I think I did pretty well on his portion of the interview FWIW. Just set an awkward initial tone that I had to dissipate with some small talk before the actual programming interview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen a similar low-tech version of this clock (sorry I can't find a link). You setup two jars. Fill one with 365 * (years of life left). In the morning you move a single bead from the full jar to the empty one. It's supposed to help you visualize "spending" your days, and encourages you to live them more deliberately.

<comment><USER13> I recall reading about this technique as used by Chris Crawford, a veteran video game developer with a lofty goal. (Intriguing article if you have the time.) [https://kotaku.com/30-years-later-one-mans-still-trying- to-f...](https://kotaku.com/30-years-later-one-mans-still-trying-to-fix-video- gam-1490377821)

<comment><USER12> Yep this is the source.

> _Chris Crawford owns 29,216 small plastic beads. Each bead is one of eight > colors, and there are 3,652 beads in each color group. One bead represents a > single day in Crawford 's life. Each color group, therefore, represents one > decade. The yellow beads are his childhood. The black beads are his teens. > The greens are his inexperienced twenties, the oranges his restless > thirties, the navy blues his settling forties and so on, all the way up to > bead 29,216, which will represent his eightieth birthday._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A simple improvement would be to use the average life expectancy given a certain age. This can be calculated with the age specific death rates for a population: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_table](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_table)

<comment><USER15> That topic would make for a lovely birthday card

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tangent: I see example.jpg added to the main repo, just for the readme. If you don't want to store binary blobs, there's an alternative: open a new issue, then copy-paste the image into the issue. It'll give you a link that you can use in a readme permanently.

<comment><USER17> This is another small step to being depedent on GitHub for hosting your project. A "git clone" won't clone images hosted in the issue tracker.

<comment><USER18> It won't, but it will still be displayed when rendering the readme, just like if it were hosted on any other webserver. Of course only as long as the webserver is around, but still better than adding several MB to your repo just for a few screenshots.

<comment><USER19> If it's only a few MB, I'd value the ability to backup the image together with the rest of the repo more than shaving a few MB off the repo.

(Also, hi Kilian. Long time no see.)

<comment><USER18> Depends on the "worth" of the image I'd say :P

And hi!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I actually designed one of these with the opposite mindset for a longevity researcher friend of mine. It was her 30th birthday and I was unable to attend, so I told her I would make sure to attend her 130th birthday instead and I gifted her a clock counting down until then.

</comment><comment><USER21> "The Lindy Effect is real (up to the biological limits of the human body)."

The Lindy Effect is explicitely for non biological systems: i.e. the car, the chair not your mother.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool project. I first saw Aubrey de Grey's TED Talk "A Roadmap to End Aging" [1] when it was first released online and it really impacted the way I think about mortality in a similar way.

[1] [https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_a...](https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging)

</comment><comment><USER23> Read Michael Ende's 'MOMO' to realize that one can not 'waste time'! I should do so again as well. One tends to forget while being in the rat race.

<comment><USER24> Increasing the amount of money and social status is not only possible direction in life. For example, one of your directions could be building better connections with people around you. This way playing games or watching movies instead of moving towards your goals is still a waste of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So clearly defined...

#define FINAL_EPOCH_TIME_SECONDS 2895868800 // this is the expected epoch time of your life expectancy

Which is October 7, 2061, a rainy Friday.

<comment><USER26> How did you get the weather for that day?

<comment><USER27> Why, do you not get 50 year weather forecasts on your phone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fuck you that's depressing.

</comment><comment><USER6> After power failure, clock will be 0..10 minutes behind the schedule. If the value written to EEPROM was ahead of actual wall clock by half of timespan between writes (instead of current time), each restart would contribute -5..5 minutes of drift, averaging out to zero over long time and multiple power failures.

One could in fact set it to update EEPROM only once a day, but write time half day ahead of current time. This will prevent wearing out memory for hundred of years while still maintaining decent accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER29> If the tinkering isn't an end unto itself, an easier alternative is to buy a simple countdown clock on Amazon for ~$15. I got this one for $12 to countdown until the end of my postdoc.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TSC1X8/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TSC1X8/)

Just pull of the retirement sticker.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nope. Backing the hell out of here.

</comment><comment><USER3> i wanted to make one of these but in the form of a watch you wear on your wrist. its interesting how some people are fascinated with these kinds of countdowns and others hate looking at them. me and my other cs buddy both think its interesting -- he has the tim urban poster on his wall. another friend of mine doesnt even want to look at it.

<comment><USER31> perhaps we should implant them in everyone, then monetize their time left..... [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Split format (ymd/hms) doesn't feel as fatal to me as e.g. 1 167 607 224 seconds remaining, where each week eats 0,05% and each year is ~ 31 557 000. It would be also nice to make time much slower at the beginning and much faster towards the end, as it really is IRL.

<comment><USER33> > It would be also nice to make time much slower at the beginning and much > faster towards the end, as it really is IRL.

I find this effect kind of terrifying. I'm in my early 30s and would estimate my perception of time is at least 3x as fast as it was before age 16 or so, maybe 4x. It's definitely getting worse. Even assuming some leveling off, I'm guessing a year at age 70 will feel about as short as a kid's month.

<comment><USER32> I'm 30+ too. When I discussed with my 70+ grandma on this topic, she laughed and said it will be decades, not just years passing by in a click, starting with 40-50+. We actually crossed our subjective time equator pretty long time ago, dude, no matter how healthy we are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This caused a reaction I did not expect. I find it horrifying, and it gave me a serious pit in my stomach.

</comment><comment><USER35> That is nice and everything, but why 5 (five!) digits for the years?

</comment><comment><USER36> I ride motorcycles, could die anyway!! pretty cool project though

</comment><comment><USER37> a problem i see is that humans tend to manifest thoughts they believe in.

when you see something that often (daily) you could think it is real (for the good or the bad).

</comment><comment><USER38> Countdown the the busiest day of a procrastinator's life.</comment>


A WYSIWYG math editor - <AUTHOR> https://coding.net/u/jinzw/p/mathEditor/git <comment><USER2> Well gave up trying to run or preview this math editor. Also its using MathJax which is already known to be very slow compared to roll your own or Katex.

I guess I'll stick with MathQuill which lets you preview as you type. [http://mathquill.com/](http://mathquill.com/)

<comment><USER3> MathJax is definitely slower, but KaTeX never got the developer attention it deserves, and so still lags in support of even some basic LaTeX environments that are used fairly frequently in math typesetting. Generally the order for software is 1) make it work, 2) make it fast, 3) clean it up, so starting with MathJax makes a lot of sense.

My absolute favourite still is [https://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php](https://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php), which is super fast, and has a nicely big input box so you can see all the text you've written, with all the convenient buttons for picking that function of which you can't for the life of you remember the exact syntax. WYSIWYG kind of falls flat when there is so much syntax you can't reasonably be expected to remember all of it.

<comment><USER4> KaTeX is still being developed ([https://github.com/Khan/KaTeX](https://github.com/Khan/KaTeX)). They support the "align" environment now, which is all I really needed.

<comment><USER5> They don't support linebreaks though. We would love to switch to KaTeX but the lack of linebreaks, among probably others, is a deal breaker. Working with MathJax is awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't read Chinese, but I'll just throw out that Lyx has a fairly great wysiwyg equation editor. It's sort-of latex based which makes it easy to input stuff, but you can actually see the equation unlike in normal Latex which is pretty unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER2> I suspect the awful loading time on both the demo and the repo is this code is sitting in mainland China. I haven't even been able to see the demo

There is no license included and non of the dependencies are included in the package.json. Still trying to get it to run locally just to see if there is anything of interest here.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, China has its own github, probably due to the GFW and due to better l10n. How popular is coding.net compared to github?

<comment><USER8> Github is not blocked by the GFW. I've never heard of coding.net before, most people here use github in my experience.

<comment><USER7> It has been blocked by the GFW a few times. I guess having it go down like that unpredictably would push people towards coding.net? But the l10n is probably a much bigger factor for why anyone would use coding.net?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more than that. [https://Coding.net](https://Coding.net) is a cloud development platform that enables developers do all the work in a browser (include free private repositories, WebIDE, powerful GTD tools, programmer community...).

Also, CODING runs a marketplace ([https://mart.coding.net](https://mart.coding.net)) to help developers find matching software requirements and make the deal. We will be rolling out the English version of our site in this year, so stay tuned:)

<comment><USER7> So do you comply with Chinese censorship better than github does?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was very difficult to guess how to use this. Consider adding a translation to English of the essential parts. (Disclaimer: I speak Spanish natively, but English will get you more world coverage.)

After some tries, I reach this steps to get a formula:

1) Open the demo: [http://matheditor.coding.io/](http://matheditor.coding.io/)

2) Press the Omega (a gray box appears)

3) Press: 2 + x _ 5 (wait half a second between each character)

4) I got this: [http://imgur.com/vtZZtrl](http://imgur.com/vtZZtrl)

</comment><comment><USER10> I generally just use [1]. Press the `fx` button and you can construct equations using the GUI that work in LaTeX. And if you click on the image and copy the address, you can send the (very long) link to a friend and share the equations too.

[1]: [https://latex.codecogs.com/](https://latex.codecogs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://matheditor.coding.io/](http://matheditor.coding.io/) for the demo

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks interesting, but a better loading indicator might be good. I opened this page, and got confused, until I looked at my browser's tab bar, and noticed it was still loading.

</comment><comment> goldenking-x I living in China.

So,Two point want to say.

1\. That site user all are super idiot & newbe.

2\. This stuff is super super super super RUBBISH.

I also can't understand, why this stuff has Favorite in HN Twitter accounts.

</comment><comment><USER13> A bit surprised to see a Chinese project on coding.net on HN. Applause!

That said I am constantly stuck in a state where I cannot backspace to delete what I wrote.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm the live example wasn't working for me :c.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is comical compared to mathquill

</comment><comment><USER2> Never loads.</comment>


Database Internals - <AUTHOR> https://databass.dev <comment><USER2> This is a very good book! Recently, I am very happy with a number of more foundational data books from O'Reilly:

Designing Data-Intensive Applications [https://dataintensive.net/](https://dataintensive.net/)

Streaming Systems [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920073994.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920073994.do)

and this one.

<comment><USER3> If you wanted to build your own database (to learn how), is Database Internals the better book, or DDIA?

<comment><USER4> I'm currently writing a book for PragProg called Building Distributed Services with Go (though it mostly applies to other languages too) that's walks you through building a distributed database from scratch. You can sign up on this mailing list to know when it's available: [https://travisjeffery.us4.list- manage.com/subscribe?u=1e3ff7...](https://travisjeffery.us4.list- manage.com/subscribe?u=1e3ff7d7791b26a8f60b9f16c&id=653935be08)

<comment><USER5> Looking forward to it. Do you have any idea when this might become a Beta book on PragProg? Cheers.

<comment><USER4> Awesome. Hopefully within a month or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been reading this book for the last few days - it is _way_ above what you expect these days for a technical book from a popular publisher in terms of its description of underlying data structures and algorithms. It's also easy to read. The depth of a text book with the approachability of a typical working programmer's book.

</comment><comment><USER7> I also recommend following Andy Pavlo and the CMU Database Group which has lots of free courses, videos and material:

[https://db.cs.cmu.edu/](https://db.cs.cmu.edu/)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnBsf2rH-K7pn09rb3qvkA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnBsf2rH-K7pn09rb3qvkA)

<comment><USER8> It suffers from the common issue for such content - theory/lectures are too diverged from the practical/lab part.

<comment><USER7> There's nothing stopping you from just writing code following the lectures. What else would a practical/lab part be? \

There are tons of open-source databases on github that you can hack on so I don't think there's a major issue with getting practical experience if you want it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The topical overview certainly sounds interesting, but sounds extremely similar to Designing Data Intensive Applications which also covers modern DB internals.

What's the sell here?

<comment><USER10> There is some overlap, but they complement each other. This one (Database Internals) has much more of a technical deep dive on storage engines, especially B-tree implementation details.

If I was mentoring someone learning this stuff, I'd advise reading Designing Data Intensive Applications first, which is certainly the best for giving the big picture, and follow up with this one for more detail on certain topics.

Given the previous dearth of books on this important subject, I think it's wonderful that we have two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Database Design and Implementation by Edward Sciore implements a fully working relational database from buffer manager up to parser and beyond. It's very much in the spirit of Tanenbaum's OS book.

Here's the landing page for the book's implementation: [http://www.cs.bc.edu/~sciore/simpledb/intro.html](http://www.cs.bc.edu/~sciore/simpledb/intro.html)

Unfortunately, I don't think the book is in print anymore.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am reading this book for the past few days. Very well written!

</comment><comment><USER13> Grey text on white background => almost unreadable on my screen and I don't usually have problems with low contrast.

<comment><USER14> Author here. Thanks for the heads up, it did look a bit bleak on the mobile. Increased the font size, made grey much more dark, and increased heading sizes. Hope it's easier to read now!

<comment><USER15> I don't know if I'm seeing the old version or the new version, but this is still very hard to read.

Advice to all web designers: Please do not use "font-weight: 300" for body text, _ever_. Simply changing that to 400 in the developer tools made it much more readable. The font was still bugging me, so I tried killing the "font- family: futura pt" too.

Wow! What a world of difference. Now it is super easy to read, instead of looking like it's trying to show off some design style.

Know your audience: you are addressing potential database developers with this book, not graphic designers.

<comment><USER14> Preferring one font over the other is more a question of taste, but I think you're right about font-weight: it does read better with 400. Thanks for the tip!

<comment><USER15> And thank you for being so responsive to feedback! It's much easier to read now.

I also want to apologize for my comment being a little grouchy; I should know better than to comment on style and readability in the wee hours. :-)

<comment><USER14> Sure thing! Appreciate that you've figured out what was wrong with that font, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In past few days I've heard so many praises and also I have heard so much criticism about Database Books in general.

What makes this book so much better?

<comment><USER17> It depends on your goal.

Database internals books are not worth reading if you want to work on implementing real world database engines. You are better off checking out internals and documentation of various implementations and also research papers in that field. And you would be doing your own research anyway.

But if you are just starting out in programming, it's probably as good book as any to learn something new and practical about algorithms and data structures.

<comment><USER14> I completely agree that it always depends on the goal. I'd also add a second vector: experience. If you've already worked with distributed and/or storage systems and have understanding of the field, you can jump straight to papers and code. However, for people who are just starting, it may be beneficial to read an overview book and get familiar with a field. This book attempts to be that a starting point that can help to navigate database papers and code.

Some of the folks I talked to who have already worked with databases a lot mentioned they've benefited from the book as well, since there were some concepts they were less familiar with or never had to learn (for example, transactional processing for the folks who have mostly worked with on eventually consistent databases; or B-Tree details for the folks who have mostly worked on LSM-Based storage engine)

Disclaimer: I'm author of this book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice. This is the book I've been wishing someone wrote for a long time. Finally! Insta-buy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this a full fee paid course for on campus students?

Because if it is, I would be miffed and feel short changed to be told to watch youtube lectures on my own time. I value face to face time and interactivity with my professor or lecturer. If this is a heavily discounted course due to the crippled way it is taught then I have no issue.

From the syllabus:

CS144 is taught using a combination of lectures and videos. In previous years, it was entirely "flipped"; i.e. all the lecture material was taught by videos. This year things are different and we are going to mix things up: Some weeks, including the first week, will be based on recorded videos that you are required to watch in your own time. We will call these Video Weeks. Other weeks, including the second week, are based entirely on in-class lectures, and you don't need to watch any videos. We will call these Lecture-only Weeks. So why mix things up? We are teaching this way because we have found that some of the material (e.g. the basic principles you learn in week 1) are most efficiently learned by watching videos - the concepts are fairly simple and the material is descriptive; a video is a more efficient use of your time. Other material, such as when you learn about congestion control in week 4, is best learned in person, interactively in a lecture.

<comment><USER20> The fee you pay for college courses is for the piece of paper saying you passed the course.

Those that don't need the piece of paper can learn for free. Who can complain about that!

<comment><USER19> Ostensibly. Some may want the paper and an actual learning experience that isn't virtualised. I must be asking for too much.

I also might not understand the purpose of the video lectures. If they supplant face to face time but get rid of the tedium, then I would say it should also accompany course/lecture notes, reading texts, and/or supplemental documents.

I just think forcing people to watch youtube videos is a much lower quality experience for a student. If it's a required course I'd want a refund for being forced into a lazy teaching format.</comment></comment></comment>


A Q&A with iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens about the demise of the repair industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-10/who-killed-mr-fixit-and-how-to-bring-him-back <comment><USER2> He lost me at the keurig analogy. Sometimes its just MUCH better to have a product that is focused on just being sold, not selling you shit afterwards. Look at keurig 2.0. That is very much how you create a market full of incomplete products and privacy invading information collection services. Apple is scared of open source and repair because they only sell hardware and apps, both of which they spend much effort grooming. Chances are if you break your phones backglass, youll be able to buy a replacement without an apple logo, if you don't want apples ridiculously (seriously is that even correct) priced glass back. That being said, this guys cause is pretty good. His sites teardowns are pretty spectacular. Hopefully phones do get more repairable in the future, I can imagine a company marketing a gimmick that the average phone repair is below x and takes less than y minutes in our future. Thatd be pretty sweet, but theres probably more hope for laptops.

<comment><USER2> Also the car analogy sucks. Actually I think im starting to hate all analogies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I bought a battery replacement from ifixit for my MacBook air thos Christmas. Installed myself without any prior knowledge. Couldn't be happier.</comment>


Ask HN: East Coast Vs West Coast: Risk Adversion - <AUTHOR>

I've been meaning to ask this on here and wondered what your thoughts were on this.
I live (currently) on the east coast, but visited the west coast (SF to get to the point).
After 25 years of living on the east coast, I've started to see a trend of folks here regarding joining/starting a startup venture.
I talk to countless individuals (tech and non-tech) would refuse to leave a cushy 9-5 job to start something awesome.
I recently spoke to an advisor of my startup who mentioned individuals living on east coast (generally speaking) are very risk adverse as compared to SF Bay area (and surrounding areas).
Is this a location thing? e.g. East coast being disproportionally risk adverse as compared to its west coast counterparts? Or have I just met overly risk adverse east coasters? <comment><USER2> 1\. Joining a startup is different from starting a startup. When you join a startup, irrespective of what cat video app your startup is working, you are still an employee. You may not be working 9-5. You may be working more like 11-11 but you are still nevertheless an employee.

2\. I would say that there are more people starting startups in the West Coast because there is a culture of starting companies in the West coast and people think it better to be closer to VCs. It is meaningless to bring this into a conversation of risk because there are loads of people working on risky shit everywhere. Working in a big company at a senior level is playing high stakes poker every day. It is not the same as a "cushy 9-5 job".

Source: I lived in SF, worked for startups for two years. Currently work in NYC.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe the term you're looking for is "risk averse".

</comment><comment><USER4> Everywhere outside of the valley is less tolerant of risk, which is what sort of makes the valley special.</comment>


View Art that Heals - <AUTHOR> http://tapsearch.com/about-ray-tapajna

<comment><AUTHOR> View our Art that Heals live and in motion based on color therapy and imagery studies to refresh your spirits, day or gain inspiration for your next project. Click on any image to view each by itself and you can show it freely to loved ones and others in need in hospitals, waiting rooms, nursing homes , rehab centers etc. If it helps you, let others know about it.

For those who are seeking something more spiritual, you can view the Healing in Blue Waters live and in motion with the healing prayer and the second touch prayer at [http://tapsearch.com/healing-prayer](http://tapsearch.com/healing- prayer)</comment>


The age of Amazon and Alibaba is just beginning - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21730641-rivals-and-governments-beware-age-amazon-and-alibaba-just-beginning <comment><USER2> Interesting article / thanks for sharing although I see it as unlikely to come true.

1\. The Economist just this month published a cover story about how globalization is actually helping people and just needs to be "adjusted". The article was very out of touch with the times and made me question and otherwise good magazine.

2\. Monopoly is being redefined slowly, mainly in academic legal circles, as market share instead of price point. This does not bode well for these two companies.

3\. Alibaba will be closed down shortly from the rest of the world. Eventually China's economy will falter, and this has been the only thing really holding the country together for the last 40 years. The solution to stabilize the country and prevent chaos from the poor western part overwhelming the rich eastern coast will be to seal the country off and stop trade, kind of like the Soviet Union did, in order to maintain an artificial economy. Probably not a great long-term solution, but it can be effective for a couple of decades.</comment>


Peeling away the interface in an iOS app - <AUTHOR> http://skookum.com/blog/ios-peeling-effect/

<comment><USER2> I love the internet for little things like this. The author proposes a way to achieve the page turn-effect in the Square app, and the one of the actual Square devs sees it and responds directly to explain how it was _really_ done :-) The internet... connecting people for nearly 40 years.

<comment><USER3> Noticed that as well. Indeed, very cool!

<comment><USER4> It can be done different ways, it's neat to see the different approaches!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Square's implementation is so drop dead simple: page curl away a transparent view. I would've over complicated it like the author did with screen captures.</comment>


There's an Ocean Deep Inside the Earth - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/theres-an-ocean-deep-inside-the-earth <comment><USER2> This is where Leviathan swims, right?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you approach enterprise sales in an unfamiliar industry? - <AUTHOR> Or for that matter, any industry. I feel like the default response is "if you're not familiar with an industry, you shouldn't necessarily be working in it" - but I'd love to hear what y'all think about it. <comment><USER2> The best way to start is by tapping your networks (personal, professional, online communities) for conversations. Your first step should be trying to understand how the industry works, what types of partnerships exist (and what the value exchange is for both parties), and understanding the responsibilities of folks with different job titles in that industry.

Start with a single conversation with anyone you know who's remotely related to that industry (preferably someone in the industry, if you can). Look for second degree connections on LinkedIn to folks at companies in that industry and ask your mutual connection for an introduction. Treat these meetings as informational interviews where your goal is to soak up as much knowledge and info as possible - be curious, ask a lot of questions, and listen more than you speak. Always end the conversations by asking for other introductions to people they think might be relevant or helpful.

By the time you've finally understood the landscape, you've already started building your network in the space. You've likely been building your product during this time - probably by integrating with non-paywall publishers and smaller news outlets. Work your way into the smallest paywalled news source first and start having conversations about the value prop with them and why a partnership with you will be beneficial to them. From there work your way up to the bigger guys. Remember that it will take many conversations and you're building relationships - deals like this are not closed overnight.

Hope this helps - good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for this advice. I'll start trying to set up meetings ASAP! Also, I dig what you've done with Tape - 98% open rates is very impressive :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some context in a comment, as not to sound too spammy, and I'm more interested in answers to the general question than to my specific situation:

I read a lot of news. It's most of what I click on on Facebook. I have a custom multireddit with all my favorite news-oriented subreddits. And every day, I hit paywalls. So, I'm currently trying to build a "Netflix for News" or "Apple News for the Web" (the implementation is pretty simple - just set up an OAuth2 Provider). The market is definitely niche (news junkies who prefer the browser experience) but I think the value prop is high (newspapers keep readers on their platform + receive monthly payout based on customer time spent on their site, readers don't have to worry about looking up news in one place).

The problem is that I've never worked in the newspaper industry. I think I only know one person who does. How do I go from that, to convincing a brand as huge as The New York Times (or whatever) to put a "Sign in with NetflixForNews" button on their paywall? The idea feels good, and the technical solution is simple, but the sales problem just feels insurmountable.</comment>


Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html <comment><USER2> Putting off an unimportant task to work on an important one isn't procrastinating. It's prioritizing.

The best bit of this essay is the last 5 paragraphs, how to work on big things:

1\. Break it down into fun small goals and experiments that get you in the right direction but offer their own reward.

2\. Let desire and interest pull you to certain activities at certain times. You're not a computer working through a todo list. Let serendipity happen.

I find having a to do list pushes me to do nothing. The thought of working through it is just too depressing. Letting desire and interest lead me means I'm usually doing SOMETHING. Often quite useful things it turns out.

When I look back over the first 15 years of my career I did my best work when I had no to do list at all.

<comment><USER3> Honest question: if you don't have a list, how do you make sure you don't forget to do some of the stuff?

<comment><USER4> The point is that "some of the stuff" doesn't matter– the only thing that matters is that you do the most important thing. Once you've done the most important thing, you do the next most important thing. As long as you keep doing that, you're always in the clear.

<comment><USER3> Then I won't be giving this to my 9th grader. Everything he's given (by teachers) must be done.

<comment><USER2> Teaching your 9th grader to prioritize and make his/her own decisions might be the most useful thing you can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination [...] the to-do list is itself a form of type-B procrastination"

This resonates so much with me. It took a long time to realise that my specific procrastination problem was type-B (and type-A). It then took another year or so before I realised that, contrary to a lot of advice out there, to- do lists are a terrible idea for a remedy.

<comment><USER6> Other than to-do lists (which are a favourite of most 'beat procrastination' guides that I've read) - what do you find helps?

As a side note; I found this to be a great article on the topic: [http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators- procrastin...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators- procrastinate.html)

<comment><USER7> Rather than to-do lists, I have found much help with the subtly different "habit tracking" systems. I personally use this one: [http://productiveapp.io/](http://productiveapp.io/)

I keep my threshold for daily success low. For example, I have a habit item of reading a book. All I have to do is read for, say, 15 minutes, and that suffices for me to click off that I completed the habit for the day, and I can go back to procrastinating if I like.

But I find that once I get started doing something that I actually want to do (such as reading a real book rather than surfing the web), then it's pretty easy to continue doing it for a longer period of time.

<comment><USER5> I've noticed the same thing, it often boils down to finding a strategy to 'fool yourself' into starting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test- driven_development](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) helped me to overcome procrastination</comment>


China's digital dictatorship - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21711904-worrying-experiments-new-form-social-control-chinas-digital-dictatorship <comment><USER2> I've read recently that WeChat has been "ghosting" words that the Chinese government doesn't want citizens viewing. Meaning, if it was on the blocked list, WeChat would just not deliver that message in its entirety.

[http://citizenlab.org/2016/11/wechat-china-censorship-one- ap...](http://citizenlab.org/2016/11/wechat-china-censorship-one-app-two- systems/)

<comment><USER2> P.S we're not far from something like that in the U.S. Private companies collude with the govt far too often, while private companies collude with their servers against their own users at an even greater degree. See recent Evernote privacy policy overreach. I'm in the early stages of building an open protocol for encryption and ownership of notes. Would love any feedback. See [https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201926) (152 points, 1 day ago, 196 comments)</comment>


VSCollectionKit: Swift Component based lib for UICollectionView - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Vinodh-G/VSCollectionKit <comment><AUTHOR> VSCollectionKit is a library for building applications views/screens in a consistent and understandable way, with advantages like composition, independent and testing.

VSCollectionView a handy framework supporting the functionality of a UICollectionView or UICollectionViewController in a much simpler way. VSCollectionKit also avoids a lot of collectionView related code hassle and duplicates.

Lets see what we get using this kit for developing the application views

### Composition ###: VSCollectionKit breaks down larger features into smaller components that can be isolated modules and be easily combined to form a full feature.

### Mobility ###: Using VSCollectionKit, we can develop a component to be independent ie., the component doesn't know anything about the user using it. This gives us a confident of using it in multiple places of the same project hassle-free.

### Testing ###: Using VSCollectionKit, each and every component can be tested individually. As it makes smaller independent components to become a bigger complex view controller, there will be less or NIL integrity issues (fixing in one place which causes a bug in a different place).</comment>


Ask HN: How do you remember the best stuff from non fiction books? - <AUTHOR> I read quite a bit of non-fiction books. I often find that as time passes i forget the techniques, methods or key insights.
What is your process for remembering the most important things from non fiction books?
I have been experimenting with the following:
1. Highlights in Kindle
2. Once the book is complete, copy to evernote
3. Revise, Delete, reorder and organize
4. Create a mind-map
Depending on the number of highlights it can be quite time consuming. <comment><USER2> I use a bookshelf. When I'm trying to remember something I read, I find the book and read it again. The advantage over taking notes, which I used to do, is that between the time I've read something and the time I'm trying to remember it, I've read lots of other things and my understanding has changed...well there's other advantages as well. I can spend time reading instead of taking notes. The book is the source and the notes are always more vague.

There are some caveats. I like physical books. I don't worry about trying to remember everything based on the realization that there won't be a test next week. I don't try to write down every idea I have as I read because I have many many ideas and the most important ones bubble up naturally from synthesis over time -- they're not little facts, they're big abstractions.

Interestingly, yesterday I was reading a technical book I bought about four or five years ago (a used copy of _ANSI Common Lisp_ ) and read a note I had written in the margin perhaps a year after buying it (I'm on Norvig's 21 day plan for learning Common Lisp, apparently). Anyway, the epiphany I'd had and written down was obvious in the text I read up to the point of the marginal note as I read it yesterday and it took me longer to understand the note than the text.

One of the good things about getting older is rereading (fiction and non- fiction) books. After a few years good books are different books when they are reread.

[http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)</comment>


Adobe Brackets 1.12 with JavaScript Code Refactoring - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases/tag/release-1.12 <comment><AUTHOR> New Features:

JS Refactoring - JavaScript specific code refactoring functionality.

Rename - Functionality in JS mode to enable intelligent rename in file/scope feature by using Tern's scope analysis and inference functions.The rename function works by selecting a variable def/ref or placing cursor in and using Ctrl+R.

Wrap Selection in Try Catch/Condition - Wraps selected code in try catch block. This functionality can be used by placing cursor without any explicit selection where Brackets identifies the statement scope and wraps it in try catch block.

Convert to arrow expression - One click conversion of anonymous expression/function block to arrow expression.

Create Getter/Setter - Creates getters/setters for currently active identifier in context of a class/construct.

Extract as variable - Expressions can be extracted as variable in the current scope.

Extract as function - Selected code blocks can be extracted as a function in a selectable scope chain and Brackets takes care of dependency symbols parameterization.

Release Notes Link: [https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Release- Notes:-1.12](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Release-Notes:-1.12)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

I really like Brackets for its instant preview mode and very nice JS support. My goto Editor for rapid web styling.</comment>


8 Types of people you see at a meetup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@peepuniverse/8-types-of-people-of-you-encounter-at-a-meetup-62e276934a0a <comment><USER2> The list matches any large group of people.

<comment><USER3> Kind of a generic list really.</comment></comment>


IPhone case with integrated charging cord - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1984298228/case-lynk-never-forget-your-charge-and-sync-cord-a

<comment><USER2> I wonder how Apple's new policy regarding 3rd party iPhone chargers will affect these guys moving forward.

And I'm not sure I share the same frustration they do. Typically, when my phone is almost out of juice, I'm about as likely to find a charger as I am a usb port. If this somehow plugged into a standard outlet, it might be worth something, but as it stands I wouldn't buy one.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Even if you did find a usb port somewhere, this 'cord' isn't long enough to let you use the iPhone while it's charging, anyway. I also don't like the idea of my iPhone hanging from a usb wall adapter.

<comment><USER4> I have one of these, which you can instantly "recharge" at the corner store by buying 4 AA batteries.

<http://www.tekkeon.com/products-tekcharge1580.html>

I normally keep it filled with good quality rechargeable NiMH batteries (PowerEX) which hold more than enough juice to completely recharge an iPhone 4. 4 AA's from the store will give you about 2/3rds of a charge. I find it well designed. It also works as a travel charger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is the iPhone 5 really going to have a different dock connector? That makes me and the stockpile of iPhone cables I have amassed over the years very sad panda.

<comment><USER6> i bet there will be an adapter for 10 bucks.

<comment><USER7> Considering everybody is going to buy one, I'd put it at a higher cost than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking at the pictures, the only practical use for this would be a laptop. Charging via a desktop or a radio (which I have done many times) would make such a short cord impractical if not impossible as the cord would just fall out of the usb port. Even if it didn't fall out, a weighted object hanging at a right angle just seems like a bad idea.

I could see this being practical if this had a longer cord that could be built into the case.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just use this flipsync USB iphone charger keychain: <http://lx.tc/flipsync>

Under $10 and always with me, solves my problem easily and inexpensively!

(disclaimer: amazon affiliate link)

</comment><comment><USER10> _(it's not terribly important, but if you change the title to " iPhone..." [note the space at the beginning], HN's super-smart auto-capitalization system stops working and you get a nice "iPhone..." instead of "IPhone...")_

</comment><comment><USER11> I prefer this one: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/juicetank/juicetank- the-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/juicetank/juicetank-the-first- ever-iphone-charger-and-case-i)

<comment><USER12> Where the hell does the AC adapter go?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great product. Bad timing.

I think many people are waiting on iPhone 4 purchases until the iPhone 5. And the 5 is rumored to have a different adapter.

<comment><USER14> They actually mention on the front page their plan for the iPhone 5 in regard to the rumors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Love the idea...now if I only had an iPhone...

<comment><USER16> sad, that they don't dare to shoot for the galaxies. and uusb would be standard anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great idea.

</comment><comment><USER18> bad design... but made me think of a good one... _runs to patent_</comment>


Ask HN: Hey hackers how many hours do you sleep? - <AUTHOR>

just another poll... <comment><USER2> 5-8. 2+ hours of exercise a day enables better concentration for longer periods imho.

<comment><USER3> True - removing the commute by living near work or working from home can also help you exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> About 6 - bed around 2am-ish, up at 8am-ish. I often have a 30 minute nap around 9pm.

Any more and I have a sore back and a foggy head, any less and I have a foggy head!

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the day, usually 6-8 and sometimes a 1-2 hr nap that day as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> An actual poll from a few weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328901>

</comment><comment><USER7> As many as I can fit so long as I'm up by 6am. Usually 6-7ish.

</comment><comment><USER8> As many as I need to...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 4-6

</comment><comment><USER9> 8

</comment><comment><USER10> 7</comment>


Ken-Thompson-esque Delphi compiler trojan found in the wild - <AUTHOR> http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/08/19/w32induca-spread-delphi-software-houses/

<comment><AUTHOR> According to Sophos, the company, the trojan infects Delphi compilers and their output in roughly the manner described by Ken Thompson's famous "Reflections on Trusting Trust:" <http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html></comment>


Apple: Heap Overflow in AppleBCMWLANCore Driver - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1302 <comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly this was not part of the original iOS11 security announcement: [http://web.archive.org/web/20170919182359/https://support.ap...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170919182359/https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208112) and (a mail to apple-security which is no longer archived at [https://lists.apple.com/archives/security- announce/2017/Sep/...](https://lists.apple.com/archives/security- announce/2017/Sep/threads.html#00000) )

But instead published after the fact as an additional update: [https://lists.apple.com/archives/security- announce/2017/Sep/...](https://lists.apple.com/archives/security- announce/2017/Sep/msg00002.html) and [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208112](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208112)

Why delay the announcement? And why remove the original "APPLE-SA-2017-09-19-1 iOS 11" with "Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 -0700" from the apple-security email archive?

Also, are Macbooks vulnerable to the same bug until next monday when macOS 10.13 drops?

Also, there are about 6 other similar issues recently posted to Google Project Zero: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project- zero/issues/list?can=1&q...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project- zero/issues/list?can=1&q=owner:firstname.lastname@example.com&sort=-id)

</comment><comment><USER2> Is this going to be fixed in iOS 10? Some users have apps which will not work with iOS 11, so cannot immediately upgrade.

<comment><AUTHOR> Highly unlikely, I don't think Apple has ever released multiple branches of updates for any device. The closest is perhaps iOS 6.1.6, a fix for the fatal "gotofail" SSL vulnerability, which was pushed out to devices stuck on iOS 6.x, but if your device was eligible for iOS7 then iOS7(.0.6) was what you would get.

That's also the only time I can remember security updates being pushed after a device model being end-of-life'd.

<comment><USER2> Have they previously had an app transition like 32-bit / 64-bit, where some users cannot upgrade?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, so this is going to be interesting to watch. Personally I was hoping that they would offer an optional download of 32bit support libraries to let iOS11 users run important existing legacy apps and access their documents, but they seem to push hard on making developers get in line and update their apps. Which is unhelpful for the cases where the developers no longer have any interest in their apps or even exist (bankrupt, disbanded, in some cases deceased)

<comment><USER3> > _Which is unhelpful for the cases where the developers no longer have any > interest in their apps or even exist (bankrupt, disbanded, in some cases > deceased)_

If they are "bankrupt, disbanded, in some cases deceased" then maybe insisting on using those apps are not the best course for the user either...

<comment><USER4> As I commented last time on the subject: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15285252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15285252)

Sometimes the apps are the only way to access something else, in this case a car remote unlock.

Sometimes someone has paid actual money for an app, more than the $1 baseline; some music apps are in triple figures.

<comment><USER5> This is a valid concern, I don't understand why you are getting downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonder what this means in the grand scheme of things. Will Apple dump Broadcom and go with Qualcomm or attempt to fix Broadcom's broken driver.

I say broken as I've yet to see good code come from Broadcom.

<comment><USER7> This isn't even in Broadcom code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe not this time, but they have a history of fatal firmware bugs that could compromise the host system - such as [http://boosterok.com/blog/broadpwn2/](http://boosterok.com/blog/broadpwn2/)

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, Broadcom's market share in attractive heavy-firmware wifi adapters is pretty high. They could just be an exploit magnet.

<comment><USER9> Does that mean that all embedded WiFi (and probably also baseband) controllers are deeply rotten, and we only blame Broadcom so far because of their popularity with device manufacturers?

<comment><USER10> Pretty much.

In general, you can assume that if you can't audit it, it's absolute crap. This is true for hardware and software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is every buffer overflow important enough to need detailed discussion and commentary?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think these latest sets of wifi flaws are interesting if it turns out they are exploitable by merely being in radio range of an attacker even without joining a malicious network or requiring user interaction. That could quickly become a fast and wormable attack. You could probably flood across an entire city jumping from chip to chip in no time.

Especially now that iOS 11's wifi-off button in the control center no longer actually disables the radio, but merely disassociates from the current access point.

<comment><USER12> > Especially now that iOS 11's wifi-off button in the control center no longer > actually disables the radio

I still can't belive this decision. I keep my Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off as much as possible and it's now difficult to to as a result of this change is ios11. Really bothers me.

<comment><USER13> I really don't understand why people keep those two off. If you're not using them they use very little battery at this point; it's not like it was 10 years ago.

Since Apple keeps detailed usage statistics (from the people who opt in) my guess is they know how common such a behavior is and it's obviously low enough they don't think this change is a problem.

I agree with some of the other comments I've seen that this probably accomplishes what the user is trying to do (ignoring a Wi-Fi network that's temporarily behaving poorly) and possibly protecting them (forgetting to turn it back on it running up a huge cell bill). I know I've heard complaints from people who accidentally did that a number of times.

<comment><USER14> I keep it off because as I ride a train it's connecting to every station wifi and losing it just as quick, completely breaking connectivity.

<comment><USER15> Turn off "ask to join" and it will only connect to known networks.

<comment><USER14> The station wifi is known though, so when I have a long wait for a train at a station I'm not burning data on YouTube

<comment><USER16> You can set the known network not to connect automatically. But you can only access that setting when you are in range.

<comment><USER14> I didn't know about that setting, thanks for the tip. Will definitely come in handy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pseudo Static Ip Service - <AUTHOR> I am an ameteur home automation hacker and I am looking for a service that would securely track only my external ip address so that I could have a way to look up my exteral ip remotely.
Are there any services like that? I cant seem to find any.
Is that type of service in demand or am I a lone wolf? <comment><USER2> You could use Cloudflare for DNS and their API[1] for updating a subdomain of your own to your dynamic ip. With that, you could also use the dehydrated[2] script with dns challenges to host subdomains with ssl on your lan. It's all easily automated, as well.

[1]:[https://gist.github.com/larrybolt/6295160](https://gist.github.com/larrybolt/6295160) [2]: [https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated](https://github.com/lukas2511/dehydrated)

I can't suggest that cloudflare script, as I've long since rolled my own, but there are plenty of examples out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> This [1] works well if you're behind NATs where you don't have control over port-forwarding settings, ie. Public HotSpots, etc.

[1] [https://github.com/beameio/beame-insta- ssl](https://github.com/beameio/beame-insta-ssl)

</comment><comment><USER4> you are looking for a dyn-DNS / dynamic DNS service like noip.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Thanks!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think DuckDNS is what you're looking for [https://www.duckdns.org/](https://www.duckdns.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I use afraid.org for my dynamicdns.</comment>


Show HN: I live in SF, & I've built a slack like telerobotics platform: remo.tv - <AUTHOR> https://remo.tv <comment><AUTHOR> SF is currently under lockdown, and i've been working on this project since summer. I had a previous startup called Let's Robot, and Remo is more of a v2.

It allows for real time control of video streaming robots w/ pretty low latency. You can setup a public or private server to share with anyone you want. Public servers are added to the public directory than anyone visiting remo can access.

I designed the structure to be a bit more like slack or discord.

This is somewhere between an MVP and a scalable v1. Currently you have to sign up for an account to access anything.

My goal is to make a general purpose open source tele-robotics platform that is targeted towards every day people to use, not just engineers.

You can customize the interface for your robot using a JSON file. The source code for the controller is on the site's front page ( if you wanna add a robot ), and the source for the entire platform is also linked there.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has. I'm currently on lockdown and streaming robots from my house off and on during the quarantine.

Direct link to my robot server: [https://remo.tv/join/ay4l4ea](https://remo.tv/join/ay4l4ea)</comment>


Razor Syntax in ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=565

<comment><USER2> It seems funny that .NET got their own @formula engine (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_language>).

I like subtle nods and references by MS towards Lotus Notes since Ray Ozzie went to MS - or is it only in my head?

<comment><USER3> It's an unsubtle nod to spark <http://sparkviewengine.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ASP.NET is finally getting the idea of alternative template engines. That is one great point about Python, Ruby, PHP etc is there are many template alternatives for all levels of simplifying templates so that they aren't so glued to the controller or renderer.

This makes it easy to swap out basic html/javascript templates and use them in complex systems without mounds of work.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ruby and Python templating engines are better.

<comment><USER6> Haml/Sass is the best thing that happened to my view layer (next to wonderful Ruby blocks, iterators and chaining)

<comment><USER7> Look up NHaml.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yet another ASP.NET flavor?

<comment><USER3> Well, yes. Which is better: options, plugins and experimentation; or only one way to do it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not against ASP.NET or this Razor syntax, but is this really HN material? Honestly folks, I'm clueless about how this got to the front page.

<comment><USER10> We also sort of already discussed this on the author's last submission. - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1641578>

<comment><USER11> All these posts about ASP.Net are getting in the way while I wait for the 500th article about Clojure or Node.js.</comment></comment></comment>


StartPerks - "Corporate" perks and deals for startup employees (SF,NYC) - <AUTHOR> http://www.startperks.com/

<comment><USER2> So is this like FoundersCard?

<comment><USER3> I so wish I could get the discount on Uber that you get with FoundersCard. Cost me $30 last night :(

<comment><USER4> Whats this FounderCard? Want to leave your referal code?</comment></comment></comment>


How to Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) Stack on Debian - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-debian?utm_content=how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-debian <comment><USER2> I will never understand why Apache and MySQL are still popular, especially Apache. Is there anyone who still chooses Apache when they could use nginx instead? And, if so, why?

<comment><USER3> A big reason that comes to mind is easy, cheap availability of people to install, debug, and customize an Apache setup. Also, availability of one-click install setups from major hosting providers. The ecosystem for "mere mortals" is unparalleled.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there still room between AWS, Google Cloud and Azure? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> That depends entirely on what you define as "room". Rackspace, Softlayer, and many others are competing in that space and are doing quite well. If you define "room" as "beating AWS, Google, and Microsoft" then I don't think there is "room" like that.

We are still in the very early stages of utility computing. There is ample opportunity to build successful products in that space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not beating, merely competing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll just say "go read _The Discipline of Market Leaders_ ". I hate to sound glib, but I think you'll find their approach interesting, and I don't feel like trying to summarize the whole book here. It's not long though, and it's definitely worth a read. IMO, anyway.</comment>


Silicon Valley might be losing its sex appeal - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/04/04/silicon-valley-salary-study <comment><USER2> People have always felt this way and that's why many many of them move away never to return. There is a reason to be there, and it's not because you want a good stable life. It's a miserable place and always will be that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Texas legalized weed I would move to Austin overnight. How is Colorado's tech sector these days?</comment>


Why are high-dimensional spheres "Spikey"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.penzba.co.uk/cgi-bin/PvsNP.py?SpikeySpheres <comment><USER2> Let me offer a couple of other ways to view this.

The most important point is that higher dimensional space is very roomy. There are many degrees of freedom, many directions.

Take the first puzzle, the inner sphere that is bigger than the outer ones. One factor is that the 2 by 2 by ... by 2 packing isn't very efficient. It's not even the densest packing in 2 dimensions, less so in 3, and it gets dramatically less so as you go up. With 10 dimensions it is really inefficient so there is a lot of space in the middle.

As far as the "cap" not having much volume: this wasn't explained very clearly, what he meant. Picture a circle with radius=1 centered at the origin, and then look at the piece cut off by y > 1/2 (hope that prints ok, I mean y greater than 0.5). That piece has a certain fraction of the total area. Now picture a sphere at the origin, radius 1, and the cap cut off by y > 1/2. That cap will have a smaller fraction of the total volume. Going to higher dimensions, the fraction gets smaller and smaller.

But rather than meaning the sphere is "spiky", this is a result of more degrees of freedom. There are many more caps in many more directions on a high dimensional sphere. So each cap has to have less of the volume. Spikiness is really an absurd way to think of it.

With practice, I've developed some ability to visualize four dimensional space. Its overwhelming character, as I said, is that it is infinitely and somewhat frighteningly roomy. This would be even more so in higher dimensions.

<comment><USER3> +1 We find similar things intriguing <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1848275> :)

Though this might seem esoteric, this phenomena has practical applications. In the vector space model of information retrieval, documents are modeled as points on a high-d sphere, where d is the size of the vocabulary.

So unless one accounts for these effects, there will be fascinating surprises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Related to this is the amusing phenomenon of concentration of measure. Take a ball of dimension d and distribute points uniformly at random by area. Take any patch with an area that is half of the total. A hemisphere is a valid choice. Consider its boundary. If you chose the northern(southern) hemisphere, this would be the equator. Strangely enough almost all points will lie within a distance of O(1/sqrt(d)) from that equator. As d grows this defines an incredibly thin band, but it contains almost all the points.

What it means in terms of programming is that if you are searching for K points (chosen uniformly by someone else), you may as well just search over that thin band and you will find almost all of them there. That ratio can easily be in the high 90s.

To give an intuition to why this happen, note that earth's equator is modestly larger than say a 60^degree north latitude. But as you crank up the dimension d this gap grows exponentially fast. So in comparison to equatorial circles, the other latitudes have almost no space at all, even when almost all of the smaller ones are taken together.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is in response to the comment here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834508>

My next item will be on the 1800 dimensional space problem I mention.

</comment><comment><USER4> >It's these contradictory intuitions that are simultaneously difficult and useful. You just need to pick the right one at the right time.

I have heard it put that you actually need to learn to ignore your intuitions and follow the actual calculations to do higher-level math. Rather like Eliezer's "shut up and multiply" on Less Wrong. I have no personal opinion on that since I haven't learned any higher math, past first year calculus and discrete math, yet.

<comment><USER5> Many great mathematicians would disagree with that. I like this definition from a prof at Stanford:

 _A proof is a nothing more than a clear, compelling argument._

If it _feels_ wrong, no matter how rigorous the math is, you still shouldn't blindly believe it. It's an opportunity to delve deeper, and either find a flaw in the proof (or your understanding thereof), or to educate your intuition.

<comment><USER6> Exactly: intuitions can be changed, and if they're leading you astray then they should be. It's very important to have a solid set of intuitions, especially in fields like higher math that aren't easily intuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recall a related fact from simple statistical mechanics: the volume of high- dimensional sphere is concentrated almost exclusively near its surface. This fact allowed some nasty calculation of volume in state space to be approximated by the area of the hypersphere.

IIRC, the basic notion is that volume is like r^n and area like n * r^(n-1). Quite different when n = 2, 3, ... and not so much at n = 10^23. I never thought of them as spikey but I get the picture now.

</comment><comment><USER8> My brain feels kinda stretched from trying to visualize all that. Thanks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome.

If it gets a couple more up-votes then it might make it to the front page for more people to get their brains stretched.

I do also need to modify the page to point out that hyper-cubes are also spikey, and the hyper-spheres in the corners are sort of in the spikes. Thanks to cperciva for the added insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Greg Egan's novel Diaspora has some mind-bending scenes set in 5 dimensional space. Imagine orbiting a 5 dimensional planet and trying to scan the entire surface. The surface itself is 4 dimensional. Lots of area to search.

</comment><comment><USER9> Someone once recommended "Infinite Dimensional Analysis: A Hitchhiker's Guide" by Aliprantis and Border, with the claim that "solving problems in high dimensions can be approximated by assuming infinite dimensions". I haven't yet summoned up the mathematical guts to dig into it myself.

<comment><USER3> Infinite dimensional analysis is essentially functional analysis. A crude analogy is that a function is an infinite dimensional vector [...f(0),f(0+epsilon),...] so on. Although extremely interesting in its own right, this approach however will not give you a handle on how the behavior changes as the dimensionality grows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> makes sense... on an 1800 dimension sphere as you move away from any orthogonal direction the other 1799 dimensions can only share what you lose in the original direction so they all add up to 1... well.. you know... pythagoras and all that.</comment>


Nissan launches longer-range electric vehicle - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41170144 <comment><USER2> Still using an air cooled battery system and defaults to a 3kw charger requiring buying the faster charger or wait for higher tier models.

with regards to the starting range of 150 miles at 30k. I am not too worried, Honda recently released a sub 30k below 100 mile range EV and Kia/Hyundai is in a similar position. Apparently they think their is even a market for below 100 still.

150 miles provides a decent buffer when weather goes cold as EVs can be really penalized in winter to the point that old models were not usable for commutes regularly hitting range limits.</comment>


An Open Letter to Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://outline.com/9Btvud <comment><USER2> I have to agree that Clojure is enlightening:-)</comment>


The Supreme Court Will Decide If the US Can Access Anyone's Data on Earth - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gy54zb/us-v-microsoft-supreme-court <comment><USER2> This will have immense ramifications on the ability of US companies to do business overseas. Even if there are no legal barriers erected (which I doubt), there will unquestionably be marketing barriers. If there were a company I did business with that had a home-country ruling like this, I would definitely think twice about how much I trust their government.

<comment><USER3> There already are legal barriers? Even if the Supreme Court decides this is legal, EU and Irish law make it illegal, and Microsoft will be in extremely deep shit if they actually share the data.

<comment><USER2> That adds a fascinating wrinkle to it, what happens if the EU makes it illegal to share the data, and the US requires it? A company could find themselves in between a rock and a hard place, forced to violate the dictates of at least one powerful governmental force.

<comment><USER4> Not that interesting, really.

Nobody forces Microsoft to exist in the EU, or to sell their software to EU citizens. They would simply be forced out of that market.

<comment><USER5> Correct, but at the same time what happens to EU companies selling software services in the US? If the EU companies don't fork over data will they get restricted too? I'm not sure if isolating every jurisdiction into its own tech ecosystem is an achievable (let alone sustainable) direction. To a certain extent, Microsoft (and presumably others) are attempting to do this for their data[1] by hiring data trustees in other countries. Essentially, Microsoft still develops the technical services but hires another company, which does not have US presence, to hold that data and is subject to the (presumably stronger) privacy laws of the country it is located in.

I'm not sure how resilient this is to coercion by the US government. Maybe the US government could forbid Microsoft from doing business with the data trustee unless the the trustee gives up user data.

1\. [https://news.microsoft.com/europe/2015/11/11/45283/](https://news.microsoft.com/europe/2015/11/11/45283/)

<comment><USER6> EU companies (typically) don't have a nexus or operating presence in the US, therefore they can't be coerced to release requested data (unless the US Government is going to request three letter agencies to null route their traffic at internet exchanges [or take other adverse actions against their traffic]).

Your shell game you suggest will not withstand the scrutiny of an intelligent judge and an aggressive prosecutor.

Source: A lifetime ago, I was asked as a consultant to spec and site infrastructure out of the reach of the US government with the help of an international law attorney.

<comment><USER5> What's to keep the US government from fining companies or suspending their ability to do business until they give up user data? For example, London suspending Uber's ability to operate in the city.

While I'd agree that small-ish foreign companies can probably fly under the radar, I don't think any company that receives payments from US customers is immune to coercion from the US. If the US government can impede a company's ability to access US customers then that's an ability to compel a company to give up data.

<comment><USER7> Worth noting that Uber's licence to operate in the UK is issued to a UK registered company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More specifically, the Supreme Court is deciding whether the US can compel companies with a US presence to hand over data stored in other countries.

"Anyone's data on Earth" is a significant exaggeration. It's not like the US is going to demand Putin's emails (at least not through the courts, who knows what they're trying to do clandestinely).

<comment><USER2> I'm not certain it _is_ a significant exaggeration, nor am I certain the US wouldn't demand Putin's email :-)

In practice you're probably right, but the idea of leaving things up to the discretion of politicians, particularly the ones we tend to elect, terrifies me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even if the court decides that companies can be compelled to provide information stored in servers in other countries, I don't see this going anywhere without mutual reciprocative agreements with other countries. Very few countries would want data about/owned by their citizens to be given away directly or indirectly. Even then, it may be a long drawn process, just like with any other cross border criminal investigations.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's time to enforce the fact that subsidiaries are independent companies that are only subject to their place of incorporation. Director of local companies have responsibility. A shareholder should only influence a company through the general assembly and is his lasting influence should be exercised by his choice of board member.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the second time I've seen this story with a completely misleading headline, it makes a person wonder what the agenda is when creating the headlines.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't the NSA already doing this the best they can? Kind of an irrelevant thing for the SC to worry about.</comment>


Ask HN: Office merge. They have a pet policy. I'm scared of dogs. What can I do? - <AUTHOR> My employer will soon be merging two of its offices into a new site. The new space is open plan (desks, not cubicles) and will hold about 100 people. The other place has a 'bring your dog to work' policy, but I'm quite uncomfortable having dogs running around me.
Personally (and the opinion of others in my office) is that the idea that you'd bring your pets to work is rediculous, but from a quick browse of the Internet it seems to have mixed opinions.
Am I right to bring it up that the dog should go, or should I try not to make waves? <comment><USER2> I like dogs but I wouldn't want to work in an office with dogs running around. I would definitely ask for a dog free zone (at the very least) if it were me. You're definitely not wrong to be weirded out by it. Working outside on a farm with dogs is one thing, but offices are no place for animals that might have energy to burn by running around (imo).

That being said, definitely consider meeting some nice dogs to convince yourself that they're not so scary. If you're feeling ambitious, go to a dog park and ask people if it's okay to pet their dog. Hold out the back of your hand to let it sniff you before you pet it, and move toward it slowly to gauge it's level of comfort. These little fears are worth taking the time to overcome.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm all for freedoms until they infringe on the freedoms of others. You shouldn't have to go to work in a place where you don't feel comfortable. Raise the issue. Any responsible and reasonable employer would either nix the policy or find a way to accommodate your situation in some way.

<comment><USER4> I'm uncomfortable around (and supremely irritated by) human babies, but it's pretty common to let people bring their awful babies into an office. Those babies don't work here, and they have no business being here, but I guess human parents feel they have some legitimate reason to bring them to work. In a fair world, I don't see how dogs are any different.

<comment><USER5> They bring them to work, set them in a bouncer, and then proceed to work the entire day while the baby is there?

The most I've ever seen is a few minutes of someone bring in their child to show some co-workers before after heading out to lunch or home.

If someone is bringing their baby in while they are working for the whole day, I think it would be reasonable to ask them to find child care options.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I've only seen the same. Having children at the office for a work day isn't sensible. Except when it's actually provided for:

At a large company I was interviewing at they showed us an open-floor office for employees whose babysitter was missing on that day (or a sick spouse or whatever).

The employees could just grab their laptop, and take a desk in that office for a day.

In front of all the desks was a glass wall. Behind it a kindergarten, so that the parents could see their child and the children were occupied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Usually most people bringing in dogs are very considerate and the dogs are usually very well behaved (certainly won't bite you). I would talk to HR, it's possible that they may have some way of helping you deal with it, possibly a section of the space where dogs aren't allowed.

<comment><USER8> We have a dog policy at my work but you have to house the pet in a specified meeting room and only move it when in transit to walk the dog or leave. That also means that there's generally a limit of one dog at a time.

We also had someone who loved dogs but was deathly allergic.

Like everyone said, talk to HR. They will figure something out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, sounds like just bringing it up would be fine (and hopefully doesn't end up labling me a dog hater!).

The whole pets policy seems crazy to me, what's to stop me bringing my SO to work because I enjoy her company.

Do you think it's just convenient for the owner, or is there something behind letting people bring pets to work?

<comment><USER9> Having worked two places where this was possible, there's a number of advantages.

Everyone in the office became a fan of the mutt, and I had lots of volunteers for lunchtime walks! Including the lady who was wary of German Shepherds at the start, who ended up curing her phobia "Oh it's only him, he's harmless".

He'd sleep near the desk until someone came over to talk to him, and as a result I wasn't clock watching quite so much (must go, dog needs out). A few heads would sometimes turn when he was having a drink (not so quiet). If I was away from desk he'd just go and settle near one of his other friends.

I felt much better towards both employers as a result.

A lot is going to depend on how well trained they are - lots of barking and running around will drive everyone crazy. Me included.

<comment><USER10> I work in an office with a dog. I detest it, the dog distracts me constantly with barking and such. I genuinely believe that the dog has a negative financial effect on the company - I'd be much more productive without it, and productivity is $$$. However, I would never say anything, as this could lead to me being ostracized as a non-"team-player".

Something to keep in mind when all feedback on an element workplace environment is positive.

<comment><USER9> I'm very easily distracted - lifelong ADD. If he'd barked he'd have stayed at home. Apart from the distraction it'd reflect on me the owner. It's pretty easy to train most breeds to stay quiet, though some of the small terrier types seem hardwired to bark. I'm not a fan of constantly yapping things.

Obviously I can't know if anyone was quietly against, but the woman who said she was wary because of breed was a quick convert. If she hadn't been he'd have stayed home and spend the day on the sofa - as he had in my previous job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had a job where it was okay to bring your dog in - my dog was well-behaved, more quiet and lazy than anything. She'd just sit under my desk the whole day, just like she would if we were at home. She'd get up and wander around if I went to use the bathroom or to the kitchen, and being 130lbs she would startle people.

On the other hand, a co-worker would bring her dog in and the thing would non- stop run around the office, sliding into things, barking incessantly, knocking over and digging through trash cans...

<comment><USER12> At one office, the owner would visit and bring his old dog, which was deaf as a post and supremely uninterested in people. The dog would do the rounds of the office, and almost everyone would put their hands out to pat him... which the dog would ignore on his way to check out the employee's trash bin. Move on to the next bin to look for anything interesting, completely ignoring the friendly humans :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What if you were allergic to pets? The employer has to find a solution to please both groups. Maybe you get a corner office.

<comment><USER14> And hope that people want you around the office more than the dogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you dislike dogs that strongly, claim to have an allergy and politely ask the owners to keep them away from your desk. If that doesn't work, explain your allergies to management. It'll spark less resentment than the truth.

</comment><comment><USER16> So I am going to try to answer your question. I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to bring up, in a "Hi I understand that the other office allows dog owners to bring their pets in. I'm really uncomfortable around dogs, you might say I have a phobia. Could we discuss whether to continue that policy, or if that decision has already been made, would it be reasonable to ask that the dogs be kept to a specific part of the office?

</comment><comment><USER17> Why not challenge your fears instead? I used to have a terrible fear of heights. Then I've got a really interesting job offer, but the office was on a high floor with really huge windows. For me that was a total horror, but I've got really pissed on myself for being so weak and in the moment of craziness I've took the job anyway. And the first few days were a real struggle to stay functional, I would use any excuse to go into the corridor just to come down a bit. But very quickly I just stopped paying attention. You just get used to it and you relax and all of the sudden the fear is gone. So I started pushing myself more and eventually I've now got to the point that I'm totally ok with heights, no discomfort anymore at all (I even did some paragliding lessons recently). That's the only way to overcome the phobias, to challenge them. And it really works, just take your time and do it step by step, on your own pace.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't know the reason for OP's dislike of dogs, but in some countries there are stray dogs running around, and they will attack people sometimes, especially children.

It happened to my cousin. His mom (my aunt) mentions that he started stuttering after that. And he is still very much afraid of dogs. People back there undertand that fear.

Here in US, it is more "Oh, don't be afraid of Fluffy, he's fine, just pet him". Telling them someone is afraid of them is just inviting ridicule. A co- worker I knew was just telling people he is alergic. He was from India, and figured we Americans understand alergies pretty well, so he said that explanation worked better than explaining his phobia.

</comment><comment><USER19> Get proper documentation of the phobia from an appropriately licensed medical practitioner. a) It'll be a good first step towards resolution of the phobia itself, and b) you'll probably need it for making your case in the office.

</comment><comment><USER20> My wife used to be petrified of dogs, no exageration - she would freeze up. But she didn't want to pass that on to our kids so we got a dog. She will now never live without two dogs.

You don't know it yet, but dogs are, with almost no exceptions, wonderful, loving beings. All they want to do is be part of your pack and make you happy, and get love back.

This sounds like a great opportunity for you. Pick one dog. Learn it's name. Say hi to it. Pet it. It won't take long if you get to see it regularly. You be forever grateful you did.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why not try to learn to like dogs?

In the past, I have generally disliked pets. However, my wife really wants a dog. So over the years I've grown to dislike them less and less, to the point where they now generally make me smile.

They might make you uncomfortable now, but it doesn't have to be that way if you try.

(Oh, and by the way, I'm incredibly allergic to dogs and cats. But I get around this by washing my hands after touching them. I've also been told that there are shots you can get that will cure pet allergies such as these.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've found that generally my managers are pretty approachable and I've never had any fears of expressing concerns I have with them during my bi-weekly or monthly 1:1 sessions.

If you're not having 1:1 sessions with your manager, you should be. It's a great way to nip issues in the bud before they become unmanageable.

</comment><comment><USER22> The thing I think everyone is missing is that it isn't their employer who has the policy. It is the other business in the same office space. I would still talk to HR about it, but it might not be up to that employer if dogs are allowed or not (except to find another office space).

</comment><comment><USER23> 1) Tell your employer about the problem. But don't accept any 'outs' from confronting your fear. Present it as an opportunity to overcome this phobia.

2) Get this book, or one like it ([https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195311353/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195311353/)) CBT is a powerful way to rewire your brain, so "dog = fear" will be a thing of the past in a few weeks of practice.

There probably isn't a safer place to practice exposures since people don't bring unfriendly dogs to work, and you can see the dogs interact with people before you practice exposure and pick ones that are smaller/friendlier/calmer/safer-feeling to start with.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you don't want to work around dogs, your employer should accommodate that. But it's also worth considering that it sounds like you have a phobia, and phobias are a curable condition. It would help you going forward if you weren't afraid of dogs. If getting bitten by a dog in the workplace was a significant risk, your employer's insurance would not allow them to put dogs in the workplace. A psychologist could help you with this issue, if you want help.

<comment><USER25> It can be that the person doesn't like dogs because it's kind of gross. Smell your hand after petting one. I like dogs though.

<comment><USER26> You have a very low threshold for what is considered gross. That's just the tip of the iceberg with pets! (and babies)

<comment><USER10> Neither of those noisy (distracting) things belong in an office, though. Offices are a place for focus.

<comment><USER27> What's wrong with bringing a baby to the office?

<comment><USER28> Babies sometimes cry loudly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> there is nothing wrong with being afraid of strange dogs, just dont pet them or interact with them, turn away from them if they approach you. make clear that you dont want to interact with them on ur workplace, ppl will understand. yeah u will look like a partypooper. whatever

</comment><comment><USER27> How do you feel about assistance and service dogs.

</comment><comment><USER30> Pet owners always say, "Oh, he won't hurt anyone. Isn't he cute? Down fido! Down boy! He's just excited. Can I get you something to drink?"

The trouble is that animals act differently when the owner is not around. If possible, spray apple juice on your clothing before you leave for work that day. The animal will bite you, but you won't see it again after that.

<comment><USER31> This is horrible and immoral advice.

Disagreeing, complaining, and litigating are one thing. Deliberately falsifying a situation is quite another.

This is of course leaving aside the fact that the course of action you suggest could easily lead to a life being taken.

It is impossible for me to courteously describe how appalled I am at your advice.

<comment><USER30> Sigh ... it is humor.

<comment><USER32> Maybe an attempt at it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YCSB Benchmark Results for YugaByte and Apache Cassandra - <AUTHOR> https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/ycsb-benchmark-results-for-yugabyte-and-apache-cassandra/59 <comment><USER2> Just as a quick comment the GC configuration on those Cassandra nodes is kinda crazy. I don't think anyone is recommending anyone to run 30G maxheap CMS. Somewhere around 16G you really should switch to G1GC.

Also I highly doubt you want to have 30G heap with 60G RAM available. Having a larger heap most likely doesn't help you at all. It will just eat away memory you could use for mmapping or off heap things and increase GC pause length.

(This is the bane of running JVM any apps. You really need to know what you are doing with the GC. Also with apps like Cassandra there is no silver bullet. Just some general guidelines to follow and slowly adjust your values and monitoring of the changes as the best possible settings change with the load/hardware setup)

<comment><USER3> Great points, thanks @doikor! Will try these.

It would be nice if some of these were the defaults as opposed to some settings folks have to change - say by running a "./configure" or some such.

In this case, for example, it felt a little weird that the machine type which had enough cores had 60GB RAM, and giving only around 10-20GB to Cassandra "felt" wrong, but turns out the exact opposite is true! YugaByte is in C++ and can handle much larger heaps.

<comment><USER4> Java's garbage collected heap is not the full extent of memory used by Cassandra. Cassandra can use as much memory as you can throw at it.

File system cache, in process decompressed page cache, key and row cache, off heap memtables etc. There are several different mechanisms for using memory that isn't on the garbage collected heap.

^ This is not a qualitative assessment of how Cassandra uses memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Throughput improvement is nice but not game-changing. What I would be more interested in here is a comparison of the longest latency. One problem my former employer had in a large Cassandra deployment was GC pause times causing latency spikes exceeding SLAs for a critical service. They did eventually tune the cluster to avoid these issues but to be honest it kind of shook my faith in any JVM-based database (maybe unfairly).

<comment><USER3> Hi @jeremyjh - you are absolutely correct about p99 being more important than avg latency for critical services.

We have done the following p99 measurements: \- a p99 comparison of YugaByte vs Cassandra using YCSB \- ran ndbench for a week and looked at the p99 of YB

The results are looking really good for YugaByte in both cases. We are going to post that very soon to our forum, will x-post here as well.

<comment><USER6> Our ndbench results for YugaByte DB were just posted on our forum [https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/ndbench-results-for-yugabyte- db](https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/ndbench-results-for-yugabyte-db).

In gist, we ran ndbench for 7 days and our p99 was under 6 ms with no "long tail". It is achieved by cautious architectural design and implementation choices. More details are available in our post.

<comment><USER6> For those who are interested, our ndbench results post has just been moved to a new location: [https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/yugabyte-db-p99-latencies- with-...](https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/yugabyte-db-p99-latencies-with-netflix- data-store-benchmark)

<comment><USER6> Some new updates on YCSB and p99 latencies. [https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/ycsb-benchmark-results-for- yuga...](https://forum.yugabyte.com/t/ycsb-benchmark-results-for-yugabyte-and- apache-cassandra-again-with-p99-latencies/99).

In our new benchmark run, we set up Apache Cassandra using G1 GC and a smaller heap size as suggested. Still, we observed a multitude of differences in throughput and p99 latencies in YugaByte over Apache Cassandra.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.dbms2.com/2013/03/18/dbms-development- marklogic-h...](http://www.dbms2.com/2013/03/18/dbms-development-marklogic- hadoop/)

> Rule 1: Developing a good DBMS requires 5-7 years and tens of millions of > dollars.

> That's if things go extremely well.

> Rule 2: You aren't an exception to Rule 1.

> In particular:

> Concurrent workloads benchmarked in the lab are poor predictors of > concurrent performance in real life. Mixed workload management is harder > than you're assuming it is. Those minor edge cases in which your Version 1 > product works poorly aren't minor after all.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would love to see how this compares to ScyllaDB.

<comment><USER9> Exactly, given how ScyllaDB and Cassandra and now Yuga are all meant to be drop-in compatible (in theory anyway.)

Having seen the benchmarks for ScyllaDB vs Cassandra I think the crown easily goes to Scylla. That shouldn't be big surprise, they do have some amazing engineers on that team, including some of the creators of KVM. They wrote their own TCP/IP stack for Scylla and can run in kernel-bypass mode.

They also do some fascinating things like batching similar internal operations to get better instruction cache performance. I wouldn't have though I-cache would ever be a bottleneck for a database. It speaks to how highly-tuned Scylla is, where the other performance bottlenecks have been dealt with to such a degree that the I-cache behavior became a performance problem worthy of tackling.

<comment><USER10> Scylla is far from being a drop in replacement for Cassandra. Too many features missing and many existing basic features like counters have been added only very recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> YugaByte [https://github.com/YugaByte/yugabyte- db](https://github.com/YugaByte/yugabyte-db) is an open source database which allows cloud native operations for Mission Critical applications.</comment>


Why the Best Leaders Want Their Superstar Employees to Leave - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-best-leaders-want-their-superstar-employees-to-leave-1475460841 <comment><USER2> > Bosses such as Messrs. Chiat, Ellison and Lucas became widely known as "the > guy" to work for in their industries because of all the prominent people who > had come through their organizations and gone on to spectacular careers.

Similar thing happens in sports (mentioned in the article, especially coaching trees) and academic circles. Much more important _who_ your doctoral academic advisor is than your institution. Sure, the concentration of good ones might be higher at the good places, but that isn't the point.

A great phd advisor will encourage you to work on projects that give you marketable and useful skills, more than only focusing on his short term research needs. And they will keep fighting for you even after you leave the group.

Your success _is_ the legacy that any manager leaves behind! Always surprised more do not take pride in this.</comment>


Swagger: a complete framework implementation to work with RESTful web services - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wordnik/swagger-core/wiki

<comment><USER2> Also works with .Net and is totally awesome! (already used it for my Web Api).

I don't know about the alternative implementations of Swagger though.</comment>