Amaya: W3C's Web Editor (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3.org/Amaya/ <comment><USER2> The last release was in 2012 - I'm curious why this made the HN home page. Am I missing some important news?

<comment><USER3> It's a nice bit of history.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been thinking some lately about systems that express the idea of programming as an ordinary computer use...systems that don't draw a distinction between users and programmers...systems that don't distinguish between programming them and using them. Earlier today, I was writing a demi- argument in response to a complaint about Windows 10S not having the Linux subsystem based on that idea and how it related to the replacement of "programming" with "development" and part of that reply was enumerating systems that treated "programming" like using.

That's when I remembered Amaya which I first stumbled across back in 2007 or so when I was trying to figure out how to build a website for my practice (pretend work that was easier than trying to dig up clients on the cusp of the recession). What is interesting to me is how diverse browsers were in the days before Chrome. The old Opera is another example of what a web browser could be...or could have been.

<comment><USER4> It could have all been so nice, if X(HT)ML would have found more support on the client side, as well as on the httpd server side. I am thinking about XIncludes, URL-endocded XPath and places like Wikipedia defining their own namespaces.

<comment><USER5> Fully agree, we could have had XAML for the web, instead of the Frankenstein amalgamation some of us have to endure.

<comment><USER4> You're being sarcastic, no? I am happy, that we do not have a Microsoft format. I'd rather prefer XUL/XHTML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great tool. I used it intensively from 97 to 2006. It was the only tool roughly equivalent to dreamweaver available for linux. Made me learn a lot about w3c standards

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember Amaya very well and I was annoyed when the W3C ceased to develop it further.

The big question is why the W3C failed to continue to develop it, as there was (and still is) a big need for a good 'reference' HTML editor.

Another big question that has never been satisfactorily answered for me is why most WYSIWYG HTML editors are so terribly—really horribly—bad[1]. One only has to look at the code they generate even on the simplest of text to realize this.

I think I've probably answered my own question here, in that the W3C couldn't actually make a decent HTML editor—certainly not one that could produce good reference code—so it just gave up!

Isn't it rather ironic that the very 'keepers' of HTML were unable to do this. It seems to me this tells us a great deal about the intrinsic inadequacies of HTML itself and I'm forever surprised there's very little ongoing debate or complaint about it. Thus—in the absence of any such criticism—the W3C has 'forgotten' fundamental matters such as mark-up formatting (limitations thereof, etc.) and is now more worried or concerned about keeping the Big End of town happy with ancillary junk such as DRM.

____

[1] For example, take the terrible HTML editor in Thunderbird email, it's been around for many years now and has had much time to evolve into a proper editor but it's still essentially a joke when it comes to editing/producing good HTML. It's open so anyone could have a go at fixing it (if it was easy to do then by now presumably someone would have done so).

If you want proof of how bad it is then just install the ThunderHTMLedit add- on which lets you view (then if you want edit) the editor's code. [For instance, it cannot automatically concatenate multiple/repeated <xyz> </xyz> \- type operations, which (along with similar elementary coding stuff-ups) I often find myself manually having to clean up].

<comment><USER8> Another aspect is that so much of the web these days is JS and CSS, with HTML being a bunch of div tags that the former two latch on to.

<comment><USER7> You're absolutely right of course. Even without JS, it's hard to think of a system that could be messier and more convoluted than the way we now mark up web pages. Not that this problem is unique to web pages, desktop publishing and wordprocessors still have and have always had similar issues (similarly the lack of coherent rules for cutting-&-pasting between pages generated by different means—i.e.: the ongoing matter of formatting distortions, etc. after pasting).

This has always seemed strange to me as you'd think that replacing handwriting onto paper with a systematic standardised format/methodology for displaying writing etc. onto computer screens/printers would have been considered one of the most basic and fundamental tasks for computer solution but unfortunately it's never been so.

Consider the following still-unsolved problem of writing (or annotating) between the lines or in the margins of computer-generated text. Right, it's dead easy to do if one wants to scribble by hand in the margins of a book or on a sheet of paper, etc. but it's nigh on impossible to do it electronically. (Given that we've now had electronic computers for some 70 or so years since WWII, this, I reckon, is very strange indeed.)

___

 _Incidentally, I consider JavaScript an abomination (at least in web pages). By default, JS is turned off on my browser and I only turn it on when strictly necessary, which in practice is about 3% of web sites I visit. Moreover, sites that require its use up front or refuse to display the primary /home page without it are clicked-off as fast as my mouse-clicking reaction time is (there's always a plethora of similar sites without such issues). This way, I avoid the most egregious of the junk that often appears on web pages and my browsing is very significantly faster (not to mention much more satisfying)._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Download Amaya binary releases

Isn't this the perfect type of application to run _inside_ a browser instead?

<comment><USER10> Now, sure; development on Amaya stopped in 2012, and it was started in 1996.

In 1996, it wasn't the kind of thing that you could do in any existing browser particularly well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My professor suggested to use either Amaya or Adobe Fireworks in a web programming class. I tried to use Amaya at first because it's free and open source but I ended up using Fireworks...It's a bit shame that this kind of project is abandoned.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember using it quite often as HTML editor, long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> test</comment>


Show HN: Plainflow, behavior-based customer journeys for your SaaS - <AUTHOR> https://www.plainflow.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> HN, this is a simple way for SaaS companies to integrate SaaS services and create behavioral based customer journeys.

Some examples:

\- Send onboarding emails when you have new signups

\- Send a Slack alert to your #customer-success team when there is a new churn-risk customer

\- Send a Slack message to your #sales team when there's a new demo request event

Here's interactive workflow example (no need for signup) [https://www.plainflow.com/recipe/slack-notification-for- chur...](https://www.plainflow.com/recipe/slack-notification-for-churn-risk- customers)

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER2> This is going to be big. I hope that one day HN will look back at the lack of upvotes on this post in the same way they look at the Dropbox announcement on HN.</comment>


Federal Circuit Should Not Allow Patents on Inventions That Belong to the Public - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/federal-circuit-should-not-allow-patents-inventions-should-belong-public <comment><USER3> It always bugs the hell out of me that many large organizations will file for patents that they have no intent of developing. I worked at a certain large corporation previously and they would have patent brain storming camps encouraging various employees to think of and file for patents on just about any topic regardless of the business's involvement in that field. A large majority of patents that come out of those workshops either stifle innovation in that area completely or are used to later extort someone who wishes to actually bring it to market.

<comment><USER4> > _patent brain storming camps encouraging various employees to think of and > file for patents on just about any topic regardless of the business 's > involvement in that field_

One principal reason is to establish a defensive portfolio, for possible use in counterattacking and as currency in future cross-licensing negotiations. If (let's say) IBM were to threaten sue XYZ Corporation for infringement [0], then XYZ would look through its own portfolio of patents to see which patents the company could use to assert a counterclaim against IBM; if XYZ didn't own any patents, it'd have nothing to trade. [1] It's commonly believed that this is why Microsoft went on a patenting binge in the 1990s: so that it would have something with which to counterattack and trade cross-licenses if, say, IBM sued it for infringement. EDIT: This was documented in a 1991 Bill Gates memo [2].

[0] In the early days of the PC, a certain large computer company had a reputation for (figuratively) dropping two or three stacks of patents on another company's desk and saying, _you can have a license to Stack A for X% of your revenue, a license to Stacks A and B for X+Y% of your revenue, and a license to all three stacks for X+Y+Z% of your revenue._ The other company would ask, _which ones do you think we infringe?_ The larger company would answer, _oh, we have no idea, but now that you know about these patents, if you do infringe, we 'll find out eventually, you'll be a willful infringer, and you'll owe us up to treble damages._ Some companies decided that settling was the better part of valor.

[1] [https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...](https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2074&context=btlj)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2007/03/analy...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2007/03/analysis-microsofts-software-patent-flip-flop/)

<comment><USER5> To finish the story with some original thought, lets ask why this tactic works.

Perhaps it works because of the expense of determining which patent claims could realistically survive a motion to dismiss, i.e., the hourly rate of the patent lawyers hired to do this analysis and the number of hours they take to do it. The larger the stack of _potentially_ assertable claims that need to be considered, the greater the cost. Quantity not quality.

If that process of determination, separating wheat from chaff, filtering out all the nonassertable (junk) claims, was less expensive than simply paying for a licenseFN1, then perhaps this tactic would not work.

FN1. Use imagination if believe this is impossible to achieve.

<comment><USER4> That's correct; many patent claims are written in long, dense paragraphs, without line breaks, subdivision numbers, or other "signposts" to guide the reader. I'm convinced that often this is often more than just laziness or incompetence by the patent attorney — it's intentional obscurantism, to make it more difficult and expensive for others to determine whether or not they infringe and whether or not the claim is in fact legally patentable. [3]

[3] [http://www.oncontracts.com/multi-sentence- claims/](http://www.oncontracts.com/multi-sentence-claims/) (self-cite)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One big problem with patents is that they are often filed for technologies developed by universities and government institutions (e.g. paid by the tax payer), where just the last missing piece of the puzzle is actually patentable.

I'd say we introduce a challenge period. If someone wants a patent, they should pose a challenge for anyone to come up with a solution. If nobody comes up with a solution in the given period, then they can have the patent.

This would work perfectly for stupid software patents.

<comment><USER7> The larger issue is how do we get universities incentives to produce practical innovation.

Currently, there are a number of different institutional frameworks for trying to deal with the issue. Most of them don't work well. We have university patents + tech transfer offices. We have obligated NIH patent holding + licensing available to third parties for NIH sponsored innovations. We have government funded 'incubator'-like institutions with wide or narrow research scopes, etc.

Patents overall are an attempt at a solution for a larger problem - how do we allocate rewards to innovators. Our main model for doing so, academically, is to try and fail to create transparent funding flows to finance enlightenment- style aristocratic researchers (with labs, equipment, staff, etc). We do this in a manner that avoids accusations that they are receiving privileged patronage while also paying lip service to the idea that free-riders, extra- territorial or not, should contribute to the effort.

But note that we're trying to do different things with this one tool - <USER2> attempts to fix it in one area often result in breaking it in another. The entire system is just kludge upon kludge because of this.

<comment><USER8> > how do we allocate rewards to innovators

The goal of the patent system is not to "pay innovators" \- they already get paid by putting good products on the market.

The goal of the patent system is to get innovators to PUBLISH their solutions so that the public can benefit from them. (And build on them in the future.)

If the patent is obvious, then the public gets no benefit, and we're handing out monopolies for free.

<comment><USER7> This is a VERY interesting reply, because it showcases so much.

Having innovators publish isn't, big picture, important. The big picture importance is getting people to actually use the fruits of research in society where that would be optimal. Publication is a tiny element of making that happen, by facilitating tech transfer (but not really, because a huge chunk of patented innovations can't be replicated from the filed documents or published research papers. Intentionally.).

So why is publication treated as the aim? Because the rewards associated with innovation are best secured by secrecy in the absence of other anti-free-rider measures. Hence secrecy is replaced as the source of reward for innovators because secrecy is directly at odds with the social desire to implement superior tech or processes.

Your refrain is a common one used by patent maximalists to describe patents as a transaction between the public and the innovator, rather than a grant of privilege. This is because if we divorce patents from their actual social utility, and instead focus on their immediate results, we can ignore their externalities and create a self-fullfilling positive KPI to talk about ("Hey look, we published n innovations in public! More than last year!" vs. "On a Net basis, we've bettered things in society.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how this would effectively play out. How much market research will be deemed acceptable to accurately say that something hasn't been invented yet? Can Joe Dirt sue a company a year after their patent filing, saying he posted the idea on his Twitter before they filed?

</comment><comment><USER10> I always feel that patents or at least the way patents work is really bad for humanity as a whole and hindering our progress. On the other hand there has to be some way for inventors to benefit, are there any good alternatives?

<comment><USER11> Have you ever worked in a field where patents are an important part of the market structure? Telecom, pharma, etc.?

I spent my engineering career in telecom, and patents are a key part of the model. Those industries don't have the equivalent of a Google or an Apple that can bankroll expensive R&D on the back of massive consumer revenue. They're no unicorns or network effects where you can take a 20% cut on every app that gets sold to your captive user base. Instead, companies pay teams of very expensive PhDs to develop things like error correction systems for modems. They patent those things, use the patents to either extract licensing revenue or, more importantly, keep out free riders who didn't contribute to developing the technology. Then it's all obsolete in five years and they do it all over again.

Markets are good, and patents, as imperfect as they are, provide an infrastructure for integrating expensive R&D efforts (which don't result in tangible property), into markets, in a way that avoids free-riding. And it also results in market structures that are sane. I can just go buy a Broadcom Wi-Fi chip. Broadcom can recoup its investment by just selling me a chip, and count on patents to keep out free-riders. Their business model doesn't require them to make a whole consumer end-product like a phone, or tie their hardware to advertising, to be viable.

In the absence of patents, you get trade secrets and vertical integration. Apple doesn't care about patents because it doesn't sell you chip designs or even a chip, it sells you an iPhone. Google doesn't care about patents because it doesn't sell VP9 or Blink--those are just a means for furthering its advertising business.

Take a step back and think about the business models you want to see more of. Do we need more Apples and Samsungs, which want to sell you a complete end- user product tied to their ecosystem? Or do we want more ARMs, which are happy to just sell you a chip or even an IP core? Wouldn't it be nice to bring back Netscape? Where you could just exchange money for a web browser, instead of going to google.com and it bugging you to download Google's web browser for "free?"

<comment><USER12> > Those industries don't have the equivalent of a Google or an Apple that can > bankroll expensive R&D on the back of massive consumer revenue

What are you talking about? The biggest players in the telecom market report some of the largest profit in the country, both in real terms and as a percentage of revenue. They're just so entrenched that they view any R&D as a cost center if they can't use it to keep others or of the market.

<comment><USER11> If you look at a pure telecom company like Verizon, they're at $13.6 billion in profits (for 2017) on $125 billion in revenue. Apple is at $50 billion in profits on $229 billion in revenue (for 2017). So Apple's margin is almost double.

Also, "consumer revenue" is the key word. The biggest R&D players in telecom don't sell to consumers. Intel and Qualcomm sell chips (and ARM just sells you IP). They don't make the chip in house and sell you a complete phone. At the same time, a company like Verizon or Comcast that sells to consumers isn't vertically integrated and doesn't do its own R&D. They buy all their equipment from other companies that do the R&D. You don't have vertically-integrated company that uses consumer revenue to bankroll the R&D. You have specialization and market transactions mediated by, among other things, patents.

Contrast web technology, where there's no patents and no markets. Nobody sells browser engines. There is no specialization. It's all driven by Apple, Microsoft, and Google, who invest in the R&D to further their consumer-facing platforms.

<comment><USER12> Verizon (and most telecoms for that matter) plays games by being hundreds if not thousands of tiny partnerships, which obfuscates their profit.

<comment><USER11> Verizon is a holding company. It's structured as a holding company with numerous subsidiaries because it's got physical property all over the country, and is subject to literally thousands of different regulatory regimes: federal, 50 states, thousands of city and county utility boards. But its profit figures are reported on a consolidated basis. (And if you have hard evidence to the contrary, man do you have a valuable lawsuit on your hands.)

<comment><USER12> It's setup in slightly different ways for different niches in the market, but on the mobile side it's a holdover from original FCC regulations on how ownership of spectrum worked. The FCC wanted to encourage competition, so they heavily emphasized partnerships with little mom and pops for each local region of spectrum. After the FCC removed those regulation requirements, those partnerships were still useful as sort of bellows of profit so that the C level can manage their growth curve.

This is all not really private information, is how pretty much all of the telecoms are structured, and isn't illegal.

<comment><USER11> Is profit from those partnerships not being reported as income to the holding company?

<comment><USER12> Not the other 30% or 49% or what have you that's not owned by the national company. But the nature of how the national company handles so many services for the partnerships means that 'negotiations' can change how the money flows around year after year in a way thats controlled by the national company (I say national company because they really are more than just holding companies, they handle large pieces of the business as well).

<comment><USER11> The profit that accrues to those partnerships either never gets back to Verizon (in which case how is it relevant?) or simply "bellows" (as you put it) the cash flow to Verizon. In the latter case, it'll still show up in long- term measurements. But at the end of the day, Verizon's 5-year profit margin is 13% while AT&T's is 11%. That's about the same as Starbucks. Google and Apple are at 20%+, and Facebook is at 28%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Eff might be wrong on this one, The problem with the provisional: is it apparently does not fully support any of the claims pending in the Fan application as published. That is, the invention as claimed was NOT in the public domain.</comment>


The French Army Is Building Renaissance-Style Fortresses in Africa - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35863/the-french-army-is-building-renaissance-style-fortresses-in-africa <comment><USER2> > While the design ... appears anachronistic

Nothing anachronistic about it; this is likely an optimal design when considering how to maximise the effective coverage of guns. This is good design for a fortification that is meant to be held.

This design is relatively quite modern and is a direct response to the introduction of artillery to warfare. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Changes_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Changes_to_fortifications) . It is a difficult fortification to crack. In fact it has a long history of use in colonial expeditions according to Wikipedia.

<comment><USER3> It's anachronistic in the sense that it was largely made obsolete by artillery advances during the 19th century, replaced by _polygonal forts_ (which could even adapt to high-explosive payloads, and actually proved their worth in both world wars), as well as the more modern bunkers & fortified emplacements.

It makes a lot of sense when unlikely to face artillery and bombers though, as it's pretty straightforward and cheap to build and operate.

But it _is_ a throwback to something which has largely become decorative in the lands or originate from.

<comment><USER4> The decorative aspect is actually a major piece of it's function here. It's intended to be highly visible, and maintaining a highly visible military presence is part of counterinsurgency tactics.

It's also a very French thing to do.

<comment><USER5> It's also in a theater of asymmetric warfare. It's not like the enemy has (serious) artillery, much less air power.

<comment><USER6> Yup, this architecture makes sure you have gun coverage for all your walls, in case people try to get close to them / scale the walls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Other nations built castles in Afghanistan using the same HESCO bastion [1] techniques shown in the article, don't think they were as interesting shapes though.

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

<comment><USER8> Yes our patrol base in Afghanistan was made partly of these and partly of the adobe mud walls of the compound we were in. This shape would've been really useful, as on more than one occasion people were able to sneak up by utilising the visibility dead-zones

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the same vein, US embassy in Tunis is closer to a fortification than to a diplomatic building. It even has a turret. It seems that other US embassies around the world became fortifications after 2001.

<comment><USER10> Diplomatic buildings have often been strong points designed to keep staff safe in uncertain times. This is true even in safer locations; the new US embassy in London is very much a fort although the defensive features (like the water- filled moat/pond, and bollards hidden in the hedges) are well integrated into the landscaping.

The new site is probably considerably harder to assault than their old building, even though that looked more like a military building. The Grovesnor Square building was so ugly that even the official picture on the US Embassy website tries to hide it from view behind some trees!

[https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy- history/rcg...](https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy- history/rcgrsvnr/)

<comment><USER11> Some people are unable to recognize great architecture when they see it. Saarinen's building is applauded as one of the finest modernist structures in Britain and is rightly Grade II listed.

[https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/09/26/the- american-e...](https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/09/26/the-american- embassy-building-in-london-is-a-modernist-classic)

<comment><USER12> Some people are unable to recognize _awful_ architecture when they see it. I like a lot of Saarinen's work, especially his furniture, but even Homer nods, and his Grosvenor Square building looks like a cinderblock with a grudge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Similar concept, lot more stars:

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

<comment><USER14> Actually not similar, only the shape is similar. The trick with the "trace italienne" is that each tower (edge of the star) can reach and attack people below the other towers, so each tower is protected by its neighbors.

As far as I can tell, Fort Bourtange never had towers for defense but rather relied on it's walls to protect it enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also worth visiting when travel reopens:

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/musee-des-plans- reliefs-...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/musee-des-plans-reliefs-1)

</comment><comment><USER16> For those interested, you can look up "Vauban" or "Vauban fortifications", in reference to Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, an important military figure under Louis XIV.

</comment><comment><USER17> Saint Barbara is entirely appropriate for a sapper[1] regiment, but it's disappointing their motto is "Sapeur suis, para demeure" instead of "Bâtis ou crève" ...

        Nous croyions nous aimer pour la vie
        Mais hélas les beaux jours sont si courts

[1] would their work be considered uncivil engineering?

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're ever in the Florida Keys Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park is a (never completed) fort in the same style and definitely worth visiting on a day with good weather.

<comment><USER19> There's also a picture of that one in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I missing something or is this article very short on photos? I can see only three of the actually fortification under discussion, none of them particularly enlightening.

<comment><USER21> What I gleaned from the article was that the French only released a handful of non-security-compromising photos (eg, closeup of a flag raising), and the author padded out the remainder of the article with drawings and pictures of other forts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://www.sites-vauban.org/The-Vauban-fortifications-in](http://www.sites- vauban.org/The-Vauban-fortifications-in)

</comment><comment><USER23> How practical are these against modern weapons? Couldn't some modern explosives just destroy a fortress wall, thus rendering its inherent purpose of withstanding a siege impossible? It's an interesting sight and architecturally curious but I'm wondering what the purpose of such an effort is.

<comment><USER24> Why destroy the wall when it traps valuable equipment that you can lob explosive shells at.

<comment><USER25> lobbing explosive shells into that need's at least a mortar, which at least needs rudimentary setup, which means you are dead a short time after firing your shell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Relevant: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort#/media/File:StarF...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort#/media/File:StarFortDeadZones.png)

</comment><comment><USER27> The latest edition of the Economist had an article about the recent coup in Mali, and about the (rather obvious) need for institution-building rather than pure military interventions by European powers: [https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and- africa/2020/08/19/...](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and- africa/2020/08/19/what-next-for-mali)

Mostly unrelatedly, whenever I see these types of forts I am reminded of the forts that workers build in Civ 5, which are equally useless

<comment><USER28> If those institutions are completely staffed and run by Europeans, protected by European security forces, you will jumpstart the development of the country by several decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So... nobody is going to ask why is the French Army in Africa?

<comment><USER30> Mali and the surrounding countries were a French colonial territory for about 80 years from the late-19th through mid-20th centuries.

France has maintained relationships with its former colonies in West Africa, and frequently performs counter-terrorism operations there.

Some local West Africans are OK with it, others are not. A 2016 attack on a beach resort in Côte d'Ivoire was claimed by the attackers (AQIM - Al'Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb), to be directly because of the foreign presence in West Africa, and the beach resort was targeted specifically because it is popular with foreigners (4 of the 19 killed were French).

France's history in West Africa is complicated but it's probably because of that history that they continue to operate there.

<comment><USER25> there's also the Francs CFA, meaning that these countries non-shadow economy is - in effect - still managed by France...

<comment><USER31> What do you mean by "managed" exactly?

<comment><USER32> I don't know what he means exactly but the main consequence is that the Franc CFA is pegged to the Euro. It has a big impact but I wouldn't call this "managing their economy".

<comment><USER31> I would say it has its advantages and issues but in any case, it's not being imposed on any country. Many have chosen not to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No mention of the Pentagon?

<comment><USER34> Why would you mention it? It's not the same shape if you haven't noticed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's interesting that the most socialist states pursue exactly the same objectives that the most capitalistic states pursue outside their national borders, often involving war, violence and exploitation.

The discourse internally is however one of solidarity, fraternity and equality.

<comment><USER36> It is not interesting at all if Stalins and Hitlers ghosts are still haunting, it would have been odd if d'Gaulles ghost wasn't around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> European Renaissance civilization...

And noone is asking what the french are doing there.

<comment><USER38> Please don't let the fact that you didn't bothered to read the article you're commenting on stop you from accessing the information you never bothered to search.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_the_Maghreb_(200...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_the_Maghreb_\(2002%E2%80%93present\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This article doesn't mention the months of protests in Mali which culminated in a coup d'état on the 18th forcing the president to resign. Yes, it's a cool construction, it likely does serve Operation Barkhane but I think there are some unmentioned colonial interests.</comment>


Probabilistic programming from scratch - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/learning/probabilistic-programming-from-scratch <comment><USER2> A relevant book is Think Bayes [1] by Allen B. Downey. It also uses only pure Python to solve simple problems of Bayesian inference. I like the simplicity of the way it communicates the ideas of Bayesian approach.

But the subject is not a duplicate of that one, as it seems to put more focus on sampling.

[1] [http://greenteapress.com/wp/think- bayes/](http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-bayes/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently learned about prolog and stumbled upon problog along the way. I imagine automatically generating probabilistic rules from Bayesian inference on a dataset would be really useful. I wonder how it would compare to other machine learning techniques in accuracy and efficiency? I am always a little skeptical about the randomness neural networks. This seems like a more deterministic alternative.

<comment><USER4> Both Machine Learning (ML) and Probabilistic Programming (PP) work towards building a mathematical object (model), which takes observation as input and produces prediction as output. Both ML and PP are about finding the parameters of the model, which requires bits of information.

Main differences:

1\. The type of bits of information used to find parameters of the model is one main difference.

In ML, information used to "train" the model is called "training set" and usually consists of the observation-prediction pairs (or just observations, for unsupervised learning), which are of the same kind as desired observation- prediction pair. In other words, with ML you "fit" your model using the same type of data, which you will use the model for. At least, this is the most common scenario of ML.

In the problems, which PP specializes in, this is not as prevalent. For example, with PP we may often see a model which predicts where the planet is, while the model is itself trained using apples falling from the tree.

2\. The type of output is the second difference.

ML focuses on producing a single value of the most likely prediction (Maximum a posteriori estimate), while PP produces a probability distribution of the predicted quantity.

Arguably, the probability distribution of the prediction is more useful for any problem where we need to _use_ the prediction for some decision-making process because then we can calculate the expectation of (mis)decision-cost over possible values of prediction.

Practically, many decision-making situations can be transformed into _estimating_ some quantity (instead of taking some arbitrary action) and ML model can be built to directly produce prediction, which is at the same time a decision.

3\. The speed of prediction is the third difference.

ML model, after the "slow" training phase, produces a mathematical object, which is a straight function and can be very quickly calculated for any observation to produce prediction (think: forward-pass in a deep-learning network).

With PP, with most common models, you need to go through a "slow" inference (MCMC-like) process for every new observation to produce a prediction. It is possible, in some cases, to design a probabilistic model such that it only needs to be fitted once and can then be transformed into an analytical expression (function) producing predictions from observations.

As the result of these differences, people applying PP and ML are of different characters :) Still, I expect ML and PP to converge over time. Specifically, I notice that:

\- ML-models are used to represent probabilistic distributions in probabilistic models; and

\- trained ML-models are being interpreted in terms of their information content (in probabilistic terms, as if ML-model is probabilistic model).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do you buy your SSL certificates? - <AUTHOR> I need one for website, any recommendation from whom to get one? <comment><USER2> I've used GoDaddy and am extremely happy, their able to issue certificate WAY faster than other registrars, and usually you can google "GoDaddy SSL Coupon" for some easy $$$ savings.

Just make sure you're buying the correct cert:

1\. Single certificates will allow you to secure ONE domain. 2\. Multi / UCC Certs will allow you to secure usually 5 or more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Namecheap.com just as cheap as godaddy without all the up selling and ui mess.

</comment><comment><USER4> Last one I bought, I used Namecheap.

</comment><comment><USER5> SSLs.com, usually.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all!

</comment><comment><USER6> GoDaddy.com</comment>


Daytime meteor streaks over north America - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9220229/Daytime-meteor-streaks-over-north-America.html

<comment><USER2> There was also this recent test of a new Hypersonic plane:

[http://www.slashgear.com/darpa-reveals-reason-for-failure- of...](http://www.slashgear.com/darpa-reveals-reason-for-failure-of- htv-2-hypersonic-vehicle-23224174/)</comment>


For the first few people, hire from your network - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/23859456522/for-the-first-few-people-hire-from-your-network

<comment><USER2> Hiring/Firing is one of the most difficult thing for founders at early stage. I think trial type hiring is the key where dating before marriage is ESSENTIAL.</comment>


Spend $120K in angel investing instead of MBA studies - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/06/28/mba/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timferriss+%28The+Blog+of+Author+Tim+Ferriss%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> That's about as false a dichotomy as I've ever seen.

You could spend that $120K in much more productive ways than either of these two, besides, when you're of the age to go in to studying usually that money is given to you as a debt with a purpose to spend it on your education so you'll be in a position to pay it back later.

If the return-on-investment in startups would be better than the return-on- investment of student loans you can bet that banks would be a lot more willing to borrow money to start-ups. At best this will teach you a thing or two about investing and leave you in debt to the tune of $120K. You'll be working for a bank the rest of your life.

If you are in the position of spending the money on a startup spend it on your own first, build a success large enough that you no longer lose any sleep over losing a 100K+ and _then_ become an investor in other peoples companies.

Terrible advice this article.

<comment><USER3> The author is intentionally not trying to earn money. As far as he's seeing it, he's fully expecting to _lose_ the $120k.

<comment><USER2> If you have $120K to lose that's one thing. But most students don't have that kind of dough lying around and to borrow it in order to throw it away is inviting trouble. That's a $400 to $700 millstone you're tying around your neck with little to nothing in return and no easy way in to the workforce because everybody else was stupid enough to blow their money on their education instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Submitted 5 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1472622>

but it garnered one upvote and no comments, and 6 days ago here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1470665>

where it got around 50 upvotes and 14 comments.

Another example of the importance of timing your submissions. In some senses this isn't a "problem" as such, but I'd like to see some way of better consolidation of the same item submitted over and over. The existence of the existing duplication detection shows that it is, in some sense, an issue, but better duplicate detection would be, well, better.

In particular, it would be nice not to have the discussion spread over multiple items. Either the same thing gets said over and over, or important and interesting points are made that get missed.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had two of the best years of my life at B School. I met lifelong friends, learned a ton, and got to push the reset button on my life.

But business school is a bit of a scam, and the willing victims are the students. They sell glamor and wealth on Wall Street and throughout corporate America. "You'll be making half a mil in 5 years, what's $160k in debt?" Everyone is going to be a master of the universe. Except it doesn't work that way, even if you play by all the rules. Even at Harvard, Stanford, and Penn. Correlation is not causation.

Would I do it again? Hell yeah. But I was fortunate enough to go to a highly ranked public school for a fraction of that. I find it incredibly hard to believe that Stanford is worth 3-4x what I paid at Texas.

BUT... blowing $120k on angel investments seems like a very, very poor substitute for the B School experience. Yes, spend a crap ton of money educating yourself outside of school, but don't piss it away on angel investments. Spend it trying to _do_ something.

</comment><comment><USER6> while that's a great idea in principle, in practice, no one's going to lend you $120k to invest in startups. If you've got the cash and you're looking to pay out of pocket, it's a nice idea. but to my knowledge the gov't doesn't over low interest loans for education-via-angel-investing.

<comment><USER7> You need to be an accredited investor in the first place for this to be an option--which means you have the money.

<comment><USER8> Who accredits investors?

<comment><USER9> The SEC: <http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm>

Feel free to discuss here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1487724>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This does not get you the two primary benefits of attending a top tier school: 1) the social proof that comes with a credential like an MBA from Stanford or 2) the instant network of friends and alums.

(Furthermore, the other comments about accredited investors is spot on. And lastly, imagine somebody told you they did this and lost it all, would you hire that guy? No, you'd think he's nuts.)

<comment><USER11> As an angel you are invited to many events where you can connect with other angels and networks.

Even better it's not a future network that will grow over the time as previous students get at better places and positions, it's an already active network of more senior people and you'll meet them as homologue not in a student/professor relationship.

You can probably get a better network by loosing 120k. May be you could choose the right categories of startups to meet the category of people you are the most eager to meet ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like a case of the blind leading the blind. If you figure you may need an MBA, it doesn't seem you'd be best suited to coaching startups, since that is part of the aim of angel investing. If they all turn out to be dud, then you're not really getting a complete picture. Perhaps it'd be quicker, cheaper and easier to study some existing successful and non-successful startups.

Furthermore, his suggestion to go out and deliberately lose say $5,000 on gambling just doesn't seem like sound business advice to me. Though if anyone does want to throw away $5,000 I'd be happy to talk to them, heh.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you don't have $120K to invest in startups, I recommend spending ~$1,400 on a few very good books: <http://personalmba.com/manifesto/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1470665>

</comment><comment><USER15> The main message of this article is the importance of investing in yourself. Ferriss chose to do that through Angel Investing and the knowledge he would gain as an advisor. Going to an expensive MBA program isn't the only way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd love to be angel investor. I'd love to spend $120K doing 12 deals at $10K each. Guess what? I'm not accredited. Also guess what? I can't get loans to go become an angel investor. So I'm going to business school instead. (OK, not really, but this is really fatuous.)

Also, if you're going to B school to learn, you're kinda doing it wrong. Everyone here who's smart/disciplined enough to be an autodidact to learn new languages and frameworks is smart enough to learn B school skills from books as well. You go to B school for the social proof, the networking, the recruiting (if you're a top-tier full-time program), and, yes, the fun.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems to me that going into business yourself is a better way to learn than giving money to people going into business.

<comment><USER18> He had already founded and exited a successful business.

<comment><USER17> Ok, so what'd he need an MBA for then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How to lose $120K.

<comment><USER20> I sometimes think that it is better to burn the money (as in, set it on fire) than it is to get an MBA if you want to work in startups.

On the other hand, if you want a cosy job in a nice company that does something that relates to physical production, an MBA would be suitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I took a slightly more conservative approach: I wandered from cafe to cafe in SF for a year, coworking with other entrepreneurs, working on my own ideas while advising theirs, and eventually starting my own business.

Additionally, I started a DIY-MBA group of about 6 entrepreneurs that invites successful business people to brunch to pick their brain.

I've spent way less than $120k, and now I have a pretty solid business, and an even more solid network.

</comment><comment><USER22> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor>

</comment><comment><USER23> Try The Success Manual method - It goes one step ahead of Personal MBA manifesto - Quotes and summaries from greatest business books and more - <http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> To be an accredited investor and make angel investments legally, you need an annual income of $200k or a net worth of $1M. (ref: <http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm> )

I dare say, if you have the means to become an accredited investor, you might not need an MBA to teach you how to make money.

</comment><comment><USER24> Spend $120K in angel investing if you're _not_ rich & connected.</comment>


StackOverflow Podcast 56 - Spolsky, Atwood, and Calacanis - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/podcast-56/

<comment><USER2> Why are those guys slumming with Calacanis?</comment>


Test-Driven Django Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.tdd-django-tutorial.com/

<comment><USER2> +1 from me. We need more language and framework tutorials to be written with testing in mind. I wouldn't be surprised if the work from this was moved into Django's official documentation very soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hooray for more guides on testing in python! Although there are a lot of mostly-equivalent tools to what I've grown to love in Ruby-land, I think the most lacking thing might be a sense of arbitrary "best practice".

The zen of python states "There should be one, and preferably only one, way to do it", which I see at the level of a line of code; However, at a higher level, I always feel like there are dozens of ways to pattern something, and none with any particular community buy-in. This leaves my integration balancing awkwardly across several different authors ideas of how things should work.

What can we do about it - How can we make the python community more opinionated? The desired end result is that software is less surprising, that common problems have a readily accessibly, highly compatible solution.

Maybe we need more snobs in Python? ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately the first thing that jumped to mind when clicking through was this: <http://grokcode.com/746/dear-python-why-are-you-so-ugly/>

I realize it's a almost self-consciously ugly and it's a development tutorial, but still - a little CSS & typography goes a long way.

<comment><USER5> What about the typography needs improvement? In my opinion, it is very readable.

There are is no window decoration, and I'm fine with that.

<comment><USER6> The lines are far too long, it would certainly benefit from more leading, larger sizing would be nice, and a typeface with a larger x-height (times is so tiny), would greatly improve readability.

<comment><USER7> thanks for the feedback - am not mad good at the old graphic design, but it's all too easy to just say "I can't be bothered with that stuff"... I'll try and make some improvements. I gather it looks particularly ugly on windows, must take a look...

<comment><USER7> have started by fixing a windows fallback font for the text so that it's not Times!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is a great resource. Especially pulling Selenium into the picture and showing good functional testing. Thanks to the author for putting this together.

While I understand the need to show how unit tests work do we really need to test Django's ability to save records to the database and retrieve them in part 1? I personally don't follow true TDD, especially with model fields. Am I off in left field? Is this pattern common with other developers? Or perhaps people test for a fields existence by checking _meta.fields?

The example of testing a specific attribute, verbose_name, (that is expected to be altered by the user) in part 2 and the user implemented __unicode__ method test I do think is a great example, though.

I like Daniel's summary in the "What To Test?" section at [http://toastdriven.com/blog/2011/apr/10/guide-to-testing- in-...](http://toastdriven.com/blog/2011/apr/10/guide-to-testing-in-django/)

<comment><USER7> Also, I'd tend to agree that testing model attributes is a bit OTT - it's very close to testing a constant... but, it really doesn't take that long, and if it provides a scaffold that makes it easier to write future unit tests on the model (eg, on a computed field), so much the better for a little nudge that encourages more test coverage...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a Django guy who started picking up some Rails out of curiosity, and that's when I realized how great TDD, specifically, automating behavior-driven testing is in general .. and I was wondering why it didn't seem like a prominent thing in the Django community. Thanks for doing this, please do continue!

<comment><USER10> I disagree. I rarely find Django apps without accompanying tests. No submissions to Django proper ever make it in without tests. But as to no test- based tutorial - you're right, but most tutorials in any given language cover testing only after the language is learned, so that's hardly unique to Django. I hope this changes, of course. Everyone should test.

<comment><USER9> I'm not referring to "it's good practice to test your code". I mean, TDD aka. writing tests to fail, then writing code to make the tests pass. Specifically, behavior driven testing, not just TDD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple of great tutorials on testing in Django is <http://toastdriven.com/blog/2011/apr/>.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been wanting to do TDD for my newest project, and hadn't searched for docs yet. Thank you, I'm using this now.

Using the core Django tutorial was a great decision. Being able to recycle things that I already know, rather than learning new things (even simple tutorial steps), is nice.

<comment><USER7> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently started learning Django for a project I'm working on. I've been reading the django book at djangobook.com, but it doesn't really talk about writing tests. This is awesome, every Django developer should know how to do this.

<comment><USER13> The Django Book is good, but it's incomplete and outdated. On the other hand, the Django documentation talks about testing:

<https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/topics/testing/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> thanks for the post! (harry, the author)</comment>


BitFury to Launch Immersion Cooling Data Center of 40 MW - <AUTHOR> https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151211005837/en/BitFury-Launch-Energy-Efficient-Immersion-Cooling-Data <comment><USER2> Bitcoin mining is so odd.. BitFury's going to add a power plant's worth of mining to secure the blockchain and nothing will change at all -- blocks will come at the same pace, the transaction limit won't increase, the network won't be appreciably more secure... what a waste of energy. 40MW of super clean power that could be manufacturing solar panels or smelting aluminum or any of a million better options is instead performing useless calculations to pay back the cost of building this silly infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> "what a waste of energy"

The energy will go towards securing $6B+ of electronic currency. The more players like BitFury that work to secure the blockchain, the harder it is for a single player to attack the chain with a 51% attack.

<comment><USER2> $6B this week.. $3B a few months ago..

Anyway, they're going to spend some $10M to build this data center.. High end cards can do something like 0.6GH/W, so this place will add 24M gigahash/S to the network.

The current hashrate is something like 650M GH/S, so we can use a literal powerplant worth of energy to increase the hashrate / security of the blockchain by something like 3.5% -- And the hamster wheel keeps on turning.

<comment><USER4> >0.6GH/W

3.65 GH/W: [https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020151117034...](https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=000201511170341298180m44675v0613)

There are some others at ~1.6 GH/W, which is the inverse of 0.6 W/GH, so I'm assuming you just got the units backwards.

This is a next generation facility so it's probably closer to 3.65 than 1.6 (if not >4), but even 1.6 would put it at 64 M GH/s, which would be a ~10% increase. 3.65 is 22%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" The ability to create densely packed circuit boards paired with high- performance during overclocking made 2PIC a natural fit for Blockchain transaction processing, an industry with a need for processing power that is growing at unprecedented rates."_

Er, no. "Blockchain transaction processing" for Bitcoin requires a low-end laptop with a modest database to handle the 7 TPS transaction rate. If some group of banks sets up a blockchain to track bond transfers, the compute power required will be modest. They don't need to "mine", just limit membership to a finite set of organizations. Remember, if anybody fakes a transaction, everybody knows about it immediately. The purpose of mining is to provide enforcement in an environment where you can't sue anybody because you're not sure who they are.

Also, Bitcoin mining systems aren't really "data centers". There's very little data flowing around. Once you start up a miner, you don't need to talk to it again unless it finds a hit, or a new block comes along and you have to restart all the miners from a new starting point. Some of the earlier Bitcoin mining operations had tons of cabling, with a cable connecting each miners to some master machine, but the newer ones seem to have the cabling problem under control.[1] This makes liquid cooling easier, because there's not a lot of wiring coming out of the liquid cooled components.

[1] [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1072474.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1072474.0)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why I dislike Bitcoin. So many better crypto-currencies that do not have the power consumption scale with the value.

<comment><USER7> Which crypto currencies have any meaningful value compared to bitcoin's?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious about the "two phase immersion cooling technology". So, they're putting the circuit boards into some kind of liquid, and the waste heat from the boards is causing that liquid to boil? What kind of liquid are they using?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm reminded of HV paper electrophoresis. Dissipating as much as 1KW in a sheet of wet filter paper, immersed in Varsol with water cooling.

</comment><comment><USER10> And liquid cooling is supposed to be news?

The Cray-2 was liquid cooled in 1985: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2#Packed_circuit_boards_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2#Packed_circuit_boards_and_new_design_ideas)

<comment><USER11> The conventional wisdom is that liquid cooling is not cost-effective and is only used in "money is no object" applications like mainframes and Cray supercomputers.

<comment><USER7> Bitfury is not a dumb company. And the power consumption per square foot of their equipment is drastically higher than almost any high performance computing project that preceded it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All that for 3 transactions a second. Woo</comment>


The Weather Channel's Secret: Less Weather, More Clickbait - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-09/weather-channels-web-mobile-growth-leads-to-advertising-insights/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand why anyone would get their forecasts from anywhere but the NOAA website. The US government provides free, (adfree) and detailed forecasts which are more accurate than 3rd party forecasts. Most 3rd party forecast sites artificially inflate the chance of rain and other factors (because a false negative is better than a false positive, in regards to rain). The NOAA forecasts do not have this "fake" adjustment in them and are very accurate. NOAA forecasts also come with the forecast discussion, written by the Meteorologists which explain the current forecast in a detailed, meteorological way.

[http://www.weather.gov/](http://www.weather.gov/)

<comment><USER3> I've found wunderground.com to be the perfect combination of clarity and high- density information. There are no click-bait "related" links there.

<comment><USER4> I also prefer their website on desktop, but it is perpetually annoying to me that you have to pay a yearly subscription to make ads go away in their Android app.

To WU: I will pay whatever you want, just make it one-time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I stopped getting my weather from The Weather Channel a long time ago, when they became more interested in click-bait articles over just reporting the weather. Thankfully today we have many alternatives:

[http://www.wunderground.com/](http://www.wunderground.com/) [http://darkskyapp.com/](http://darkskyapp.com/) [http://forecast.io/](http://forecast.io/)

And of course [http://www.weather.gov/](http://www.weather.gov/), to name a few.

<comment><USER6> The Weather Channel purchased Weather Underground in 2012. WU doesn't push the sensational stories on their weather pages, but their "News" section is just as much of a joke now.

<comment><USER7> I didn't realize that. I guess I need to change weather providers again. From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel)

The Weather Company (TWCC Holdings:[1] consortium owned by NBCUniversal (25%),[2][3] The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital,[4] exact Bain and Blackstone percentages unknown)

NBCUniversal being Comcast of course.

Thank you for the information.

<comment><USER8> Fortunately, the weather aspect of Wunderground hasn't been adversely affected by the purchase. It appears that TWC treats Wunderground as a separate property. They have allowed some level of autonomy. The extra funding has dramatically improved their web presence. Basically Wunderground is TWC's web property that targets weather geeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Weather Channel is one of the WORST offenders for clickbait ads. The whole website reminds me of a poorly designed spam wordpress site complete with 'has science gone TOO FAR? CLICK HERE!' ads.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://weatherspark.com](http://weatherspark.com) is the only weather site i hit anymore, its fabulous, putting hourlies in graph form makes the data very easy to digest, i can't recommend it enough

</comment><comment><USER11> The page's <title> is "Weather Channel's Web, Mobile Growth Leads to Advertising Insights - Businessweek". Ditto for the slug in the URL.

Looks like Businessweek is the pot calling the kettle black.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not exactly a secret</comment>


Ask HN: What do you guys think about Netflix's expansion strategy to China? - <AUTHOR> According to their last Q3 report, they are planning to license content existing providers in China rather than offering their own services. How many titles do they actually own that they could license to China, since they don't actually own the rights to some of their popular shows like House of Cards and Orange is the new black? <comment><USER2> I think it is smart.

As you mentioned, they don't have the full right for _all_ of their shows. But they _do_ have the full rights for many of them.

Proceeding the way they are planning to will allow them to penetrate the Chinese market using providers that already have experience serving the market. Assuming that the shows will still carry some Netflix branding, it allows them to build up their brand in China without having to do the huge amount of work that would be required to localize all of their applications.

I assume there will still need to be lots of work done to localize things like subtitles, but there's a good chance the providers they're teaming up with have expertise in that area already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Building their brand up with licenseing is a great idea. But would the Chinese audience respond well to the shows that were built to target the western audience like stranger things? Also Which shows do they have the rights too?</comment></comment>


Bill Watterson- A Cartoonist's Advice - <AUTHOR> http://zenpencils.com/comic/128-bill-watterson-a-cartoonists-advice/

<comment><USER2> Aaaand it's toast.

Watterson is the most notoriously reclusive artist in his field - if somebody got an interview with him, that's a feat.

<comment><USER3> While Zen Pencils is using older written quotes (it's the theme of the comic), the recent comics documentary 'Stripped' has the honor of the first audio interview with Bill Watterson. He initially declined, but after their interactions with dozens of other cartoonists, word got to Bill that they were "the real deal" and passionate about what they were doing. Rather inspiring.

[http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/11/reclusive-calvin-and- hobb...](http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/11/reclusive-calvin-and-hobbes- creator-bill-watterson-speaks/)</comment></comment>


How to make hacking sound like rape - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/05/14/how-to-make-hacking-sound-like-rape/

<comment><AUTHOR> With titles like that it will be soon embarrassing to call yourself a hacker.</comment>


How Pinterest Onboards New Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.useronboard.com/how-pinterest-onboards-new-users/

<comment><USER2> Great content. As someone that worries if I'm doing the right thing from a UX perspective often, it's good to get analysis of how others do this stuff!

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you think so! It's always helpful to learn from the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi everyone! I'm the person who made this, and I would love to answer any and all questions you may have. Or comments - I can field those, too.

</comment><comment><USER4> Keep up the posts, Samuel! It's refreshing to have such a great resource for onboarding.

<comment><USER5> I agree. Great stuff, as always. Thanks, Samuel!

<comment><USER3> Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


First skydiver to land without parachute - <AUTHOR> http://news.sky.com/home/strange-news/article/16233460

<comment><USER2> Perhaps the title should read First skydiver to land without parachute On Purpose. Or some such.

</comment><comment><USER3> Plenty of skydivers have landed without a parachute, just not well.

Also: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-fall#Surviving_falls></comment>


Ask HN: How do you change money? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in money changing and foreign exchange, I'd like to do something in the space. I'm asking; if you're thinking of or going on vacation, how and when do you change money? Do you use a dedicated forex company or your bank? Do you do it at the airport? Do you use a fx vending machine?<p>It's clear that the process of managing money is changing from an analogue to a digtal one. We know it's changing payments (Square, Bitcoin etc) - but money changing? <comment><USER2> The answer does depend on where I am heading but in my experience I usually exchange a smaller amount at home (at a forex company) and later just withdraw from ATMs. This is especially convenient if you got a debit/credit card with no extra charge (beyond exchange rates) for withdrawing outside your country.

Exchanging at airports is usually a bad deal, worse rates than else where in my experience.

Forex is a rather regulated field, some countries more than others. There are always concerns about risk (robbery, fraud and so forth). For the most part you can pay with your card, so you no longer have to carry around very large sums of cash.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The answer does depend on where I am heading but in my experience I usually > exchange a smaller amount at home (at a forex company) and later just > withdraw from ATMs.

Yeah, that's what I do. I'm guessing you use online banking for the forex? or a dedicated forex company e.g travelex?

I've never worked in forex or know anyone in the business - I never knew it was regulated. I assume that kiosk type fx companies use banks for money supply? and that as long as currencies were pegged to global rates, they are free to charge whatever they like?

I do hear lots of people complaining about commission, that's what I guess makes Bitcoin and other P2P options attractive. Maybe forex companies have little choice, especially when you consider airport rents, staff etc.

<comment><USER2> I tend to go to a forex company if I have to exchange before traveling, never do online banking for it.

I am not sure how the kiosk fx companies does it but moving money around is always a risk. They can probably charge as much as they like but it is that they cannot exchange unlimited amounts, you have to show how you got the money when exchanging above certain amounts. Money laundering regulations makes up a lot of the regulations in that area.

Bitcoin fluctuates wildly though, and exchanging it is hardly quick for the most part. Both brings down the attractiveness for consumer-type fx.

Airports are location monopolies so companies that operate at them have no incentive to provide cheaper services. They can operate at a healthy (for them) margin and the customers will still come. There is a reason those airport sandwiches are expensive!

<comment><AUTHOR> > Airports are location monopolies so companies that operate at them have no > incentive to provide cheaper services. They can operate at a healthy (for > them) margin and the customers will still come. There is a reason those > airport sandwiches are expensive!

Yeah, airports are going to only get busier right so they'd be a good bet for startups (and more monopolies) in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Most places I visit, I change a small amount of cash, enough for a cab from the airport at the other end and a meal/coffee - usually at the airport on the way out. Apart from that, I rely on credit cards and ATMs. That's worked fine for me over the last 10-15 years travelling from Australia to the US, UK, Thailand (mostly Bankok), Singapore, Hong Kong, & New Zealand. I've occasionally had one of my credit cards (Visa, Visa debit, and Amex) or one of my ATM cards (St George and ANZ) fail to work for me - but get that here in Australia too.</comment>