Low consumption lifestyles create more wealth than acting "rich" - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/millionairenextdoor.htm

<comment><USER2> So. Millionaires save like crazy. They devote their lives to hoarding money (bad connotation unintended), to the exclusion of a lot of other material goods.

This sounds like a compulsive behaviour. Should we regard excessive frugality as a sickness and millionaires as pitiable? Serious question.

(Full disclosure. I am a first generation millionaire by this article's criteria. But I don't fit the profile very well -- not an entrepreneur, my wife earns about as much as me, we've bought "foreign luxury cars" and an expensive house. And most important, we have no kids (which explains why we have money - we're DINKs).)

</comment><comment><USER3> No.

The article describes wealth accumulation. Not wealth creation. Wealth creation is what pays for their income.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure? If you have time, re-read the article.</comment></comment>


TCP Communication Between SQL Server and SqlSatellite in SQL ML Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.nielsberglund.com/2017/10/31/microsoft-sql-server-r-services---internals-xii/ <comment><AUTHOR> What about the TCP packets sent between SQL Server and SqlSatellite?</comment>


7 Ruby Forks Worth Checking Out - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/db4097a44cba

<comment><USER2> Oh, Ruby. What else.</comment>


The Interview Question You Should Always Ask - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/01/the_interview_question_you_sho.html <comment><USER2> The meat of the article:

 _After you have narrowed the pool of applicants down to those with the skills, experience, and knowledge to do the job, ask each candidate one question:

What do you do in your spare time? [...]

people are often successful not despite their dysfunctions but because of them. Obsessions are one of the greatest telltale signs of success. Understand a person's obsessions and you will understand her natural motivation. The thing for which she would walk to the end of the earth._

<comment><USER3> _What do you do in your spare time?_

IANAL, but I've heard warnings that this question might be illegal since (a) it isn't directly related to an applicant's ability to do a job, and (b) it is likely to reveal information about the applicant's marital status, children or lack thereof, ethnicity, and/or religion.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not illegal to ask a question which in answering, the applicant may offer such information.

Illegal: Are you a U.S. citizen? Where were your parents born? What is your native language?

Legal: Are you authorized to work in the U.S.? What languages do you speak?

Illegal: Are you married? Do you have, or plan to have children? Have you ever been divorced? What do you do for child care?

Legal: Are you willing to relocate? Are you willing and able to put in the amount of overtime and/or travel the position requires?

Illegal: Are you a U.S. citizen? What is your religion? Are you practicing?

Legal: Does your religious affiliation, if any, interfere with your working in this position?

Illegal: How old are you?

Legal: Are you over 18?

The very first interview question I ask is "Tell me about yourself".

<comment><USER4> Why can't you ask if someone is a US citizen? I thought certain jobs (e.g., DoD contractor needing security clearance) required citizenship? Or are you only allowed to ask about that in specific circumstances?

<comment><USER3> From what I've read, you're apparently supposed to ask "do you have a security clearance" and "are you eligible to get a security clearance" -- i.e., ask the specific question you need answered rather than asking a more general question from which you can infer what you want to know.

<comment><USER5> A 5 second Google search will show you that there are plenty of jobs that overtly require US Citizenship. For example, all TSA screeners must be US Citizens.

This is kind of a diversion from the real discussion. It's unlikely that anyone reading this board can legally ask interviewees about their citizenship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a variation of a theme that seems to pop up regularly here and I'm always surprised that smart people can buy into such a simplistic idea.

The problem here is this theory completely dismisses the need for diversity in a company. In my experience the very worst performing companies are ones that are packed with clones of their founder. Because no matter how gifted their founder might be he can't know/do everything. So in the end companies with people who are identical end up with a very limited set of skills.

Building a company is like building a baseball team. Just as your first baseman is going to have a completely different set of skills than your outfielder a programming lead (who should be obsessive) is going to have a completely different set of skills than a marketing manager (a job that generally benefits from someone who goes out a parties at night).

<comment><AUTHOR> a) A simple idea doesn't infer a simplistic idea.

b) _Building a company is like building a baseball team..._

Which is pretty much exactly what the article says:

 _What if you were hiring a receptionist? What spare-time activities would suggest to you that a candidate might be a star?

Well, what do star receptionists do? Don't think of all the million things they might do. Just think of the one or two most important things. Perhaps the best ones are super friendly and well organized. Well, if a candidate likes to spend his spare time alone reading a book, he probably won't be your star. But if he throws a dinner party once a week, you'll know you've got a winner.

Greg Davis, my friend the fishing guide, is on the water fishing with clients six days a week. Can you guess what he does on his one day off?_

<comment><USER6> You said: Which is pretty much exactly what the article says:

Not really. In this one paragraph he's actually suggesting there is no great skill to being a receptionist other than being social (which I believe to be a bit elitist btw). That is why it differs.

But in every other part of the article the author suggest hiring people who are obsessed with their area of expertise so much so that they spend their spare time on it (even the last sentence you quote about Greg Davis alludes to that point).

The point I was making is that some people are useful because they are contradictions. The programmer who spends his free time playing guitar in a band might bring perceptions to a discussion that the programmer who codes at night would never think of. Even though being in a band at night does not fit the rigid ideal this article suggests.

<comment><AUTHOR> _In this one paragraph he's actually suggesting there is no great skill to being a receptionist other than being social._

Really? What an incredibly long bow to draw.

<comment><USER6> I'll be honest, I have no idea what the sentence means (long bow?)

But let me try to elaborate on my point. The author gives several examples and in each example he cites the person's job and then points out how the fact that they spend their time using the same skills in their personal life makes them the best qualified for their job. Examples

Greg Daniels: Job: Fishing Guide - Free Time: Spent Fishing Captain Sullenberg: Job: Pilot - Free Time: Accident Investigator for Airlines

So his premise is that people who spend their spare time using the same skills as they use in their jobs make better employees. He then brought up the Receptionist example and cited "throwing dinner parties" meaning the skill behind throwing parties is what he think applies to being a receptionist. But his thesis is the same he just sees the skill behind receptionist as socializing

My counter point to his argument was that diversity is valuable and that people who hone skills other than the ones directly related to their job are just as valuable because they can generate insights from those unrelated skills. That's why it's important to have those people along with the people who spend their free time on work related skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my spare time, I don't code, because I do code for a living 8+ hrs a day, and in addition to that I have a life.

When I am not working, I DO code for fun, because I enjoy coding.

A better question might be, have you ever done what you do for pay, for free just because you think it's fun.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. Once, at an interview with an un-named, extremely large tech company, the recruiter asked me if I had a "passion for technology", so I decided to have a little fun:

 _"I'm not sure what that means."_

 _"Oh...you know...passion. When you look around the campus on any given night, you see lots of lights on. That's passion."_

 _"Actually, I think that's called 'overtime'."_

I didn't get that job. Guess I wasn't 'passionate' enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't do interviews but one thing I will always look for in others is "passion for technology". If you code at nights for coding's sake you've got passion and I want to be your friend.

<comment><USER10> I know some people with a lot of "passion for technology" (Linux, Mac, iPhones) who are essentially idiots. Luckily, the only programming languages they barely know are Bash and the like, so they can't do much damage. Ass- kissing keeps them employed though.

<comment><USER9> Under pressure of mounting evidence and upon consideration I confess that "passion for technology" is not a sufficient criteria.

I guess there is more nuance to this.

Among my friends the ones I emphatise the most with are the ones who _do_ something. Solve coding puzzles, write code that's useful for others, tinker with new technologies just to satisfy their own curiosity or even only talk about doing these things (which I think is a precursor). This in contrast to those who spend their free time watching TV, doing sports or hanging out.

OTOH I can easily believe that there are people who can do these _coding_ things yet wouldn't be much fun at all. Somehow I just don't meet them.</comment></comment></comment>


RIP SYNHAK: How a midwestern hackerspace tore itself to shreds - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tdfischer_/rip-synhak-7093ade6b943

<comment><USER2> Forget Roberts Rules; The law is the most important set of books everyone has memorized, yet no one has ever read (and cannot easily access even if they wanted.) A few of my favorites from Wikipedia:

> _A maximum 900 copies of the Laws of Ohio are published and distributed_

> _The Ohio Revised Code is not officially printed_

I would think that alone would make corporate governance quite difficult in practice. You can download any book off the Internet for extremely cheap, if not free--except the law. Am I alone in thinking this _likely_ causes _major_ problems in a society based upon the "rule of law"? IMO poor corporate governance is just one example of the failure of the rule of law caused by the _willful_ negligence to _effectively_ publish the law which binds us.</comment>


What the seven wonders of programming? - <AUTHOR>

like pyramids and the Great Wall of china what do you think are the wonders of coding? <comment><USER2> Wonders of coding (not _exactly_ the same as wonders of programming): 1) Edition 7 UNIX -- it was a wonder for what it did on such tiny-resourced machines. 2) FORTH -- great power in a small space 3) PDP-10 (DECsystem-10) TECO -- text editor in 4K words of memory.

</comment><comment><USER3> Microcode - the process of developing a specific series of transistors to become a microprocessor.. The core of the magic. Especially how one can start up a microprocessor from pushing an on switch - that's the definition of sublime to me

</comment><comment><USER3> 8-bit/Microsoft BASIC - many a programmer today can draw their roots back to BASIC. It was the languages that made significant inroads to elementary-high school programming education as well as self-taught programming education.

</comment><comment><USER4> Python Metasploit

</comment><comment><USER5> The Linux Kernel

</comment><comment><USER6> At the lowest level programming allows us to use code to control machines mechanically thats a wonder.</comment>


Nintendo's Genre Innovation Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation-strategy.html# <comment><USER2> I like the article's point about how when genres reach maturity, they become attractive to an increasingly specialized, increasingly small audience. Flight sims are perhaps the most extreme example: they were hugely popular in the 80s and early 90s, but by the mid-90s they basically required you to be able to actually fly a plane, which was not so popular.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love how Nintendo were so open about their strategy, even before it became an obvious success, but the cognitive dissonance is so strong that even today many people (particularly the stereotypical "hardcore gamer") still actively refuse to understand it and will go to great lengths to explain away reality.

</comment><comment><USER4> An oldie but a goodie!</comment>


Tell the Senate to Pass a Strong Election Security Bill - <AUTHOR> https://act.eff.org/action/tell-the-senate-to-pass-a-strong-election-security-bill <comment><USER2> For the HN crowd, if you're looking for highest impact per unit time spent, I'd recommend reaching out to your representatives and public offices (including local city reps), and volunteering to come in for a lunch and learn with the staff. There's an ocean of knowledge between the cybersecurity stuff we discuss here every day and what most staffers (in frankly more powerful positions than yours) have.

Spending an hour over sandwiches with staffers talking about what phishing is and answering their questions about whatever they want is a great way to do your part save the democratic process.

For example, I volunteered to do a lunch and learn with SF Dept for the Environment. I covered really simple stuff like looking at the url and domain before logging in and how to use a password manager.

I also said, "If you have a stupid question you've always wanted to ask, now is your chance." Since you're not their curmudgeonly IT person, some feel more open to asking things they've always wanted to ask but felt would be met with a scoff.

These are the people who eventually will interview Zuckerberg. Help them out.

<comment><USER3> > "If you have a stupid question you've always wanted to ask, now is your > chance."

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, i have to say this. USA has a long history of meddling in other countries elections[1]. Now that Russia allegedly interfered with US elections, everyones losing it. No wonder my Non-US friends and many others in other countries are cynical of USA.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia- isnt...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the- only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> > A competing bill introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden

Oh FFS. My one of my senators does the right thing already and gives me no excuse to write to them. (I wrote anyways giving approval)

I'm commenting on the last bit of this, linked to by the original article: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/if-it-doesnt-have- pape...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/if-it-doesnt-have-paper- ballots-and-automatic-audits-its-not-election-security)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nobody dares confront the biggest problem: absentee ballots.

<comment><USER2> I'll bite. Why are absentee ballots the biggest problem?

<comment><USER7> By far the biggest vector for voter fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It doesn't do any good to secure the voting machines if there is no verification of identity of voters, or effective controls on people voting multiple times. We have so little verification in this regard, and so little transparency, that there's actually a debate as to whether this even occurs or not and is a problem. Not really enough data to know.

It would also help if they made ballots non-ambiguous. There should always be a "none of the above" choice so that a machine could validate correctness. Currently, if a choice is left blank, you don't know if the person meant "none of the above" or forgot to mark it, or tried to mark it but the marking failed.

Adding a "none of the above" choice makes that problem go away, and makes it so that the ballot cannot be submitted until it is correct.

Incidentally, if "none of the above" wins, then the election really should be run again, with new candidates.

<comment><USER9> What's your favorite analysis illustrating that multiple voting is a real problem?

I also wonder if you think there have been any good comparisons between states with strict id requirements and states without them?

We should change our voter eligibility system though, from one where people have to maintain a registration to one where the government just uses information it already maintains to send everyone a postcard indicating where they can vote.

<comment><USER8> This seems backwards. We don't wait to see if there is a problem, and then fix it when it comes to financial matters.

We know there will be some fraud, so we design systems to verify who is doing a transaction and ensure someone else does not impersonate them. Peoples money is at stake.

What would we say to a bank that does not require a login to take money from someone's account? Would it be ok for the bank to say, "first, you have to demonstrate there is an actual problem that is widespread". Of course, they control all of the data that would let you make your case. And, how would you prove that it wasn't Joe who took money from Joe's account if there was no authentication method for the transaction? It would be just having to take Joe's word for it. "Honest, I didn't take that money from my account - it was someone else".

That's exactly how voting is today. Its just worse, in that Joe may have died, or stopped voting for some reason, or be in a care facility and unable to form decisions, or not even exist, or live in another state and still be voting in his old state (and his new state), or any number of other things. The person voting for Joe would likely never get caught, and the problem would not ever surface.

There are several examples of fraud in the past. There are also examples of reforms that have been successful in reducing fraud. We have a ways to go, though.

I'm not sure I'm up for the postcard for this same reason. I don't think I'd patronize a bank that sent a postcard to an address it has on file giving the bearer carte blanche with my account.

<comment><USER9> So check fraud is exactly what you are describing in a financial context and still happens all the time.

As far as voter notification, you don't have to use a literal postcard and there wouldn't be any need or reason for it to be a credential, it'd just provide the voter with information about where to vote. The polling place would do whatever verification was required separately from notifying the voter of where they are eligible to vote.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Morgan Stanley says Alphabet's Waymo unit could be worth as much as $70B - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2017/05/23/morgan-stanley-says-alpahbets-waymo-unit-could-be-worth-as-much-as-70-billion/ <comment><USER2> All I get from this is that Morgan Stanley would really, really, like to get Google's future investment banking business.

<comment><USER3> If you were accurate it'd be foment</comment></comment>


BSD vs. Ubuntu motd(5) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lelff/status/1210619413885575168 <comment><USER2> One implication of this that some people don't realize is that a brand new Ubuntu instance -- whether a physical host, a virtual machine, an EC2 instance, whatever -- immediately calls home to Canonical as soon as it spins up for the first time.

The functionality is included in the "base-files" package, which has a priority of "required" and is marked as an "essential" package. Thus, if you have an Ubuntu instance, it's nearly 100% guaranteed this is installed and enabled by default.

(If memory serves, this was added in 17.04 or thereabouts.)

<comment><USER3> Rather older. This sort of thing started rolling out when Landscape came out, c.a. 12 years ago. Does Red Hat have something similar in RHEL?

<comment><USER4> RHEL doesnt need to since to get packages access you need to register your system with your rhn account...

Fedora or CentOS does not

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> To disable the part of the MOTD which calls home, setting

      ENABLED=0

in /etc/default/motd-news should be sufficient.

To get rid of the entire "dynamic" MOTD, disable the timer unit:

      $ sudo systemctl disable motd-news.timer

Alternatively, stop supporting companies that covertly slip spyware like this into their software. Debian is wonderful, of course.

(I'm on an iPad and going from memory, but I _think_ this is correct -- someone will correct me if it isn't!)

<comment><USER5> If Debian offered the same things Ubuntu does, people wouldn't use Ubuntu. But, alas, they don't.

<comment><USER6> As someone who's worked heavily with both Debian and Ubuntu - they do.

There are differences between them but I am 100% confident that I can do everything that an Ubuntu system can, especially if we're talking about infrastructure.

<comment><USER7> Try getting Debian working on a laptop. Those "non-free" packages in Ubuntu make a huge difference.

On servers, not so much difference. Well unless you are using k8s, etcd, juju and all that jazz

<comment><USER2> > _Try getting Debian working on a laptop. Those "non-free" packages in Ubuntu > make a huge difference._

I'm typing this on my "workstation" but, sitting here on my desk, there's a laptop running Debian on either side of it (and there's another one across the room).

I can't read your mind so I'm not sure what issues you've encountered attempting to run Debian on a laptop. Apparently I have already figured out how to workaround them (but I've also been using Debian for ~23 years so perhaps that has something to do with it).

<comment><USER7> Getting things like wifi and GPU acceleration working on laptops can be problematic with pure Debian.

You _can_ do it but on Ubuntu it just works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> See also:

\- Bug #1701068, _" motd.ubuntu.com currently shows media item (HBO's Silicon Valley using Ubuntu)"_ [0]

\- Dustin Kirkland's explanation here (on HN) back when this first happened [1].

\---

[0]: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base- files/+bug/17...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base- files/+bug/1701068)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=14663947](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=14663947)

</comment><comment><USER8> People should really expect Ubuntu to call home. This is the same OS that for a while used to send every filesystem search you did in the default GUI to Amazon so that it could include ads in the results.

I'm not even saying this is bad. Ubuntu has to fund itself somehow. But people should really know what they're getting. Ubuntu is not a privacy-focused or user-centric OS. It's the Windows of the Linux/Unix world.

<comment><USER9> Well now this just makes my "Linux Desktop recommendation guide" even harder since the whole point of Linux distros these days are supposed to empower the user to have complete control over his/her computer and OS which is what Ubuntu was supposed to be doing and is viewed as the ground zero of introducing Linux to newcomers.

> I'm not even saying this is bad. Ubuntu has to fund itself somehow.

Oh dear. You make as if its fine for the users to give themselves up to Ubuntu (and Amazon) to be mined by the distro that does call itself "privacy- respecting" and "open-source"; some may call such claims misleading in the light of this now. Due to your defeatist rhetoric in supporting these overlords, I would have to change the guide to support the devil I know that can't read my encrypted data, rather than two or eight unknown devils that can.

At least with macOS its all "encrypted" and has sane defaults with a consistent user interface and when some settings are turned off, they stay completely off.

<comment><USER10> I honestly don't know what advice to give people at this point (they keep asking me) other than "try building a simple OS with busybox and a kernel so you can make an informed decision based on your needs."

Literally everything you can't read and understand the code to seems to be actively hostile, I'm surprised clang doesn't call home.

<comment><USER11> Don't you think it's weird that we let all processes on a computer have unrestricted access to the network/internet by default? Isn't that the problem? Access beyond the computer should be by consent only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am not surprised. It seems like every piece of software with enough people and commercially-oriented interests will silently phone home now. Whether it's open-source doesn't matter, they'll still do it regardless of what others think.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tbh I find the Ubuntu message of the day quite useful.

The "adverts" are benign. Right now it says to check out microk8s and also to look at livepatch.

But logging in and seeing a summary of: loaf, disk usage, processes, number of users logged in, IP addresses, memory usage and swap usage, kernel version and also last login time and from what IP.

That's pretty useful stuff to me.

Also if you're in the position to care about motd, you're going to have the skill to change it yourself.

<comment><USER6> > The "adverts" are benign. Right now it says to check out microk8s and also > to look at livepatch.

My distro shouldn't be advertising to me. Call me "old school" but this has _no_ place in Linux. Also, if you're in a position of trusted compute then you don't want this sort of information leaving your network.

> Also if you're in the position to care about motd, you're going to have the > skill to change it yourself.

Yeah - and I feel I shouldn't have to add it to my images/recipes/whatever to fix this. I use Linux for a lot of reasons, and some of the most important ones are that it doesn't advertise to me and/or leak data. This is telemetry and it's unacceptable.

<comment><USER14> >This is telemetry and it's unacceptable.

I dislike the idea of tying particular political or economic philosophies together with a tech stack like Linux.

Everyone can distribute linux distributions however they see fit, it's an open platform and if that includes telemetry by default that's fine too as users have choice. I don't think anyone uses a Canonical distro and is genuinely upset or surprised about this particular benign case.

The linux distribution space is truly one of the few places where we can't make any excuses about market power or lack of choice. There are a billion distributions, almost all of them free. Users will pick accordingly, and my sense is that virtually nobody cares about this particular case of telemetry.

<comment><USER6> > I don't think anyone uses a Canonical distro and is genuinely upset or > surprised about this particular benign case.

I've had to use Ubuntu in an environment with high security needs/regulations. I've had to disable this exact feature because leaking OS versions, network information, etc. externally via that user agent string was unacceptable from a security standpoint.

I was upset that something as simple as a motd had been retooled to leak data.

> and my sense is that virtually nobody cares about this particular case of > telemetry.

And in my real-world experience I've been paid to care. When forced to work with Ubuntu (which is _everywhere_ these days) I have to "reign it in" with custom images/scripts/etc.

> I dislike the idea of tying particular political or economic philosophies > together with a tech stack like Linux.

This isn't "political or economic philosophies" this is security 101. Leaking data like my OS version, IP addresses, when admins are doing their work, etc _to the public internet_ is a hard "no" for anyone who's operating in any semblance of "best practices".

<comment><USER14> not doubting your experiences but just out of interest if you can tell, what security-relevant sector uses stock ubuntu and exposes themselves to the internet like this? I've never seen a setup like that before.

<comment><USER6> PCI environment for a household name ecommerce application with millions of users.

Also we didn't use stock Ubuntu - I/we had to get it to not phone-home... it was just extra layers of "we shouldn't have to do this" in regards to managing the OS.

I left the company when it was apparent that "security culture" were just buzzwords they would repeat in meetings to make themselves feel better vs. an actual core competency. They had more resources assigned to migrating our WordPress blog to K8s than they did for the credit-card handling infrastructure.

Honestly Ubuntu was one of the least of my worries, but after the experience of getting it to "shut up" and stop phoning home I made the decision to never recommend it moving forward as a security best practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember seeing this on twitter some time ago. It was discussed a lot.

edit: google found this article [https://lwn.net/Articles/726902/](https://lwn.net/Articles/726902/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've never seen the motd come up on my laptop. When I open up a GNOME Terminal, it doesn't print the motd by default. I've only seen it when I ssh into another machine, or log into a console. If this is supposed to be phoning home for analytics purposes, isn't it missing a big chunk of data?

Also, wouldn't apt be a much better source of analytics data? Yes, there are apt mirrors which aren't controlled by Canonical, but most people would be hitting ftp.{countrycode}.ubuntu.com, or at the very least be downloading [http://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt](http://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt).

<comment><USER17> You don't correctly understand when the script is being run.

* [https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/tree/deb...](https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/tree/debian/motd-news.timer)

* [https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/tree/deb...](https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/tree/debian/motd-news.service)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And this is why Debian exists.

When packaging we are required to disable privacy harming "features".

<comment><USER19> I've returned to vanilla Debian as of late and it's refreshing. My gripes are the guided installer always insisting I need a swap partition and no sudo out of the box, but those are easy enough to overcome.

It's nice to see only a handful of processes running on a new setup.

<comment><USER20> You almost certainly do want swap (in the 99.9% case).

I had a better / more elaborate explanation bookmarked somewhere but can't find it now, the tldr is a "modern" OS (past ~2-3 decades) wants the freedom to manage anonymous (malloc) and named (mmio) memory between physical RAM and disk devices. Disabling swap means the OS must always keep the anonymous pages in physical RAM, which negatively impacts any IO-bound workload (can't cache) and, ironically, puts more pressure on the disk.

So unless you have an extremely specific and finely tuned use-case with lots of benchmark data, the OS will almost always make a better call.

<comment><USER21> You do probably want swap, but the comment you are replying to is talking about a swap _partition_ and that is not the only way to do swap. Using a file instead makes it easier to change the size of your swap, some people prefer that.

<comment><USER20> Again, what about sticking to a sensible default that covers the 99.9% case? The installer is hinting you to do the right thing (to create _some_ swap), even if it doesn't provide all the possible myriad options. Swap files vs dedicated partitions have different trade-offs, if you start going that route it's easy to start blaming the installer for having less power/flexibility than invoking debootstrap directly.

<comment><USER22> Swap file _is_ a more sensible default in this day and age, at least for the desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I once wrote on how to disable parts of the ubuntu motd: [https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Disable_dynamic_motd_and_motd...](https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Disable_dynamic_motd_and_motd_news_spam_on_Ubuntu_18.04.html) \- it's way more complicated then it should be IMHO.

<comment><USER24> The fuss seems to be about motd phoning home. Disabling it is trivial, as you noted in your blog post.

The remaining bits likely come from Debian. If you believe it's a bug, have you tried reporting one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> These are the kinds of packages that get uninstalled immediately, and then configured in my config-management to remove on sight. Debian luckily doesn't do crap like this.

<comment><USER2> I mentioned it in another comment but this functionality is included with the "base-files" package:

      $ sudo apt remove base-files
      ...
      WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
      This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
        base-files bash
      ...
      You are about to do something potentially harmful.
      To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
       ?]

Have fun with your broken system after removing that!

The best you can do is disable it (and hope it isn't silently re-enabled later):

      $ sudo systemctl disable motd-news.timer

<comment><USER7> Please open a bug with canonical asking for motd to be moved to oss own package.

<comment><USER17> Like this unfixed one from 2018, asking that removing execute permission from the script disable the attempts to run it, do you mean?

* [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/18...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/1803601)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sometimes, Im not sure where the internet and linux are headed anymore.

<comment><USER27> Ubuntu != Linux && Ubuntu != TheInternet

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> HN commenters sometimes ask why bother with DNS-based ad blocking when one can just install a browser extension.

This is why.

There seems to be one assumption that all online advertisers and telemetry implementers make. They assume the user is not in full control of name resolution. ("Full control" as used here means relying on whitelists not third party blocklists.) In this case, they assume motd.ubuntu.com will be resolved without any user input. "Without any user input" here means the user never looked at the domain "motd.ubuntu.com" and made a decision whether it was needed or not.

<comment><USER29> How many people have motd in their ad block lists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm assuming Canonical wont remove it due to it "increasing customer synergies" or similar.

Perhaps we make a package that patches this out? I'm thinking of something that detects this file and replaces it rather than a manual process. That way it gets fixed whenever "base-files" or whatever gets its updates. Make it a depend on base or similar.

Somebody with a sharper set of teeth and specialised dorsal fin might want to do an audit for similar shenanigans. Canonical have "prior art" for this kind of thing. I doubt this is the only addition.

</comment><comment><USER31> When did Ubuntu start doing that with their motd?

<comment><USER32> Since version 17.04

"In Ubuntu 17.04, we added /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news"[0]

[0]([https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/6k7a86/comment/djkd8...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/6k7a86/comment/djkd8oy))

<comment><USER31> Nice find, thanks. So, a fair while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I wish Canonical would just charge a small amount to download Ubuntu. I don't pay money for Ubuntu, everyone I know doesn't pay for Ubuntu. Nothing is free. Individuals and corporations need to make money. I just hate that adds are the default instead of charging me a few dollars for useful software.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure if this data they're collecting (if they even are storing it long-term) is even being sold.

Like the other commercial Linux distros, Canonical profits from support.

Also, now it seems that even when you pay for the product you're not guaranteed to have something that doesn't include spyware. Windows 10 is a great example of this.

<comment><USER33> I completely agree. It is even worse when you pay for a product and still get adds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Everytime I update ubuntu the MOTD gets readded. No matter what options I pick it readds a file in the motd folder. Stupid.

<comment><USER35> Obviously this isn't something you should have to do, but maybe making removing the write permissions from the directory will do the trick?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> A simple straightforward snippet of shell. Is that supposed to be bad?

<comment><USER26> It depends, what do you define a shell's role to be.

To us purists, it shouldnt phone home for a motd.

<comment><USER6> This isn't even an idealist "purists" thing - this is a "I don't want my distro leaking telemetry" thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub my motd shouldn't tell canonical every time i log in...

looks like it never hits the cache unless the curl fails.

<comment><USER37> it doesn't.

Right above that code is this block

      # If we're not forcing an update, and we have a cached motd-news file,
      # then just print it and exit as quickly as possible, for login performance.
      # Note that systemd should keep this cache file up to date,
      asynchronously
      if [ "$FORCED" != "1" ]; then
              if [ -r $CACHE ]; then
                      echo
                      safe_print $CACHE
              else
                      : > $CACHE
              fi
              exit 0
      fi

None of that code in the tweet actually runs at login.

<comment><USER2> > _None of that code in the tweet actually runs at login._

Except when there was a bug that caused it to do just that (and also caused a five second delay when logging in).

<comment><USER37> ... 2 and a half years ago.

Can you provide links to all software you have ever written so I can complain about bugs that existed in 2017?

<comment><USER2> I suppose I can, if you really want me to, but:

1.) no software I've ever written is installed and enabled, by default, on pretty much every Ubuntu instance created in the last ~2.5 years (whether the "owners" of those instances want it or not),

2.) I certainly never claimed to write 100% bug-free code (in fact, I will freely admit that I absolutely _DO NOT_ write bug-free code!), and

3.) this discussion really isn't about me or any code that I have written.

(If you're the one that wrote whatever caused the bug and my comment caused your feelings to get hurt, sorry, but software bugs are a fact of life.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does it man it's no longer safe to update Ubuntu, for the risk of getting some spyware tools?

<comment><USER39> Ubuntu always had spyware though

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Ew, you got some Windows 10 in your Linux.

</comment><comment><USER41> You know you can configure your motd however you like, right?

<comment><USER26> Its an operating system, not a nuclear plant.

*sane defaults used to be thing.

I dont want to worry about stuff i dont know about making connections i didny say it should.

Confugure one thing, sure is easy. You think they'll stop at one?

<comment><USER41> Comparing some annoying adverts to a nuclear power plant operation system failing is... Something.

If it was just about the ads, I'd agree. But comparing it to BSD is silly. BSD doesn't have scriptable motd and I'm supposed to act like that's obviously better? Eh.

<comment><USER26> I am partially responsible for at least 200 individuals, let alone those who depend on them. Now if you think the digital safety off 200 isnt comparable to the digital safety of say, 200,000, well. "It is with the first link that a chain is forged".

Look, Nothing against you, you dont seem to have a systems exposure i do. Im not a fullstack dev, maybe you are and its fair to just see your own machine and expect everything else to work.

Car builders and bridge builders see different problems to solve, and see risks differently too.

<comment><USER41> Thanks for the condescension.

I'm saying the modes of failure and effects are different. Digital safety and protecting people's lives are two different things. Both important, but different. But even besides that, you ought to be using a different tool for that.

Is it fine to have the server I use for my personal site and projects use a dynamic motd, perhaps even reach out to the network? Yeah. It can be useful. Should a CA signing machine do that? Obviously not.

I'm saying that acting like one is unambiguously better for being less featureful is wrong. That's all.

<comment><USER26> I reread what i wrote and it can comeoff as condescending, though it wasnt meant that way. I meant to actually say is that my attitude is specifically forged by my experience.

What you think is fine, i don't think is fine, because we see the use case from two different perspectives.

You also see benevolent usage, i see abuse potential. System security and usability are always at each other's neck in a never ending act of balancing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I read this as BBC vs Ubuntu motd

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

</comment><comment><USER43> The number of people switching to BSD because of this is exactly 0.

Further, as an avid user of Ubuntu, who reaps the benefits of millions of work hours of Debian &/or Ubuntu employees, I'm ok with advertising whose source code I can audit, and modify even.

And to think that the majority of dissenters are commenting from their closed source Macs & iPhones, or their equivalent commerical competitors, on Google funded browsers tracking their every click, is all a little ironic

<comment><USER44> And you know this number is zero why?

This is just yet another quite literal example of how many GNU/Linux distros are becoming more like Windows - they do all sorts of things now that they were never asked to do, and it's up to us to fix things after a clean install.

<comment><USER45> > many GNU/Linux distros are becoming more like Windows

And others aren't. Though I disagreed with the SystemD move, I've quite enjoyed arch for years. There are also some excellent other options, for instance, Alpine is a Musl/Busybox/Linux distro that works great on old machines. I think most Linux users will move to a different Linux before moving to BSD for comfort reasons.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to host static site (PaaS/Cloud)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If you've already bought into Amazon's AWS ecosystem, S3 and Cloudfront (and maybe Route53) can do that well and easily.</comment>


Google to pay 60 million euros into French media fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/01/us-france-google-idUSBRE91011Z20130201 <comment><USER2> Cheaper than paying $1B after an anti-trust (see Microsoft), so just pay the bribe as a cost of business and move on.</comment>


Who's Going to Fund the Next Steve Jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121633667123063791.html

<comment><USER2> The question is wrong. They should have asked "Who wants to be next Steve Jobs?" I suspect not too many: most technical entrepreneurs are more interested in quickly making a "widget" of some sort and sell out to the first real business that comes along.

Some may argue that personal computers in the 70s can be compared to web- widgets of today: the public at large didn't look at them as at "real computers" and few believed in truly global adoption. In that regard early PC pioneers were swimming against the flow.

While today, the entrepreneurial mantra is to "figure out where everybody is going and be there first", being "part of the flow" is crucial (any VC will tell you that). And nobody bothers with re-thinking anything: hey, ideas are nothing, execution is the king. Build something fast. Be in a browser. Get on TechCrunch.

Next Steve won't grow out of making half-assed JavaScript reimplementations of existing desktop software. And I honestly have no idea what the Next Steve will do. I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files" for software built in the 50s. Perhaps this is what they call a "matured industry" and perhaps looking for a next Steve Jobs is as practical as looking for a next Henry Ford.

<comment><USER3> Steve Jobs probably should not be compared to Henry Ford. Apple, if anything, is a great fast-follower with an incredible sense of design and marketing. Henry Ford, on the other hand, was mainly responsible for the initial commercialization of something that's pretty much reshaped culture. If anyone's had a similar impact in the computer industry, it's Microsoft, not Apple.

<comment><USER4> I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before that market existed. Microsoft's big break was when they were called upon by IBM to provide the OS for IBM's competitor to Apple. Had not Apple taken IBM by surprise, IBM may have eventually decided to go into that market anyway. But absent competitive pressure from Apple compressing their timeline, they probably would have gone with a more proprietary design and wouldn't have even needed Microsoft.

<comment><USER5> _I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before that market existed._

Okay, time to channel Grandpa Simpson! Where's my cane?

<grandpa>

Now, sonny, what people forget is that Apple Computer brought their Apple II to an _existing market_ for home PCs. [1] The first home PC had been introduced in January 1975, and by 1977 when the Apple II came out there were already multiple PC enthusiast magazines, Microsoft had been in the software business for two years, and there were multiple companies selling PC hardware. The Apple II was introduced _at a personal computer show_.

Even the Apple I was an entry into an existing market.

Jobs and Wozniak certainly pushed the envelope: The Apple II was, for example, arguably the first PC to be marketed at folks who didn't know how to solder, who didn't even _care about hardware_ but just wanted to buy or write software and run it. But the hardware hackers drooled over it too [2], and they bought it, and thus the venture was less risky that you think -- it didn't have to create its own market, because Jobs knew the core market was already there; the challenge was to _grow_ the market.

Pioneering the PC market was the work of the Altair guys at MITS, two years prior. MITS, of course, followed the usual good advice for people who are trying to discover a brand-new market: They launched early to test the market. They launched _really_ early. As in "before they actually _built_ more than a single prototype, they photographed a mockup and sent that photo plus the schematic to the editor of _Popular Electronics_ [3], who read the schematic, concluded that the hardware was probably real, and published an article on it that drove hundreds and hundreds of mail orders in a few weeks." Then the company used the money from the mail orders to actually buy the parts, package the kits and send them out. [4]

You could even argue that _MITS_ was targeting an existing market: If the folks writing _Popular Electronics_ hadn't built a fan base that was ready and waiting to solder together computers, the PC revolution wouldn't have caught fire in 1975.

</grandpa>

All of this is cribbed from Steven Levy's _Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution_ , a book you should really read.

[1] Note: Here "PC" has its original meaning of "generic personal computer" and does not refer to MS/DOS compatible boxen. Those came later, obviously.

[2] It helped that the Apple II not only came with schematics and a complete listing of its ROM, but had been designed by a hardware-hacking genius of the first water who liked to show off.

[3] MITS also mailed their single prototype to _Popular Electronics_. It got lost in the mail and was never seen again. If you find it, contact some historians.

[4] If you think you intend to follow this business plan, make sure your lawyer is sitting down before you broach the subject.

<comment><USER4> Well, okay, I will of course concede that there were personal computers before the Apple II (although at the time it came out, the Apple I was probably the closest thing to a working computer, as opposed to a kit that you could use to build a working computer, that you could get)

But Popular Electronics readers or not, I still think it's accurate to say that "the market" for PC's did not exist before Apple. The post I was replying to was arguing about whether Apple or Microsoft was more like Henry Ford. I think it's also fair to say that the market for cars in the US did not exist before the Model-T, despite the fact that there were several cars sold before it, all of which were unreliable, extraordinarily expensive, and used only by hobbyists - just like pre-Apple I (and to a lesser extent pre-Apple II) computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files" for software built in the 50s."

BINGO, i talk about this all the time and no one listens! the move to multi- core is a chance for a real reboot, rather than optimizing old software to run slightly faster on the new hardware.

<comment><USER7> And _really_ multi-core machines, like the Ambric MPPA (Massively Parallel Processor Array) with (currently) 336 cores on one chip, with very fast on chip communications, have the potential to change _everything_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA>

<comment><USER9> From the man too modest to directly name his own name... :)

I guess that changes the question - will the next Steve Jobs need a traditional VC?

<comment><USER8> I didn't mean that to be a reference to YC. I was just pointing out that Sam was as good a candidate as anyone for "next Steve Jobs," and that he did in fact get funded by VCs-- Sequoia and NEA.

<comment><USER10> He did get funded, but is he really in it for the long run? My uninformed prediction on the matter is loopt gets acquired by MS in a few years, which does seem to be the goal of most startups these days.

<comment><USER9> I don't know Sam at all, but if all he wanted to do was sell out in a few years, I could think of better ways to pass the time than negotiating with (ick) cell phone carriers. That's some serious muck he and the other Loopts waded through, and it makes me think they're in it for the long haul.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> With the kinds of tools now available I'm wondering if the next Steve Jobs will even need funding.

<comment><USER12> How is the next Steve Jobs going to produce millions of hardware units without funding?

<comment><USER13> Apple didn't have any for the Apple I. Jobs secured orders from a computer store who paid up-front. This money was then used to produce the machines.

Funding did, of course, follow quite quickly from this for the Apple II.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Next 'Steve Jobs' will probably be Chinese.

<comment><USER15> Steve Jobs is great at making "luxury" products and marketing them. Marketing high-end products is not what China is good at. China is good at other things, like actually building the products that Jobs markets.

But, the article isn't about who will be the next Steve Jobs - it is about who is going to fund the next Steve Jobs. Given China's economic growth, there is a good chance that the next Steve jobs could be funded by investors from/in China.

<comment><USER12> You're thinking of Steve Jobs circa 2008, who makes pretty white luxury boxes.

But the Steve Jobs that counts for is Steve Jobs circa 1978, the Steve Jobs that was making cheap ugly boxes that plugged into your TV. (And of course it was really Woz, but let's leave that aside for the moment.) The point is that Apple started and became big by being a low-end company, and only turned high- end once they were already huge.

<comment><USER15> China has the cheap and ugly market sewn up, so by that definition of Steve Jobs, there are already dozens, if not hundreds of Chinese Steve Jobses.

<comment><USER12> Hmm. The Apple I/II wasn't just a cheap and ugly knock-off of another product though, it was an innovative machine that changed the way computers were built. It challenged the existing notions of what a computer had to be and how much it had to cost.

The closest analogue I can think of in recent years is the Eee PC, which interestingly comes not from China but from Taiwan. (Support for the notion that innovation comes more easily in democracies? It's only one data point, but still...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a really good question. I posted something I just wrote which basically asks the exact same question from the opposite perspective, coming from the entrepreneur's viewpoint:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249453></comment>


Copyright troll Righthaven's epic blunder: a lawsuit targeting Ars - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/copyright-troll-righthavens-epic-blunder-a-lawsuit-targeting-ars.ars

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I find the copyright follies amusing, sometimes not. Its important to understand that when an organism is dying it has no compunctions about killing nearby organisms if, for some reason, it feels that its actions my lead to it not dying. Sort of like when a person loses their balance on a balcony, and in their panic grabs the person next to them and they both get pulled over and fall to an untimely end.

As I am fond of telling people, the _news_ business is alive and vital and healthy, the news _paper_ business is dying like cold blooded reptile in an ice age. Why the discrepancy?

News is, at its heart, and information business. Data is collected, it's analyzed and digested, then presented as editorial for consumption. You can think of this as a value chain where raw data costs _$x_ to acquire, people (or algorithms in some cases) cost _$y_ to convert that data into news, and it costs _$z_ to reproduce and distribute that news to consumers. Consumers pay for the information either directly (via subscription) or indirectly (by tolerating being marketed to) or doubly indirectly (by giving up demographic data which will be later used to market to them). Sometimes its a combination of all three.

Take the revenue (ads and demographics have to be converted to $ first but they all convert) per reader, multiply by the number of readers, subtract off the cost and voila, your gross margin. Lop off of that what you will for recurring costs and presto you're a news business. If the remaining margin is greater than 0 your a profitable news business, if its less than 0 you are a dying news business. Newspapers are generally lumped into the latter category.

Newspapers are carrying a lot of costs they don't need to carry (printing, newsprint, delivery services). There was a perceptive write up about how the New York times would save money if it sent everyone a Kindle and just stopped printing the paper [1]. In fact it could send all of its subscribers a free Kindle, cut the cost of a subscription, and make more per issue than they currently make. Its not a question of 'making it up in volume' its about 'the cost of goods has just dropped 42%.'

Papers are an old old institution. As institutions they don't accept wholesale change to their business model (even if it means survival). They have both a strong cash base generally and political base. So rather than move past the Asteroid strike/Ice Age and join the Web 2.0 mammals on the other side, they are flailing away in their newsprint and india ink tar pits. People walking by the tar pits have to watch out for them grabbing them in an effort to keep from dying, to bad they are already dead.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt- costs...](http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice- as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle)</comment>


Laravel 5, AngularJ 1.3 and Foundation 5.5 starter kit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JulienBernard/starter-laravel-angular-foundation

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a starter kit for a Single Page Application featuring the modern Laravel PHP framework and Google's acclaimed front-end framework AngularJS, featured with Foundation 5.5 for the GUI. Just download and play with it to build something great!

Forked from [https://github.com/Zemke/starter-laravel- angular](https://github.com/Zemke/starter-laravel-angular) (switch Bootstrap to Foundation).

<comment><USER2> Good job! 😉

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not a flame, but with the changes in angularjs, is still viable to use it, or choose a light library, eg: reactjs? also, for what I saw, laravel is like rails + [ENTER design pattern here]. Is a good choice?</comment>


Yuil vs. Cuil - The hack wins hands down... - <AUTHOR> http://laserlike.com/2008/07/30/yuil-vs-cuil/

<comment><USER2> Compared to Cuil, yes. But I still like the layout of Yahoo!'s normal search. Whose idea was it that stacked results didn't work for conveying amounts of information?

<comment><USER3> Stacked results are what work best. But Cuil had to make themselves look visually inovative, just to be considered 'diferent' from Google. If not journalists would say that they were equal to Google/Yahoo - no matter how better, or worse, the technology and search results.

Even, as it is the case, the UI doesn't help the user.

<comment><USER2> I think the moral, then, is not "innovate visually for no reason." It's "don't pretend like you've got something that can compete with Google."

:-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, but the link should point to <http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/> not <http://laserlike.com/2008/07/30/yuil-vs-cuil/>

From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter._

<comment><USER5> I submitted <http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/> earlier today, but HN seems to have deleted it (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262081>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Showing relevant images is hard <http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/search?q=cuil>

<comment><USER2> Cuil isn't a pulp fantasy hero? But it sounds SO much like one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow! The results are 1,000 times better.

Nice work, Sam.

<comment><USER8> Ahem...

Nice work, Yahoo!

<comment><USER7> Fair enough. :)

I can't wait to see more...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this kinda stuff has to embarrass cuil, the results are better (yahoo) but still perhaps an engine like goog, Y! or MSN will by their indexing technology (that is supposedly cheaper)

<comment><USER10> No, it doesn't. Cuill, like Powerset, is a new search engine still doing relevance and query reformulation tuning. It's a lot of work to get results as good as Google and Yahoo! deliver, and a large part of it is a massive body of training data to work with.

People who think this should embarrass Cuill are profoundly missing the point. It's a technology demo to show, "Yes we can make a functional search engine and our technology is not smoke and rainbows".

Powerset faced the same absurd criticism, and it was frustrating because people were so caught up in the search wars that they didn't see the product as its own entity.

<comment><USER11> It's not very difficult to make a functional search engine. With the amount of resources cuil had, all you would have to do is provision a few thousand servers and deploy a nutch cluster on them.

Then you pair random images with random search results. Voila, you have cuil.

The criticism is duly applied as Cuil made the claim that they would be better than Google at the same game. Powerset never made such a claim. The people who criticized it didn't have an understanding about what it was actually trying to do.

<comment><USER10> > It's not very difficult to make a functional search engine. With the amount > of resources cuil had, all you would have to do is provision a few thousand > servers and deploy a nutch cluster on them.

This is incredibly wrong. What Cuil has done is neither easy (in terms of effort) or trivial (in terms of overall accomplishment). Most people simply don't understand the incredible amount of infrastructure that goes into a search engine. Certainly I did not until being part of what Powerset did, and I was shocked.

> Then you pair random images with random search results. Voila, you have > cuil.

I confess I am confused why they don't just turn the feature off. It's certainly not baked yet.

> The criticism is duly applied as Cuil made the claim that they would be > better than Google at the same game.

They can be better than Google at the same game _at some point in the future_. Right now all they have is a faster index generator, which is obviously what they feel they need to pursue funding or acquisition.

> Powerset never made such a claim. The people who criticized it didn't have > an understanding about what it was actually trying to do.

I am watching the same series of events I lived through with Powerset unfold for Cuill, and it is no more tolerable from the outside than the inside.

<comment><USER12> Cuil is much more worth than powerset is. PowerSet was searching through about 5 million pages? No need for a huge cluster farm!

No offense meant, but I bet if Powerset wouldn't have been sold, you probably would be workless as they would have run out of money very very soon. You can't make money searching through wikipedia, and the technology was nothing more like phrase detection (with verbs, nouns, etc) and simple dictionary lookup. The interface was nice though. I bet the technology wouldn't work with foreign languages too... ;).

What I think powerset has is the skills to run large clusters, to deploy software on a large scale, and to scale things up. These are things that are interesting, but I think the Microsoft guys can do this as well without buying powerset.

If Microsoft would have spend the 100 Million they gave out for buying powerset on 100 google engineers and give each of them 1/3 million each year (so they leave google and I bet many would!), at the end of 2 years, they would have had a much better product at a far better price!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cuil made the mistake of telling the user they found 0 results. Instead they should have used Cuil for main results, and then if nothing was found should have displayed Google or Yahoo results(probably Yahoo because of the whole Boss thing).

That way at least half of your results would be relevant.

</comment><comment><USER14> Searching for my name returns my linked in profile as the first hit ... with a picture of Charles Nutter.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yuil's been taken down? Why?

</comment><comment><USER16> Except for the semantic part...

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm liking Yuil. It definitely passes my vanity search test that I commented on here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=258828></comment>


"Your Dropbox is full" email - <AUTHOR>

I just received this email from Dropbox.  I have the free version, but only using 84.9 MB of 2 GB available.  Email also included link back to Dropbox to upgrade to paid plans.<p>Is this a new method to get people to upgrade to paid plans? <comment><USER2> If you don't mind less app integration, I'd suggest giving Cubby [1] a try.

It has most of the Dropbox features with 5 GB of free space and killer feature of making anything a cubby, just draf and drop any folder on desktop app and to sync it automatically.

1: <http://cubby.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> yes</comment>


Jour – the simplest possible journal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bsima/jour <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Beginning OpenGL Development on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hwrd.me/2014/05/07/beginning-opengl-development-on-os-x/

<comment><USER2> I took a class on this topic last summer. It was hard, but extremely rewarding in the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I'm looking forward to the rewarding part :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Or you could use Qt and have it run everywhere...

<comment><USER4> There's nothing OS X specific (yet) about this tutorial (excluding the install and -framework compilation flag). The author is using [http://www.glfw.org](http://www.glfw.org), a cross-platform OpenGL windowing/context creation library.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Sorry for the misleading title. It was more to inform that I will be doing this on OS X, as opposed to for OS X.</comment></comment></comment>


[ANN] Lua 5.2.0 (final) now available - <AUTHOR> http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/ANN-Lua-5-2-0-final-now-available-td7102528.html

<comment><USER2> In the same vein, LuaJIT2 beta 9 was released a couple days ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a bit weird that they went with goto. It is a much smaller addition than continue + labeled break + labeled continue + switch, but it's still really unusual to see in a scripting language.

</comment><comment><USER4> So now that module(...) is deprecated does anyone know the expected standard pattern? The changes say to just build it with code (setting _ENV?) but do the devs have a "right way" to do it?

<comment><USER5> The Lua developers are generally not very fond of endorsing a single "right way" to do things. But basically, it's something like:

        -- localize all the stuff you need
        local _ENV = {}
        -- module code
        return _ENV

So really not that much code to add yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any links to info on 5.1.4 -> 5.2 changes? I can't seem to find any.

EDIT: Found some information! <http://www.corsix.org/content/look- lua-52-work3>

<comment><USER7> There's some info in refman: <http://www.lua.org/manual/5.2/manual.html#8>

There was a more detailed summary at <http://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes> but it looks like it's been taken down. There's the Google cache: <http://tinyurl.com/832f273>

<comment><USER6> Ah, thanks! These are much more informative.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does programming have any value outside of electronic systems? - <AUTHOR> For lack of better words, outside of the concept of electricity. <comment><USER2> Yes, it teaches you problem solving.

Concepts like encapsulation can be applied to business units - when you see communication between people I see API's/Interface boundaries.

Debugging has provided me with an "introspection" capability where I can step logically through a problem and divide and conquer an issue into smaller steps.

I used the binary search algorithm to eliminate causes in a chemical system I was debugging once - people who do not know binary search would have almost certainly tried exhaustive enumeration, which is much slower and resource intensive.

System programming shows you the importance of buffers, backpressure and feedback loops, I use this to manage cash flow through my company.

Programming is actually learning to think. The "coding" aspect is just an implementation.

Once you get some serious experience programming (you get past learning all the syntax and learn a few different languages) the abstract concepts become clearer, and you can apply them anywhere

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this reference. I recently was researching ancient military strategies and trying to link them up with or gain knowledge to apply in software. I think there is a lot to gain still from forgotten lessons.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely! The Art of War is excellent for general strategy. I've found it good as an abstract strategy book and have applied it to negotiations and business, but because it's so general it might be a bit of a stretch to get programming strategy out of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Before computers, "computers" were people.

It was a _job title_ for numerical calculation.

It's a curious thing, but numerical computing predates computers. One striking linguistic feature is that in computational fluid dynamics (a kind of numerical computation), a method of calculation is called "a code". Whereas, for software development, a program's specific instructions are called "code". The CFD usage wrong to me, but since they were first... maybe _we_ were the monsters all along?

In the future, we may have cellular/biochemical computation, or quantum calculation, or calculation based on some other phenonema (neutrinos?), perhaps not yet discovered.

Meanwhile, there's a pedantic argument that all known computation is really "electrical" (including human neuron pulses).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this. It's interesting personally to see my own menatal limitations placed on the term "electricity".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> first useful programs were knitting mills and carpet machines around 1800 - there was no conditional logic, just a long loop of effectively what were just print statements. See jacquard looms on wikipedia - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom#/media/File:Jacq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom#/media/File:Jacquard.loom.cards.jpg)

first real program is often attributed to Countess Ada Lovelace, in describing operations of the Babbage machine in 1843. She even had a bug in her "code". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_program)

<comment><USER5> " _there was no conditional logic, just a long loop of effectively what were just print statements_ "

So what you're saying is, Jacquard beat Adobe to PDF by nearly 200 years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is kind of a challenge. There have been several electro-mechanical computers that were "programmable" in the modern sense. I've never heard of one that was _purely_ mechanical. I guess Babbage's analytical engine would qualify, but it hasn't been built yet, so who knows if it would actually work?

Way past time to make one powered directly by horses. _We have the tools. We have the technology._

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. This is what I was looking to explore.

<comment><USER5> It would help the thread to get a tighter definition of what would qualify as programming.

If having the operator manually re-configure parts counts as programming, then we've probably already achieved purely mechanical value.

If we set the bar a little higher to a _bonafide_ Turing machine, then I think you've thrown down the gauntlet.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I had been pondering about how I personally put so much energy in learning, exploring software etc, yet it seems to depend on, at it's core, a few other important innovations. It's like saying I'm a speech therapist, but Darwin decides not to bring a mouth, tongue, or hands to write with. When the lights go out, is it relevant?

<comment><USER6> Well sure it is. Those dependencies you're talking about (the transistor, keyboards, screens, etc -- the things that modern computing depend on) are just the current, and I would say _arbitrary_ , implementation of the concept of "computing".

A lot of the real early work in computing was done by George Boole, before Shannon picked up where he left off. That kind of stuff (boolean algebra, information theory) will always be relevant... (to survival in ye enden times? maybe not) and it doesn't involve electricity.

Just as I imagine that the things that you learn as a speech therapist go way deeper than just helping kids with their lisps.

It's easy to get caught up in the current fads and stay on the surface (e.g. programming languages, or frameworks) of the computing field, and maybe what you're experiencing is a kind of existential dread about the meaning of the work you're doing. But I think if you stick with it and go deep, you'll find that "computing" is a fundamental aspect of the universe.

And if the lights do go out, then maybe everything you learned while "studying computers" will be of help in figuring out how to get them back on again... Or, better yet, help you to realize that you didn't actually need the lights in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sure! For example see the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem). Algorithms to solve the problem were devised and used long before computers existed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Devices like the Curta are beautiful, as a deleted comment mentioned, but how would we move past those? Distributed systems, databases (written journals?) etc? What value do these have outside electricity?

<comment><USER8> > how would we move past those?

We did.

It just turns out digital > mechanical.

Thanks to Shannon and many others, we figured out we should 'pack more' into tinier spaces (circuits [0]), using less symbols (binary [1]).

Another such leap would require moving past current limits of physics understanding.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#Comparison_with_vac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#Comparison_with_vacuum_tubes)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69-YUSazuic&list=PLbg3ZX2pWl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69-YUSazuic&list=PLbg3ZX2pWlgKDVFNwn9B63UhYJVIerzHL&index=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my precise question, does digital === electronic? If true, how do Claude Shannon's (numerous) contributions become relevant in the absence of electricity?

<comment><USER8> >does digital === electronic?

I had never thought about that. But someone has: [https://www.quora.com/Whats- the-difference-between-electroni...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the- difference-between-electronic-and-digital)

>relevant in the absence of electricity?

Theory is independent from practice or implementation. A logic gate is a logic gate whether you model it with wires, water channels, or whatever else. Regardless of perceived 'relevance':

>The value of knowledge is not statically predefined

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that link

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Genuine question, would concepts of Ransom Olds, or more familiar, Henry Ford's assembly line, be more valuable than software if not for electricity? (Random example)

</comment><comment><USER9> Problem solving is a big one and how to investigate things. It has also helped me understand how people categorise things and why.

</comment><comment><USER10> Vehemently yes. The value of knowledge is not statically predefined and processes are not limited to their domains (IMHO).

<comment><AUTHOR> But how would you execute or run said functions?

Or to clarify, outside of theoretical execution? To do actual work or perform tasks, that would provide value to a lamen/normal person/small business etc?

<comment><USER11> Some of the early computers were mechanical instead of electric. I would assume they store data on punch tape much like the magic piano does to play songs. It would be to heavy for personal use, unless there was a way to make it smaller by using smaller parts.

<comment><AUTHOR> But didn't they rely on vacuum tubes or other electronic assistance? Forgive my ignorance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Monotonic AI Models: Sound Logic for Machine Learning – Toptal - <AUTHOR> https://www.toptal.com/machine-learning/monotonic-ai-models <comment><USER2> I'm a really novice practitioner of ML. Is using a monotonic model over a classification model kind of like adding ultimatums or rules to the classification?</comment>


Google kills Latitude Location Alert - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/18/google-latitude-location-alerts-dead/

<comment><USER2> No question about it being "over the top" creepy.</comment>


Several Pages of Detailed Telling Criticism of PVS-Studio Static Analysis Tool - <AUTHOR> http://nomarketingbs.blogspot.com/2012/01/pvs-studio-greatest-trial-of-21st.html

<comment><USER2> The Installation

John Carmack says, Visual C++ developers should try PVS-Studio – painless demo download. Yes, the demo download is indeed painless and clicking through makes the program just install. Well, not exactly – first you have to close all instances of Visual Studio you have running, but then it's a simple click- through. And then you get the reduced functionality.</comment>


How I hacked my brain with Adderall: a cautionary tale - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3184496/hacked-brain-adderall-cautionary-tale <comment><USER2> Lol, wonder how much adderall he was on when he wrote this? Brilliant rambling but with a somewhat feverish, twitchy aspect to it...

I used to take adderall and it was awesome. I got shit done, was fabulously thin, and all my documents were meticulous and colour coded. I didn't like the insomnia though, and it made me sort of depressed in the evenings when coming off it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a very well written, entertaining, and relatable article. I enjoyed it.

<comment><USER4> agreed, very well written. I love when he talkes about the signs of procrastination (like what I'm doing right now).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the biggest question that isn't being asked right now? - <AUTHOR> In the mid- late 2000's the question was " why do housing prices keep going up regardless of events/geography". What is the question why are missing now ? <comment><USER2> How long do we need to atone for our parents' mistakes.</comment>


The Indian physicist who contested Stephen Hawking's theory about black holes - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1229007/abhas-mitra-the-indian-physicist-who-contested-stephen-hawkings-theory-about-black-holes/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting.</comment>


How Bitcoin Can Save Publishing - <AUTHOR> http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-can-save-publishing/

<comment><USER2> Reposting what I posted two weeks ago when this was posted the first time (and promptly ripped to shreds and then deleted)

Where this utterly falls apart is that it doesn't consider that the major barrier is NOT the price. It's overcoming the friction of getting the user to pay anything, at all. If you can do that, conversion rates are similar at $0.10 and $10.00. That is why micropayments are dumb. They're leaving money on the table.

NB: I work in the industry and this is coming from direct professional experience. I'm not really at liberty to go much more in depth than I did, but I have strong real world data that says micropayments are a disaster, plain and simple.

<comment><USER3> So the solution is to have some sort of premium content Internet pass. It costs $10 a month, but can be used to get free content at whatever sites are signed up with it. Kind of like Amazon Prime, but with an arbitrary number of vendors. Then, the $10 per user is split among all the products that the user uses it with.

Now here's the kicker -- come up with a marketing deal with various ISPs, where they can include this with their subscriptions. Either as a premium that comes automatically with their higher-speed tiers, or something that can be billed as extra for the lower speed tiers.

<comment><USER2> Yea, pretty much, that's where I think it should go. Sort of Spotify for written content.

Some very high profile outlets (WSJ, NY Times, New Yorker, the Economist) might be able to make their own things work, but those are the exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER4> _Sort of Spotify for written content._

Wouldn't this end up leaving even more money on the table? Spotify pays artists based on their share of total plays.

Say two sites (X and Y) join up to offer a $10/month pass for unlimited access to both sites, with the say pay scheme as Spotify. Site X has 3 times as many articles/videos as Site Y. If every user reads/watches 100% of Site Y's content, Site X may still receive an equal or larger share of the payouts even though users consumed a much lower percentage of it.

<comment><USER5> If you make the assumption that each piece of 'content' takes the same amount of effort/money to produce, that's not really a problem. Site X has presumably spent 3 times as much on content creation, so it's fine for them to get 3 times the revenue (assuming equal quality).

The problem I see is that with spotify it's pretty easy to determine the rate of content consumption (e.g. songs or minutes listened). News sites are pretty adept at turning one piece of content into many (multi-page articles or slideshows), and the system would have to protect against that.

<comment><USER2> Another option might be to proportion revenue in accordance with membership sources into the cartel. E.g. if site 1 delivers 10 new subscribers, and site 2 brings in 2 new subscribers, the money goes to the sites in a 5:1 ratio, minus maybe 10% off the top for operating expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jon Rosenberg (of goats.com)'s experiment with this in the early 2000s -- not bitcoin, which didn't exist yet, but micropayments in general -- was the first one I saw with hard numbers about why this will be extremely difficult. Sadly, he's taken his site offline, but short version: There's a huge difference in someone's mind between "free", and "not free"; it's seen as a change in category, not in degree. Having to commit any amount of money - even $1 - significantly reduces your audience, but once someone's gotten over the hump of willing to pay, you might as well ask them to make a larger purchase of a T-Shirt or subscription.

This sort of experiment has been repeated many times. Folks like Flattr have tried to tie this to social networks, so it's seamless; and the NYTimes model of metered paywalls (smaller publishers can use something like [http://www.tinypass.com/](http://www.tinypass.com/), which Andrew Sullivan's blog uses) seems to be taking over magazine publishing. Even attempts to turn cable subscriptions a la carte aren't doing well, as Megan McArdle explains: [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/why- cant...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/why-cant-we- unbundle-cable/239849/)

I get why the Genesis Block would have enthusiasm for this idea. But one-pass micropayments, Bitcoin or otherwise, don't seem like the future to me.

<comment><USER7> Ten years ago you were right, but I think you are making this out to be some hard-wired component of human nature when it is largely cultural. Something has changed culturally and psychologically in the time since then. The psychological gap between paying and not paying now is narrower than it was 10 years ago. This is in large part due to developments that have taken place in the time since, especially the iTunes model. In the 90s people people were extremely cautious about purchasing things online. In the beginning it didn't happen at all, but Amazon and the development of e-commerce broke that barrier. People began to think nothing of giving out their credit card information and home addresses to purchase things that will ultimately be shipped to their homes. Then, paying for all-digital premium content became the norm, especially because of iTunes. iTunes completely normalized the concept of a small payment for quick and easy access to content. People think nothing of purchasing an app or a song in two seconds on iTunes, because psychologically $1.00 doesn't mean a whole lot to them and easily fits within their recreational budget and it is exceedingly convenient.

I think the next form of content to fall into this model will be written content. First major newspapers had to stop giving away their content for free (they already have as you point out). People have shown that they are willing to pay for this formerly free content. Now comes the part where they start charging for a la carte access to articles. I've already seen this on some magazines - GQ? Time perhaps? I forget - and I must admit I've clicked through a few times, and I don't have a lot of disposable income. I might simply irresponsible but on the other hand I'm probably not alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does this have anything to do with Bitcoin, on a fundamental level? Companies like Tinypass ([http://www.tinypass.com/](http://www.tinypass.com/)) do a pretty good job of this already with more traditional currencies.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin doesn't have this: [http://www.tinypass.com/terms/](http://www.tinypass.com/terms/)

<comment><USER10> Except that it will if anyone actually tried to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bitcoin paywalls… gee how original. It's just like our old non-solutions, only with Bitcoins, so that makes it awesome.

<comment><USER12> Lower fees, and no divulgement of personal financial details, make it awesome for micropayments.

<comment><USER11> It's like Paypal without the risk management and all the convenience of forex.

<comment><USER12> It has lower fees than PayPal. For micropayments, you don't really need risk management. In addition to offering a lower cost option for micropayments, it enables transactions in countries not well integrated into the global economy where PayPal can't operate (e.g. Ukraine).

You're right about the forex cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Although I'm not sure Bitcoin can do much to change the paywall problem, this article does shed interesting light on the state of the publishing industry and how the natural downward drive of quality is leaving a gap of top-quality and accurate reporting.

I am very interested to see who will fill that gap in the next few years, and I think it will go to whoever solves this free/non-free paywall problem.

<comment><USER14> It's more complex than free vs. non-free, but it's solvable and will be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was posted two weeks ago and was a load of BS then and still is.

Can someone with appropriate privileges just kill this one off please?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6444566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6444566)

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that you work for qz.com which kinda discredits you when asking for another site to be deleted.

<comment><USER16> Ad Hominem attacks aren't cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but I wasn't trying to attack him. I was surprised that someone would ask that a thread be deleted that vehemently so I got curious about his background. When someone is in a competing position, s/he has to respect other people's expectations about them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buddhism and Happiness: Sitting Quietly, Doing Something - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/sitting-quietly-doing-something/#more-7137 <comment><USER2> It seems like Neuroscientists and Buddhists keep agreeing on things.

<comment><USER3> Yup, though Buddhists seem to have a few thousand year lead. Hopefully if won't take a few thousand more years to make the leap from neuroscientists to the general population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of you here must meditate.

What is the form of meditation you practice? Can you elaborate a little so the novice could benefit?

<comment><USER5> My beliefs and meditation-prayer practices are according to the Christian Faith, but "sitting quietly, doing something" is an apt description whether it's Buddhist meditation or Christian mental prayer (a Western form of meditation).

I am happy to share with readers here the most excellent compendium of the Ignatian method of Christian mental prayer that I have ever encountered:

\- Fifth Treatise: On the Excellency of Prayer

<http://www.holynamesoftware.org/OnPrayer.pdf>

The following essay is a real treasure too:

\- The Practice of Lectio Divina

[https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdgpYJu8XEUoZGRxc2Z6cWtfM...](https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdgpYJu8XEUoZGRxc2Z6cWtfMmNyMmt3M2Yy&hl=en)

<comment><USER6> I'd also highly recommend Thomas Merton's 'New Seeds of Contemplation', which though written by a Trappist monk and grounded in Christian philosophy applies to contemplative practice in any tradition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the beginning, you will want to train your attention, a practice called "samatha" which will allow you to concentrate for a extended periods of time with single pointed attention. After being able to concentrate on a single point such as your breath or a mantra, you will be able to do cool stuff with insight meditation. It's also important to keep a daily sitting routine. I meditate for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 at night. Every month I try to do a 4 hour sit on a Sunday morning. Find a teacher or a sangha. Check out many different lineages. I tried Soto Zen, Rinzai Zen, and even Vedanta before ending at Tibetan buddhism.

<comment><USER8> Four hours? Your bladder must be made out of steel.

What value to you get in return for this significant investment of time? I've been curious about meditation for a while, but never really understood the benefits. Every time I've tried it, I've walked away cranky and uncomfortable.

<comment><USER9> Where have you tried it? If you're really curious, I'd recommend a weekend retreat as a good way to give you a taste of what the benefits are. Practicing on your own is fine, once you know what you're doing, but until you do, it's much easier to get instruction in person and practice with a group.

<comment><USER8> I've tried it at home, on my own. You're right about the value of getting instruction in person. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Turning the Mind Into an Ally - is a great book to ease your way into a mindfulness practice. Great, practical, real-world, without being preachy. <http://amzn.to/90fIv1>

</comment><comment><USER10> While I don't necessarily meditate per se, I do chant everyday. I follow a sect of Buddhism known as Nichiren Buddhism. Basically, the chanting helps to elevate our life conditions so that we're able to face any challenges in our daily lives. You focus on changing your attitude/thinking so that you affect your environment and not the other way around. Buddha in Your Mirror ([http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Your-Mirror-Practical- Buddhism/...](http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Your-Mirror-Practical- Buddhism/dp/0967469783/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290098664&sr=8-1)) and Buddha in Daily Life ([http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Daily-Life-Introduction- Daishon...](http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Daily-Life-Introduction- Daishonin/dp/071267456X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290098703&sr=1-1)) are 2 interesting books that I'd recommend if anyone's interested.

</comment><comment><USER11> 'When Rinpoche told my wife that he was being billed as "the happiest man in the world," he laughed as though that were the funniest joke he'd ever heard.'

Well, at least he gets it.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a brain chemistry self-hack, and I am not sure it's a good thing.

Also I know a few people who are neither Buddhists nor super smart but have managed to perform this self-hack.

The human brain is plastic enough and if you try hard enough for a long enough time you can cause some very drastic shifts in function.

This _might_ be a good thing, but I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Zazen, just do it.</comment>


Bitcasa being shut down with less than a month notice - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/21/bitcasa-killing-drive-cloud-storage-service-on-may-20-will-focus-on-growing-platform-business/ <comment><USER2> I signed on early on, suffered slow and unreliable service and ultimately lost much of my data that they corrupted at some point. I finally cut my losses about a year ago and moved what I could still extract onto onedrive, not surprised they are closing.</comment>


Ask HN: Why non-English Wikipedia pages look weird? - <AUTHOR> This baffles me. Check these two articles for the same person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_der_Gro%C3%9Fe
One in English and one in German. The fonts and way the article is presented in the German version if a far cry in respect to the English one, although the contents are most probably better (golden star).
Any idea why this is happening? I have noticed a similar pattern in almost all pages apart from the English ones. <comment><USER2> Some screenshots maybe? Because the only noticeable difference I see is the info bar on the right in the English version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even that!

<comment><USER2> That is up to whoever edits and\or maintains the page. This is an open space. So either they are okay with it or consume information other way.

I doubt there is a big difference between german and english ways here though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could you be more specific? What exactly is different?

<comment><AUTHOR> The fonts (typeset). By default in English looks like a more modern version in respect to other languages. It seems to me as if the other languages have been stuck in a past version of MediaWiki.

<comment><USER2> They are exactly the same and use sans-serif (you can easily check this via DevTools). Maybe you have some sort of extension installed that does this. No other way for the same font to look different for two pages in this case. Once again - post screenshots.

I've checked both pages on two different desktop OS' and see no issue you are describing.</comment></comment></comment>