"Banks are no place for coders" - <AUTHOR> http://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/276069/problems-with-coding-jobs-in-banks/ <comment><USER2> Never worked for a bank but I've done financial services on and off. It's the worst industry I've ever worked for in terms of technology, technical debt, bureaucracy and skill of the average developer. There also tends to be an arrogance from the developers that think they're good just because their code is handling millions of dollars a day.

The also seem to be the worst with NIH syndrome. Where I am at the moment, we built our own database (essentially a front end around sybase to compensate for performance because no one knows what a transaction is), several schedulers, a reporting solution, a message bus (bought it and now everyone has to use it because of politics), to name a few. This seems typical in financial services.

<comment><USER3> This sounds exactly like life at a bank I know in the capital markets division.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I interned at Capital One and had the exact opposite of this article. They are pretty serious about being a tech company and the culture of the software engineer teams was on par with you would think a software company would be like. They definitely were switching to the newest technologies(to the extend federal regulations let them) and were pushing the cloud and ML big time. They are also moving all their tech from a small city to a big city. Hours are flexible and there was good work life balance. Maybe that is just the by product of being a younger and smaller organization.

<comment><USER5> I've had several clients in the banking / credit sector. Capital One is an outlier. They are as good as finance gets for the average developer.

On my second day I was given access to the full catalog of AWS. So yes they're all in on the cloud. ML use was visible too. That's not a lie. They have GitHub enterprise and an "open source" culture has grown up around a few projects there that are like internal open source. These projects are not governed by any department but lots of people contribute.

I plan to swing back through there again before I retire. It was fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Agree.

Teams like strats or any quantitive developer roles may not be good either. There may be some interesting jobs in systems require ultra low latency if you get to build them from scratch or rewrite them.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, the bank interviews are way easier than interviews with google/facebook.

The sad reality is, in London there are very few employers pay as much as the financial service sector, if you can't get into google/facebook, and don't want to migrate to another country, you either work for a financial service company, or take a massive pay cut.

</comment><comment><USER7> I work for a banking group. Top 3 private bank in my country, top 3 in HQ's country.

I couldn't agree more, even though I believe that "...Technologists are second class citizens in banks..." is an understatement.

You wouldn't believe the money we throw away in technology and software development only for political reasons.

I have enclosures full of servers and storage that have been waiting for conectivity for more than a year. We've decommissioned high end storage after their lifetime was over and they have never seen a byte! This is not in special circumstances, it's normal.

All this and we're still making money like nobody.

I fear that someday we'll be bought by someone competent, then we are fucked, because we couldn't stop the morons (or delinquents) that burned all this money for nothing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Worked for two Fortune 500 real estate financial services companies. The pay was excellent. If I had family to support, I would not have left. The money was too good.

The work was unfulfilling; brown-nosing, meetings, horrendous code base. Refactoring does not exist in the enterprise vocabulary. The managers usually have masters in IT not CS so they weren't in touch with the engineers. We were forced to use expensive crappy SCM like ClearCase which required two administrators to make sense of it. All code was prescribed straight out of Microsoft enterprise application patterns. I felt like a drone.

I left on my own accord. I most enjoy the freedom to think outside the box. Job happiness level is high, pay could be better.

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't speak to the author... but I've done a couple contracting stints at financial institutions... the first time was a great experience, everyone was at the top of their respective game, and it was a great team to work in, I'm actually working with a few people I worked with back then at a job I recently started.

The most recent time, was not very enjoyable at all... very litigious, slow moving and a recent project was built like it would have been a decade ago, ignoring all progress in the space, and getting it updated was akin to pulling teeth with the rest of the team. After a year, I was ready to not go back in.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article is a bit contradictory:

"There are some good jobs for developers in banking. [...] These jobs are hard to get though – I interviewed for a few, but I wasn't successful."

So it's more.. don't go to a bank unless you are good enough ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the author is referring to Quant jobs here. They are not 100% software engineering/Developer jobs. One needs to have command over financial mathematics as well. In that sense, it's hard for a pure CS background candidate to get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is Goldman. And banks that emulate their culture. And there is everyone else.

The bad banks tech orgs are clubs for VIPs and friends and relatives of the business and the tech just doesn't matter, as a result you have a poisonous culture and an army of frauds. Especially true of the failed investment banks that got acquired by consumer banks. If you find yourself in the latter, and you are not part of the club (ie refuse to perpetuate the fraud of screwing over the business to enrich some tech executives agenda) run in the opposite direction. Join a trading firm instead.

I will bet OP was at a "club" bank.

<comment><USER12> lol Goldman with a proprietary secdb where techs and strats are locked into an ecosystem that they can't move out of whilst the firm is ironically trying to move off the silo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would agree with what the author has said. That being said, I believe it takes a certain individual to grow inside a bank (because I'm one of them) and I think it is different between teams. If you are not smart (but hardworking and willing to learn), you will thrive inside a bank.

I have a liberal arts major at a large-public university and have a minor in computer science. My offer at a large bank was the best offer I got and I got placed in an operation/support role. I have been in my current role for over two years and this is my first "real job" outside of college.

Even though it is not Google/Microsoft/Amazon, I am extremely happy in the position I am in. The first two years were difficult and it is not the type of role I want to do for the rest of my life, but working at the bank had some benefits. I get paid overtime hours and get to work remotely whenever I want. If I had a family or significant other I would be miserable. Recently there has been a mass exodus and layoffs in our team (due to a "location strategy"). I am able to do the work that used to take 4-5 people and there is only one other person in the Western Hemisphere that does my job.

I support what the bank calls a "critical application". There's very high probability that your money has moved through this application. There has been a lot of work for me to do and have been given flexibility because I work hard and get the job done. I get paid overtime (100 hours of overtime this past month). Even though I am happy at the moment, I know my current role is unsustainable and I intend on moving to another team within the bank or externally (at the end of the year where I will probably lose my overtime eligibility).

Our company provides services for self-learning (which usually costs hundreds of dollars a year) and bi-annual hackathons which gives me an outlet for actually programming. A project I worked on in one of these hackathons got patented recently. I live in a major US city which has two major hackerspaces and a plethora of jobs and career networking events/MeetUps. Since I am doing so much overtime, I make more than my salary capped associates and application developers (who are my age) and my mortgage will be paid off by the end of this year. I think my next career move will be in application development with one of the many teams I support at the moment or move into consulting.

<comment><USER2> If this is your only programming job then there's a good chance you're oblivious to a lot of problems and at that level of experience you shouldn't be expected to know better.

One of those red flags is having junior Devs working unsupervised on critical stuff.

I don't mean to sound rude or condescending, just that you have a lot to learn and I very much doubt you're learning good lessons there.

<comment><USER13> I know I have a lot to learn. I am not a programmer for my job role. I program has a hobby. I run the operations side: support, deployments, and business analyst type work. I am not oblivious to the problems because I see all the problems when I am facing the product side of the business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I did some research on Morgan Stanley a few years ago when I applied for a job there, and was surprised to find none of the top people (the members of the Executive Council, or whatever it was called) were engineers. I wasn't expecting much, maybe a CTO, but there was no one at all. It seemed very strange for a company that is heavily reliant on IT.

The closest they had to an engineer in that group was a risk control officer, with a stats background.

<comment><USER12> I've never worked for MS but my impression was that they are a decent tech bunch (corely Java). Also you can't really beat [http://www.morganstanley.com/profiles/bjarne-stroustrup- mana...](http://www.morganstanley.com/profiles/bjarne-stroustrup-managing- director-technology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> why wouldn't i want to live in Belfast or Poland? too few terrorists attacks, too few gangs, too low price of living, schengen with easy access to most of the Europe?

i would much more preferred those two cities instead of overpriced multicultural London with Muslim mayor

<comment><USER16> I was ready to agree with you until I saw the remark about the "Muslim mayor". What does his religion have to do with anything?

<comment><USER15> nothing really, I just think mayor of city should represent majority of population and be one of them and yes I am aware majority (in theory, not really familiar with attendance of voters) voted for him

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I might not be a place for "coders", but it can be a pretty great place for engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists with an interest in finance and that love solving very hard problems using computers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Belfast isn't that bad.

<comment><USER19> Good Guinness

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> i don't I feel like every business that doesn't make money directly from technology is like this. In most companies tech is a black box as its hard to directly tie revenue against it.</comment>


Currency Traders Are Left Out of New Wall Street - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/a-dying-breed-currency-traders-are-left-out-of-new-wall-street <comment><AUTHOR> I used to work for a forex hedge fund, so I witnessed some of this trend (though primarily via my boss who had regular conversations with many banks). This trend is very real. Underlying it is the continual shift towards automation, but it was greatly amplified by both the financial crisis and then the forex scandals. We interacted with many former forex traders who had transitioned to a sales or support role. We also at times had trouble getting anything done with banks because everyone was seemingly fired or on leave due a scandal.

<comment><USER2> y, it's an interesting trend.

Decision making processes evolving to machines talking to machines, and humans talking to humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article doesn't seem to address the question -- why _currency_ traders, specifically?

<comment><USER4> TLDR: FX is getting to where equities and derivative markets have been for a while

FX is an OTC market. There are no official "exchanges". Most trading happens either on the interbank markets or via brokers like ICAP, BGC, etc.

Over the last few years, the spreads (difference between a buy and sell price) have compressed. FX Clients (i.e. corporations, hedge funds etc.) who would trade directly with their preferred banks; now aggregate feeds from multiple banks and brokers to attempt to get the best possible price.

This automation and increase in client sophistication has led directly to tailored market making and sophisticated risk management. The number of players in the FX market has increased as the technology has commoditised. Things like the latency and quality of your market making feed have become differentiators.

All of the above has resulted in the market going electronic and a massive reduction in the proportion of trades being quoted and managed by human traders. In most banks, market making is now done by algorithms that aggregate market data and other information from a variety of sources.

Traders have either become specialised to niche currencies (Asian, Emerging Markets, etc.) or at dealing with extremely large trades. Their job is now all about determining the type of rate (i.e. which algo) a client should get and how the risk from those trades is managed (aggressively, passively, etc.).

I have worked on FX desks (as a developer) for 10+ years. I have seen spot trading desks shrink incredibly, with old school traders being replaced by quants and quant-developers. The algorithmic trading space in FX is not as sophisticated as that in equities of derivatives, but is getting there.

<comment><USER5> Cash FX (spot, forward, simple swaps, cross rates) is almost totally automated. FX options is less automated. Since FX is less capital intensive than rates or credit, there's still a fair bit of old fashioned trading activity there, even among banks that have withdrawn from other FICC & equity areas like UBS.

<comment><USER4> Depends on which bank you are talking about :)

You will be surprised at how many places still have spot traders quoting 500K EURUSD rates and assistants running around with pieces of paper..

<comment><USER6> 500k flow ccy spot via voice? I think you are joking. It's easier for a client and a bank just to trade via an electronic platform. The voice trader would likely direct the client to his on screen rates and he would trade there. I suggest anything under 15mn would be traded via screen.

<comment><USER5> Last time I was on an FX trading floor (2010) clients seeking voice quotes for spot would get a sales person who would be using the sales version of the FX single dealer platform. Sales guy would voice quote the electronic rate made by the auto trading system that was shown in the Java SDP GUI on their desktop. For top clients the spread might be tightened slightly, but most would get the vanilla electronic rate. No human trader would be involved, and there would be no manual price discretion at any point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft launches 'Don't get Scroogled' Bing campaign - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/11/28/microsoft-takes-aim-at-googles-shopping-listings-with-new-dont-get-scroogled-bing-campaign/

<comment><USER2> I did two shopping searches on both services. One for "towel rack" and one for "tv sound system" because these are things I actually searched for in pursuit of a potential purchase earlier today. This is what I noticed:

\- Bing's results are surrounded by ads, while Google's are not

\- Google's interface is cleaner and the images are larger

\- Google's results include ratings, which I personally find to be an awesome feature, and "special offers" on select results

\- Bing had more results, but slightly less focused ("tv sound system" results include headsets and televisions)

\- I couldn't say that the quality of the results themselves were definitively better from one than from the other

\- When using lists to compare products, Bing's include just about every technical detail while Google's provide less, but more summary-like information

I order almost everything from Amazon anyway because I have Prime and it's amazing. But if I were to do a quick out-of-Amazon search for something, I'd still default to Google. I didn't find Bing's results (based on this limited test) to be different or better enough to compensate for it's less comfortable experience and feature set.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny how changing search engines has become a foreign thought--that'd be like telling the average american to switch out of Coke.

In fact I'll make a point to do that right now--to Bing I mean, not a fan of soft drinks. Let's see what it's like to have Chrome lead me to Microsoft's results for a few days, if only to give my brain a workout, in the same sense I've put my mouse on the left-hand side--and then ditched it completely for keyboard only. Which is actually something to entertain regarding search as we know it, is nothing ever going to replace it? Can't you really think out of the box and turn the world of search upside down? Surely what we take for granted isn't the only way.

<comment><USER4> Pepsi is pretty popular you know.

<comment><USER5> In certain regions and by a certain demographic. They'll have 30% of the fizzy drink market as long as it lasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Look, you read the word "don't" and your subconcious already knows something's fishy. This is something a smart/experienced marketing person would know. Attack ads are for losers.</comment>


Telescope: Open-source Hacker News clone built with Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://telesc.pe/

<comment><USER2> But it's not really a clone unless the pagination times out. ;-)

<comment><USER3> It does have an implementation of "can't collapse comment threads", though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original discussion 18 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840032) .. it'd be interesting to hear how it's changed since then as I believe it's under active development :-)

<comment><USER5> A lot of things have changed. There are a lot more features now (things like invites, notifications, tags, more granular settings, RSS feeds, a simple API, etc.).

Right now I'm working on making the app more modular by extracting these features into separate, oprtional packages. It will make the app even more customizable, and easier to maintain as well.

You can read more about the roadmap here: [http://telesc.pe/blog/meteor-0-8-update-next- steps/](http://telesc.pe/blog/meteor-0-8-update-next-steps/)

And if you want to see a working example of Telescope I suggest checking out [http://crater.io](http://crater.io), a community about Meteor itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great. I really want to try Telescope for maintaining & tracking feature requests within our team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is a combination of social news and cryptocurrencies I did with Telescope last autumn: [http://bloqchan.com/](http://bloqchan.com/)

It is democracy for capitalists - you vote with your money!

We are searching for somebody who would like to help us with developing and marketing (also rebranding and designing).

Next step is to integrate it with our Dogecoin browser wallet and make one- click sharing (while browsing) possible together with the already existing 'one-click' upvoting [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dogecoin- browser-w...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dogecoin-browser- wallet-d/fcakjkhpcakekaagfkafeafceiemomcm)

Ultimate goal is to let the tipping culture go mainstream and deeply revolutionize how content discovery + creation monetization works!

BTW: We are also developing a blockchain-based 'backend' for social news with integrated crypto-currency. Distributed and censorship-free.

Leave a message on bloqchan with your thoughts please!

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, but it the app is soo slow!

</comment><comment><USER8> It creates a bad impression of Meteor when you click the first link in the demo that contains a couple hundred comments and the entire browser freezes for 8 seconds: [http://demo.telesc.pe/](http://demo.telesc.pe/)

Don't make the mistake of trying to open the Firefox debugger on that page either or the freezing lasts even longer.

That one page makes _807_ HTTP requests totaling 953KB to display about 20KB of text.

<comment><USER5> Part of this is that the demo is using a pretty old version of Telescope/Meteor (like 6 months back), and also that it's running on a free *.meteor.com instance that's not very powerful. I need to fix both of these, sorry about that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand how this is news... It's been out there for months. It is ___much more_ __interesting the "Made with Meteor" [http://madewith.meteor.com/](http://madewith.meteor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This application is partially cloned in the excellent Discover Meteor book([http://discovermeteor.com](http://discovermeteor.com) ... written by the same folks).

<comment><USER5> Thanks! If anybody's interested, that clone (basically a much simpler version) is open-source too:

demo: [http://meteor-book-chapter14-2.meteor.com/](http://meteor-book- chapter14-2.meteor.com/) source: [https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/Microscope](https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/Microscope)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just out of curiosity I think I've read somewhere that HN is written in Common Lisp. Or Am I just in pure delusion?

<comment><USER12> Arc, which is a dialect of lisp.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_\(programming_language\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Soooo slow</comment>


Ask HN: When Can You Retire? - <AUTHOR> What assumptions do you make about social security, cost of living?<p>More generally, how do you also calculate this age? <comment><USER2> A dramatic part of the answer may involve answering the question "WHERE can you retire". If you are willing or interested in retiring in another country, there seem to be several lovely choices where you can have a good life at a fraction of the cost of retiring in the USA.

<comment><USER3> Just be wise. In perspective of 10-20 years the cost of living in cheap countries might skyrocket and the currency might appreciate diminishing value of savings in dollars.

Just read ThaiVisaForum (thaivisa.com) - endless stories of expats who over last 10-15 years went from comfortable living on pension in Thailand to destitute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When your reliable passive income exceeds your cost of living you can probably retire.

Aside from that, the issue is too complicated and important to not seek professional guidance.

</comment><comment><USER5> When you can live off of 4% of your investment assets.</comment>


Donate Your Tab to Puerto Rico - <AUTHOR> https://donateyourtab.to/ <comment><USER2> BEWARE: this is a cryptomining-on-your-device racket, and it has a clicktrap so you can't back-navigate.</comment>


Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/theres-no-such-thing-as-motivation-e02edd7de30 <comment><USER2> I agree with this. I've spent just as much time researching productivity as being productive some times. And I agree, we don't fail on the motivation part but on inability to create environments, habits and schedules that allow for distraction-free productivity. But I always failed to maintain longer than a week's worth of concentrated productive habit. Why? I have a theory: you can't maintain rigid schedules and habits if you have family too.

No chance of choosing focus areas and ignoring a sick child and sleepless nights, family emergencies and soul-sapping homework assistance.

Family is my productivity enemy. But I love my family so I don't sweat lack of productivity that much. Anymore.

But yeah, motivation is not the answer. Fully agreed.

<comment><USER3> > _Why? I have a theory: you can't maintain rigid schedules and habits if you > have family too._

Haven't millions of people -- and lots of famous productive writers, and such, done exactly that?

<comment><USER4> And to varying degrees the detriment of their family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title's a bit clickbaity. "No such thing as motivation", and he goes on to explain two different types of motivation and sums it up with "do x and y and your motivation will grow".

Also, I'm missing a golden thread in this post. It reads like a few half-baked thoughts to promote his company.

I do agree with his recap though.

<comment><USER6> Exactly! He's absolutely spot on that habits are better than motivation for getting things done, but it's bizarre to have a title claiming there's no such thing as motivation, and then have several sections in the article talking about and defining what motivation is.

<comment><USER7> It's not bizarre. Unfortunately, clickbait is good for business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Motivation is absolutely a skill that can be mastered. Being motivated to get up and run at 6:00 am is not telling yourself that you have to, it's learning how to _want to do it_. Same thing with anything else. You have to learn how to connect the desire for some end state (getting the project completed, getting a faster mile time, etc) with the present. Habits are great, but excercising the capacity to want to make shit happen outside of your normal routine is also a skill worth developing.

<comment><USER9> I think linking it to _wanting_ can be problematic when people are trying to start. I get up every single day at 6am and go straight to the gym. To say I want to do this makes it sound like I have some insight, I'm crazy or I'm a 'morning' person. None of those are true. The alarm goes off, and I get up. There is no want or motivation in that moment, it is only discipline.

I do it because working out every day improves my physical and mental health. My cognition is better. Starting each day off doing something I don't really want to do (getting up early), sets the tone of the day to one of getting the things done that need to get done.

> You have to learn how to connect the desire for some end state (getting the > project completed, getting a faster mile time, etc) with the present.

IME, this is useful when deciding you want to make a change, but not something that is front and center when the alarm goes off early in the morning ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Building discipline is a master, root skill to learn that unlocks everything else.

Breaking down any task into small steps has always helped me get going on things that seem to be a little tough to start. This has been way more productive than telling myself to do something for just 5 minutes, and often see myself continue.

Discipline is learning to do what needs to be done regardless of how we feel. This creates more results than chasing motivation.

Anything we perceive we are motivated or passionate about always has things we don't want to do attached to it.

If anything, motivation might be like taking a shower every day. Forget to shower and any effect quickly dissipates. Motivation is finite like our attention and willpower.

<comment><USER9> > Discipline is learning to do what needs to be done regardless of how we > feel. This creates more results than chasing motivation.

This 100x. Discipline is the goal. To paraphrase Jocko Wilink's podcast and book, "discipline equals freedom". Want to get up early, set an alarm and get up. Want to get in shape, go to the gym starting right now.

When I recognize I'm procrastinating on something that needs to get done, I immediately attack it and get it done.

<comment><USER10> "Discipline is freedom" is so true. Gotta play the game by the rules till we can set our own.

It's strange though, we are raised to think discipline is bad, but everyone with financial, physical, dietary, academic, professional discipline often ends up being successful in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Fuck motivation. it's a fickle and and unreliable little dickfuck and isn't worth your time.

"Better to cultivate discipline than to rely on motivation. force yourself to do things. force yourself to get up out of bed and practice. Force yourself to work. Motivation is fleeting and it's easy to rely on because it requires no concentrated effort to get. Motivation comes to you, and you don't have to chase after it."

"Discipline is reliable, motivation is fleeting. The question isn't how to keep yourself motivated. It's how to train yourself to work without it."

—Theangryviolinist (probably)

</comment><comment><USER12> I read Drive by Daniel Pink (referenced in the article) and Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. They both make very interesting cases again current thoughts and practices surrounding motivation, especially regarding how rewards (in any form) often have the exact opposite effect of their intention.

I wrote some more about this recently here [0]

[0] [https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/enter-the-zone- fight-i...](https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/enter-the-zone-fight- imposter-syndrome-and-unlock-intrinsic-motivation-kjpbpe5a5)

</comment><comment><USER13> This don't make no sense. You still got to be motivated to do the routine that has supposedly removed motivation.

<comment><USER3> If you constraint motivation to mean "absolutely anything that makes you do something" then yes, it doesn't make sense. You still need to convince yourself to send a signal from your brain to do something, and one can say that that requires "motivation" too.

But that's not how most people use the term motivation, or whine about "not having motivation" mean.

The whole point of the distinction in the post is between waiting to feel motivated (as in "to positively look forward/like/inspired to do the thing") vs just doing it, not giving a shit for how you feel.

As a crude example: a writer could wait until they feel "motivated" to sit down and write. Another could just set a schedule that has him sitting down every weekday 9-5, and writing something, anything, whether they feel motivated or not.

The second we usually don't call "motivation", just discipline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're doing something shitty with your life, this kind of thinking is a good way to continue doing it well.

I doubt that's a good thing, net, unless you really truly don't have any options.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just want to point out that there is research that suggests there's no clear- cut extrinsic/intrinsic designation and that motivation generally lies on a spectrum between these two types (Ryan and Deci). Moreover, finding ways to move yourself along the spectrum towards the intrinsic end allows for more effective output.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of Scott Adams, System vs Passion.

</comment><comment> your-nanny all the clickbait titles on medium. I've mostly stopped bothering to read them

</comment><comment><USER17> I work all hours for a startup, and I enjoy my work, but when my boss gives us corporate "110%" talk, I want to resign</comment>


How Many Of Your Ads Are Being Blocked? - <AUTHOR> http://www.statstory.com/how-many-of-your-ads-are-being-blocked-updated/

<comment><USER2> Not enough in my opinion.</comment>


Chance of finding young Earth-like planets higher than previously thought - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-06-chance-young-earth-like-planets-higher.html <comment><USER2> Outputs of the Drake Equation are looking better and better, but I'm starting to worry that detecting intelligent life is going to be much harder that we previously thought. Even if a million radio-capable civilizations arose within the Milky Way, what are the chances of two such civilizations within a distance of say 100 light years having that capability at the same time?

Even then, the chances of contact seem slim. The other day, I was doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations to see what's needed for a near-Earth colony (say at about 5 light years) to send data back to Earth. Even with the tightest possible beam, even after pumping a massive amount of power into the transmitter, even after using square-kilometers worth of receivers, very little signal seemed to get through.

I'm starting to feel like there might be a lot of needles out there in a cosmic haystack that we'll never be able to sort out in our civilization's lifetime...

<comment><USER3> I'm pessimistic on the Drake equation because the single data point we have, ourselves, makes it look like after a civilization reaches radio capability it might quickly turn to over-harvesting of resources and in a few thousand years eliminate its advanced civilizations and return to a primitive state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related: I have always considered that the chance of finding life (or intelligent life) is unknown, because unless we don't find a second data point (first being us) it is not possible to estimate how common or rare it is.

We can talk all we want about filters and stages to intelligent life, but it doesn't really mean anything until a 2nd case is observed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Given the vastness of cosmos and the richness of star systems it's just ludicrous to assume earth-like planets are somehow special and rare.

At these scales nothing is rare.

<comment><USER6> Actually, they are possibly rare. Rareness is a percentage, so as long as only 1% or less of planets are earth like, that's rare, even if there are millions of them.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that such an interesting thing to think about. They're "rare" as a percentage, but because of their abundance, they're not "rare" at all.

<comment><USER8> Anyone know of a language that has vocabulary that distinguishes these two meanings of rarity?

<comment><USER9> Feels similar to the distinction between accurate and precise</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux-Insides: Interrupts and Interrupt Handling, Part 10 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides/blob/master/interrupts/interrupts-10.md

<comment><USER2> I just started reading the source + commentary for MIT's xv6 (an modern x86 adaptation of Unix V6) and I can't wait to use Linux-Insides to take what I learn and apply it to Linux.

Bravo to whoever 0xAX is, what a great resource!</comment>


Should Microsoft for freemium with windows phone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2013/09/12/should-microsoft-switch-windows-phone-to-a-freemium-model/

<comment><AUTHOR> The article doesn't mention the possibility of freemium for lower end phones, where profits are lower and licensing is likely a higher percentage of overall cost, and a paid model for premium phones, where manufacturers are making more.

This would give manufacturers a reason to create windows phones, if they can operate on cheaper hardware than even the cheapest android handset.

The challenge may be that windows phone starts to be viewed as a discount or poor OS vs the competition.</comment>


Luddites Are Almost Always Wrong: Technology Rarely Destroys Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20131001/19110024723/luddites-are-almost-always-wrong-technology-rarely-destroys-jobs.shtml

<comment><USER2> Horses used to have jobs, but technology destroyed them.</comment>


Ask HN: How is it different to be a product manager in ML domain? - <AUTHOR> 1. How is PM in ML different from PM in consumer apps?
2. What are the skills needed to be a PM in ML domain?
3. How can one gain those skills?
(About I am a software engineer with a few years of experience and regularly contribute to open source. I am a hobbyist, ML enthusiast too.
Perhaps PM in an ML company is a good way to get into the domain for someone with 10+ years of experience.) <comment><USER2> I bet you get paid more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do product PMs get paid lesser than senior engineers?

<comment><USER3> Yes by quite a bit</comment></comment></comment>


Did Google Hang Up On Calling Google Voice Via SIP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2011/03/did-google-hang-up-on-calling-google-voice-via-sip.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A follow-up to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2298593> as it seems access to this ability to call via SIP is not completely working.</comment>


If Corporations Are People, They Should Act Like It - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/if-corporations-are-people-they-should-act-like-it/385034/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I'm personally against corporate personhood... I think there should be limits on rights of a corporation, and that there should be methods in place to restrict the actions of corporations to better benefit society... that doesn't mean socialism, I mean eliminating corporate taxes, adding in international currency exchange tariffs and excise taxes, and encouraging companies to either reinvest, diversify or payout dividends...

Holding onto liquid or even un/under-used fixed assets doesn't benefit society. Part of the social contract allowing for the limited liability of companies is to benefit society with collective opportunities. With the ever- expanding IP restrictions, and even the premise of "corporate personhood" that is exceeded.

Then again, I'm pretty libertarian minded, and feel that ensuring competition is one of the most important things we can do for society.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> After a lot of back-and-forth with people who decry the idea of corporate personhood, and those who support it, I've decided to post one of the few articles I've read that manages to maintain some semblance of balance. This article has produced a good number of _quality_ debates in the circles I've shared it. I hope others will find it similarly enlightening and useful.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like we need a special category. He thinks corporations should be partial persons. I wonder what fraction he'd pick?

He's got many good points that are a helpful education on the topic, like pointing out that since the 5% owns 2/3 of all stocks, "shareholder rights" really means the interests of the wealthiest. That's probably not what progressives are trying to champion and probably betrays their lack of understanding of the subject.

I feel like this topic is related to the hypothetical discussion of how we should handle long-lived or immortal people. Since corporations persist for much longer than humans they can act on the same goal(s) for a destabilizing period of time.

If corporations are treated more like people, if they have a "conscience," then how do they define and update it?</comment></comment>


Hackers & Bakers - <AUTHOR> http://community.livejournal.com/misc_tech/2303.html <comment><USER2> Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

I wish for every ten supposedly witty disses out there on the web there were even one actual refutation. If my ideas are broken, tell me where. I don't want to stay mistaken. I change my mind about things a lot.

<comment><USER3> "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't figure out what blog the first section is referring to. Steve Yegge? Raganwald?

You have to admit, the third section is a great parody of Joel on Software (ps. buy my stuff).

</comment><comment><USER5> I honestly must have missed the point of this. I saw the title on reddit "You see, I once worked in a Bakery, code and bread are very similar in fact" and assumed it was a Joel Spolsky takedown.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html>

...but here, it's apparently a Paul Graham takedown. Reading it, it doesn't appear to do anything but bumble around for a few sentences.

<comment><USER6> Also, a Steve Yegge "takedown", I think. Or maybe I missed the funny of the first section, there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder who upmods these things. Do these people feel guilty about admiring PG, and think they'll fix their "bias" by promoting "the other side of the story"? Do they want to feel themselves better than everyone else, because they "don't drink the Kool-Aid"?

I understand why stuff like this gets on Reddit, but why here?

<comment><USER8> It was funny. I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a joke and not a comprehensive rebuttal.</comment></comment>


Gogobot iPhone app gives users a mobile friendsourced trip planner - <AUTHOR> http://techno-freaks.in/gogobot-iphone-app-gives-users-a-mobile-friendsourced-trip-planner/

<comment><USER2> I always wonder how useful friend sourcing is for travel outside the US. A lot of my friends only travel to major cities in the US. Nationwide, only 3 out of 10 Americans have passports.</comment>


George Fong – Head of Security at ESPN Is Doing an AMA - <AUTHOR> George Fong is a former FBI agent and now head of security at ESPN. He joins us to discuss his book, The Coldness of Night, in the Urban Book Club on Dec 7th. Get the app at urbanama.com. <comment><USER2> The AMA is live now on UrbanAMA</comment>


Best open-source visualization frameworks? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a Rails app and would like to visualize the size of a users folders based on how many files are inside of them. I'm considering giving D3.js a try, but am not sure if I can have it dynamically update as files are added to each folder. I'd like to be able to input my JSON data (which is something D3 does do).<p>Unless D3.js is the best choice, any other good alternatives? <comment><USER2> d3.js hands down. You absolutely can update in d3 stuff in real time, all you do is create a transition and re-bind the updated data. I've previously built the front end to a trading system that streams events to the browser and updates a d3 visualization over a websocket, and once you get your head around how d3 does things it's the perfect tool for this kind of thing.

Here's a tutorial that looks quite good: [http://blog.visual.ly/creating- animations-and-transitions-wi...](http://blog.visual.ly/creating-animations- and-transitions-with-d3-js/)

<comment><USER3> Seconded. It's got a learning curve, but its hands down the most well thought out library I've used. It's actively maintained by Mike Bostock, a thought leader in this space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe processing.js?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get PHP lamp or mamp on Ubuntu 19.10? - <AUTHOR> I recently changed my pc from windows to Ubuntu 19.10 I Love linux so much faster and simple than windows
but I want to learn php on this machine what's the best way to get MySQL php lamp or apache and all that good stuff for PHP development on this ubuntu machine?
everything seems outdated or there is always new stuff and new code hard to differinate what to use and keep up with. <comment><USER2> Try tasksel. It has a simple wizard-like setup. I used it to install Apache, PHP and MySQL on a server by following a video tutorial. You can preview the whole process in this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuAwCKIoKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuAwCKIoKg).

Unfortunately, it doesn't also install phpMyAdmin like MAMP does. But from a quick search, it seems that phpMyAdmin can be installed by running a single command in terminal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haven't worked with PHP in years, but I found a good LAMP install tutorial from Digital Ocean:

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- inst...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install- linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-ubuntu-18-04)

Probably, you'll use the same process on 19.04 as on 18.04.

<comment><AUTHOR> seems like getting PHP dev on Ubuntu is more complicated than a simple MAMP on OS X or Wamp on Windows.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it is, but it's also much closer to how PHP is deployed on a production server if you're not using a shared host, so it's good for someone to learn these kinds of command line skills if they have any plans of working in the software industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I generally use Bitnami's stacks. There's one for LAMP too.

Benefits: Fairly latest versions. Everything in one directory (I usually install them under /opt). No effect on system packages. No need to add PPAs for new versions.

Drawbacks: Can't update an existing installation; have to install a new version of the stack in another location and migrate.

[1]: [https://bitnami.com/stack/lamp/installer](https://bitnami.com/stack/lamp/installer)

[2]: [https://bitnami.com/stack/lamp/README.txt](https://bitnami.com/stack/lamp/README.txt)

<comment><AUTHOR> this looks interesting and it works for Ubuntu? I can have PHP/MYSQL and phpmyadmin ?

I like this, so basically it's the MAMP or WAMP version for like Linux ubuntu?

<comment><USER4> It works on Ubuntu. I use it on Ubuntu.

It's LAMP. There are different ways to deploy LAMP on Ubuntu but they are all LAMP stacks at the end of the day. 1)From system packages is most common. 2) From PPAs if you want latest versions. 3) As virtual machine. 4)As containers. 5) As software bundles like the Bitnami stack 6) Building all components from their sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow main you're a life saver this worked perfectly on ubuntu. most of the online saved was outdated this helped a lot thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ubuntu runs a little behind in the PHP versions...I think it is mainly for compatibility sake (which is good if you are looking long-term without much breakage)

I switched to Linux Mint recently (which is a offshoot of Ubuntu) to have more recent PHP/MySQL versions. There are many guides out there for getting LAMP up and running with Mate as well as Ubuntu. Just include the version with it (i.e. search install php mysql ubuntu 19.10 )

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://cpriego.github.io/valet-linux/](https://cpriego.github.io/valet- linux/)

Check out laracasts.com [https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-6-from- scratch/episodes...](https://laracasts.com/series/laravel-6-from- scratch/episodes/4)

See comments about linux.

<comment><USER3> Note: that first program installs Nginx, not Apache if OP wants true LAMP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just to segway a little I am a fan of lxc. I would be happier fiddling with PHP in a container than the main os.

I run lxc containers and PHP on another box and run sublime seemlessly on the remote box to edit code.

</comment><comment><USER8> Check digital ocean / linode tutorials</comment>


President Putin's Fiction: 10 False Claims About Ukraine - <AUTHOR> http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/03/222988.htm <comment><USER2> It's not a propaganda, mind you. All the Putin's myths and FUD are being very well debunked in this article. I live in Ukraine and see what happens here with my own eyes. Trust me, whatever Putin and his state-funded media (RT, ITAR-TASS and others) say is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is a pity that there is so much propaganda on both sides of this conflict. I do not like Putin and will open a champaign bottle once he will be replaced by a better successor. But this article hides some of the facts.

A more critical view: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/the-ukraine-crisis- through-the-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/the-ukraine-crisis-through-the- whimsy-of-international-law-1.2559980)

</comment><comment><USER4> So this is propaganda and not sure why the article is posted here, this isn't reddit. And most of these are up to interpretation. So BS.</comment>


Amazon Pulls Thousands of E-Books in Dispute - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/amazon-pulls-thousands-of-e-books-in-dispute/?ref=technology

<comment><USER2> Pretty poor reporting from the NYT. Amazon isn't "under pressure" from wall street to up their margins, they actually enjoy quite a premium valuation. And Amazon doesn't use cheap ebooks to drive sales of their kindles, it's the exact opposite - cheap kindles to drive sales of the ebooks. With the story so oddly slanted it makes me wonder who bought this placement.

<comment><USER3> Also: "But in what might have been a sly message from Amazon, there was a button to click to tell the publisher you would like to read the book on Kindle."

That button is on every title that's not available on Kindle, for whatever reason, and has been for ages. As you say, pretty poor reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"This should be a matter of concern and a cautionary tale for the smaller presses whose licenses will come up for renewal," said Andy Ross, an agent and a former bookseller. "They are being offered a Hobson's choice of accepting Amazon's terms, which are unsustainable, or losing the ability to sell Kindle editions of their books, the format that constitutes about 60 percent of all e-books."_

followed by

 _Mr. Suchomel said the publishers were solidly behind I.P.G. "They were almost unanimously positive, saying, 'Don't change your terms,' " he said._

First, if the publishers don't care, or if they would simply prefer not to concede to Amazon, is this news?

Second, maybe I'm too young and too inclined to believe that technology may cure all ills, or this is just my ignorance of the actual requirements of the bookselling industry showing, but to me that "unsustainable" line reeks of "we're not willing to optimize our processes, customers be damned." If I'm not mistaken Amazon has singlehandedly propped up this industry in the last decade, so unsustainable for whom? If the answer to that question is three tiers of middlemen who are unwilling to take a hit on their profit margins due to some combination of habit, entitlement, and spite, why should authors or readers give a shit?

</comment><comment><USER5> Amazon follows a long line of huge-volume retailers into "not afraid to be the asshole" territory.

Unless it's the case that it actually _costs Amazon money_ to offer books at the prices that IPG wants, this is a pure power/spite/warning play. And I very much doubt that it costs them money.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, good. If this catches on, it might increase the likelihood that I'll be able to buy ebooks from other than Amazon. I'd like to have that option into the future.

<comment><USER7> Ditto that – but I feel like the only way that'll really happen is if some publisher is gutsy enough to put out a format with little to no DRM – maybe a print restricted PDF or something similar.

Only something that is able to be read on any platform, in any of hundreds of apps will it be viable competition at this point.

It would genuinely be refreshing to see some sort of innovation come out of the old-media content creation industries for once.

<comment><USER6> "if some publisher is gutsy enough to put out a format with little to no DRM – maybe a print restricted PDF or something similar."

Pakt <http://www.packtpub.com/> and O'Reilly <http://oreilly.com/> do exactly that. Pakt's pdfs have your name and address printed on each page.

<comment><USER7> Excellent point – I should probably have said mainstream fiction or general/non niche publishing house or something similar. Tech, while not a _small_ market is specialized enough to not threaten entrenched publishers – unless O'Reilly wants to branch out into fiction, etc.

Also, the simple idea of putting your name and address on each page is pretty good low-tech copy deterrence, IMHO. I didn't know about that – thanks for the insight.

Though

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I think embarrassment is about the right level for DRM.

<comment><USER7> Embarrassment, indeed =)

Relatedly, it's about simply making people choose one of three options (at the moment): 1) Don't copy it 2)Be okay with everyone knowing your name – i.e.: take a stand and flaunt your disagreement with copyright law or 3) Do a lot of manual work to scrub your name off (even harder if they're PW locked).

Regardless, I like it because it's simple _and_ it embraces the new realities (and abilities) of digital distribution. They could never do that with mass- market books 10 years ago, but now, it's trivial to do with on demand pdfs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On the one hand I'm not thrilled about Amazon having so much power. But on the other, I'm tired of being raped by the publishers when I buy ebooks. Those things should cost less than physical books, dammit.

</comment><comment><USER9> Any chance these publishers can band together union style for better leverage? I'd guess that the sheer number of publishers would make this not possible.

<comment><USER10> IPG is about to learn that one can publish an ebook without a distribution middleman taking most of the money.

(Think about the authors here. Amazon takes 30% of the money that goes to the distributor. The distributor takes 30% or more of that money. The publisher takes 30% or more of that money. And finally, a few cents are left over for the guy who wrote the book. How sorry I feel for IPG...)

<comment><USER11> Sounds like the recording industry as well!

Actually all middle-men!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of another industry under the same pressure credit card industry via new disruptive payment systems.</comment>


Einstein's Science Defied Nationalism and Crossed Borders - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-einsteins-science-defied-nationalism-and-crossed-borders/2019/06/20/b8b65554-7590-11e9-b7ae-390de4259661_story.html <comment><USER2> Nationalism is an extension of tribalism which is inherited in human beings, it's in our DNA [1]. We, as a species, may override our instincts to do what we feel is better for humanity, but then again humanity is just a larger tribe.

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-is- trip/201208/...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-is- trip/201208/you-are-tribal-person)

[2] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-emotional- footpr...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-emotional- footprint/201802/belonging-is-our-blessing-tribalism-is-our-burden)

<comment><USER3> We've seen nations grow beyond the bounds of tribal/regional origins into ethnically diverse multicultural and multilingual economic powerhouses. The US and most European countries are good examples of this. As long as a lingua franca remains mostly dominant and people acclimate to others acting differently around them, it's a perfectly natural state. Ancient Rome and Ancient China both prospered economically under these conditions. Nationalism in all it's incarnations has historically been an attempt to reassert tribal balance in favor of some formerly dominant but now sub-dominant group and it rarely ends well for that group.

<comment><USER4> "The US and most European countries"

More likely European nations are still mostly ethnocentric whereby the clear majority of the populations identify with a group that is historically part of that territory.

Which is fundamentally different from US, Canada, Singapore and even Central/South American nations which have yet another aspect.

"Ancient Rome and Ancient China both prospered economically under these conditions. "

Ancient Rome invaded, plundered, occupied and demanded ongoing massive tributes from it's territories. Even most of the Italian peninsula were technically slaves.

The basis of 'prosperity' in Roman territories mostly boils down to physical security, i.e. 'Pax Romana'

"Nationalism in all it's incarnations has historically been an attempt to reassert tribal balance in favor of some formerly dominant but now sub- dominant group and it rarely ends well for that group."

Maybe you should offer some examples here, because I can't think of a single one.

\- Quebec nationalism resulted in a 'quiet revolution' and an officially bilingual federal state.

\- Scottish nationalism resulted in devolution.

\- Nazi/German nationalism in both World Wars wasn't exactly the reassertion of a 'formerly dominant state' \- moreover, now that France is weakened and the UK is 'out' \- Germany's dominance of the EU is basically unchallenged.

\- Russian nationalism has been fairly strong since the modern concept of nationalism.

\- Nationalist movements throughout the post WW2 era resulted in the ostensible freedom of many powers from former colonial rule: Egypt, Libya, Algeria. (That list is very long.)

FYI the modern concept of 'Nationalism' is merely a civic orientation of that which existed before (and still does) i.e. 'ethnicity'.

Sweden and Finland do not share totally arbitrary borders.

The border between Finland and Sweden is such that the relative ethnic populations of Swedes and Finns are contiguous, i.e. _Sweden is where the Swedish people live, Finland is where the Finns live_ \- mostly.

The ethnocentric nature of the nation state is still obvious today by the fact that many ethnic Swedes for example live in Finland, and are demarcated as a separate group - not just people who 'speak a different language', bur rather, they are of a different ethnicity than Finns, although technically of the same legal nationality.

Though nationalism is very different in a place like the USS or Canada, it's still forms part of people's natural identity.

Family, tribe, ethnic group, 'nation' (be it ethnic or idealist) are part of who we are; to ignore this would be to ignore the very nature of who we are.

That said, some things, like Scientific knowledge tend to be humanist, i.e. transcending ethnicities, and of course we often need to be reminded of this.

<comment><USER5> I also don't see China as having been ethnically diverse. They had foreigners invade, control and eventually got swallowed by the numbers, but it wasn't like the Roman Empire. If anything anyone who didn't assimilate into Han culture was driven out or worse (mountain people, manchurians, etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/what-was-einstein-s- relations...](https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/what-was-einstein-s-relationship- to-judaism-and-zionism-1.5425826)

Einstein views were conflicted. He was very pro-nationalist where it was a Jewish concern. He felt this was forced, but that doesn't change his position.

</comment><comment><USER7> Time to pull out this chestnut. I start out as a physics major, this is Georgia Tech in 1980, 1981. In my classical mechanics class my german physics professor said that "of course we weren't taught relativity because it was considered Jewish physics". That brought a round of chuckles until we realized he wasn't kidding.

</comment><comment><USER8> just wondering out loud, but one can't defy nationalism without crossing borders no?

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not because law of physics are universals, that the political point of view of Einstein are universal. Moreover, when you look are how many nationnal socialist scientists from Germany were transfered in America after ww2, and how America benefited until today from them, tends to discredit any kind of authoritarian argument that political point of view of a physics specialist is more relevant than the one from my jobless neighbour.

<comment><USER10> No political views of Einstein are even mentioned, they're kinda besides the point here. Even if they weren't, many things Einstein said or wrote aren't considered insightful because he was "good at being a physicist", but because they are valuable and insightful in their own right, and often beautifully put.

There should be some kind of Godwin's law for mentioning Einstein, and the "just because he was a good physicist doesn't mean the thing I'm not actually going to address is correct" stuff showing up.

<comment><USER9> This is a very common habit of our modern propaganda, to use the position of an expert in very narrow field as an authoritarian position to promote political agenda... Moreover, dead cannot speak, and it's very easier to use them for this.

<comment><USER11> Except in this case, Einstein very much _was_ a philosopher in addition to a physicist. His philosophical writings weren't as stand-out as his physics, but they weren't shabby either. He was offered the job of the first leader of Israel, not because he was a great physicist, but because he thought deeply about philosophical and political issues.

He did write quite a bit in his own contemplated voice in these subjects. It is true though that a reinterpretation of his voice can become problematic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fascinating. The entire article doesn't even bother to include the fact that Einstein was a socialist. He didn't want to "cross borders" \- he wanted to remove them, which is the sole sane solution.

<comment><USER13> How does a democracy work without borders? Without borders there is no demos.

<comment><USER14> The "demos" or people would be any freely associating group of people, which isn't necessarily defined by borders.

<comment><USER15> It would end up the same as today, ultimately, nations would emerge. Don't you think "free association" is where civilization began at first place? And you expect a different outcome? Who would protect "free associates" from the violence of others who don't buy into that system?

Utopia like Anarchy severely ignore the "human nature" factor.

<comment><USER16> It's unknown how civilisations began but they were most likely not formed through "free association" but rather by violent extortion. It's thought that pastoral communities being regularly robbed by nomadic groups eventually developed a relationship of paying tribute to one group in return for protection against others. Or, put differently, one group of bandits will fight off the others to get exclusive pillaging access to some farming communities. This tribute system is believed to have then developed into a taxation system.

In no way are modern nation states a form of "free association". I cannot freely choose to not pay taxes if I am born in a nation, nor can I freely choose to join another nation if I accept their principles.

Your predictable and very unoriginal use of the "human nature" argument is in fact the ignorant position. It completely ignores the significantly larger number of humans throughout history (and including today) that have lived in freely associating relationships that in no way resemble the modern nation state or earlier forms of civilisation.

<comment><USER15> It's very well known how civilization began.

You cannot find a single example of what you deem "free association" that is not currently defended directly or indirectly by an army.

The irony of your statement is that while you called me ignorant you said the exact same thing as I said in your first paragraph.

Then you try to back pedal to make a "point" in the last one by giving zero examples of your "larger number of humans throughout history (and including today) that have lived in freely associating relationships.

And next time refrain from calling other people who disagree with whatever ideology you believe in as "ignorant", it qualifies you as a troll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Einstein married his 1st cousin, I bet he loved socialism.

<comment><USER18> And he abandoned his schizophrenic son.</comment></comment>


The Planetarium - <AUTHOR> https://mozillademos.org/demos/planetarium/demo.html <comment><USER2> It talks like it should do a lot more, but all it lets me do is zoom in on a few panels of an infographic about the planets. Am I missing something?</comment>


Turn your phone into a simple interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.koalaphone.com/en/

<comment><USER2> "Turn your phone into a simple interface" doesn't sound quite right; maybe "Give your phone a simple interface" fits better?

Looks very much like BigLauncher, I assume it's from the same company?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it definitely sounds better :) KoalaPhone is from a different company than BIG Launcher (but both apps are from Czech Republic).</comment></comment>


What fiction has to say about the libraries of the future - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/what-fiction-has-to-say-about-the-libraries-of-the-future-36314

<comment><USER2> The future of libraries is confusing because libraries serve multiple purposes, not just warehouses of free books.

They are archives.

They are places where the public can ask for the skills of a professional researcher.

They provide critical civic and informational access to the underprivileged. You can see this mandate in the libraries as free Internet terminals initiatives.

They are community centres with art, fitness classes, galleries, gyms, meeting rooms.

They are daytime shelters for the homeless.

And probably more. As someone with a library degree you'd think I'd know but honestly spent half my degree hearing librarians talk about what is the future of the library without getting to the heart of the matter.

Obviously without books libraries are community centres and so the future of community centres is likely to improve especially as the world urbanizes.

And very likely informational stores will not need to be physically bounded and can be centralized on the Internet (Google) and even so if localized (Yelp, Ancestry.com, Wikitravel). That is just economics.</comment>


This Spam Infographic About Spam Infographics Makes My Head Hurt - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/02/infographics-all-the-way-down/

<comment><USER2> "Aside from the Greyhat SEO tricks, your anti-infographic infographic and the post that inspired it are actually just describing successful web-writing and content creation. It's like there's a reason people are clicking on it."

Ugh. She didn't read the thread, it would seem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't 'get' this anti-infographic movement - What's the difference between text-based content and graphical content? Gaming sites like Digg etc is always going to happen regardless of the format.

<comment><USER4> In general, I think the problem breaks down this way:

1) Humans respond in intuitive, predictable ways to graphics, particularly with a greater emphasis on emotional response. (As opposed to an analytical response.)

2) All information sources have bias, and any marketing competence on the part of the infographic creator will tend to subconsciously amplify the bias of the graphic's creator.

3) Combining the creator's bias with the infographic's tendency to more easily invoke emotional responses over analytical ones results in a reaction more couched in that emotion than in logic.

IIRC, USA Today was criticized for this, decades ago.

[edited to fix concatenation of numbers to a single line.)

<comment><USER3> Wow, so people are getting upset that content is causing a greater emotional response, with a direct influence on the graphic's creator? To me that seems as if the designers and marketers are doing their job properly.

<comment><USER4> Sure, as long as you're aware that you're reading marketing material, and are aware of the bias that goes with that. People often are more sheeple than critical thinkers, though.

[I think] The anger is generally on the part of the critical thinkers against those exploiting sheeple. You can think as critically as you like, but that doesn't mean you won't be drowned out by those who don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sigh, I planned on schooling the system of the system by creating an infographic like this and posting it to Digg/Reddit/HN. I spent all day in chem hall sketching it out and preparing it for the weekend surge.

While we may realize this part of the spam game, there's always going to be new schemes to replace this one. The morals and ethics of SEO are always being pushed and bent to get a page #1 in Google for a keyword. I admired some of the infographics and even have a few saved (music/movies/picking a lock). There are much dirtier ways than this to get backlinks and attention. I would actually toss this in the grayhat area, because at least its providing some thought invoking content.

<comment><USER6> the thing is that only the techies realize that's part of the seo game...99.9999% of the population will not care. And if those seo guys can't get the numbers the way they want...they'll just go and buy links.

or create a huge SEO link wheel i.e. something like this chart:

<http://i55.tinypic.com/2142vdv.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is this spammier than usual linkbaiting?

<comment><USER8> There's content but it isn't textually indexed by Google, it's easy to put up statically on any existing domain, and by using huge images it's more likely to be linked to instead of rehosted.</comment></comment>


Reactive.coffee: reactive programming and declarative UIs in CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://yz.mit.edu/wp/introducing-reactive-coffee/

<comment><USER2> Library author here - happy to answer questions! Canonical blog post is actually over at [http://eng.infer.com/post/57598286968/introducing- reactive-c...](http://eng.infer.com/post/57598286968/introducing-reactive- coffee-reactive-programming-and). Project home page, courtesy of GitHub: [http://yang.github.io/reactive-coffee/](http://yang.github.io/reactive- coffee/).

Also, our startup, Infer, is hiring great engineers, and we love open-source - come learn about us: [https://www.infer.com/careers.html](https://www.infer.com/careers.html)

(Thanks jashkenas!)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really nice cleanup/update on Knockout. The source code at ~400 lines is very understandable. I've looked at a lot of reactive frameworks, this is great work!

I'm glad you're thinking about how to manage garbage collection. It's tricky with these push-based frameworks.

Have you given consideration to asynchronous vs synchronous reactivity? The advantage of asynchronous is you don't propagate the changes as they are made but instead once all the changes are done. You can avoid redundant computations this way, for example if a bind is dependent on multiple observables that change in the same "turn". And in some ways (worth debating) asynchronous semantics are more understandable than synchronous since unknown code is not being run underneath you while you are in the middle of changing observables.

Here's Ember's writeup on their rationale for asynchronous: [http://emberjs.com/guides/understanding-ember/managing- async...](http://emberjs.com/guides/understanding-ember/managing-asynchrony/)

Also since Object.observe is asynchronous, Google's polymer/MDV will also I believe have these semantics.

<comment><USER2> Yes! There's already a lag-delay primitive, but it's a one-off hack we needed to get things working - more general asynchronous propagation is definitely a requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "z = bind -> x.get() + y.get()" seems nice, but when are the attached listeners removed again?

Typically this is solved with weak listeners, but Javascript doesn't support weak references. I'm worried that this library never removes the listeners, effectively leaking like crazy?

<comment><USER2> Astute observation - this is actually something we do call out in [http://yang.github.io/reactive- coffee/infelicities.html#garb...](http://yang.github.io/reactive- coffee/infelicities.html#garbage-collection). As you note, JS doesn't have it as easy as in other platforms, but it's not a fundamental problem and is still reasonably straightforward to address (as described). The fix is slated for this coming release, and we'll need to more thoroughly document/explain what this all means.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the explanation in the link. The problem that is described in the link is clearly solvable, however what I'm referring to is more fundamental.

I'm not talking about nested binds, but just a simple bind such as "z = bind -> x.get() + y.get()". This will add listeners to x and y. When will those listeners be removed again (without adding new ones during the recalculation of z's new value in case of a change to x or y)?

It may be that x and y are the basic models in my app, and during my clicking around in the application I create and close many panels, and each panel has bind-operations that add listeners to x and y. Now the panels may be long gone, and will never be used again, but when will the listeners that was added to x and y as part of creating the panels be removed?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, this is what I'm talking about - a fuller explanation would require more text. :)

The question is what you're doing with z. As long as you're also adding and removing your hypothetical panels in turn with bind, you're good:

      div {class: 'container'}, bind -> [
        if show.get()
          div {class: 'z'}, bind -> x.get() + y.get()
        else
          div {class: 'nothing'}
      ]

The question is what happens at the top level or when you want to break out and do your own thing. We don't have the luxury of weak refs in JS, and as a result it's less forgiving if you do "silly" things like create binds that go nowhere and that you don't want to keep. But even with weak references, one can't tell if you added a bind only to subscribe a console.log caller to its changes, save to localStorage, or some other side effect that you _do_ want to keep. In any case, it's incumbent on us to fully document what "silly" means, include simple-to-use API calls to capture and dispose entire subgraphs (for when you want to do your own thing manually), and provide good debugging introspection tools for finding these `bind`s to nowhere, in case you really don't want them lingering around.

We've also been bouncing around ideas for reversing the reference DAG and having cells named by the reversed paths through the DAG, which we may experiment with. You then get to deal with the converse problem of manually needing to hold references to the sinks in the DAG. In any case, we're very open to learning from how things play out in practice, and shape the direction of the library accordingly.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, you're putting the entire UI in binds. That's a really clever way to handle the lifecycle of the listeners!

bind is "stupid" in the way that it completely recalculates a cells value on any change of a cell it's previous calculation depended on. It doesn't "understand" the calculation in a way to only recalculate the part that was strictly needed to update its value to a change.

I mention this because if the entire UI is in a bind, then on every change the entire UI would be recreated. I worry that this could get prohibitively slow on a sufficiently complex UI? (It can also lead to problems with widgets losing focus, but that can be solved in a similar way as in Immediate Mode GUI's).

<comment><USER2> A bind only re-evaluates if changes happen within its own immediate scope, and not if the changes are within any descendant binds' scopes. Whenever you want to carve off finer-granularity updates, scope things to a separate bind. This has scaled to, for instance, a complex WYSIWYG web page editor, where the whole page/document being edited is structured using cells and rendered with recursive binds - the app needs to be very responsive to each change a user makes, whether it's typing in text or dragging a style slider, even if the focus is on the top-level DOM element. That's not to say we've seen all the use cases - we definitely want to see where things fall down as well.

<comment><USER4> Just one last question...

Say I have something like a button with an action, and the action has a cell whose value is used when the action is executed by clicking the button.

If I create the button in a bind, and the cell in the action is also made with a bind, but during the calculation to create the button the cell for the action is never actually read, then no listeners will be attached to the cell for the action, and the cell will therefore not update itself to underlying changes.

Now sometime later I click the button, but the cell for the action has an expired value, what happens?

I guess my question is, what happens when the reading of a cell value only happens outside the evaluation of binds?

One solution could be to always add a listener to new reactive cells created during a bind, another solution is simply to evaluate a cell everytime it's value is requested when it has no listeners added.

<comment><USER2> Think of cells (including binds) as just containers: when you call .get() (inside or outside a bind), you just get the currently stored value. Besides the container abstraction for its own sake, values also enable the scoping effect described earlier - if you have x.get() + y.get(), and x updates, you don't need to re-evaluate y (which in turn may be a bind - its body is scoped off so that you're not re-evaluating an entire sub-graph of the application). They're also necessary groundwork for smarter propagation strategies, e.g. stopping propagation if the value hasn't changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really cool stuff. I love the simplicity of reactive cells and I've been writing views in coffeescript for a while now. ([https://github.com/jkarmel/space-pen](https://github.com/jkarmel/space-pen))

As I was playing around with the JS fiddle todo example I noticed that there is no focus restoration when I have the todos update on 'keyup' instead of on the form submission:

      theForm.find('input').keyup ->
        opts.onSubmit(descrip.val().trim(), priority.val().trim())

(you can see this in action at [http://jsfiddle.net/EwfB8/2/](http://jsfiddle.net/EwfB8/2/))

Any plans to add a feature for dealing with this issue?

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting project. I'm uneasy about zero HTML, and instead having most/all the HTML in .coffee. But I'm opened to it.

Is this project related to, or draw inspiration from, Reactive Extensions (Rx.NET, Rx.js, Rx.cocoa, etc.)? [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS](https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS)

Recently, I've seen the idea of reactive user interface pop up all over HackerNews and GitHub. What a lot of folks are missing is that whole applications themselves can be reactive, from UI to servers to data sources. I feel like many of these reactive UI libraries are missing this.

<comment><USER2> We elaborate briefly on various related work at [http://yang.github.io/reactive- coffee/related.html](http://yang.github.io/reactive-coffee/related.html), but absolutely - there's a large body of existing work and trailblazers we liberally draw inspiration from. In the case of RxJS in particular, the styles actually feel quite different - RxJS is more about explicitly merging streams and constructing the data flow graph with some set of combinators, whereas dependencies are inferred automatically in reactive.coffee (along with a UI- building layer).

We're also strong believers that the entire stack can be architected in this way. Stay tuned! For now, check out projects like Fun, Ur/Web, and Meteor/Derby:

[http://marcuswest.in/essays/fun-intro/](http://marcuswest.in/essays/fun- intro/)

[http://www.impredicative.com/ur/demo/](http://www.impredicative.com/ur/demo/)

[http://www.meteor.com/](http://www.meteor.com/)

[http://derbyjs.com/](http://derbyjs.com/)

<comment><USER7> Facebook's recent React framework is also worth mentioning ([http://facebook.github.io/react/](http://facebook.github.io/react/)).

A nice JS library for reactive programming is Bacon.js - [https://github.com/raimohanska/bacon.js](https://github.com/raimohanska/bacon.js) \- it's smaller, the source code is easier to read and I found it a little easier to use.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, both are mentioned in the related work page!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks like just the sort of thing I've been looking for. Reactivity is very convenient, but it's so often tangled up in a massive library that's trying to do much more at once.

I've learned the hard way to embrace the "best in breed small libraries" philosophy over the "monolithic do-everything framework" approach, and I'm particularly excited to see a small, simple reactive library that goes as far as to use efficient DOM diffs.

Can't wait to try it out!

<comment><USER9> You may be interested in what we've built with React ([http://facebook.github.io/react/](http://facebook.github.io/react/)). We're focused exclusively on rendering and wiring up event handlers and offer a super straightforward, highly performant reactive programming model. There is some particularly interesting technical aspects around how we keep state consistent between React and the browser as well as how we've architected the core (it's a bit like a game!). And it's been proven at scale (both userbase and eng org size) time and time again.

<comment><USER2> Hi Peter - React is great! To those of you who haven't already, go check it out. It shares a lot of similarities with reactive.coffee (besides our highly original names), including the "code-first" approach to building up views.

<comment><USER9> Yep glad that we're validating each other :) Also ractive too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like this. As an avid user of Coffeescript, Knockout.js and Erector- style code-as-templates, this is a great fit for me. Additionally, while I now understand how Knockout works internally, I was initially frustrated by how much magic it involved; Reactive.coffee looks like it does a better job of exposing the relevant parts of how it works.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you feel that you've lost anything in terms of composeability as compared to a more stream/combinator-oriented approach, like, say, Flapjax? If so, have you found that painful in the real world, or do you think it's more of an academic concern with little meaningful impact?

<comment><USER2> Good question - the reason why we built the library this way was exactly because we find declaring expressions to be more natural than wiring together streams by combinators—which, BTW, Flapjax does support. Far from academic- without-impact, Leo's work was actually directly influential on me—esp. since he worked in PL and I didn't, so much of my initial exposure to reactive programming came from a few projects including his.

<comment><USER12> I'm a big fan of bacon.js. Is there any way you can abstract over values over time, or asynchronously? This was always my big problem with knockout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
        x = rx.cell(3)
        y = rx.cell(5)
        z = bind -> x.get() + y.get() #1
        z.get() # 8
        x.set(1)
        z.get() # 6

I wonder when #1 will be simply expressed as z <\- x + y.

<comment><USER2> That would require a new language/syntax layer, which we wanted to avoid. (There's also something to be mentioned for being explicit and reducing "magic," which was part of what drove us to create this library in the first place.)

That said, you could imagine a simple implementation by reflecting on each sub-expression (or auto-lifting operators/functions), where something like `z <\- x + y` is compiled to:

      z = bind ->
        tmp0 = if x instanceof ObsCell then x.get() else x
        tmp1 = if y instanceof ObsCell then y.get() else y
        tmp0 + tmp1

Rather than forking CoffeeScript for the `<-`, you could start with a simple expression parser:

      z = rx.expr('x + y')

<comment><USER13> Right, I've been doing too much lisp recently, I assume macros everywhere.

Couldn't `bind` be ordered (meaning always reading its input) to avoid '.get()' ?</comment></comment></comment>


Outcry as YouTube star Logan Paul posts video of dead body in Japan - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/outcry-as-youtube-star-posts-video-of-dead-body-in-japan <comment><USER2> I don't want to open the link but I presume he went to the forests around Mt Fuji (since sibling poster writes that he went to a forest).

That place is very famous as a suicide spot and it appears in many works of fiction in this context. The other famous spot is Tojimbo, a seaside cliff which also appears in many movies / TV shows.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct: the article states that the forest is Aokigahara forest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The body was found in the Aokigahara Forest near Mt Fuji.

A respectful and well-made documentary on the forest was produced by Vice a number of years ago. You can watch it here:

[https://vimeo.com/16532592](https://vimeo.com/16532592)

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmgagk/aokigahara- suicide...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jmgagk/aokigahara-suicide- forest-v3)

</comment><comment><USER4> Youtube seems more and more to be turning into a kind of wasteland of unmoderated, self-published content. Apparently, and sadly, that's where the money is.

<comment><USER5> > Youtube seems more and more to be turning into a kind of wasteland of > unmoderated, self-published content. Apparently, and sadly, that's where the > money is.

We must be living in different universes. In my universe, Youtube has spent the last year or so purging content that isn't advertiser friendly and auto- moderating even family-friendly and innoffensive channels into oblivion. They let a lot slip by them due to their size and dint of their AI being stupid to the point of possible malice, but I'd rather have a wasteland of free expression than a well-manicured garden of corporate and MCN-driven garbage.</comment></comment>


Information Technology, 50 Years Ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/01/information-technology-50-years-ago/

<comment><USER2> What I find interesting was that ERMA was totally obsolete when delivered. By the end of 1959 IBM had delivered the 1401 and the 7090 both transistorized. The 1401 was the mainstay of the business world until the advent of the 360 in 1965. The 1401 and 7090 were q dynamite combination where the 1401 served as an offline peripheral controller for the 7090. The 7094 was my first computer. Baseball was my first computer game, played on the console switches and displayed on the accumulator and index register displays. (My first video game was Space Wars on a PDP 1.)

<comment><USER3> The hardware that went into ERMA may have been obsolete, but that is only the foundation of the technology. The project was years in the making. I can imagine that trying to sell adoption of emerging transitory technology into a massive financial system would have seemed an unwarranted risk.

Magnetic ink doesn't care who reads it and magnetic ink readers don't care if they're driven by vacuum tubes, transistors, microprocessors, or (we hope) photonic integrated circuits. The vision that went into this project was phenomenal. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the foundation of our modern electronic banking?

Another point on obsolescence: consider microprocessors in satellites and probes. I understand that well proven circuitry is required, which by nature is obsolete because it trails newer system in features and performance.

"Traditionally, space-qualified single board computers (SBCs) have trailed the cutting-edge commercial and military products by factors of performance often times in excess of 10-100x."

See: <http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/home/article.php?id=100088>

So the technology was obsolete for "new technology" but it still was suitable for the purpose it was intended, whether finance or space exploration, both areas we don't want to make mistakes.

<comment><USER2> In 1959 the whole computer industry was on the cusp of the conversion from vacuum tubes to transistors, but it was not like jumping off the cliff. The vacuum tube predecessor to the 7090 was the 709. Vacuum tubes were unreliable because they burned out frequently. The transistor machines were a huge step forward in reliability and the 7090 was at least 20 times faster. Once the transistor machines came out the vacuum tube ones were dead. I imagine BofA was faced with the decision of a year's delay to get the new systems and rewrite the software or go ahead with what they had.

Those were the days where every new machine required a rewrite of all your software. OTOH there wasn't very much of it. ERMA had only 4000 bytes of memory and the 7090 had 32K 36 bit words.

Processors for satellites are entirely different animals. They have to be radiation hardened. It's not a matter of waiting for generation x of the x86 to prove itself. Commercial processors flat out wont work in high radiation environments.</comment></comment></comment>


Online radio service wins ruling over license fees - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news170137409.html <comment><USER2> This sounds much like Pandora; is the ruling application to them to?</comment>


Show HN: Bumblebee – a JavaScript voice app framework based on DeepSpeech - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jaxcore/bumblebee <comment><USER2> Congratulations Dan on the release. This does fill a gap, both in terms of developers' skills and existing toolsets' availability and functionality. My question would be, could this be used out of the box in educational environments, for instance to assess accuracy of pronunciation?</comment>


Ask HN: How does Medium calculate how long it will take to read a post? - <AUTHOR>

Medium and many other sites have a calculation for how long it might take you to read that particular post. How is that calculated and is there a library to add that to any site? <comment><USER2> I'd assume that they're taking a word count and then using a predefined number of words per minute to figure out approximately how long the article will take to read.

For example, [https://medium.com/fragmented- musings/295cc75cd1fd](https://medium.com/fragmented-musings/295cc75cd1fd) has approximately 600 words and has an approximate reading time of 3 minutes. From this we can deduce that they're assuming that around 200 words can be read in a minute. By diving 600 by 200, we arrive at 3.

<comment><USER3> Most likely.

[http://www.spreeder.com/](http://www.spreeder.com/) says: "To train to read faster, you must first find your base rate. Your base rate is the speed that you can read a passage of text with full comprehension. We've defaulted to 300 wpm, showing one word at a time, which is about the average that works best for our users. Now, read that passage using spreeder at that base rate."

I wouldn't be surprised if Medium is calculating read time the same way. It's just aesthetically pleasing and somewhat useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get your articles total word count, and divide by the average word read per minute.

Here's a WP plugin that does this: [http://codecanyon.net/item/minutes-to- read/full_screen_previ...](http://codecanyon.net/item/minutes-to- read/full_screen_preview/6126659)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm guessing simply dividing word count by average words per minute[1]

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Reading_and_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Reading_and_comprehension)</comment>


Implementing AS OF clauses with Git refs (HEAD~) in our open-source database - <AUTHOR> https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2020-03-20-querying-historical-data-with-as-of/ <comment><AUTHOR> This blog post discusses our implementation of the AS OF clause for our custom open-source SQL database, Dolt! In addition to the usual timestamp semantics, Dolt databases can be queried using git-like refs. Examples:

SELECT * FROM myTable AS OF 'HEAD~';

SELECT * FROM myTable AS OF 'HEAD~20';

SELECT * FROM myTable AS OF 'feature-branch';

SELECT * FROM myTable AS OF '4gunscn1j6ijtsj121m7bjaj4j8grjmv';

About Dolt: Dolt is a SQL database with the revision features of git. So you can clone, branch, fork, merge, push and pull databases just like you would git repositories.

Ask us anything!</comment>


How to Label 1M Data Points per Week - <AUTHOR> https://scale.com/blog/how-to-label-1m-data-points-week <comment><USER2> ''' for dp in datapoints: label(dp) '''

Next Question

</comment><comment><USER3> 50+ upvotes and no comments?

<comment><USER4> I guess you have to read it yourself :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to manage bookmarks? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I like to read about technology and different CS topics, so HN is a really useful resource. One of the problems I'ev found recently is that the amount of bookmarks I have is growing really fast. How do you manage them? I red a couple of "Ask HN" post about it, but I would like to know if now you use some kind of manager, what's your organization (folders? by topic or relevance?), etc....
To reduce this to a couple of questions:
- What's your criteria to bookmark a page?
- Do you use some kind of tool/extensions/anything to manage your bookmarks?
- How do you sync your bookmarks between devices/navigators?
Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> You mean the 22 years of bookmarks I've collected on at least 30 computers? I usually ignore them and just search for what I want to find, again.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Everything that I potentially want to read later, be it on the train or waiting for the bus

2\. Pocket [0], it comes with an extension too

3\. Pocket

\- [0] [https://getpocket.com](https://getpocket.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> On my bookmarks toolbar I have a bookmark folder named 'y', under which there are a lot of dated folders, the latest of which is '17C'. Anything I bookmark in the next three months goes there, and in October I make '17D'.

If I use a bookmark often enough, it gets moved or copied out of the original folder, and put in a more relevant category folder. These are located under 'ref' or 'util' on the bookmarks toolbar.

</comment><comment><USER5> I make folders with topics and some folders inside them, for example: Design > Tools, Programming > Reads, etc. I name them as short as possible, and no more than one folder inside. Also, I use Pocket. But Pocket doesn't work for me when it comes for saving bookmarks, because when I save too much, it's painful to see that I have too much to read.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use to use delicious, when they were getting shutdown, I switched to google bookmarks. Its all there, but hard to get at. I occasionally download the entire xml and save it.

I had some ideas about making something to help me, but its more of a vitamin and not a painkiller.

</comment><comment><USER7> Liberally tagging bookmarks with [http://www.pinboard.in/](http://www.pinboard.in/) and going through the list once a year to prune

</comment><comment><USER8> I usually email the link to myself in GMail with related tags. As you know, Gmail is great with search!

</comment><comment><USER9> 6 comments me thinks it means people have mostly moved on from bookmarks as an important tool

</comment><comment><USER10> I email links to myself.</comment>


The quest for extreme selfies killed 259 people between 2011 and 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-45745982 <comment><AUTHOR> This evening,my friend and proffesional stuntman, Flavius Cernescu, start receiving phone calls from friends, telling him how sorry they are for his lost. Confused, he realized that BBC used the photo of him and his partner, for a very strange article( the one linked). When confronted, BBC didn't responded at all, and literally destroyed their credibility and business too. You can see them perform at: [https://youtu.be/zPebGQ7ioH8](https://youtu.be/zPebGQ7ioH8)</comment>


CentOS 6.2 Released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-December/018335.html

<comment><USER2> This is excellent news. After the long lead times for 6.0 and 6.1 its very reassuring that CentOS seems to have gotten its momentum back and is tracking the Red Hat releases with minimal lag.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This is a great resource for tracking the dev team: <http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/blog>

<comment><USER4> When did they start doing that? The last time I tried to find a window into the CentOS process, the Powers That Be were ignoring or belittling anyone who wondered what was going on or how to help.

<comment><USER5> The CentOS development process has always been pretty open. What you're describing seems very weird.

Did you try the mailing lists for example? (linked from the main page): <http://centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=16>

<comment><USER4> The mailing lists are where it was happening early this year. Look through posts from Karanbir Singh, it was like pulling teeth just to get him to tell people how they could help with testing (knowledge previously limited to some semi-private group nobody knew how to get involved with).

Definitely didn't want to talk about build processes, just lots of handwaving about how hard it is to get right. I even recall he eventually pointed out some "build scripts" under pressure, neglecting to mention that they weren't actually usable by anyone without hidden knowledge and package requirements he didn't want to talk about.

The whole thing left a very bad taste in my mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Warning: I upgraded an HP ProLiant DL385 server from CentOS 6 to 6.2 and the network stopped working due to an incompatibility with the 6.2 driver.

If you have a server that uses a Broadcom ethernet controller (tg3 driver) I hope this saves you having to make a Christmas trip to the data center...

<comment><USER7> Any chance you have any documentation on it or a bug report in to redhat/cent? details man, details!

<comment><USER6> I did a Google search and apparently the bug is fixed in later versions of Fedora, so it's just a temporary situation with RHEL/CentOS I'm assuming.

I think the easiest way to check if your server would be affected is to boot from the CentOS 6.2 netinstall CD, and see if it can access the network. If that works fine, everything should be good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://virtualboxes.org/images/centos/>

if you want to try it the super easy way</comment>


The design of Michael Jackson's gravity defying shoes - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastscience.tv/summary/innovative-shoes-allows-dancer-lean-forward-without-falling <comment><USER2> That's actually really cool</comment>