UK Cops Say Visiting the Dark Web Is a Potential Sign of Terrorism - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pay4gz/uk-cops-say-visiting-the-dark-web-is-a-potential-sign-of-terrorism <comment><USER2> The fact that cops would want to be aware of people using the Dark Web doesn't seem particularly surprising or alarming. When you're looking for bad actors you build up a profile based on previous bad actors. I used to work in fraud prevention, and we found, for example, for our particular product if someone opened an account and then changed addresses within two weeks, there was a pretty good chance it was identity fraud.

Of course there's nothing nefarious about opening an account two weeks before you move to a new place, but it would get you looked at because so many people who did were fraudsters.

The goofy thing about this story is the fact that they circulated a _leaflet_ listing something like this as suspicious behavior. They're going to get buried under bogus tips from nosy neighbors as actual terrorists avoid doing this kind of stuff publicly.

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly. For those who are not like you and me, people who probably subscribe to "if you have nothing hide…" will suddenly get suspicious of us. Sure, maybe not terrorism, maybe buying "unusual" items, say illegal drugs.

It's the way they worded it. Too encompassing. Lacking information, and yes, distributing leaflets. People who doesn't understand what the dark web is will simply believe what they've read. (And "dark" being in the phrase…)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "holds passports or other documents in different names for no obvious reason" \-- their spies are terrorists, wow

"travels for long periods of time, but is vague about where they're going" \-- seriously?! Must every citizen post their travel itinerary now?

"is visiting the dark web, or ordering unusual items online" \-- well, they need to start arresting thousands if not millions of people \-- also "unusual items" like what? When is something "unusual"?

These UK Cops are spreading FUD and turning people, families, against each other.

<comment><USER4> I'm a liberal/hacker/software-engineer - you know the type, even joined the Pirate Party years ago.

But am I the only one that doesn't have a problem with this. The set of people that visit the dark web intersects with the set of terrorists so obviously they should look into those people.

>their spies are terrorists, wow

Their spies are a special case.

If you don't want to abide by the laws of the UK then nobody is forcing you to live here.

<comment> xkcd-sucks >If you don't want to abide by the laws of the UK then nobody is forcing you to live here.

Oh please, this is just another way of saying "if you're disenfranchised you don't belong here."

People born in the UK are absolutely forced to live there in the short term-- You need a passport to leave the country, and the means to afford resettlement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only country capable to deal with terrorism today is Israel. In the UK and the US there's a generalized state of paranoia. Or maybe finger pointing is just a sign of incompetence? Everybody is _suspicious_ now, yet they failed to act on warnings from Italian security agencies regarding the perpetrators of the London Bridge attack.

<comment><USER3> Add to that, the intelligence the Philippines gave to the US re: threat of, what we later know as, 9/11, was ignored. No doubt (and this was also reported) because they don't trust "third-world" countries, or from intelligence agencies that is not themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maintaining privacy is now terrorism, what a world.

</comment><comment><USER7> Probably true, it moves someone from 1-in-15m to 1-in-14.5m chances of being a terrorist.</comment>


Running JavaScript tests on Jenkins CI - <AUTHOR> http://blog.iterate.no/2012/12/19/javascript-tests-on-your-continous-integration-server/

<comment><USER2> I wrote an article a few months ago on how to run Jasmine (as well as rspec and cucumber) tests on Jenkins CI.

[http://mikekusold.com/blog/Development/2012-06-05/deploying-...](http://mikekusold.com/blog/Development/2012-06-05/deploying- a-rails-slash-coffeescript-project-with-jenkins/)

</comment><comment><USER3> We've got our JS unit tests running in Jenkins via a Maven plugin (jasmine- maven-plugin). IMO Maven can be a pain to set up but the end result is less janky than custom shell scripts. Actually I think the same could be said for Jenkins itself. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> The true value (something I'm working on at the moment) is integrating this with Sauce (<https://saucelabs.com/>) to run in multiple browsers continuously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, indeed, we are also looking into this.

BrowserStack (another browser-in-the-cloud provider) has an API [0] which would make this task quite easy. Just add another build step with a script that POST to /browser that contains the URL of the Buster server. (They also have tunneling support.)

[0] <http://www.browserstack.com/automated-browser-testing-api>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> PhatnomJS and Buster really seem to be the cool kids. I hope to see more tests of front-end code integrated in Jenkins & similar ones soon.</comment>


Why does HipChat client 2.2.1080 flash my webcam on startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm running HipChat client 2.2.1080 on ubuntu 64bit and whenever I start the application the webcam flashes.  I have just asked hipchat help directly and have posted on superuser.stackexchange but was hoping we could get to the truth of this.  I am def concerned about privacy because skype doesn't flash the webcam on startup<p>http://superuser.com/questions/758053/hipchat-2-2-1080-on-ubuntu-64bit-12-04-flashes-webcam-on-startup <comment><USER2> I've always figured it was a diagnostic... so that it can determine your eligibility for video during the rest of the session or something.</comment>


Convert OLM to PST - <AUTHOR> To convert OLM to PST file format, used an excellent tool Kernel for OLM to PST Converter Tool. This tool easy to converts all email items such as email, attachment, contact, calendar etc. It supports all versions of MS Outlook and Windows OS versions. Visit here - http://www.olmfileconverter.net <comment><USER2> Several recovery and migration products are being discovered by our organization. We design our products in such a way that they are easy-to-use and can be accessed by universal computer users. One such migration product is Outlook Mac Exporter, that converts OLM files to PST file format.

[http://www.demoware.org/file- converter/olm2pst.html](http://www.demoware.org/file-converter/olm2pst.html)</comment>


How Notch marketed Minecraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.koonsolo.com/news/how-notch-marketed-minecraft/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this article is far off base. While Notch certainly marketed himself a bit, his success really took off when Penny Arcade posted the iconic comic.

[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17](http://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17) [http://www.penny- arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/17/mine-all-mi...](http://www.penny- arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/17/mine-all-mine-part-one)

And, let's not forget part two:

[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20/mine-all- mine-p...](http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-part- two) [http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/20/mine-all- mi...](http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-part- two)

<comment><USER3> Author of the article in question here. Are you sure? The articles you refer to are just after the "PayPal Freezes $750K in MineCraft Dev's Account" news. This last part was of course, spread by Notch himself (another example of awesome marketing).

But let's agree, by then, Minecraft had already made $750K, which seems quite successful to me. And this was all before Minecraft hit the major new sites. Seems I left this part out of the article (I should probably update it).

[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/paypal-freezes- mi...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/paypal-freezes-minecraft- devs-600k-euros/), [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal- Free...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal- Freezes-750K-in-MineCraft-Devs-Account)

<comment><USER2> I stand corrected. :)

Yeah, I would've mentioned something about the penny arcade article at least. I don't remember seeing anything about Notch or Minecraft in general discussion etc. until the comic went live. For that matter, I'd be very interested in seeing a graph of Minecraft's earnings from the early days, I imagine the spike was insane.

Minor edit: Yeah I would've mentioned something about how the marketing he did reached a self-sustaining cycle. Where suddenly the big spin about minecraft wasn't just that it was a good indie game, but an unusually successful good indie game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, I think Reddit is to "blame".</comment>


Winds of Change Blow Away College Degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/winds-of-economic-change-blow-away-college-degree-peter-orszag.html

<comment><USER3> It looks like this newly submitted article is reasonably thoughtful and informed. The distinction between job categories vulnerable to globalization and those less vulnerable is interesting, and points out that some college- degree-requiring jobs may be increasingly outsourced.

But degree-seekers decide whether or not to get degrees at the individual level, and sometimes after already deciding on a career. I've not posted in some of the other recent threads about the supposed uselessness of college degrees, and I want to provide a different perspective on the issue. While reading about IQ testing research, specifically directed to the issue of IQ tests as qualifications for being hired for full-time employment, I saw the striking statement that at ALL levels of IQ, an engineer will enjoy better career prospects than a technician. In many business corporations and government agencies (perhaps there are some exceptions), the distinction between being hired as a "technician" and being hired as an "engineer" is mostly determined by the absence or presence of a college degree. The lifetime earnings difference (remember, this is for persons with the same IQ) between a technician and an engineer is more than enough to justify investing in getting a college degree in engineering.

I do not claim this generalizes to the difference between an "office assistant" and an "office manager" (which perhaps is also defined mostly by higher education credentials) but that would be an empirical issue to look at. If college study has signaling value in the job market, and perhaps also provides some practical training for being in one job category rather than another, whoever you are, however smart you are, you may be well advised to seek a college degree.

For the more college-skeptical view of Charles Murray, see "Down with the Four-Year College Degree!":

[http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/10/06/charles- murray/down-w...](http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/10/06/charles-murray/down- with-the-four-year-college-degree/)

<comment><USER4> The real question is whether this earnings difference is justified (the college degree adds enough value to the employee to put them on an entirely separate tier) or a "bubble" (perceived by hiring managers to be that important, but not actually).

If the latter, many companies are making expensive mistakes by not hiring less-educated but intelligent workers. The costs of training would be far lower than the salary savings .

My sense is that most employers today have no interest in serious training and career advancement for their employees. They hire technicians, engineers, and managers, rather than hiring technicians and letting them work their way to being engineers and managers. As a result, individual workers have far less space to grow within the company, loyalty is lower, the management has no personal experience of the day-to-day operations of the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if the solution to this whole issue is a proper market, and true innovation, in student lending.

A competitive financing market, where college hopefuls compete for access to lenders' funds, and lenders compete to get quality students, could work well.

It seems that private lenders, if they could make interesting loan agreements, would be the best equipped to provide substantive loans to whomever, and we wouldn't see ridiculous degrees and subjects surviving, as students are incentivised into more productive areas.

<comment><USER6> Actually the key is to get rid of government loan subsidies. They just bid up tuition and get capitalized into non-essentials like sparkling student centers.

It's no coincidence that college prices have risen as the government has increased their loan subsidies.

<comment><USER7> Cart before the horse! Any evidence of cause-and-effect here? Its also true that "government loan subsidies have increased to offset rising college prices".

<comment><USER8> If you agree with Austrian economics, this follows the typical business cycle. Cheap money, inflated prices, credit contraction, bust.

In the last 5 years we've seen this happen at least three times:

      * housing
      * solar
      * equities

the insidious thing about student loans is that the borrower has little to no credit history and cannot default on the debt. A large portion of this money (40% iirc) is going to for profit institutions which have policies in place to keep a student enrolled (when any respected school would kick the the student out for low academic performance or issues of ethical conduct).

<comment><USER9> _If you agree with Austrian economics,_

Big if.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel this is only a symptom of a social change. We don't value hard work anymore. Everyone pushing for college degree has watered down the meaning of college graduate. For every one that actually wanted to earn it and learn there lots more interested in just the diploma, without no real understanding of their field of choice. This resonates with the fact that the society promotes shows about Kim Kardashian and they've become so central.

It's just so easy to become complacent and mediocre when that's what's really the mentality they're trained to have. It's starting to feel more and more like Atlas Shrugged.

</comment><comment><USER11> Change happens. Cope.

My parents graduated with a solid grasp of vacuum-tube electronics - <USER2> walked straight into a world of transistors. Change happened. They coped.

Pick your field of study with care, recognizing what the degree can (and can't) do for you out there. Realize there is no guarantee, no social contract, no assurance that your degree will in fact do anything for you. Find a suitable balance between cost of education and subsequent salability (engineering degrees paid in cash have good payback; advanced degrees in obscure studies piling enormous debts don't), and look for creative solutions (don't just go "I want" and swipe a card with no idea how it will be paid).

Realize the price tag is the result of supply-and-demand: so long as students are willing to incur massive debt for misguided or aimless degrees, prices will go up. And realize there are more options than list price, if you will dig and inquire (my wife & I have 5 degrees, total cumulative cost ~$100k with the last degree paying us to go there).

</comment><comment><USER12> "Since the distinction between personal services (likely to remain in rich countries) and impersonal services (likely to go) does not correspond to the traditional distinction between high-skilled and low-skilled work, simply providing more education cannot be the whole answer."

What are personal services exactly?

<comment><USER5> Waiter, boot polisher, hair dresser... anything you need to be there in person to do. For everything else, there is outsourcing :)

<comment><USER7> And Americans don't like those jobs - so my Vietnamese neighbors will prosper while my American neighbors will go on the dole and complain about immigration.

America has split in two: the land of opportunity is still there, but now alongside an entitled class of nth generation unwilling to put in the same effort as immigrants to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's rather insulting for a vice chairman of Citigroup and a member of that elite club that helped topple Iceland's economy to lecture people on the further ruin that he, by his very occupation, assists in actualizing.

<comment><USER14> Citigroup profits from the higher education bubble as much as anyone. And it is always naive to blame a small group of elites for structural economic problems.

<comment><USER13> The small group of elites that have a monopoly on the issuing of credit and currency ARE the structural economic problem. It's their baby. We just get to pay for it.

It's far more naive to discount a monopoly. Always.</comment></comment></comment>


Software engineer detained at JFK, given test to prove he's an engineer - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/02/28/software-engineer-jfk-detained-questioning/ <comment><USER2> I am utterly speechless. I would completely fail if this was asked of me after traveling 23+ hours and jetlagged and not to mention being unprepared. Software Engineers in the Bay Area are given weeks to prepare for questions like balancing a BST.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's just unbelievable! Until the last line of the article I was expecting it to be satire but apparently it is not.</comment>


How We Cut Latency Down by 30k% on Our Git Server - <AUTHOR> https://www.clever-cloud.com/blog/engineering/2015/06/09/git-server-30k-improvement/

<comment><USER2> That's not how percentages work.

<comment><AUTHOR> That new git server is so fast, it finished before you started it!

More seriously, the performance improvement here is really significant</comment></comment>


7 Awesome Resources to Test Cross Browser Compatibility of Your Website - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestpsdtohtml.com/7-awesome-resources-to-test-cross-browser-compatibility-of-your-website/

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll check these out</comment>


Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/300042

<comment><USER2> See this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110034>

</comment><comment> mark-t It's not possible for the answer to that question to be yes. You can't do the impossible. If he creates a perpetual motion machine, then it's not impossible.

</comment><comment><USER3> no ..... no he hasn't

</comment><comment><USER4> no

<comment><USER5> I clicked the comments solely to post "no." Looks like you beat me to it. :-)

<comment><USER4> Sorry about that :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Should Open Source startups apply to Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR> http://ope.nu/p/131

<comment><USER2> I guess I fail to understand the thought that brought this question up in the first place. So tell me: Why shouldn't they?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the global sense, sure, apply to whatever.

However, if you actually want to get an investment, you should probably know that the investor actually wants to invest in the kind of company you run.

Considering the quote from "How to Start a Startup" in the piece, it's not clear that Paul Graham thinks startups and Open Source are compatible.

So, that's why I asked.</comment></comment>


Startup of the Week: Velocity - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/startup-of-the-week-velocity

<comment><USER2> Some of us have too simple idea for a startup and others want to do everything in a single startup. Often the best idea is the simplest one. I suggest to see the instagram lifecycle : [http://d152j5tfobgaot.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2012...](http://d152j5tfobgaot.cloudfront.net/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/insta.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats. One day I will be in the article like this one.</comment>


"Learn to Code": The Meme Attacking Media - <AUTHOR> https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/1/29/18201695/learn-to-code-twitter-abuse-buzzfeed-journalists <comment><USER2> I've got no desire to kick people when their down, and make no mistake, these journalists are down. However, there is a tendency for people in media to look down on people with blue collar jobs, and to minimize the difficult of being an effective software engineer. It has resulted in a bunch of $group_of_unemployed_people should just get with the times posts.

I'd feel bad for them if they didn't do it to other people first.

<comment><USER3> > However, there is a tendency for people in media to look down on people with > blue collar jobs,...

In what universe is journalism a blue-collar job?

<comment><USER4> Some people mistake blue collar to mean middle class, instead of tradesman (ie white collar is where you don't have to worry about getting your shirt dirty). Journalism is certainly white collar work, regardless of how it pays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Edit: Ok so if I'm going to be cynical I like to at least be right about things. It has been pointed out that I am, in fact, wrong. So here is my best attempt at breaking out the series of events.

Expensive, Pulitzer prize finalist journalists, a part of BuzzFeed News (BFN) are cut.

BuzzFeed (BF) contributors rightfully lament the loss of their co-workers.

The internet, including me apparently, reads about this from a variety of sources and _most of us_ reach the wrong conclusion about who is who.

Since people jumped to the wrong conclusion about who is who and what actually happened people now spamming the more reputable side of BuzzFeed, who were laid off, with "learn to code"

\-----

I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand I'm pretty confident there were at least a few legitimate journalists let go in the recent wave but boy oh boy is is hard to have sympathy for the content farmers that got the cut.

> Last week, more than 1,000 jobs were eliminated at publishers including > BuzzFeed and Verizon-owned Yahoo/AOL.

I'm trying to think of the last time I intentionally sought out and consumed content from either of those two outlets. It's unfortunate that they were let go but I'm consistently surprised that BuzzFeed hasn't imploded already. But this isn't an article lamenting fellow journalists and their struggles. It's about:

> The Meme Attacking Media

And that's where I call bullshit. Is this an attack? No idea, debate away. If it's 4Chan screwing around...eh maybe, I guess? I'm more inclined to believe this is people on this internet punching down at people who are now in bad circumstances. Someone found a more effective way to punch and it took off.

The thing that I call issue with is that this is "the media". Following some of the link chains we can see that:

> In 2018, Vox, Vanity Fair, Vice, GQ, Vogue, Teen Vogue, the New York Daily > News, Good Media Group, Glamour, The Outline, Refinery29, and CNN > experienced layoffs

Depending on politics and specific interests some will see outlets they care about in that list, some won't. But it seems like people aren't talking about the reporters laid off from Vanity Fair, The New York Daily News, or CNN. No we're getting BuzzFeed spam that have managed to turn their own demise into more bloody BuzzFeed spam. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or really mad.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I think you might be railing against the wrong beast...

[https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed- news](https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/staff-buzzfeed-news)

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Attacking Buzzfeed is easy as a "content farm" but the teams let go were primarily in the national security / politics teams, not the teams creating the stupid (but entertaining for many) top 10 listicles.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Yep. In other words, the expensive journalistic staff.

<comment><USER6> Seeing you across this thread as someone who doesn't just dismiss journalism! I'm looking forward to seeing what The Markup [1] comes out with on the data- driven tech-focused journalism front. Saw their managing editor talk last week and I'm tentatively hopeful...

[1] [https://themarkup.org/](https://themarkup.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"Learn to code" is not a viral phrase that's being spammed to out-of-work journalists; it's a targeted attack disguised as a meme.

I emphatically sympathize with the journalist who have been recently let go. However, I wish there were a better way to define the difference between a meme and a targeted attack. Maybe Twitter should think about banning political speech or be upfront and adapt club-penguin levels of moderation.

Consider the "Vax-Happened" meme. This is a funny meme that is a "targeted attack" on a specific group. Really, most political speech is an attempt at a targeted attack / meme. "Republicans only care about rich people", "Liberals want to take all of your money in taxes". "Bernie bros are aren't living in the real world".

In terms of internet culture, this is hardly the first meme in poor taste designed to cause trouble. I think the point is setting the bar so low in terms of offense that to be offended seems more ridiculous. It's like when my 6 year old hones his annoyance to be so quiet that I can't hear in the front of the car, but the whispery weird noises cause his sister to squeal.

This new appropriation of "learn to code" is more personally insidious to me than other radicalized phrases and gestures. I like coding and hope everyone learns to code to some proficiency.

Oof.

<comment><USER8> >I emphatically sympathize with the journalist who have been recently let go.

I don't, hopefully they all get fired.

<comment><USER9> Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, regardless of how you feel about journalists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This oddly reminds me of gamergate whereby engaging on the facts seems to side you with the abusers.

</comment><comment><USER11> > "Learn to code" is more than internet schadenfreude. It's also the most > recent rallying cry of an anti-media faction.

The same media that just days before were busy firing up an online mob to harass a 16 year old child who had the audacity to wear a MAGA hat.

Why would anybody be 'anti-media' one wonders?

<comment><USER12> Know that I really don't intend to upset anybody or attack people unjustly for their ideologies when I say this: I think your point probably has legs, but could be made much more convincingly with other examples - it's hard to use a MAGA hat as an example of an innocent thing when it's so closely associated with, and so frequently used to implicitly express, a vicious hatred of liberals. I understand that to many people who wear it, that's not part of the message, but there are many examples of people expressing themselves in ways that are not so muddied by the hatred of broader groups, and you could probably find one of those more clear-cut examples if you tried.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure it matters about whom a false story is printed. The point is that it was false. It was rushed to print without getting the whole story.

Obviously, in the era of internet journalism it's important to get stories out as fast as possible, but (it seems to me) the incentive for getting out stories quickly that are likely to trigger outrage is pretty high.

This particular example is rather salient because it is recent,the evidence of false reporting is fairly clear, and because the cost to the victims of this journalistic malfeasance is fairly high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not "targeted harassment", it's millions of people who have been looked down upon, talked down to and generally attacked by these media properties enjoying some schadenfreude while pointing out their hypocrisy (telling coal miners to learn to code...).

<comment><USER15> How is that not targeted harassment?

<comment><USER16> How exactly is it ? Was it not targeted harassment when they were suggesting that miners should "learn to code"? Why not though? We all know that was derogatory. Does it become targeted harassment because it came from 4chan ? Or are they entitled to protection from the same type of jokes they were making?

<comment><USER15> When they were 'suggesting that miners should "learn to code"' was it in an article they wrote or was it a coordinated campaign to find people who were laid off of coal mining jobs and tweeting them "learn to code"?

<comment><USER16> Well, i don't know many miners with a twitter handle so I have no ideea whether it was a coordinated campaign or not. The fact that they worked for the media did give them reach though, what I understood from your reply is that as long as you put it in an article it's fine... just don't tweet @. That being said... 4channers should create their own Buzzfeed, you don't need journalism training for that; and just attack from there. I'm not saying i don't feel bad for the people laid off, but it' just a tweet. In bad taste, true, but it's not the first, and it will not be the last. this time though, the so called buzzwhatever journalists are the target so that is apparently worse. m2c

<comment><USER15> I don't think putting in that kind of thing in an article is"fine" but if it is in an article I would expect for you to show me where they are talking down on the workers, not just the job. I don't like coal mining so my desire to stop coal mining could be taken as "looking down" on coal mining but I DO NOT look down on the people who work in coal mines. I also don't see setting up or supporting the creation of programs that will teach these out of work coal miners a new profession as looking down on them either. I'm just trying to find why people are feeling like this because I can't find and hard evidence that they actually do talk down to these people.

<comment><USER16> Why "learn to code" though? Why not "learn to write quizes"? Why not "learn to plant potatoes". What exactly qualifies miners are prospective coders ? (this is where the actual joke began) "that kind of thing" \-- you are making it sound way worse then it actually is. Most of them were targeted at the editorial department and not persons. Would the campaign be less opressive if people suggested that the laid off "learn to cook" ? That is exaclty the point, nobody looks down on coal miners and nobody looks down on coal mining. Coders on the other hand have been taken as a joke long before the twitter thing happened. look no further than Mr. Trump

<comment><USER15> What exactly is the reason a miner can't learn to be a code? The reason they are teaching code is because it is looked as a skill with a lot of demand which is the whole point of the programs that teach in-demand skills. I honestly don't follow what "Coders on the other hand have been taken as a joke long before the twitter thing happened. look no further than Mr. Trump" means, can you rephrase it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Setting aside conflating attacks with voicing opinions, there's also this:

[https://c1.legalinsurrection.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/...](https://c1.legalinsurrection.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/Learn-to-code-headlines-via-Twitter-620x421.png)

<comment><USER18> 1\. Nobody got laid off at any of the publications that wrote the stories in that image.

2\. The reporters wrote the stories based on actual events. None of these pieces are "takes" recommending this. They are reported-out stories.

3\. They didn't start the initiatives that led to the stories. If you've got a problem with it, go criticize the people that started these initiatives to assist these communities.

4\. There are also initiatives to bring journalists into these areas to better report on them. [https://thegroundtruthproject.org/call-applications- appalach...](https://thegroundtruthproject.org/call-applications-appalachian- reporting-project/)

<comment><USER17> Those initiatives were also decried as attacks on miners by the laid off journalists?</comment></comment></comment>


Earth Temperature Timeline - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/1732/ <comment> 0-_-0 Unfortunately, this is deceptive. The point of it seems to be to show how the recent sudden increase in temperature is unprecedented in the last 22000 years. The problem is that the data for different intervals comes from different sources. The last part showing the rapid rise comes from very accurate, yearly measurements. Historical data comes from reconstructions with much lower resolution. In a signal processing sense that means that the historical data is "low pass filtered". In other words, it lacks high frequency variation. You could say that the information you need to decide whether the recent rapid temperature rise is unprecedented or not is missing from the vast majority of the chart, but it's present in the last segment of the chart.

Authors of the Marcott et. al. (2013) [1] paper that the XKCD chart uses state:

 _Q:_ "Is the rate of global temperature rise over the last 100 years faster than at any time during the past 11,300 years?"

 _A:_ "Our study did not directly address this question because the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of ~120 years on average, which precludes us from examining variations in rates of change occurring within a century. Other factors also contribute to smoothing the proxy temperature signals contained in many of the records we used, such as organisms burrowing through deep-sea mud, and chronological uncertainties in the proxy records that tend to smooth the signals when compositing them into a globally averaged reconstruction. _We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years_ , 50% is preserved at 1000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2000-year periods and longer. Our Monte-Carlo analysis accounts for these sources of uncertainty to yield a robust (albeit smoothed) global record. Any small "upticks" or "downticks" in temperature that last less than several hundred years in our compilation of paleoclimate data are probably not robust, as stated in the paper."

[1]: [https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/fresh- thoughts...](https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/fresh-thoughts- from-authors-of-a-paper-on-11300-years-of-global-temperature-changes/?_r=0)

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, your stance is deceptive:

Assuming a resolution period of ~120 years (full cycle) or halfcycle (assuming an effective sample every ~120 years, hence a full cycle period of ~240 years), then the recent excursion can be roughly approximated as a step function. If one lowpasses a step function, you get visible ringing. In the low resolution part of the record there is no ~120 year nor ~240 year ringing at all, so the probability of a similar Heaviside step function theta in temperature having been present but filtered out is nearly zero...

<comment> 0-_-0 It's not literally a low pass filter with a sinc function of course, that was an analogy. It's more like a gaussian smoothing. You're not going to get ringing in the temperature record...

Here's the direct quote again if you missed it above:

 _" We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years"_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please label 2016

</comment><comment><USER4> Hug of death . Alternate links please?</comment>


Why shouldn't copyright law apply on the Internet? - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/09/shouldnt-copyright-law-apply-internet/ <comment><USER2> Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section "What Works Are Protected." [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwikvOqMssDWAhXpiFQKHdlVCmUQFggyMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.copyright.gov%2Fcircs%2Fcirc01.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEYz9Egp_tJfB4Zo5FMBSRdDIe-9A)</comment>


HyperDev: deployment, hosting and collaborative editing for web apps - <AUTHOR> https://hyperdev.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Currently in private beta, developed by Fog Creek, comes a online IDE for web applications, with deployment, hosting and team collaboration built in.

It reminds me how Heroku started (in 2007, 2008) with an online IDE for (only?) Ruby on Rails applications. Later, Heroku stopped with offering the online IDE and moved to the current deploy-via-git-push-model. It will be interesting how this works out for HyperDev.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't seem to be a private beta cause I just registered.

It looks lovely and streamlined for nodejs stuff, do you know if this will be open source?

<comment><USER3> It's definitely not in private beta, because I also just signed up. It's a bit confusing because you don't enter a password -- you just enter an email address. They then assume that you want to authenticate via github to use that email.

Since Heroku's famous pivot, there have been a few companies that have built online web (and other) development collaborative development environments, including [https://www.nitrous.io/](https://www.nitrous.io/), [https://codio.com/](https://codio.com/), [https://c9.io/](https://c9.io/), [https://codenvy.com/](https://codenvy.com/), and [https://koding.com/](https://koding.com/). There's also the more scientifically oriented environments like [https://www.pythonanywhere.com/](https://www.pythonanywhere.com/), [https://wakari.io/](https://wakari.io/), and [https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com). I don't think any have had breakout success yet.

Of the above, at least [https://c9.io/](https://c9.io/) and [https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com) are open source.

Disclaimer: I wrote [https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com), which is why I watch this space.

<comment><USER4> HyperDev is taking a simplified approach to the space of live, collaborative coding and deployment. There's no need to set up your environment, configure your build pipeline, memorize Git, or manually deploy updates.

We're hoping that it makes development much easier for developers everywhere to collaborate, share, and have their code running live. We focus on removing obstacles and providing quick feedback. When you make a change to your project, the result is live on the internet for all to see in <1.5s.

I've found this kind of rapid feedback and shared experience to be really valuable, and we've got improvements planned to make it even better in the future.

<comment><USER5> It does. It really is as simple as it gets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey HN, thanks for your interest in our Beta!

Here's some helpful info [https://hyperdev.com/about/](https://hyperdev.com/about/) to give you an idea what it's about. I'll try and respond to comments as I can.

\- A humble HyperDev developer

<comment><USER6> You should make this page more accessible from the site's root. The only reason I even clicked on the comments (and thusly saw your link to /about/) was to complain about the fact the HN link goes to a login/data harvesting^W^Wsignup page.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link posted was to the main site / entrance point of HyperDev, and sure, it could have contained somewhat more information. I also found the link to pages with more background information like [https://hyperdev.com/about/](https://hyperdev.com/about/) after searching for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First, this is awesome! I assume the reference to HyperCard is deliberate? (Aesthetically very similar too!)

Disclaimer: We're doing something similar at [https://anvil.works](https://anvil.works) (live web-app builder, though ours is drag'n'drop), so I ask from experience:

1\. I see your sample app uses in-memory state on the back end. This is jaw- droppingly easy for simple examples, but dies whenever the Node instance "goes to sleep". Do you have plans for more durable storage? (I assume so, given that you're self-hosting - what do you use for your own storage?)

2\. How do you sandbox user code? I'm going to guess "docker" but there's only so much poking around I'm going to do uninvited. I'm also guessing that allowing random users to run code (with outbound internet access?) on your servers is something you're going to have to be nice and careful with...

<comment><USER8> Hi meredydd! Thanks for your interest and yes, you got the reference to HyperCard ;)

1\. Checkout the sample app [https://hyperdev.com/#!/project/bramble- leaf](https://hyperdev.com/#!/project/bramble-leaf) for an integrated object datastore backed by DynamoDB, that works quite well! I myself built some nice stuff with it :)

2\. We use a smart backend system to control user access, quota and sandboxing. For now we rely on honor system during the beta. We have systems in place to block abuse but... hopefully they won't be necessary :)

<comment><USER7> Neat - offering everyone a little bit of AWS quota is a nice starter. (We use Google Sheets, which has...different tradeoffs.) Is there a repository of such things that I've missed?

I also really like the way you've implemented the "your source is visible (presumably unless cough mumble monetisation?) but here are where your keys go" thing.

<comment><USER8> The gallery contains some examples: [https://cosmic- flower.hyperdev.space/](https://cosmic-flower.hyperdev.space/) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to allow anyone to sign up... can you please explain how this differs from something like plnkr.io, codepen.io and JSBin, to name a few similar applications?

<comment><USER8> This is not only for frontend development and short lived code. You can write both front-end and backend code (check out the gallery for examples, [https://cosmic-flower.hyperdev.space/](https://cosmic-flower.hyperdev.space/) ) that is automatically and continuously deployed to a container and runs.

Just to clarify: some parts of HyperDev _run_ in HyperDev.

EDIT: you can write your API, your little game for your son, your prototype app, alone or with friends, on HyperDev and it will always run, you can connect it to databases, use it as a webhook...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very nice. I've been building something like this with C9. It needs to be done!

</comment><comment><USER11> Congrats guys!

<comment><USER12> Thanks Blake! :-)</comment></comment>


Microsoft wants to see primary school computer science teaching in UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/careers/3423383/microsoft-demands-primary-school-computer-science-training/

<comment><USER2> what a crappy spammy side design</comment>


Apply HN: PlanitWide – A network marketplace for planning travel - <AUTHOR> Our travel planning platform provides a purpose-built organizer for "careful planners" to research and plan  their trip. This organizer comes pre-populated with information to research every aspect of a trip. Users can also gain assistance from our community of pro and semi-pro specialists who have targeted expertise and local relationships.
We think that an effective travel market-network has to cater to four key aspects as part of an integrated workflow: 1. Dreaming: The inspiration/desire
2. Planning: The research
3. Buying: Booking and itinerary creation 4. Consuming: Everything done on the trip and then shared
For this to happen, certain conditions needed to exist. Over several decades, one or more of these conditions has been made possible (ie., the internet and smartphones) with some materializing only recently (ie., collaborative economy, niche communities)
Now that these conditions finally exist, a travel market-network can become a reality. What's needed is a community-driven platform that bridges the information sources to the consumer by offering a systematic research and planning method. This is what will bring the Dream-Plan-Buy-Consume aspects of travel together to be catered to effectively by this market-network.
Status: We used a  prototype to validate the "single player" utility of the product before we moved on to the network effect pieces. We are currently revamping the user experience based on feedback. <comment><USER2> My biggest problem when traveling is choosing a hotel near the things that I'm interested in. For me that's food, for others it's parks and museums, and others it's shopping. Would your service help me?

Another issue I have is that I don't have any intuitions about the layout of the city I'm visiting, so I can't easily plan several things in a row. Would your platform help with this?

How will you get users?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it will. The way the organizer is laid out is by trip decision. So initial research, orientation etc, for eg, falls into a "Basics" bucket that provides you the best information to get a sense of the place.

The initial iteration isn't geared towards giving you the answer (need a lot of data to make this happen) vs presenting you with the best & most relevant resources to help you arrive at the answer that best answers your questions

So in terms of finding hotels, as in your example, the tool wouldn't currently do it, but would give you the best resources to help you figure that out as quickly as possible.

Re: users. This is clearly one of the biggest challenges with travel startups given the 1-3 times a year use for most.

We've been testing a community passionate about travel and we're extremely encouraged by the results from the last couple of months in bringing people back almost daily (either to submit content, engage with it or just consume). Bottom line they're coming back for a reason other than to plan travel. But by coming back, we're staying top of mind as the place they discovered these great travel resources so that when they're ready to plan a trip we're likely going to be the place they do it. We're also working on something that ties this community more tightly into the platform down the line so the entire journey from initial discovery through planning is seamless.

We haven't pulled any of the levers that allow for content sharing content or referral mechanisms etc as yet that will serve to bring others to this community, which will serve as the top of the funnel, on an ongoing basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're using a lot of high-level descriptions and marketing speak that makes me have trouble understanding what your app actually does. Usually it's best to start with describing the one most useful thing that your app will do, to start.</comment>


Amazon's near-$500 price tag kills Kindle DX buzz - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/05/06/amazons-500-price-tag-kills-kindle-dx-buzz

<comment><USER2> Everyone in the market for a Louis Vuitton bag is always bummed when they realize they can't afford the $5,000 bag in the window. But once they're in the store, the $500 bag in the back ends up looking like a great deal in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER3> Talking about college students spending $500 for this is radically premature. There's no way that by August that a significant number of universities will be all-digital on the book front, and they aren't going to switch for the spring term, either.

So, the soonest case where any fraction of college students might be Kindle- only is August-ish, _2010_. Any guesses on what this will cost by then? Probably ~$200 or less, for something a generation or two more advanced. (Perhaps not color by then, but higher res, I bet.)

And frankly, even in 2010 the colleges that have an all-digital option will still be the exception. I would expect it'd be at least 2012 before a student might reasonably choose this option.

The real question is "will anybody buy it today and subsidize further development?" And the Kindle 1 sales seem to say yes. I don't really know because AFAIK Amazon has not released sales numbers, but they are certainly acting as if these things are selling fast.

<comment><USER4> It's not all about books. The inclusion of a PDF reader makes this a big deal. In many schools, everything you need to know for a class is in the instructor's PDFs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd spend ~$500 a semester on books while in college. If ebooks are cheaper (as they should be) by, say 50%, I'd save the money in a year.

<comment><USER6> They're not cheaper, sadly.

<comment><USER5> Sigh. They just don't get it. <http://thepiratebay.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When the first iPod was released, everyone complained it was too expensive ($400), and we all know how that story ended.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think this is a great comparison. iPods were going up against portable CD players and hard-to-use/lower capacity mp3 players. And, people could convert their CD collections for nothing or buy a single song at a time.

If you were a student (or if you are a student) would you buy a $500 Kindle to read textbooks, plus a lot more to download digital versions of the texts? Unless there's a slam-dunk cost benefit that students can see, I don't think this is going to make a huge impact on the textbook market at this price point.

As for magazines and newspapers, I don't think most people can justify a $500 expense to read magazines and papers that they can get for much cheaper in print or free on the Web. I subscribe to the WSJ for $90 a year and read the NYT for free on my iPod Touch and Web browser. Even if the NYT started charging $50 for the Touch and Web versions, it would still be just a fraction of the investment required for reading it on the Kindle.

<comment><USER7> The new Kindle can read PDF files. Just like the iPod did for songs, suddenly you can have any book for free, if you're willing infringe copyright. That's a big selling point in the student market (there are a number of textbook- dedicated torrent sites). Imagine, $500 for a semester's worth of books, or $500 for a kindle and copy the books from your friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> But notebooks can already read PDFs -- and they let students take notes. Why get a second $500 device that can only do one of these functions?

<comment><USER8> I mean, couldn't you argue that your notebook could already play MP3's, why get an iPod?

It's the e-ink, the portability, the battery life, the weight of the device.

Everyone I know that has a Kindle loves it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because laptops don't fit in your pocket.

I am sure that Kindle owners love the devices, for the reasons that you stated. The problem I have is the price. Students and newspaper readers will have a tough time justifying a $500 purchase, especially in this economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What did people expect? The existing small Kindle costs $360. Large-screen ebook readers from other companies cost even more than the Kindle DX. How exactly did anyone expect that Amazon would get a larger e-ink display without raising the price?</comment>


Woman gets laptop back in DIY sting operation - <AUTHOR> http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Woman+gets+laptop+back+sting+operation/5069377/story.html <comment><USER2> I am baffled why people still have _irreplaceable_ files stored only on their local hard drive.

Forget having your computer stolen, what if your hard drive dies?

If you aren't backing up your critical files, there are a myriad of cheap cloud-based options: <http://tarsnap.com> for geeks or the paranoid, Backblaze/Mozy/Carbonite/Dropbox/Arq/etc. for others.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, people don't think about this until it's too late. I learned the hard way when my MacBook Pro's HDD failed unexpectedly, and I lost a lot of music, movies, games, code, etc. (had some of it backed up, though).

I'm glad Mac OS X and Windows include "set-it-and-forget-it" backup solutions, but users are reluctant to turn them on simply because they may not have the time or effort to set them up.

<comment><USER2> There's really no excuse for not using Time Machine on Mac. I think it's one- click setup (a yes/no dialog comes up the first time you plug in an external hdd to a fresh installation, if memory serves).

If you are afraid you won't be plugging an external hdd in enough, I think it's worth getting a Time Capsule (automatic Time Machine backup over wifi).

<comment><USER3> There's a hack that allows you to back up to a shared folder on Windows, which is what I do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've encountered this first-hand a lot. Police are too busy with other larger crimes to work on stolen computer cases. Here's what to do to protect against this:

1\. Buy or setup a good, reliable file backup service. (daily rsyncs)

2\. Use full disk encryption on the laptop hard drive.

3\. Buy an insurance policy.

This way, you keep your documents, your privacy and get a replacement laptop when it becomes lost, stolen or damaged.

<comment><USER5> Great suggestions. For developers, I think there are a few additional things to consider. While I completely agree that a file service backup and encryption are a good idea, I think it's important for developers to be able to recover quickly even without these things.

1\. Yes, use backup, but also use version control. Keep your commits sufficiently up to date that you will able to get back to work quickly with a fresh new computer. Consider it a bad sign if you have to get your new computer restored to exactly the same state as your old computer to resume developing.

2\. Encrypt, but just don't keep highly sensitive files on a laptop. I read that 1 in 10 laptop are stolen, and keep in mind that many aren't stolen because they never leave someone's apartment. If you travel around with your laptop, you're in a higher risk group. Use dummy data and dummy databases. Don't store external passwords to real systems on your laptop. Consider it a bad sign if you can't develop to a local database populated with inconsequential data.

3\. Definitely buy the insurance policy, if you'd have trouble coming up with the money for a replacement. But they key here is to make sure that it's just money we're talking about. Try to set up your development environment such that the cost to you of a stolen laptop is the replacement cost of the laptop.

I'm a little worried this comes off as overly judgemental, so I just want to be clear that I understand this may not all be within the control of the developer. However, I think that an IT setup that requires people to carry highly sensitive information or passwords on portable devices that are frequently and easily stolen is a sign of a badly broken system, even with encryption.

<comment><USER6> Re 2: Why not? If your disk is encrypted, anyone stealing it might as well not have any files at all.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. If you're vigilant about it, this is safe.

I guess my only worry would be that the laptop is swiped while open, but i'd admit this is an unlikely scenario.

As a development practice, it's good to be able to build up a dummy db, but yeah, security isn't the big win here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Glad that ended well and her neighbor didn't get his throat slashed.

<comment><USER8> Wisely put. People who steal and fence the goods on the Internet are obviously inept criminals who act impulsively without thinking through the consequences. Inevitably, a DIY sting operation is going to end up with a criminal panicking and trying to cover his tracks by killing the "witness."

It's an unlikely outcome, but imagine this as a reverse-slot machine. You get one pull of the handle. Three of any fruit and you win a used laptop. But if three skulls come up, you are executed.

How good a bet is this?

<comment><USER9> Is the slot machine located in a back alley, in a windowless van, or a Starbucks?

I'd feel pretty safe pulling that lever in a Starbucks, as they did.

<comment><USER8> Comparatively, some of these hypothetical slot machines are less likey to kill you than others. But no location is truly safe, thus I contend they all have three skulls waiting for _someone_.

If a used laptop is enough of a reward to wager your life, I admire your courage, but when I think of it in financial terms, the thought gives me the heebie jeebies.

<comment><USER10> I completely agree with all the other arguments you make here, which makes me re-evaluate my disagreement on this one. But I think my interpretation still holds up:

In 2010, Ottawa saw 27,446 property crimes, and 14 homicides[1]. In general, about half of murders are committed by a friend or family member[2]. So even if the other 7 murderers _all_ started out doing petty theft, there's still only 1 in 3,920 laptop thieves who's going to kill someone.

Now, as a high-falutin' tech blogger for whom laptops grow on trees, that still may be an unnacceptable risk/reward ratio for you. But if a laptop represented a more substantial investment, its value might begin to approach the value you personally would place on, say, 50 separate scuba dives. Which, at a death rate of 1 per 200,000 dives, is about where the risk evens out.

[1][http://www.ottawapolice.ca//Libraries/Publications/2009_-_20...](http://www.ottawapolice.ca//Libraries/Publications/2009_-_2010_Crime_Trends_for_the_City_of_Ottawa_resize_1.sflb.ashx) [2]<http://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/nvaa/ch16hom.htm>

<comment><USER8> _In 2010, Ottawa saw 27,446 property crimes, and 14 homicides[1]. In general, about half of murders are committed by a friend or family member[2]. So even if the other 7 murderers _all_ started out doing petty theft, there's still only 1 in 3,920 laptop thieves who's going to kill someone._

I appreciate what you're trying to say, and believe me when I say that if you consider the risks and want to go get your laptop, that's fine and I'm not arguing with _you_ making _your_ choice.

However, the statistics you quote above do not support your quoted odds. Since the 27,446 reported property crimes did not all involve the owner confronting the thieves, we cannot use the numbers to draw a conclusion about the risk of a confrontation resulting in a murder, much less an attempted murder or assault.

On the flip side, while I do not have statistics handy, deep diving, dry suit diving, cold water diving, decompression diving, mixed gas diving, drift diving, and other activities I have enjoyed of are thought to be associated with slightly higher risks than the overall statistics suggest, although not as high as the three big killers: Cave/wreck diving, rebreather diving, and commercial diving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what the ceaseless appeal of stories like this is. They seem to pop up a LOT.

<comment><USER12> "Small agile group of clever people produces results far superior to large, calcified, bureaucratic organization that ostensibly should be performing the task."

That narrative is usually an easy ticket to the front page of HN.

<comment><USER8> Oddly, such stories are often held up as examples of why we should have less government and pay lower taxes, instead of suggesting that perhaps budget cutbacks are the reason the police have to prioritize and can't send investigators out to recover every laptop stolen from a car.

I'm not arguing the case either way, just suggesting that such stories are often interpreted through the filter of our existing bias.

<comment><USER12> The State, like Twitter, is good at some things, and not at others. People insist on using it for things in both categories. So 'give the police more money' is not always a great idea for reducing crime - I'm from an area where the police have enough money to buy very nice toys indeed, but that strangely hasn't accompanied a drop in abuse of police power, police racism, or prosecution of the abominable War On Drugs.

As for filters - I admire the woman in the story, because she is a great example of the entrepreneurial mindset.

1: Attempt to achieve your goal by conventional means (call police).

2: Actually notice that conventional means will not get you what you want.

3: Come up with an alternate plan (DIY sting operation).

4: Execute fearlessly.

I argue that those four steps, broadly, are what a good startup founder does.

<comment><USER8> I agree with all of those points, however that while she has things in common with great startup entrepreneurs, here on Hacker News we usually contemplate ventures that offer more upside than the return of a laptop and less downside than death :-)

<comment><USER12> That is a good value of 'usual,' and I agree with it - but I think it's also, sometimes, valuable to consider those characteristics in the small. I actually have a specific person in my life to whom I'm going to repeat this story, with the four-points explanation, to encourage them on the path to starting their own company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My friend Peter set up a remote login to his laptop from his phone. When he accidentally left his laptop in a cab in Manhattan, he was able to track it down and get it back from the cab driver after about three weeks. He also was able to monitor the cab driver's use of the laptop with his phone -- apparently the guy spent a lot of time on adultfriendfinder.

</comment><comment><USER14> Submarine.</comment>


Autopiper: automatic pipeline synthesis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/autopiper <comment><USER2> Hey cool, someone pointed me here -- surprised to find my toy side-project on HN! I'm not actively hacking on autopiper at the moment (busy with other things) but I still believe the semantics/ideas are sound and I'd love to find more time for it someday. In its current state it's more of a proof-of- concept.

I think it might do better as a DSL that lowers to the pipeline representation directly (embedded in, say, Haskell or Scala), rather than inferring intent from a CFG -- benefit of hindsight...

<comment><USER3> This is very cool. I have been/am toying with very same ideas, but using a Lava variant, all in the context of Reduceron. I'm also planning to redo my RISC-V implementation as a working example.

Silvia Muller in "Computer Architecture: Complexity and Correctness" describes work on auto-pipelining. Are you basing your work on this or something else?

<comment><USER2> Interesting! I saw Lava briefly and understood it as basically a DSL to describe logic; additional abstractions to build pipelines on top of that would be very cool. Looking forward to seeing what comes out of your work!

And yup, there's been a lot of past work on auto-pipelining, but my understanding of what's been done before is that it handles splitting logic into stages, but doesn't necessarily encapsulate more complex patterns -- e.g. no one has built a tool that understands stall logic or bypass networks or clears/restarts in a pipeline and can synthesize those patterns flexibly.

So you could see autopiper's main contribution as the "lowering" of a conventional SSA-based IR into pipelined logic, along with the primitives necessary to describe the actual semantic intent behind design patterns (ask/provide for bypass, killyounger and CFG backedges for pipeline restarts), and the insight that macros can use those primitives to build things like speculation.

If you know of any other past work I'd be really interested to see it!</comment></comment></comment>


Hydroxychloroquine is effective in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0 <comment><USER2> We know by now that HCQ is effective against it in Vitro, we need some randomized double blind studies with in Vivo use now.</comment>


Taleb: The only man who has a clue - <AUTHOR> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/taleb-the-only-man-who-has-a-clue.html <comment><USER2> The only thing this guy understands is marketing. I assume somewhere in his book he gets past talking about how great he is from being the first to trade a certain asset class, but I wasn't able to make it that far.

<comment><AUTHOR> I recommend reading Fooled by Randomness (his first book) if you want the one that maximizes substance and minimizes the bluster.

<comment><USER3> Good to know, because anti fragile was unreadable. I also gave up before getting to any real content.

<comment><USER4> I had the same experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a self-assessment, right?

</comment><comment><USER6> He has certainly been proved right about black swans been way more common than people assumed. Kind a sux.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be a little pedantic, this isn't really how I would summarize Taleb. His main idea is that Black Swan events are extremely important because of their outsized impacts, not because they are more frequent than people think.

<comment><USER7> Well if you define a black swan event as important then, sure, it's bound to be important.

"Black swan defining characteristics:

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations(...).

Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'.

Third (...) we concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."

<comment><USER8> No, the conventional belief is that only a very small proportion of extremely rare events have a major impact, as measured by standard criteria of the importance of impact. Taleb is arguing that a much larger proportion them do.

<comment><USER7> If asked to plot the exact distribution of events in the (rarity, impact) vector space then I'm bound to getting it inaccurate more than not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IP Theft by offshore staff - <AUTHOR> http://mojolabs.me/2013/04/02/ip-theft-by-offshore-staff-what-we-did/

<comment><USER2> Ugh, who gives two weeks notice to someone that's getting fired? At every company I've worked at, you don't even to return to your desk once they drop the hammer on you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Years ago, when something around the house would break prematurely, I would say to my wife "Let me guess, you got a really good deal on this didn't you?"</comment>


Fedora 17 Released - <AUTHOR> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/

<comment><USER2> Release announcement: <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F17_release_announcement>

Download: <https://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options>

Changes for Desktop Users: [https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en- US/Fedora/17/html/Release_...](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en- US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Changes_for_Desktop.html)

Changes for System Administrators: [https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en- US/Fedora/17/html/Release_...](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en- US/Fedora/17/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Changes_for_Sysadmin.html)

Gnome 3.4 Release Notes: <http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.4/>

F17 Feature List: <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/FeatureList>

F18 Planned Feature List: <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/18/FeatureList>

DistroWatch package version comparison: <http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora>

Official release commentary (DVD extras style): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmWdYJTsKbM>

<comment><USER3> Please don't forget their bittorrent offerings, since that protocol was _designed_ for the exact situation where a lot of people want a very big file at the same time.

<https://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could anyone comment on using Fedora on small screen device, such as my 1024x600 netbook? My current installation, Linux Mint 12 needs upgrading, and doesn't handle the low vertical resolution well. Many dialogs are too large and/or are positioned partly outside the screen, and the two horizontal bar layout is not optimal.

<comment><USER5> Fedora ships with support for several desktop environments, which are easily installable, such as XFCE, LXDE, Sugar, and several others (including, of course, KDE as well!). Fedora's default is Gnome 3, but that doesn't mean it's your only choice. The other options might be more suitable for a low resolution display.

Through 3rd-party packages, other environments might also be available, such as Cinnamon and MATE.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure about MATE but instructions to install the unofficial packages for Cinnamon on Fedora 16 and Fedora 17 are available [1].

[1] <http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=274611>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using the beta for a month or two now, and I must say that I'm impressed. I didn't think I'd like the new shell in Gnome 3, but I don't have any complaints and is actually pretty slick. I'm running it on a T420 and it supports all the hardware perfectly and seems to get better battery life than Kubuntu (Maybe different kernel version or something...).

I love being able to install any needed development tools with a simple "sudo yum install".

</comment><comment><USER8>
        Minimum RAM for text-mode: 768 MiB

Why would it require so much RAM on text-mode?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure that documentation is correct - there were some changes in the installer for F17 that lowered that memory requirement and we explicitly tested installs with 512 MiB (the hard coded minimum for install with Fedora 17). I've seen reports of successful installs with 384 MiB and enough swap (using the nomemcheck boot parameter) but AFAIK, that isn't supported and YMMV.

As far as why the installer needs that much memory, there are several things but yum, rpm and selinux are big memory users.

While it is a little old, one of the Anaconda (the name of the installer used in Fedora) developers did an analysis on where all the memory is used during installation [1] which I found to be rather interesting.

[1] [http://www.bangmoney.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/165...](http://www.bangmoney.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/165-This- Week-in-Anaconda-11.html)

[EDIT] Fixed typo

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Code name "Beefy Miracle"? And the next one is "Spherical Cow"? Why the sudden obsession with bovines?

<comment><USER10> The names that were voted on and how they fared-

        Votes :: Name
        </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
        1359 :: Spherical Cow
        1087 :: Halva
        1072 :: Chamoy
        1035 :: Pamukkale
        964 :: Tandoori Chicken
        930 :: Frankfurter
        821 :: Pop Soda
        536 :: Ketchy Ketchup

From [http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April...](http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2012-April/003067.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> If someone is going for a fresh install, could he post the number of packages installed by default?

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there an official minimal/lite fedora variant like minimal ubuntu or debian netinstall ?

<comment> meta-coder Yes, there is Network Install CD. <http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all> Approximately 200MB for i386.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately redhat based distros don't support _keeping_ the install minimal past installing the first few things afterwards. There is no --no-instal- recommends --no-install-suggests for RPM based distros and no (easy) way to acheive that either.

It's for this reason that I have, over the past year, discovered that my favorite server OS is debian minimal (with those above flags entered into apt.conf) while my favorite desktop is without a doubt Fedora / gnome3.

This is exactly the opposite of the norm I think, but, fedora pushes the desktop boundaries far further than ubuntu and debian is so highly optimised for minimal server setups.

<comment><USER14> openSUSE is a RPM distro and it's package manager (zypper) has a --no- recommends when installing packages.

But everyone forgets about use opensuse guys :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>