Getting a bit creepy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gingerlime.com/2013/getting-a-bit-creepy/ <comment><USER2> I _really_ like the "NoScript" model of permissions in a browser and wish phone OSes allowed that model. With "NoScript", I block javascript by default but can unblock temporarily or whitelist permanently.

On my Android phone:

* With standard Android, I have to whitelist an application when installing it. I cannot pick which permissions I give it, I cannot control when it can use those permissions, and I cannot remove permissions. Ever.

* With Cyanogenmod, I can restrict permissions fine grained both for permissions and applications. This would be really great if it were usable, but when I try to use it the applications behave very badly (often crashing) if they don't get unfettered permission to use my data.

I would love it if (a) applications behaved well in the absence of permissions (I fault Google for setting expectations of availability that don't require this) and (b) I had a UAC style permission granting mechanism[1] so that _I_ control an application's access to my data and can monitor what it is asking for and when. While it could still "steal" my data (cache it, send it to the borg) any time I gave it permissions, it would at least give me a clue that the application was not trustworthy if (when) it popped up unexpected permission requests.

[1] I cannot believe I said I like Windows UAC dialogs. That will cost me another year in purgatory. :-/

<comment><USER3> I'd love to have it, integrated in the OS and by default as well. Something might be moving, as Google added "App Ops" [1] (hidden by default, but it's there) in Android 4.3, which allow you to revoke permissions from applications.

That said, there are some alternatives to Cyanogenmod's Incognito mode, which should work better.

One is XPrivacy [2], which relies on the XPosed Framework [3]. This is what I'm currently using on my Android phone. You can allow/restrict some permissions by default, and then have a whitelist for certain applications.

Another one is OpenPDroid [4], which requires you to patch your rom (there are some preset for the biggest roms, so usually it's just a matter of a few clicks). I haven't used it, but it should work just like XPrivacy.

XPrivacy and OpenPDroid send blank/fake data instead of blocking applications from using certain APIs, so they cause way less crashes. They even allow you to choose the fake data to provide, so that you can fake, for example, your location.

[1] [http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops- android-4-3s...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops- android-4-3s-hidden-app-permission-manager-control-permissions-for-individual- apps/)

[2] [https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy](https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy)

[3] [http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401)

[4] [http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for this, I am switching to Android for freedom but I wish to retain privacy also. Asking permissions for each aspect and requiring apps to work if it is denied is one of the few things I liked about iOS.

<comment><USER5> If you really want freedom, use CyanogenMod, or better, Replicant. Google's been enviously eyeing Apple's walled garden for a while now.

<comment><USER4> Oh yes I am well aware :) I think Replicant is the one for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately things aren't "getting" a bit creepy, they've been creepy for quite some time.

In 1998 I worked at a large publicly traded insurance company. We provided quotes online and sent a follow-up email to the person with their written quote in it. I was asked to figure out a way to determine when the person read their email. Our infrastructure was Classic ASP so I:

1\. Created a new web site in IIS

2\. Changed IIS' processing of .jpg to run through the ASP processor

3\. Created a .jpg program in the site that would update a quote's record as having read the email

4\. Put an img tag in the HTML email that loaded the "jpg" file with the unique identifier on a querystring

Our business people used this to automatically initiate an outbound call to the person the second they read the email. A lot of people were creeped out, "OMG I just sat down to read your email, what a weird coincidence" but by god those people bought insurance from us.

Of course today, that is the reason why images don't automatically load in emails. But there are plenty of people finding new creepy things to do every day.

<comment><USER7> How did that work in 1998? Wasn't the phone number in question being used to connect to the internet?

<comment><USER8> I had a cable modem by 1998. Faster uplink speed than I have now, actually – saturated the 10MBps network in my house and it wasn't throttled in the pre- Napster, pre-port-filtered era.

<comment><USER9> What cable companies were giving you 100mbps Internet in 1998?

<comment><USER8> 10Mbs, not 100. With Cox in San Diego could hit (IIRC) 16 Mbps per cable segment but at the time no cable modem had a 100Mb ethernet interface since that hardware was still expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My eye-opening creepy moment was after installing Facebook's android app. I had the G+ app already installed, but logged in with a dummy account which follows various people I don't know in real life. For some reason, G+ put those people in my contact list and one day I accidentally called one of them that put their phone number on G+. It never rang because I quickly hit disconnect. The next day on Facebook, guess who was suggested I add as a friend? Mystery dial.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, FB got permanently banished from my phone once I saw my contact list grow by a couple hundred people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally, I'm going to move away from Android, because I feel like I cannot use the device without the sensation that my privacy is under assault, not only from some App creators, but from the OS itself. Many of the most popular utility apps ask for very intrusive permissions - unique identity, location, sms, contacts etc - and the OS provides no way to effectively sandbox your data. The OS does not believe that you should be able to control access to your data, on your own terms. I have also come to believe that there is a fundamental misalignment of incentives here - I'm only willing to use a smartphone on the basis that I'm buying a device which attempts to protect my privacy, not attempts to expose it, and that will only work if the business model of the manufacturer doesn't rely on mining my data to sell advertising.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure other operating systems are much better.

<comment><USER13> > Unfortunately, I'm not sure other operating systems are much better.

I think the funny part in all of this is that iOS does give you more fine- grain controls over app permissions.

<comment><USER14> Seeing how long it took them to realize that "Contacts" were something that you should ask permission to use I don't know if I'd trust apple with knowing which planet I live on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find that emails like that have the opposite effect and push me away from products/services. If the product/service was useful to me, those emails would not be required to keep me engaged.

<comment><USER16> That is how you remember it when they don't work. You don't even remember them doing it when they did work.

That's why companies run A/B tests rather than trust word of mouth.

<comment><USER15> That's very true.

Perhaps what turns me off are the desperate "Please come back to $SERVICE, you've been gone for more than 35 seconds! Please come back!!" from the free services. I don't mind the weekly specials from the local computer retailer, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _"You have SMS waiting from Dad, Jonathan and Florian". The mightytext guys > thought it would be more engaging to take a look into my recent SMS > messages, pick up recent or popular contacts and use it to get me to use the > product._

> _To me this is crossing some invisible but very clear line. I haven't used > the product yet, and it's already trawling through my personal stuff?_

I'm confused by this example. Isn't this exactly the purpose of MightyText, the app he installed? It's routing your text messages through you server. Obviously their system knows what texts you are sending, otherwise how would it function? Also, the product has been used if you give it permission to access your contacts.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'm confused by this example. Isn't this exactly the purpose of MightyText, > the app he installed?

Blog post author here. The purpose of MightyText (as far as I understand it anyway) is to allow _me_ to use SMS through my computer at greater ease. I accept that in order to do that, technically I need to allow the app to access my Android SMS, contacts etc and "act on my behalf" to deliver messages.

I trust the program not to _abuse_ this access I give it. I do not expect it to use this information to spy on me, even if this spying is merely for marketing purposes or to encourage me to use their program more. I think that's the creepy part.

<comment><USER18> Is there a 'don't send me email about unread messages' option somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> These were not unread messages. The list of names were (probably) taken from the last SMS senders on my phone, _before_ I installed MightyText. Since I don't use SMS much, no new messages were delivered after installing it either. So MightyText went through my old messages, and then sent a reminder/engagement-email using those messages.

EDIT: I've updated the original blog post to make this clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > But it just feels creepy to email me about it this way.

In other words:

"Yes, I know it's wrong and they should not know these things about me, but I want to use their product anyway, so can we please just pretend nobody knows what's going on in our society?"

</comment><comment><USER20> I prefer when sites and apps are in my face about what they can do.

Because the most likely alternative is they have the exact same information but the consumer isn't fully aware. Which is actually _more_ creepy.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've seen accurately targeted technical ads when viewing my local paper's site that are creepy as well, since there's "no way" they should have known enough to put that ad there, and was musing on a post about this creepiness, too. Recommendation engines are interesting, and it is amazing how much information can be gleaned from simple yes/no/didclick kind of stuff, but it can also reach a creepy point faster than we might think. Sort of like the little "20 questions" novelty toy that can surprise you, where (I assume) it exploits the effectiveness of dividing the solution space in half with each question... you do that 20 times and you've reduced the space by a factor of a million.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have to say I know exactly what the author means. When I visit a site (like BetaBrand) and all of a sudden start seeing their ads in my Facebook feed, it feels unsettling, even if they are just using the cookies temporarily stored on my computer.

<comment><USER6> That's Google Remarketing ([http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html](http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html)). The greatest sounding idea which has almost no chance of working in the real world in my opinion.

I went to Rackspace.com based on a HackerNews article a couple months ago and I'm still bombarded with ads for them on every site I go to.

<comment><USER23> I switched to firefox with noscript. Stop using chrome 90% of times. Turn off 3rd party cookie on default for all browsers. pointed doubleclick.net/com to 127.0.0.1 to /etc/hosts.

The web felt less creepy now.

<comment><USER24> There's an extension for Chrome called NotScripts, which does pretty much what NoScript does in Firefox:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notscripts/odjhifo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notscripts/odjhifogjcknibkahlpidmdajjpkkcfn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is thr trade the author made: I sell my personal information away, in order to use a "free" product.

I suggest that if someone doesn't like this business model, then purchase your programs; don't get ad-supported programs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Honestly, this actually sounds more like a bug than an instance of creepiness.

From my understanding, it sounds like MightyText scrapes in your SMS messages and allows you to read/respond to them from their client. Looks like it just picked up old messages and accidentally thought they were unread.

Otherwise, this isn't just run-of-the-mill tech company creepiness, it's fraud like the dating websites advertising "3 messages waiting for you."

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm experiencing a very creepy behavior on Twitter, described here

[http://pastebin.com/KR01pmAH](http://pastebin.com/KR01pmAH)

(TL;DR: Twitter displays a different behavior with the user profile of my ex- girlfriend than with any user name, including people I've interacted with much more in the last 1.5 years)

I would like many people to do the experiment.

</comment><comment><USER28> Getting our attention is a world of spam requires crossing the creepy line. Unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER29> >I'm trusting you with my data. I realise there are risks involved, but please treat my data with respect. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. And don't be a creep.

Yes, we can! :-)

</comment><comment><USER30> What do we expect when we take free candy from strangers? Of course it's creepy.

This is just another reason to curate the things we let into our lives.

</comment><comment><USER31> As far as I remember , similar permissions are required when you install app for "Uber" cabs.</comment>


How Tasteless Suburbs Become Beloved Urban Neighborhoods - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/suburbs-immaculate-conception/408025/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> There does seem to be considerable distaste for the suburbs on regular display in large parts of the media. This title captures that perfectly: while the housing stock remains the same, it magically transforms from tasteless when suburban to beloved when the suburban area becomes urban.

<comment><USER3> _There does seem to be considerable distaste for the suburbs on regular display in large parts of the media_

Yes, this is eternal.

Meanwhile, the people who actually _buy_ and _live in_ these houses continue to want the things they've always wanted -- an affordable dwelling with space for the children to play, along with room for a cookout and maybe a small garden, in a safe neighborhood, with decent schools.

Conformance with the latest theories of architectural aesthetics isn't even _on_ their lists, much less at the top of it.

<comment><USER4> From the article:

One is that everything old was once new, and new things often provoke a backlash. We ought to be humble in believing that our opinions represent some timeless, objective truth, looking backwards or forwards. The same bungalows that seem to us quaint and charming were tacky and soulless to many of the people watching them be built; it seems more than possible that the new apartment buildings we vilify today will be thought of sentimentally by future generations who know them only as an important part of their city since they were born.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article seem to ignore a large part of the 20th century were in the post- war period many European countries took the "just build more and higher" approach extending cities with high-density suburbs. At the time forward looking and idealistic planned communities, today neglected and infamous for their social problems.

I'm a "city kid", I've always have lived and prefer to live in urban areas. I think these suburbs often have a undeserved reputation, but that doesn't mean that a simplistic argument of "thing we didn't like before turned out good, so maybe doing thing people don't like now will be fine" has any bearing. Like anything else you still have to look at the facts, weigh the arguments and if you try your best hopefully come up with a winning compromise.

<comment><USER6> You hear a lot about the bad examples of this, but little about the good examples. I remember wandering through a working class high rise area in Southern Spain, and being amazed by how friendly the atmosphere was, but you'd never hear that area discussed in newspapers and magazines. The fact is living in apartments is very common all across Continental Europe, and that area is not well-represented by the Banlieues, or bad council estates in London.

FWIW, although I don't like Brutalist architecture, my attitude is that these mistakes are almost entirely down to social policies that came with the construction - or at least a mismatch between construction and policy.

In particular, it was a mistake putting large percentages of very disadvantaged, vulnerable families together into brutalist, modernist constructions that they found ugly, where they didn't want to live, and then not putting in the money necessary to maintain them. I don't think the same problems are likely to be repeated if you're replacing low density suburbs filled with wealthy professionals, with high density flats filled with wealthy professionals, who are specifically choosing to move there.

<comment><USER7> > The fact is living in apartments is very common all across Continental > Europe

I had to google what a "Brutalist architecture" is. Turns out it's somewhat similar to how Central and Eastern Europe countries look like as a whole: socialists governments used to love this style and were building tons of these. It's now extremely common. Wikipedia says that 1/3 of Czechs live in buildings like this:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Dlhe_die...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Dlhe_diely_panorama_zo_starych_gruntov.jpg)

Which is probably representative to the whole former Eastern Bloc. Here in Poland these building were being built from 1950-ties to early 1990-ties, non- stop, one after another, district after district, city (and, to a lesser degree, town and village too!) after city.

I've lived all my life in one or another of those. They are old, very badly constructed and ugly as hell, but they are inhabitable and they provide homes for millions of people. It's somewhat gross to hear your neighbour peeing at night, but it somewhat "works" \- you have a cheap shelter for really many people close to city centres.

I don't really want to make any point, I just wanted to provide some context to your statement about how common living in apartments is on this side of the Berlin wall.

<comment><USER8> Brutalist is a particular style, I think what was really meant was "prefabricated" — the buildings could be assembled on-site from parts (wall sections etc) manufactured elsewhere.

A huge number of houses had been destroyed in WW2, so rebuilding them quickly and cheaply was a priority. It wasn't just socialist governments, the UK built loads of these too — though as prosperity increased, they became much less common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone surrounded by the new construction in Seattle, these things are hideous.

Predominant materials include cinder blocks, a random orange wall, corrugated metal, yellow windows jutting out at a weird angle, and one wall made from reclaimed artisanal barnwood. And that's all on one building.

Density, urban sprawl, NIMBYism, single family homes, etc. are issues for someone else. I just wish we were seeing some good looking buildings.

</comment><comment><USER10> All these debates about housing and transportation in the USA seem to never even approach the idea that high density would solve the problem. Build vertically, build tightly - that is where urban happiness lies... Not in an individual house at the end of some suburb where no one can go anywhere without a car !

<comment><USER3> " Build vertically, build tightly - that is where urban happiness lies... "

Most people do not agree. They have always moved to low density areas any time it becomes feasible. This is a constant throughout just about all of human history, and under just about every form of social organization. The wealthy have _always_ had country estates, even in the days of ancient Rome. The nomenklatura of the Soviet Union had their country dachas, etc.

You are getting the cause and effect backward. The car _made it possible_ for people to spread out while remaining employed, and they took advantage of that capability. It didn't _force_ them to do it.

It's called voting with your feet, dude.

<comment><USER11> This has been shifting. Even though it might still be true for "most" people (>50%) the portion of people preferring urban environments is increasing, and fewer people are leaving cities after starting families.

[http://www.planetizen.com/node/77680/do-millennials-opt- citi...](http://www.planetizen.com/node/77680/do-millennials-opt-cities-or- suburbs-yes)

<comment><USER12> Although that supposed trend seems to be exaggerated--at least in the US. According to this piece [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials- are-less...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-millennials-are-less- urban-than-you-think/) for example, the actual trend seems to be that a fairly narrow slice of demographics (25-34 with college degrees) mildly prefer living in a few specific dense urban environments like Brooklyn.

Overall there is something of an urbanization trend (especially in emerging economies) but it's not as pronounced as it's often made out to be.

<comment><USER13> Everyone has their thing, and I definitely see the appeal to urban living when you're young and have time to yourself. Why anyone would want to live in a highrise or in a dense city when they have children, though, over having your own yard or quiet, safe neighborhood to play in, doesn't make sense to me.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. It's not that millennials are different in any way (preferring high rises vs the McMansions of the Boomer generation), but instead the millennials are putting off children until much later and just don't have many school aged kids yet.

In 5-10 years, they'll be heading out of the cities just like their parents and grandparents did.

<comment><USER12> That's definitely one interpretation of at least some of the increasing millennial urbanization (such as it is) that I've read. That it's more about delaying moving to the suburbs/buying a house for a variety of reasons including marrying and having children later and the economy (especially of a few years back where of the currently available data is from).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This somewhat reminds me of San Francisco today. Most of the "hot neighborhoods" now were immigrant neighborhoods even only 50 years ago.

People are paying $2M for homes that 50 years ago were in areas regarded as low income. Tiny homes!!

It's amazing.

<comment><USER16> _It 's amazing._

Not totally: returns to people living in dense cities have risen, per Edward Glaeser's _The Triumph of the City_.

In addition, most cities have erected draconian land-use policies, which I wrote about here: [http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a- futu...](http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in- seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities). That means demand is rising rapidly while supply is being strangled. Prices rise.

<comment><USER15> You don't think it's amazing that people will pay exorbitant amounts of money for housing that a few decades ago was regarded a ghetto? I do.

<comment><USER17> It wasn't the housing that was regarded as ghetto, but the people who used to live there.

<comment><USER15> That was actually my point. The areas of SF that have gotten ridiculously expensive are areas where the housing is actually sub-standard to what you'd see in most of America.

The house that just sold for $2M wouldn't even be worth $200K in most US cities. The house is just beat up and old.

I could see paying $2M for a gorgeous house that is either new or recently upgraded. There are houses that are basically condemned going for >$1M!

<comment><USER18> I think the mistake you're making is thinking that the value of houses in SF is dominated by the value of their structure. Rather, it's dominated by the value of the land they occupy. In the case of the $2M sub-standard SF house in a desirable area you mentioned, if it burned down to the ground, the land would still be worth well north of a million dollars.

Edit: wording

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Price and value are two completely different things. If you are able to spot (or predict) high value for a low price the world is in your hands.

By the other hand if you follow the sheep and buy scarce but low value stuff for an high price you're in the rat race..

</comment><comment><USER20> I live in Bath - it's a world heritage city, it's considered very beautiful.

Thing is, when it was built, it was viewed as a sort of tasteless Vegas-cum- Milton Keynes.

It's just a never-ending cycle, like most things.

<comment><USER21> I agree with the Vegas comparison, but what made you think of Milton Keynes?

<comment><USER8> Milton Keynes is the standard example in British usage of a boring city.

It's one of the few cities in the UK with a grid layout, which is enough to convince many people that it must be boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage](http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage)

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately I don't think I've seen a "tiny" design that's wheelchair accessible.

<comment><USER22> Right, almost all of them involve ladders to lofts or something, but there is no reason a tiny house can't have a normal bed near the ground if you need that.

Anyway, by any chance did you read my page? I am pretty bummed out because I have been trying to link to that tiny villages thing from everywhere I can just so maybe a few people would read my idea, but the traffic analysis on the github page keeps saying there is 0 traffic (except for 2 the other day and 1 of them was me).

<comment><USER23> There's a bit of a problem with the page so far:

[http://imgur.com/zhPbYuA](http://imgur.com/zhPbYuA) \- see the whitespace?

Maybe adding photos would help the traffic?

<comment><USER22> There is an image. Well, thanks for reading through the text if you had time, really just trying to get the ideas out there.

I did not see any whitespace like that on my browsers (obviously). What browser do you have? I will have to test with other browsers and find a way around that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


More information about TerraTech's AI Fleet - <AUTHOR> http://terratechgame.com/terratech-dev-diary-commanding-an-ai-fleet/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, designer of the game here. hackthisuk posted a link to our TerraTech Kickstarter here a few weeks ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7936828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7936828)), some of you seemed pretty interested so we thought it would be good to post an update on what we have been upto. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about the game. Cheers!</comment>


New theory why languages don't all have the same number of terms for colors - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/languages-dont-all-have-the-same-number-of-terms-for-colors-scientists-have-a-new-theory-why-84117 <comment><USER2> There's a good book about this whole complex of themes, the _Sapir-Whorf hypothesis_ [1] that basically your language determines the way you think (100 words for snow, more/fewer words for colours, etc.):

 _Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages_ by Guy Deutscher.

TL;DR: no, language doesn't determine how you see the world. There might be one notable exception - there's a tribe somewhere (forgot the details) that doesn't use front, behind, left, right, but the cardinal directions (they'll actually say, "oh, there's an ant on your northern leg"). As they grow up with this, they have an uncanny sense of where north is wherever they are, even in buildings etc.

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

<comment><USER3> Just to really emphasize the point -- the _Sapir-Whorf hypothesis_ has been essentially disproved. It comes up a lot because it's a very attractive idea, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

> that doesn't use front, behind, left, right, but the cardinal directions

I can't remember where I saw this (maybe Language Log, consider this "citation needed"), but apparently there are some Polynesian Islanders that use a language with different direction concepts (inwards/outwards maybe?).

<comment><USER4> You're right, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been thoroughly disproved. A good book on this is _The Language Hoax_ by linguist John McWhorter.

The main reason it still hangs on is that it is used by people to try to support the left-wing ideological idea that human nature is entirely a product of socialization, and so can be formed to produce a perfect socialist society. And let me add that, as Marxist writer Norman Geras explains in his book _Marx and Human Nature_ , this is not at all what Marx himself thought.

<comment><USER5> There are a number of books, throughout history, on either side of the conversation. I would not call the issue settled by any measure. It's hard to settle any issue when it comes to tricky, sneaky, intangible things like qualia, and semantics.

<comment><USER6> You wouldn't call linguistic relativity a settled matter? Because it pretty much is, especially the strong form. And evidence for the weak form is quite lacking, relying mainly on the work of Boroditsky, whose main article has never been published and who doesn't control for culture, education, etc. in her others. It seems to me that culture has much more influence on how someone things/perceives things than language ever could... Which also explains why very different cultures can use the same language -- if language determined your thoughts, wouldn't, say, Quebecois and French culture be fairly uniform, not to add Algerian or Cote D'Ivoirean (is that even a word?) in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Noting subtle differences in "warm" colors probably corresponds to ability to determine if food is ripe or spoiled. If it's various shades of "green", it's all unripe so you don't care.

<comment><USER8> Also, warning coloration in animals: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aposematism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aposematism)

And perhaps connections with toxicity in fungi (i.e. _Amanita muscaria_ ) and plants (e.g. European yew and bittersweet nightshade).

<comment><USER9> The aril (i.e. the red seed covering) is the only part of the yew tree which _isn 't_ poisonous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _the grid itself is perceptually more or less uniform_

I can tell you that the grid is more physically uniform than perceptually uniform. It is well known that humans are physiologically less capable of distinguishing hues of blue than of most other broad categories. This property is encoded in most colorimetric systems, such as CIEDE 2000.

Update: I read a paper some years ago which I can no longer find an English copy of[0]. The author used Isomap to project the mutual perceptual distances (as modeled by CIEDE 2000) of physically-uniform colors onto a two and three dimensional euclidean space, with very interesting results (toward the end of the PDF).

[0]: [https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc- rio.br/22445/22445.PDF](https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/22445/22445.PDF)

<comment><USER11> _I can tell you that the grid is more physically uniform than perceptually uniform._

If they're Munsell colors, as the article suggests, they _should_ be close to perceptually uniform. The Munsell system was specifically designed around perceptible color differences: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system)

It's pretty old, so it predates any of the modern standardized color systems you'd typically use in software today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another fascinating topic is how our language determines how we see different colors. The Himba tribe does not distinguish between blue and green, but is able to discriminate among shades of green that basically look the same to us, Westerners.

[https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/its-not- easy-s...](https://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/its-not-easy-seeing- green/)

<comment><USER13> Huh? I just ran a color picker over the squares in the article's pic [1]. They're all RGB 0/199-200/0 except for a left mid-upper one, which is 0/206/0 ... is that what sticks out to this tribe?

Then I follow the link to the original [2] chart, which claims RGB values of 80/186/15, except for the odd one which is 97/192/4\. But my color picker is showing the same as before: everything is 0/199-206/0.

Something is not right here.

Edit: Here are the two colors he intended, based on the labeling of [2]. I can tell them apart.

[https://www.webpagefx.com/web-design/color- picker/50BA0F](https://www.webpagefx.com/web-design/color-picker/50BA0F)

[https://www.webpagefx.com/web-design/color- picker/61C004](https://www.webpagefx.com/web-design/color-picker/61C004)

[1] In Mac OS X you can pull up the "digital color picker" from spotlight search.

[2] had to to change to http from https ... should be safe for this context: [http://origin.boingboing.net/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/ring...](http://origin.boingboing.net/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/ring1-RGB.jpg)

<comment><USER14> That is the experiment. All the boxes are the same color except for one (the oddball), which the subject is supposed to identify. The original study claimed that the Himba were (slightly?) faster to pick the oddball when it was a slightly different shade of green than UK English speakers. When the oddball was blue, UK English speakers were faster than the Himba.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _In an industrialized culture, most people get by with 11 color words: > black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and > gray_

Native Danish speaker, and I really only acknowledge eight true colours: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, and gray. Perhaps tellingly, all those that come with solid, earthy, Germanic names. Orange and purple are clearly much later imports, and while I do of course use the words, I cannot help regarding those two as constructs - blends of yellow/red and blue/red. Pink is such a recent import, it has only really become a term in my lifetime. It is _not_ a word I would normally use, except in a sort of ironic context. I would always default to "light red".

My no nonsense daughter, in her twenties, insists that pink is definitely its own colour - _not_ the same as light red. But then, as I understand it, female eyes can see further along the infrared spectrum than male ones. I assume women have a richer perception of most things reddish than the rest of us.

<comment><USER16> I do wonder why light red feels like a distinct color (pink), while light blue or green does not. Is it just a learned cultural thing?

<comment><USER17> Yes it is cultural, but it's complicated. There are some aspects of colour that are cultural, but there are also biological asymmetries so to speak, we don't actually distinguish red/green/blue equally well, the colour receptors we have are more like red-yellow/yellow-green/blue for example.

It's also something of a linguistic constant that red is most basic "chromatic" colour to distinguish, after making the the distinction between white and black. Perhaps because blood is red?

The science of colour and colour perception is an incredibly fascinating subject, that even Goethe had a hand in shaping. I really recommend you to read at least [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Traffic lights are green/yellow/red in the US.

They are rouge/orange/rouge in French (translation: green/orange/red).

Some languages perceive the middle color as yellow, some as orange. Because this is deeply buried in the brain since childhood, adult friends from different countries can disagree on the true color of the middle light for ages...

I am wondering if this difference can lead to different taste/connotation regarding colors in different country.

<comment><USER19> I've heard the center light referred to as "amber".

<comment><USER20> In the UK it's Amber. I can't remember ever hearing yellow.

<comment><USER21> In the UK it's actually a different color though. Their center lights are a light orange that, as an American, I wouldn't hesitate to call amber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just watched this Vox video on a (potential) pattern behind color names last week, which also covers a bit about the research by Berlin and Kay:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg)

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmm. This helps explain to me the weird notion that some people are "white" and others are "black", when neither is either. Addendum: The new ones that were found that weren't white or black were obviously... red.

</comment><comment><USER23> I could be related to how far north or how close to the equator the language started, hue and contrast will vary based on light.

If something is dark green in the morning but light green at noon, you'll just call it green.</comment>


Yahoo Plans End-To-End Email Encryption by Year-End - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/yahoo-sees-end-end-email-encryption-year-end

<comment><USER2> I didn't even know that Yahoo Mail still exists.</comment>


"Someone was typing in a URL and WhatsApp was fetching it off my server" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mulander/status/874370124932943874 <comment><USER4> Hi HN, op here.

I posted this not because I was angry on having a GET request sent to my server on a char by char basis. My main concerns were privacy related, since I posted this some additional things came to light:

1) This leaks the IP address of the person writing the msg

2) When property="og:image" is used it also leaks the User Agent and Android version [1]

3) When presented with invalid headers as a reply it can cause a crash on IOS, which mean this is a potential RCE vector [2]

4) It leaks the exact time an URL is typed into a chat

5) It's on by default, this is the default behavior in E2E encrypted conversations [3]

I don't use WhatsApp, I found this out by accident as I just have a habit to tail my logs. I know though that Signal doesn't do any of this pre-fetching. I am aware this is a 'feature' but there's no place for it when security is involved.

[1] [https://twitter.com/0xjomo/status/874585822158352384](https://twitter.com/0xjomo/status/874585822158352384) [2] [https://twitter.com/dr4ys3n/status/874725257722179584](https://twitter.com/dr4ys3n/status/874725257722179584) [3] [https://mastodon.social/@rysiek/9146943](https://mastodon.social/@rysiek/9146943)

<comment><USER5> These are all expected behaviors and are the correct decisions if the user expectation is that URLs generate preview cards.

If the connection was not made from the client (aka 'leaks the IP address') then it would need to be proxied (aka central point for 5eyes to monitor to get all WA client urls) or the servers would need to know the contents of the messages (aka break e2e and we are still back to a central monitoring point.)

Of course it will send user agent info, so that it can provide a better preview card if the site supports taking advantage of this info. If it only provides this when you explicitly try to send the info then it is doing what the user told it to do.

The header bug is interesting and if it is actually a WA problem you should report it.

Of course it leaks the exact time a URL is typed into chat. I can't even imagine what you are trying to say here since this is a point that is without a point. We have already established what it is trying to do and in that context this point makes no sense.

It is on by default and is the default behavior because this is what users expect. The secure features of WA are a bonus, but are not the raison d'etre here and when it comes down to it WA is a messaging app and it prioritizes usability when the feature is not an egregious security problem. In this case it is not a major security problem so usability and expectations win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did you all know that chrome does this too? May sound obvious but I always had assumed that nothing is sent until you press enter for some reason (yeah I know, search prediction would be impossible without that). But one day I was type in a path on a test URL and noticing my server getting hit on - <USER2> single letter.

<comment><USER7> Yes, Chrome does it as well, but I expect that as it's a web browser. I know the tradeoffs when browsing the web and expect that my requests will be visible across the Internet. That's just how web browsing works.

However, WhatsApp is selling a solution that is meant to provide privacy. When I write a URL in an SMS, my phone does not try to preemptively retrieve it to display a preview. WhatsApp may be encrypting the message, but it's identifying me to a server while I'm composing it, which is enough to completely destroy any level of privacy or anonymity that I would expect.

<comment><USER8> > WhatsApp is selling a solution that is meant to provide privacy.

Yep you are right. They even tout this in their Security Page.

[https://www.whatsapp.com/security/](https://www.whatsapp.com/security/)

> WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're > communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even > WhatsApp. This is because your messages are secured with a lock, and only > the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read them.

<comment><USER7> I suppose that I'm not surprised. You can't audit WhatsApp's source code, and even if you could, you can't guarantee what you're putting on your device matches the source code. Yet another closed source, inherently untrustable system.

<comment><USER9> Even with open source you don't know what you're putting on your device matches the source code (unless you're part of the 0.00001% that would compile their own mobile apps).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In order to produce the link preview, probably. As far as why it's character by character, I don't know, but that doesn't seem very sinister to me. Checking URLs letter by letter is sloppy, especially if you're not even trying to do auto completion, but it doesn't reveal any more information than a complete url could. Anyway, I would think they are expecting people to paste URLs in, not type them.

I've written code to fetch sites and give a preview, for a bookmarking bookmarklet. This involves analyzing the html for title and to select best image to represent the page. That of course necessitates retrieving the page, either through the client or server.

<comment><USER11> It's not sinister so much as that Whatsapp is sending the requests directly from the user's phone (not through a proxy, etc) which is exposing the end user's IP address and full user agent string to the website hosting the page. This information could be used to identify the end user which goes against Whatsapp's whole "Privacy and Security is in our DNA" thing. ([https://www.whatsapp.com/security/](https://www.whatsapp.com/security/))

See this tweet for the info exposed: [https://twitter.com/0xjomo/status/874585822158352384](https://twitter.com/0xjomo/status/874585822158352384)

<comment><USER12> Knowing that WhatsApp produces link preview cards, I frankly don't see anything here that I didn't already expect and assume was happening - <USER3> cards come from somewhere that is neither me nor my conversation partner. This can't be a surprise to anyone who was concerned about privacy.

If WA proxied the request, it would be WA snooping on the conversation, and that would be a way larger problem because they would accumulate that metadata for EVERYONE.

If you don't want cards or external requests in the conversation, you obfuscate the url with any of the myriad methods people use to get past anti- url filters in forums etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> E: Disregard. Whatsapp is doing exactly what they should be doing. Telegram seems to proxy the requests.

Why is no one saying anything about end to end crypto?

Whatsapp shouldn't be able to see my messages, isn't that what they say themselves?

<comment><USER14> The 4th comment is:

 _doing a GET request over the internet is already violating e2e_

<comment><USER15> not if it's over TLS/SSL...

<comment><USER16> When both e's in e2e are the parties of the conversation, and the TLS connection is too a third party, then yes it is a violation of their claim.

<comment><USER15> I'm going to have to disagree with that. The TLS connection is not part of the conversation... it has no ability to intercept messages, encrypted or otherwise.

It's merely just another e2e communication between the client and another party, albeit through another protocol.

<comment><USER16> But it reveals part of what was typed in the e2e chat to the third party... tls or not is irrelevant to that point.

<comment><USER15> True, I overlooked that. Thanks for taking the time to point that out :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes me think of another potential privacy risk: if you paste a URL in WhatsApp, or click Android's share button and select WhatsApp, it doesn't add a space after the url. Most users are probably aware that they have to add a space, but if they forget, WhatsApp will probably send the first word of the rest of the message to the server. (Similarly if you paste a URL at the start of an already-written message, but maybe that's even more contrived.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Apparently several other messaging apps behave similarly, from the replies in that tweet there were mentions of Facebook Messenger[0] and Telegram[1].

[0][https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCRsz7mXUAAEbKK.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCRsz7mXUAAEbKK.jpg) [1][https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCSyWs0XcAAQb2N.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCSyWs0XcAAQb2N.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER19> On the one hand it provides a greater user-experience if Whatsapp can figure out the URL and preview information about the posted URL (like any social network does today, even we do it at STOMT when you attach an URL to your feedback).

On the other hand i do not get why they send it after every character. Makes it even faster but creates a bunch of unnecessary requests. Not very user friendly. They could do it after they recognize a finished URL (as soon as there is a space). And as pointed out in the tweets it COULD harms the users privacy.

<comment><USER20> They're probably trying to prefetch the URLs so they're loaded by the time you want it, just not a nice way of doing it.

<comment><USER19> Yeah right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Skype scans messages for URLs and downloads them. Microsoft claims is that they are checking for malware, still creepy.

<comment><USER22> Does anyone remember that time that they blocked any messages containing YouTube URLs in MSN Messenger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One aspect is the lack of debounce, but also revealing the endusers ip and user agent. They could proxy external link requests via whatsapp servers without breaking end to end encryption. wonder what iMessage does ?!

<comment><USER24> > They could proxy external link requests via whatsapp servers without > breaking end to end encryption.

What good is E2E if you are going to send the plaintext home anyway? Doing these requests on the device is stupid, but proxying them through FB servers would border on malicious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I believe this Behavior is for information gathering about odata.

</comment><comment><USER26> What does Signal do for link previews? Nothing at all?

</comment><comment><USER27> Prefetching a webpage to generate it's preview should at least be optional, controlled through user settings.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seems like they need debounce? Most JS utility libraries (lodash, etc) have a debounce function...

<comment><USER29> And even if you don't use those, denounce takes about 4 lines to write.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> probably whatsapp web version? it adds some kind of description if you send an url: [https://i.imgur.com/Rkl2cZJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/Rkl2cZJ.png)

</comment><comment><USER31> Did that change happen before of after the acquisition by Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER32> Plain creepy. Also, does it produce a lot of traffic?

<comment><USER33> This is a stupid and crappy implementation of a helpful feature, but how is it creepy?</comment></comment>


Creating a Startup on EC2 - Really a Good Idea? - <AUTHOR> http://elastic-security.com/2009/06/11/creating-a-startup-on-ec2-really-a-good-idea/

<comment><USER2> Creating a startup that uses AWS (or other similar services) is a (very) good idea. Creating startup to improve AWS infrastructure _may be_ a good idea because - due to fast pace innovation on the Amazon side - one can be steamrolled.</comment>


How do I post a job? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You don't. That is exclusively for YC companies.

<comment><USER3> Just to add that there is also an official monthly thread for job posts. The latest are in [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

@OP Find the correct thread and post there, or wait until next month.</comment></comment>


New study finds extensive use of fluorinated chemicals in fast food wrappers - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/9964.html <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13541466)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> we are screwed</comment>


Free Mobile Design Course - <AUTHOR> http://mobiledesignbook.com/course?ref=hn

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Unfortunately the landing page CTA button does not have any label on safari with my iPhone 6, latest iOS. I only see a red rectangle.</comment>


Terraform at Scale - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, Presentation i did at a HashiCorp User Group in Melbourne Australias last week. Just thought i'd share the content if anyone is interested!<p>Link: https://prezi.com/view/AuhhEjz2Wbi7lWoS2VGs/ <comment><USER2> Clicky: [https://prezi.com/view/AuhhEjz2Wbi7lWoS2VGs/](https://prezi.com/view/AuhhEjz2Wbi7lWoS2VGs/)</comment>


Luis Suarez biting game - <AUTHOR> http://lamordidagame.com/

<comment><USER2> We could discuss the fact that the nicest games are made in flash.

<comment><USER3> I'd have to disagree, the nicest web games are made in Java(or webgl or unity etc.). Trying recreating runescape in flash.

But yea I get your point, it's surprising that js is still not that popular for making browser games.

<comment><USER4> Are you talking Java or javascript?

I don't know if its that surprising that js isn't more popular. Html5 hasn't been supported by browsers for nearly as long. I've done the Udacity html5 game course and worked with flash a bit, and the tooling for Flash makes it easier / faster to build apps/games.

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about java, runescape is written in java not javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A little too easy... but still hilarious!

</comment><comment><USER6> Lol, fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER4> 2072 until I got bored.</comment>


The War Situation: House Of Many Mansions (1940) - <AUTHOR> http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/the-war-situation-house-of-many-mansions

<comment><USER2> Interesting. This is during the 'phony war' when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, and not yet PM. His oratorical flourishes seem a little misplaced here; they didn't become appropriate until 10 May 1940. 1940-05-10 was truly a day of destiny. Churchill became PM, and Hitler launched his offensive in the West. A terrible struggle, with many defeats and setbacks continued up to Oct 1940, and the end of the Battle of Britain.

But why mention this now? Some analogy with Greece perhaps? Or Ukraine, or the Da'esh?</comment>


Where will Evolution lead C++17? - <AUTHOR> http://meetingcpp.com/index.php/br/items/where-will-evolution-lead-cpp17.html

<comment><USER2> Let me state for the record that Change is Good. C++ changing with the times is really what is keeping it alive as opposed to the other legacy type languages that have stagnated.

However, in my opinion C++ is changing too much, too quickly. I barely got the changes from 2008 down pat, and I look up and not only have I missed the 2011 changes, but also the 2014 changes to digest. It's going too far too fast and it feels like C++ steering committee is filled with ultra-experts that don't understand that the young kids aren't picking up C++ because Python, Java, Scala, etc are more digestible, and the older people like me who love C++ aren't able to keep up with all these changes because we aren't at the cutting edge and don't need most of this esoteric functionality they are adding.

It feels like a runaway train and if there's a few more iterations I'm going to have to give up trying to catch up because at that point it's easier to just spend my time becoming an expert in another language like Java or Scala. To mix another metaphor, it feels like the steering committee is outpacing it's supply line of users and in 2-3 more iterations, there will be such a wide swath of functionslity that it will be a complete mess because there will be too much fragmentation of the language over a relatively short time period.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2008? There never was a C++08...

Last Standard was 2003 before C++11.

<comment><USER2> You're right, sorry I got mixed up between 2003 and Visual Studio 2008 which is the IDE I used frequently back then.

<comment><USER3> I've been writing c++ on and off since Visual Studio 6. I would be glad to see it move faster. I don't have to learn all esoteric things - I can pick and use parts which I like, such as auto, for-each, smartptr, lambdas and so on. There was a version 2003 and then C++11. Almost a decade later. How can that possibly be too fast?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Named arguments would be lovely. It's quite exciting to C++ adopting all sorts of modern conveniences relatively quickly, after a decade or more of stagnation.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the unified call syntax proposals. The one that has the potential to go bad quickly is operator. which I forsee being used to create some painfully obfuscated code.

</comment><comment><USER6> Imho the problem with C++ is that it has gained too much weight over the years. I think that other languages, for instance "Rust", will eventually fix everything that C++ is forced to do wrong (due to its legacy), and these new languages will become more and more attractive to use as a development language.

Some things I personally hope will be added to C++ and/or Rust:

\- coroutines

\- lightweight threads

\- garbage collection (for high-level stuff)

\- a natural form of metaprogramming (not the convoluted approach taken by the boost libraries), i.e., active libraries that generate code based on given parameters

\- pure, lazy functional programming (language subset), e.g. for concurrent stuff

\- pattern matching

<comment><USER7> > the problem with C++ is that it has gained too much weight over the years.

> Some things I personally hope will be added to C++

... and therein lies the problem with language design ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The basic suggestion is to define x.f(y) and f(x,y) to be equivalent_

Am I the only one who thinks this is terrible from a semantic point of view?

<comment><USER9> That does seem terrible. Right now those two things are, semantically, completely different.

<comment><USER10> Except for operator overloading, where they are weirdly sometimes the same. Also, the semantics of Koenig (aka, "argument dependent") lookup really play into the matter, as they are effectively similar to member functions. As someone who has been writing C++ now since 1996, I will say that this change feels entirely natural and even "satisfying".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I dislike about most of these proposals is that they make C++ even harder to parse. It's important that tools other than full compilers be able to make sense of program text.

<comment><USER7> > It's important that tools other than full compilers be able to make sense of > program text.

Depends. Qt Creator now embeds Clang itself to do just that. Visual Studio is basically the same philosophically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To the same place it will lead C++. A dead end.

</comment><comment><USER13> Another round from the C++ committee. More features, not more safety. That crowd just doesn't get it.

About a decade ago, I suggested to the C++ committee that their avoidance of dealing with the memory safety issues in C++ constituted material support of terrorism. They were sufficiently worried to delete that posting from their USENET feed. So, a decade later, C++ has as many buffer overflows as ever.</comment>


API to crunch professional data of users, match jobs - <AUTHOR> http://talent.predikt.co/api/

<comment><USER2> This is fantastic and kind of ties into a startup idea I am working on with someone else related to job candidates and scoring. I'll give the API a spin and see what it can do and how well it works.</comment>


It's Time to Legalize Polygamy - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-decision-polygamy-119469.html <comment><USER2> Three friends of mine are married; each one has an emotional, sexual, and financial bond with the other two. They have jobs and a house and two kids; they're basically a model family if you ignore the novelty of the bit where the kids have three parents.

The law only recognizes part of this relationship as a marriage, even though it is clear to everyone who knows them that all three are equal partners; it's not a couple-plus-another, it's three people who have chosen to bind themselves together as a family.

I see nothing to be lost by allowing their triad to gain the same legal status currently afforded to pairs, and much to be lost by continuing to prevent it.

<comment><USER3> A friend of mine grew up in a commune-like household. Several couples and sets of children in a large house pooling resources, sharing responsibilities, collectively caring for each other like a single family. The impression I got was this was a collective emotional and financial bond with a more traditional sexual coupling, but I see that as besides the point.

The question is, what regulatory framework would you impose here? How would you want this to work in terms of taxes, inheritance, divorce, etc. I think when you dig into it, the reality is it's hard enough to build a workable framework around two people forming and breaking these bonds, to make an 'n-way' coupling that actually functioned properly (from a legal and fair- taxes perspective) would probably be impossible.

To the extent that you want to tie in a 3rd (or more) people to a union with children that could be biologically descendant from any two of the set... these would have to be one-off contracts in the form of LLCs / partnerships holding the assets, and estate / inheritance plans with appointed god-parents, etc. I just don't see how the state could make a one-size-fits all framework for n-way couplings, but also I don't really see what's stopping a motivated group from making it work on their own.

<comment><USER2> It is a hard problem and I don't have an answer to propose.

I know my friends have set up a number of legal arrangements with powers of attorney and such in order to work around their lack of marriage, just as gay and lesbian couples had to do for many years.

The problem for them is the same problem homosexual pairs faced up until yesterday: checking the "marriage" box grants you a long list of goodies, from the mundane to the critical, and many of them simply can't be acquired any other way.

It may be that the solution is not to continue fixing the legal institution of marriage at all, but to abandon it. If people could sign up for the rights and responsibilities of marriage a la carte, in whatever combinations suit their relationships, we could solve not just the gay-marriage problem but all the other forms of inequity currently baked into our traditional framework, many of which we may not even be aware of yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People should be allowed to make any sort of private contract they want (as long as they don't hurt anyone else). Why are marriage contracts any of the government's business?

<comment><USER5> At very least to determine what happens to your property when you die (and, perhaps more importantly to the state, how it is taxed). And also what happens to children if you die before they are of age.

Hospital visitation is a tricky one. I suppose you could have people register who gets to visit, but it would be unfair unless you required everyone to do this. I would be pissed if I a family member got in an accident and died alone while I pleaded with the hospital staff while people in traditional relationships are allowed in without the same registration.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't we, in theory, set it up so that those issues (excluding taxation) are dealt with in a standard polygamy contract.

Of course there is still the issue of determining what the correct resolution of those issues is, so we will likely have a situation of multiple 'standard' contracts, and people picking one without actually researching the differences.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure most things probably could (though still unfair if some have to explicitly acquire these rights by contract while others get it by default). The government's obligation at death is the sticking point.

This case was about getting a spouse's name on a death certificate. The DOMA case was about taxation at death ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While possibly polygamy should be as legal as same sex marriage (I don't see why not) it is unlikely to become legal any time soon. It just doesn't have the same number of adherents to push it forward. And most people don't know someone or have someone in their family that is a polygamist. It's also hard to make an argument for innate tendency.

<comment><USER8> OTOH, it's in the Bible. That may help a little bit.

<comment><USER9> I was recently in a hotel room and as there was nothing else to do I looked up who Gideon was in the Gideon bible. It turns out he was a major polygamist (Judges 8.29)

<comment><USER8> Now I see their organization under a completely different light... Promoting polygamy by distribution of bibles...

[http://www.gideons.org](http://www.gideons.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Banning polygamy is in part about equality in marriage opportunity; the risk in some societies is a surplus male population that engages in insurrection and other "crime" or violent behavior. This sexual frustration and social inequality can end up going in many different directions.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this the 'slippery slope' argument that gay marriage advocates said would never happen?

Well, it happened.

<comment><USER12> If you actually read the article, you'll notice that it's on your side of 'what won't those hippies do next.'

<comment><USER13> That's definitely the tone, but it's pretty funny since it's talking about the erosion of traditional marriage. Polygamy is almost certainly the most traditional marriage there is. Groups of people dedicated to each other who shared the responsibility of raising children definitely came before people decided to partner-up. For an example, I'm not saying you have to believe the Bible literally, but most of the men in the early parts of it had multiple wives. Now, maybe it's a radical idea for the majority of the population to consider Biblical marriage traditional, but even if you don't believe in that particular religious text, it's at least evidence that plural marriages were pretty common thousands of years ago. I'm not saying they're better or worse, but they're definitely traditional.

<comment><USER14> If most men had many wives, there must have been a lot less men than women, and/or a lot of men with no wife at all. Or perhaps wife sharing would account for it.

<comment><USER13> Or, like a lot of books, most of the stories were about rich men who had things others didn't. That part isn't glossed over at all. But that's just about the Bible stories. If you're talking about my comments on early humans, I think it's likely that sharing partners was more common.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 Reasons to Make Links Longer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nikmcfly/10-reasons-to-make-links-longer-3c82d36823f5 <comment><USER2> The new killer app: [https://make-my-link-longer.glitch.me/](https://make-my- link-longer.glitch.me/)

Reminds me of [http://www.shadyurl.com/](http://www.shadyurl.com/) Looks like shadyurl.com is down now though :(</comment>


Ask HN: any ideas on how to deal with lousy Time Warner Cable service in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

Time Warner is the only option in my building. The internet is slow, flaky, and my partner and I can barely do low load things like ssh into servers and web browse simultaneously. Threads like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5276772 and their twitter feed leads me to believe that I am not alone.  Does anyone in NYC know how to fix this so I can get some work done at home? (Calling their customer service hasn't been helpful). <comment><USER2> Try getting DOCSIS 3.0 (50Mbps down/5Mbps up) if it's available in your area. That's what I have both at work and at home, in NYC, and it's great. The service rarely ever has outages, and speed is very good. I am using Time Warner as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What cable modem did TWC give you? I've got an UBEE DDW3612 that's DOCSIS 3.0, but its still pretty slow at times.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DIY animated ascii art - <AUTHOR> http://animasci.com

<comment><USER2> Not sure if it's because I'm on iOS chrome, but I don't see how or where to create these animations. I would think generating content is one of the primary actions you want users to be doing.

I also noticed that the page numbering is odd. The second page is numbered 7 in the URL, third page is 6, etc.

You may wan to consider a search feature and or categories rather than only reverse chronological order.

What's your long term vision/plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. You probably are visiting the page on a mobile device - there the links for drawing animations are at the bottom of the page. Since it's (still) a hassle to draw animations with a touchscreens I figured it won't hurt to stow links down there.

The page numbering is indeed unconventional, but that has it's reason too: links should be immutable. If someone links to page 6 it should always display the same content. If smaller page numbers have always the newest content, then they would not be immutable any more. The page numbering scheme animasci uses is actually exactly like the one of a book: older content is on smaller page numbers.

Long term vision? Hopefully see some good text animations!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you folks think? I am grateful for your constructive feedback :)</comment>


Building a Linux Desktop for Cloud Native Development - <AUTHOR> https://blog.alexellis.io/building-a-linux-desktop-for-cloud-native-development/ <comment><USER2> > chrome - [...] A faster browser than Firefox, sorry, not sorry.

What about fighting the Chromium monoculture? Is the difference in browser speed so great that you can't tolerate the extra lag in Firefox in order to fight Google's dominance?

<comment><USER3> There is no problem with a monoculture based around a common browser kernel.

Proof: Every cloud company uses Linux and this has created nothing but opportunity for ~~Linux users~~ everyone!

<comment><USER4> Also nothing but opportunity for those looking for kernel flaws, of which their many. The Linux kernel monoculture is a devastating weakness.

<comment><USER3> No it's not. It's an opportunity to fix things once for everyone instead of having to fix things a hundred times for a hundred different operating systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So it's an article about hardware, screens, and typical linux command line tools? What is the whole point he is trying to make that is not covered in 1000s other articleS?

<comment><USER6> I don't know that he needs to make a point, can't he just publish a guide about his own setup like 1000s of others do?

As for why it's notable and on the front page, if you don't know who Alex Ellis is, I strongly suggest you take a closer look at the OpenFaaS org on GitHub, if you're at all into K8s or want to do serverless stuff on K8s. Last week I had heard of this guy and thought I mostly knew why he was notable, but this weekend I started to try working with OpenFaaS, and found no less than 5 or more important projects under his name while traveling down the rabbit hole of "what's the best way for me to run this as a developer" – if my experience is not unique, then that answers it for me, why HN apparently cares what _his setup_ is like in particular.

Check out K3sup and inlets-operator, for example. The most surprising problem I solved on his dime this weekend was "how do I use cert-manager to get certificates for my Kubernetes ingresses, when the K8s cluster is private and LetsEncrypt can't reach it?" – I wasn't even hoping to solve this, but it just works out of the box, with a handful of apps provided through "k3sup app install" (including cert-manager, of course), your ingresses can get a public IP for long enough to perform the HTTP challenge, and your private cluster can get TLS certs handled automatically for a couple pennies, without any awkward certificate secrets hand-off process (where an admin carries the TLS certs from an internet-facing cluster over to the private cluster, for example, as I've heard of others doing to bootstrap their private clusters.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read the headline quickly and thought this was building a Linux Desktop on the Cloud and thought it would discuss hosting a performant desktop dev environment on AWS/DO/Azure. Anyone have great success with that?

<comment><USER8> Tried that with a fully specced out machine. It doesn't matter if VNC, X11 XDMCP, Teamviewer, Anydesk or some of the more obscure things I tried out. The latency kills all the fun.

<comment><USER9> > The latency kills all the fun.

I've found that while it changes the constraints on what is fun, some fun is still possible, and the ability to preserve state across devices/locations sometimes offsets the 'loss of fun'

e.g. coding / light 'ops' stuff that is just 'graphical text' is fairly bearable to me in the ~100ms range with good compression/low bandwidth settings, since often you can blindly type some code/commands and take a breath while the UI updates. Video/Graphics/Etc or heavy GUI interactivity starts to get a bit painful.

one clear benefit to cloud is faster in-cloud bandwidth/latency which could make up for the less responsive UI depending on your use case

<comment><USER8> Obviously you can get work done with it, I also can imagine that getting accustomed to a type and think about it approach while taking a breath might be worth the ability to preserve states. For me preserving states across devices/locations has been solved 10 years ago, though nowadays in extreme situations I just don't do any work if it's not my device. I won't enter any credentials on a device that's not mine or hasn't been in my physical control since being setup. I'd rather fly home. Nothing we do is that important.

For me a low latency is the single most important thing when using a computer. Having 1000hz input device rate on the mice, proper NVMe SSD and 144hz/240hz Display rate makes all the difference of a decent computer experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Affiliate link masquerading "article". What does mouse buying suggestions have to do with any of that....?

</comment><comment><USER11> > Note: if you are having issues with any of the images, this may be because > they are coming from an Amazon server. Reload the page without your add- > blocker, or view it from another browser.

So are these affiliate links or something? Why would I want to invest work to turn on ads?

<comment><USER12> it was actually nice reading the article without the images

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got a nuc8i5 (not i7 like his and not 10 as well) as I would to try Hackintosh as my last purchase of mbpro15 really break the bank.

but I never reached there. It now runs windows and linux very smoothly. Just swap the nvme 512g.

His experience seems useful as I still have a 512g for Hackintosh. May be I should try the min ubuntu 18 like his and then try the external ip access.

Good article I say. But not sure about he said ok with the noise. May get the noiseless case and do win/linux with it like this : ignore the Hackintosh part:

[https://youtu.be/tUUP8K3RqAo](https://youtu.be/tUUP8K3RqAo)

</comment><comment><USER14> Just to clarify one of the points in the article, in the U.S. I believe we can't deduct business costs like Zoom anymore unless you're 100% self- employed. BYOD-type deductions were unfortunately removed by the current administration.

<comment><USER15> > BYOD-type deductions were unfortunately removed by the current > administration.

Did you mean specifically the executive branch, or also the Congress?

It's a sincere question: I'm not really clear on what the IRS can do on its own vs. what requires legislative changes to the tax code.

<comment><USER16> I believe he means by congress, specifically the 2017 tax bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that the author had fan nose / heat issues with the Lenovo Ryzen mini PC.

I really hope AMD and OEMs get it together and make sure thermal design for their PCs allows for stability and noise reduction. Older HP workstations are a good choice for noise, price and power.

I have my noisy 2U machines under a bed in my downstairs room - but that requires a hard wired home and a spare room.

<comment><USER18> I built a 3400g in an A300 mini chassis. It's very quiet and very small. I don't know what Lenovo's issues were - maybe not enough vertical space?

<comment><USER17> Could also be thermal management issues on the software/ driver side of Linux. I remember reading about Linux kernel patches in that area very recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why do you need a special machine for cloud native development? I have created a GitGub repo with cloud native dev tools which is more than what I usually need.

[https://github.com/whirlwin/cloud-native- workspace](https://github.com/whirlwin/cloud-native-workspace)

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a similar post on my blog about setting up a Linux workstation for software development. I think one important aspect that is not covered in OP's very nice article, is command-line setup.

Switching from bash to zsh and starting to use plugins for improved history search, autocompletion, syntax highlighting and more was a huge productivity boost for me:

[https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux- workstation/#boo...](https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux- workstation/#boosting-command-line-productivity)

Especially relevant when dealing with lots of different tools, as is very common with cloude native development.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is some pretty serious affiliate content marketing :-/ Do we really need a guide on why you should install Ubuntu on a NUC?

</comment><comment><USER22> I liked the build, but I'll stick to my system76 laptop and using chromium and vim.

I'll probably replace the laptop when the one they, system76, are reportedly building themselves is released.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was hoping for something like ChromiumOS. I'm not sure what's the point the author is trying to make here.

<comment><USER24> I am still waiting for a Ubuntu Spin that attempts to do this. It would make for a nice change.

<comment><USER25> > I am still waiting for a Ubuntu Spin that attempts to do this.

You made me curious: what does mean _this_ in your comment? What do you like in ChromiumOS and would like to see in Ubuntu? What is in Ubuntu that you would like to have replaced with a ChromiumOS-like alternative?

<comment><USER24> Possibly some lightweight custom DE based on Gnome's SDK, like tiling manager possibly, to give it a ChromiumOS vibe, but you can still use other utils from Ubuntu. But one that's not too focused on shortcuts only.

<comment><USER25> Could you expand what do you mean by "ChromiumOS vibe" (ELI5)? Do you look for a i3 inside GNOME Shell?

PaperWM[0] is an example of a tiled scrolling (window) manager based on GNOME SDK (Mutter) that runs in GNOME session.

[0]: [https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM](https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why did he stack those 3 alexas on the loudspeaker?

</comment><comment><USER27> Which keyboard is he using? Looks very cool!

<comment><USER28> He mentioned it near the end of the article. Durgod Taurus K320 TKL

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078H3WPHM](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078H3WPHM)</comment></comment>


Data Analyst, Internal Finance - <AUTHOR> http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000005LG1e The Analytics Team at Palantir analyzes our company's financial and operational data so we can scale and operate our business more effectively. We are a combination of entrepreneurs, engineers, and finance geeks, brought together by our passion for solving complex problems to support data-driven transparency. What worked yesterday, needs to work better today, take less time, and provide further insight. Our small team is full of autonomous self-starters, and we tackle unstructured problems everyday with little to no oversight. Our projects are flexible and tailored to our superpowers; we analyze data using whatever program and method will generate the best results. Everything in our workplace is designed to let us rock a project from start to finish with no red tape to hold us back. This team resembles the rest of Palantir, not anything you'll find in traditional corporate finance.
Responsibilities: Transforming financial operations, always striving for impact Taking projects from start to finish, and in the process automating and setting them up to scale Analyzing, structuring, and presenting data Planning for the sake of execution, optimization, and efficiency Tackling structured or unstructured analyses without obvious solutions Collaborating with other Palantirians, across the company and around the globe
Requirements: BA/BS or MA/MS in Finance, Math, Statistics, Economics, Engineering or another analytical field Strong experience with complex data modeling in Excel; work with SQL a plus Demonstrated ability and desire to learn quickly, and make an impact Entrepreneurial mindset, with proven ability to be resourceful, and experience improving and streamlining processes Ability to work independently and as a team member in an unstructured environment
Preferred: Startup experience / work in a low structure high autonomy environment Data visualization experience <comment><USER2> Wow this position seems awesome. Do you know if they are specifically looking for someone with D3 experience? I guess it's time for a quick project...

edit: It says "This position is closed". Is this an error, or was this initially posted a while ago?</comment>


Robot with $100 Bitcoin buys drugs, gets arrested - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/102604472

<comment><USER2> Congratulations to the Swiss authorities for their reasonable attitude and decision. I wonder how this would have played out in the US? Also, it's curious that they were more concerned about the recreational drug than the fake passport.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beware, auto-playing video. Dear webdesigners, fucking stop that crap. Not everyone lives on an unmetered connection, and videos suck bandwidth like nothing else!

<comment><USER4> This problem would disappear if browsers would just include a click-to-play option for videos. If Google didn't own YouTube, it would have included this option a long time ago.

<comment><USER5> There is a click to play option for plugins in Chrome, and I'm pretty sure it exists for Firefox in some manner (config or extension), too.

[http://www.howtogeek.com/188059/how-to-enable-click-to- play-...](http://www.howtogeek.com/188059/how-to-enable-click-to-play-plugins- in-every-web-browser/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >In January 2015, the Swiss police confiscated the robot and its illegal purchases.

Ha. Put it on github and you can just re-download it as needed.</comment>


Google's Dremel Makes Big Data Look Small - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/google-dremel-versus-hadoop/ <comment><USER2> A small note: Its great to see so many great tools coming up to solve the kind of problems which were earlier difficult/impossible to solve.

But however please check your bid data use cases many times before using big data tools. Because frankly 'big data' is becoming a just cool must use tool regardless of use cases people have these days. I've even seen data sizes as small as 10 MB being considered for bid data use cases. Often this gets subjected to a monstrously complex architecture for no good reason.

Generally most of these cases can be addressed and solved with as simple a tool like sqlite! And all you generally need is something like Perl with sqlite and ability to write simple SQL queries.

People get deceived very easily, When they look at GB scale XML files they think that is what big data is. Yet most of that generally and easily goes into a traditional RDBMS. And the performance is generally is in pretty acceptable limits. Mark up eats a lot of space and data size. When converted to flat file structures like csv's, tsv's and then imported to a RDBMS the data sizes are way smaller. I've some times seen an order of 10x difference.

Another annoying thing is abuse of NoSQL databases. Perfectly relational data is being de normalized, force fed in NoSQL databases and access data interfaces are generally bad buggy sub implementations of SQL.

This is almost like, people who don't understand SQL are condemned to implement it badly.

<comment><USER3> "Woops you want to query that column? Better wait 12 hours while we add an index to petabytes of data! Oh shoot, and that column too? Another 12 hours, and you have to use both columns in the where to use the index. "

If you are storing xml files for your column-oriented DB then you should be shot. I imagine protocol buffers or something like that might be smarter. IMO.

Your other stuff is way off base as well, but I'm lazy.

<comment><USER4> He's talking about people mis-applying big data tools for things which are clearly not big data - there are a lot of applications that don't have, or will ever have petabytes of data.

The point about XML is comparing the storage size on disk of the same data in an XML files vs the equivalent data in a database, not stored as XML in a database.

<comment><USER3> Which is a false dichotomy, if you use the right storage mechanism for your column-oriented DB, the comparable relational DB storage will actually be larger since it has to index every column to provide the equivalent of what you can do with column-oriented storage. Also, another myth he brings up is that you can't have complex joins with column-oriented DBs. It's completely possible.

<comment><USER4> For practical purposes, you usually don't index every column. The index is a value-add for performance gains, which as far as I've seen requires custom implementation in map-reduce databases. When it is implemented, you would have the same storage problem. As an example you can look at Common Crawl, which has a public index of web page data. They provide a hadoop database of page source, and a smaller data set of page text. The page text database serves a similar function to an index. Using the text dataset instead of full HTML would be like an "Index Scan" in database optimizer terms.

I don't think he said you can't do complex joins; he said people tend to denormalize the data before putting it into NoSQL databases.

<comment><USER3> If you compare the two, then you must compare apples with apples. That is, you must compare relational DBs where every column is indexed since with column- oriented DBs, you can search by arbitrary columns without having to worry about which column is indexed. You can say that in practice you don't need this, so you reduce functionality but you're no longer comparing apples to apples. Besides, it's nice to search by any column, just because relational DBs limit you doesn't mean it's not useful. map-reduce databases are something entirely different, although you can do map-reduce via joins if need be.

You denormalize because, among other things, you don't have complex joins. With column-oriented DBs that can perform joins, denormalization is not necessary. NoSql is something entirely different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to the paper describing Dremel [PDF]: [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36632.pdf)

<comment><USER6> And there's already a potentially better column oriented datastore used at Google: <http://vldb.org/pvldb/vol5/p1436_alexanderhall_vldb2012.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an apache version of this in the works: [http://www.itworld.com/big- datahadoop/290026/new-apache-proj...](http://www.itworld.com/big- datahadoop/290026/new-apache-project-will-drill-big-data-near-real-time)

<comment><USER8> Nice, I see that MapR are initiators of this project, which can be seen as a good thing.

Here's the direct link to the project.

<https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/DrillProposal>

"Drill is a distributed system for interactive analysis of large-scale datasets, inspired by Google's Dremel."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I remember correctly, BigQuery only lets you import data via local csv files, uploaded one at a time. That makes importing data sets of relevant size quite a pain.

<comment><USER10> Oddly enough, I found out about this restriction just yesterday. I wanted to play around with Google's ngram dataset. Amazon hosts it for free in S3 making it a no brainer to run in EC2 or EMR.

Google doesn't have it available in Google Cloud Storage and I would burn a ton of bandwidth and time just to get it there.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11990839/is-there-a- way-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11990839/is-there-a-way-to- upload-to-cloudstorage-from-a-url)

This makes it too difficult to kick the tires on BigQuery IMO. A file that will upload in a reasonable amount of time is more or less a toy dataset and if it's big enough to be a valid test, you will probably spend days trying to get it uploaded.

<comment><USER11> There is publicdata.samples.trigrams in the public datasets.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I left a comment on the SO post noting that and my need for bigrams rather than trigrams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every time I see a paper with Web-Scale in the title I throw up in my mouth a little.

So they're using large amounts of nodes for parallel processing of complex queries with specific data segregated to individual nodes. The fuck does that have to do with the world-wide web or scaling the performance of an application on the web?

<comment><USER13> Because the data is the traffic of one of the most heavily used sites on the web, and the application is an index of the web. So there's two.

<comment><USER12> So I should call my dinner utensils Cow-Scale because they can be used on roast beef? Hey, I could call my socket wrenches Navy-Destroyer-Class-Scale because they can be used on boats!

Dremel does not have anything to do with the web _at all_. It's just data processing. You can use it for anything.

<comment><USER13> Dremel was specifically invented to solve the problem of analyzing website logs for a web search engine. They didn't build it to study particle accelerator traces and then throw it at weblogs later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Dremel" isn't trademarked by the rotary tool folks?

<comment><USER15> Trademarks apply to domains. Dremel have a trademark on the Dremel drill, not on anything in the whole world called Dremel.

<comment><USER14> Ah, _that_ is true, but if I recall, a "fanciful mark" that's entirely made up, like Kodak, Google, or Dremel; has to pass a higher bar. If Dremel produced and sold a power tool named "the Google", then there might be grounds.

<comment><USER16> It's an internal name not used in commerce so it is not subject to the same liability. Not an expert beyond that, but you can nickname your sister Kleenex without violating a trademark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not sure why Cloudera is part of this article, seems like all the attention here should be on Google and the BigQuery team.

Here is an open source project similar to Dremel:

[http://www.itworld.com/big-datahadoop/290026/new-apache- proj...](http://www.itworld.com/big-datahadoop/290026/new-apache-project-will- drill-big-data-near-real-time)

</comment><comment><USER18> From TFA "We discuss the core ideas in the context of a read-only system, for simplicity. Many Dremel queries are one-pass aggregations; there-fore, we focus on explaining those and use them for experiments in the next section. We defer the discussion of joins, indexing, up-dates, etc. to future work." Really, it takes Dremel multiple SECONDS to complete trivial massively parallelized read queries? It must take hours for an UPDATE or JOIN then. Wake me up when you move past the trivial, until then, enjoy your hair.

<comment><USER19> Dremel is a query tool, not a database.

<comment><USER20> That's true, BUT to query you need to have the ability to perform joins. That is what makes raw MapReduce such a pain and even higher level abstractions slow. I like the idea that Dremel is showing, I even downloaded the Google paper to read tonight, but the Apache implementation needs to have joins otherwise it's not a "query tool".

<comment><USER21> You can join on top of BigQuery with small join tables. [https://developers.google.com/bigquery/docs/query- reference#...](https://developers.google.com/bigquery/docs/query- reference#joins)

<comment><USER18> _cough_ Here small means less than 8MB of compressed data _cough_</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Looking for a technical co-founder (SF/East Bay) - <AUTHOR>

I launched a location-based application recently and need help taking it to the next level. I am looking for a Technical Co-Founder to share the load to make this happen. The service, Crumbs, is a location-based service that enables anyone to place notes in any place (not necessarily a business) in the world, thus leaving reviews, recommendations, experiences for others to see -- think of it as a Yelp/Facebook/Twitter of places. The service launched just a couple of weeks back, but we've had some previous good feedback from our alpha testers via TestFlight.
The app is currently out only for iPhone so it's Objective-C. The backend is done as Tomcat/Java Servlets (my forte) with almost the whole suite of AWS services (EC2, S3, RDS, SES), and Twilio (for invites via SMS). However, I am flexible on the technology for the next version. I'm considering HTML5 (for quick Android release), and could consider other backend technologies (my only requirements are extensive framework support and good scalability).
We made a couple of less-than-ideal product decisions that (I believe) have hindered the service's virality. Now that we have launched and have actual usage (we have solid app analytics in place), we can see this in perspective and that's what I am looking to correct in the next version.
Why I am a good co-founder for you: I am both business and tech. Not to brag, but I could probably go toe-to-toe with any technical guy out there. For Crumbs, I've written ~20K lines of objective-C (non-comments), and ~3K on the backend side. On the business side, I work - hard. I managed a team of part-time EECS students, contractors, got the website, and lined up committed angels (though not yet sufficient for a full angel round). For whatever it's worth, my resume looks good on paper (linkedin.com/in/wongjoh).
What I'm looking for: - Objective-C and Java EE preferred. Potential for HTML5 and other backend technologies - Good at hacking and at architecting (and knowing when to do what) - Strong product and UI design sense - Experience using social APIs (facebook/twitter) - Location: San Francisco or East Bay based -- we have office space in SF Financial District (close to Embarcadero station) and in Berkeley (a co-working location)
Also to be clear, I'm not looking for a code monkey. I'm looking for a partner who can co-lead the technical side. Working in the same room is very important to me. You can discuss long-term direction one minute, then, draw a component diagram, and then pull up Xcode/Eclipse and start making it happen.
Why is this a great opportunity?: - I am offering up to 1/3 equity in the company (terms to be discussed) - The product is built, operational - A chance to take a project and help mold it into a success - Proven to obtain funding. Lastly, this is a very large market opportunity.
Interested in talking more?? Contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com and let's get the dialogue started.
[full disclosure: I copied the format of this post from a previous, very good, HN post also looking for a tech co-founder] <comment><USER2> Clickables:

<http://www.crumbsapp.com/> => Looks cool!

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/wongjoh>

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this idea. The design on your site is also really really nice. Good job.

Good luck to you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Johnny Wong,

I think your app is a really interesting idea. Ill try it out - but on the site, you have the marketing photo scroll which show notes on pics -- but you dont have screenshots of the actual app anywhere?

That would be more helpful...

If you find a good co-founder - can you come back and submit a post to HN "Found my cofounder on HN and 3 months into it we are doing great, here is some advice"

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, especially the "we are doing great" part ;-)

Ahh, the screenshots. You are right -- nowhere to be found on the site, but they are at the itunes link ([http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crumbs- app/id421662811?mt=8&#...). Will correct that at our next site update</comment></comment>