Multistate Outbreak of E. Coli O157:H7 Infections Linked to Romaine Lettuce - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2018/o157h7-04-18/index.html <comment><USER2> About 90% of the United States' supply of lettuce in the winter comes from Yuma, Arizona [0].

I think it more appropriate for most people to eat seasonally-appropriate vegetables during the winter months, than to get a little lettuce from thousands of miles away. Winter squash, carrots, apples, and many other food products store very well in root cellars [1].

[0] [http://www.visityuma.com/agritourism.html](http://www.visityuma.com/agritourism.html) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar)

<comment><USER3> How many people have root cellars? I'd guess it's a pretty small number of residences (e.g. definitely not folks in apartments).

<comment><USER2> Root cellars can be built anywhere food is grown. The Wikipedia page has pictures of very large buildings.

My point is that it's more efficient to eat locally-stored produce than to ship lettuce from Yuma to Maine in the winter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this happen at wide spread scale? I understand that situations occur where birds could track in disease by landing in growing areas but it seems like a more substantial contamination to cause this many infections.</comment>


Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End fails to thrill - <AUTHOR> http://www.keepingthedoor.com/2009/08/02/vernor-vinges-rainbows-end-a-review/

<comment><USER2> I found Rainbows End mindlessly boring; most of the technologies are obvious extrapolations from today, with nothing exciting or surprising about the consequences. It's sort of like a fiction writer realizing his character could have a PC with 1T of RAM.

Great science fiction is about ideas, not technology per se.

I don't usually bother to criticise stuff I don't like, but I loved his two previous books (Deepness in the Sky, and Fire upon the Deep, and before them, True Names). Those seem like labours of love; whereas this one feels like it was to pay the bills. I don't know what's up with Mr Vinge (except he retired from his comp sci academic position...); I would just love to have some more of his old output. Not all such wishes can be granted, of course, nor are necessarily even possible.

<comment><USER3> While I found the book boring, I do like to read explorations of a world where the "obvious" (to us!) technologies grow and see what aspects of society change. In essence, that's really what any Sci-Fi book must accomplish especially if they don't have a good story to tell behind that.

While a lot of the key thoughts weren't really new versus what I was reading in short stories a decade ago, it did offer some further "what if" scenarios that are interesting with (especially) the wearables and contact lens UI. In addition, the (sometimes jumbled) interaction of people with their certificate authorities and groups was something that wouldn't have been discussed at all in older scifi-- those are problems we'll need to think about more eventually and I liked seeing those ideas explored a bit.

Overall, I think I like Rainbow's End more as a touch on a lot of different near tech since a good bit of SciFi focuses on one or two far-out tech concepts that become "magic" versus tech.

This one covers a lot of not-so-distant and not-so-magic tech concepts we can almost see on the horizon:

      * Wearable computing
      * Augmented reality
      * GPS-guided air-mail
      * Virtual amusement parks
      * Library digitization
      * Networks of trust and authentication
      * Emergent AI (slightly more "magic", but has always been "any day now" in scifi)
      * Ubiquitous software development
      * Auto-pilot vehicles
      * Virtual reality learning
      * Virtual tribes/cliques/social groups
      * ... lots more ...

Pretty much everything he discusses (maybe aside from body regeneration?) is near enough in possibility that you can see how we might get there and it's interesting to think about the interactions of all of the concepts at once.

While he's not a good story teller, the high number of topics he was tackling at once made the story something I kept reading. I think it's unfair to give him a low grade because he didn't come up with lots of "new" revolutionary ideas-- just exploring the interactions between them is compelling enough that I'd like young scientists to read this, even if they see a different future ahead.

I would also like to read more stories of the "near cool" future rather than _only_ have access to deeper stories like Diamond Age, Ender's Game, and Steel Beach.

<comment><USER4> You might like "Halting State" by Charlie Stross.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State>

<http://www.antipope.org/charlie/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I mean, gosh. There weren't even any _aliens_!

I didn't find it anything like the ride his previous two were, but I'm not sure it was meant to be. That's not to defend the book; I definitely think character took a bit of a back seat to the technology, but in a sense, I think technology -- rampant and out of control -- _is_ a character.

One thing, speculatively, along those lines: I think (or perhaps merely hope) Rabbit is another Pham Nuwen. Remember, _Fire upon the Deep_ was written first; _Deepness_ seven years later. When I read the former, I kept wondering what Vinge was on about with the crazy reanimated historical dude. Then I read the second.

Rabbit felt a little like Nuwen like that.

</comment><comment><USER6> This was the first book I read of Vinge's and I didn't think it was that great. Later I read _A Deepness in the Sky_ and _A Fire Upon the Deep_ , which I thought were _awesome_. These are the smartest science fiction books I have ever read. After reading these, I ordered all the rest of his books. I also really liked _Marooned in Realtime_ and _The Peace War_.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was very disappointed with _Rainbow's End_. Even the politics bothered me. Judging from the prominent role terrorism and the Department of Homeland Security play in the book, Vinge has abandoned the libertarianism of his earlier books and become a dyed-in-the-wool Bushie.

<comment><USER8> Well, it _was_ a dystopia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I much preferred the novella _Fast Times at Fairmont High_ , which had many of the same characters and setting.</comment>


Show HN: Awesome-ci Lot's of tools for git, file and static source code analysis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cytopia/awesome-ci <comment><USER2> So, every script seems to be a 900+ line bash script, with largely the same boilerplate, and the actual checks/fixes are just one-liners.

While wrapping possibly complex/tricky one-liners with an easy to use shell script makes sense, it seems like they could be optimised to re-use most of the boilerplate in a library file.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true. I tried to make them as generic as possible, so whenever I have to update one of the files, I can just copy/paste a fix to all other files.

This also let's me add other checks/fixes more easily.

I wasn't sure about the best way of having a bash library. Any ideas about this are welcome to hear.

<comment><USER2> I might look into this more deeply and open some issues to discuss possible improvements. I like the general goal, and these days it's refreshing to see someone not reinventing the wheel with a nodejs script.

<comment><AUTHOR> So true. I like the idea of taco bell programming: [http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell- progra...](http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2010/10/taco-bell- programming.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Docker Acquires Tutum - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.com/2015/10/docker-acquires-tutum/ <comment><USER3> I try and not comment about this too much, but the text on the Docker site is stupidly hard to read. The font color, #7A8491, has a contrast ratio of 3.8/1 (black on white has a ratio of 21/1), which is barely above the w3 accessibility standards for _large_ text (18 point, or 14 point bold - <USER2> for the thin stroke text the Docker page uses (Helvetica Neue Thin)).

Fix this, please, Docker. A few more points towards black isn't going to destroy the look and feel of your page.

<comment><USER4> Every time somebody brings this up, I always think about this website: [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

<comment><USER5> And we come full circle (from their website):

[http://thumbsnap.com/i/djeyW72B.png?1021](http://thumbsnap.com/i/djeyW72B.png?1021)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems to be a good move towards a more stable revenue generator for Docker, the company, but I'm more interested in what the long-term Docker ecosystem implications are.

I think Docker is _just_ passing through the early adopter status in terms of actual production usage (it's much more mature in its lifecycle for dev), and having one of many cloud Docker providers owned by Docker might have a chilling effect on other 'container in the cloud' providers using Docker as their primary container format/platform.

<comment><USER7> I mean- AWS, GCE, and Microsoft are already on board, and AFAICT all the little container centric providers are 100% docker. Who else needs to be convinced?

<comment><USER8> Well, I would say all of those companies are convinced of the open source container engine itself, but much less around Swarm, Compose, and the other components.

In particular, Mesos seems super strong in the orchestration/scheduling layer, and its not clear that Docker will be able to dislodge them.

<comment><USER9> I honestly think it solves a different problem. Apple runs Siri on the biggest mesos cluster in the world (pretty much verbatim quote from MesosCon 2015. I was there). Twitter runs clusters over 10k physical nodes.

Swarm and compose are cute, but they simply aren't made for that kind of massive scale. The inverse of course, is that they are incredibly easy to setup, and they work for a very large number of workloads reasonably well.

I manage mesos clusters as part of $day_job. There is a certain level of setup required and if you don't need the scale, you simply don't need mesos for it. I really see them as complementary in the longer term. Perhaps a swarm mesos framework could be written. It is highly unlikely that Docker will ever do the resource scheduling better than Mesos.

<comment><USER10> Great points.

There is a swarm/mesos integration whereby the Swarm API is offered to the developer but it uses the Mesos framework to do the scheduling.

It works, and there's more to come in terms of demos around the corner.

<comment><USER9> And that is the sweet spot where you get the ease of swarm with the scalability of mesos. Win/win

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried Tutum a couple months ago, the onboarding experience was awesome, the free image builder was super fast, metrics of my processes everywhere I loved it... the struggle started until I deployed a real app with little workload: After a couple of hours Metrics didn't worked at all, process got stalled and the whole UI became useless because I had zero visibility of what was going on.

I switched to Heroku only to realize that I had the same problem there too, obviously it was an issue in my app but at least Heroku have me an specific R14 error code and description of what was happening and finally knew what I was dealing with. For the next 48h that I was debugging the memory leak I had my dynos switched to 1X to get even more resource metrics, once the issue was solved I switched my dynos back to hobby.

I'm considering going back to Tutum now that I have deferpanic installed and configured in my app and my Heroku bills are around 100 USD monthly(20USD SSL endpoint x 3 + 7USD hobby dynos x 3 + 22.50USD Compose RethinkDB), but I was shocked to realize how much value a mature PaaS can deliver for clients even for a hobby-ish app like mine.

</comment><comment><USER12> I did a quick smoke test to see if Tutum passes muster. My smoke test for this kind of tool is if they have a solution for deploying mongodb as a production level service with sharding or at the very least replica sets. Like so many other "let's do the easy part and stop there" companies, they have a template for starting a single development mongodb node that would be easy enough to do myself. I want a tool that has a repository of templates for making formations of very hard things easy. Openshift is at least working on it: [https://github.com/openshift/mongodb](https://github.com/openshift/mongodb) Their replica set version is not able to persist data permanently until Kubernetes figures out how to attach separate persistent volumes to pods in the same service. Unfortunately, Amazon is again the only game in town that does exactly what I want: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/mongodb-on-the- aws-cloud-ne...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/mongodb-on-the-aws-cloud- new-quick-start-reference-deployment/).

If I want to run locally, I have to ditch Docker entirely and just use Ansible: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible- examples/tree/master/mong...](https://github.com/ansible/ansible- examples/tree/master/mongodb)

<comment><USER13> I'm not trying to be pedantic, but the phrase is "passes muster." [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pass_muster](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pass_muster)

But "passes mustard" did give me a pretty funny visual image. :)

<comment><USER12> Ha, well that was stupid of me :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do I have this right?

In 2011 dotCloud launches as a platform-as-a-service company.

In 2013 dotCloud releases docker, software based on the lessons they learned building their PaaS product.

In 2013 Tutum starts to build a PaaS based on Docker.

In 2014 Docker (renamed from dotCloud) sells their PaaS to cloudControl.

In 2015 Docker buys Tutum.

<comment><USER15> Tutum is not a real PaaS, it runs containers in the user infrastructure and can be easily adapted to run on-premise

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tutum mentions they manage persistent volumes and handle mapping them to containers at runtime, presumably across different nodes/hosts.

Anyone know how that actually works? Is it similar to Flocker at all?

<comment><USER17> In the last dockerconEU I had a chat with Borja Burgos and he said that they were planning to use flocker for that.

Not sure if finally was the solution ;-)

Congrats too all teams!

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I know that they are still looking into integrating with Flocker. Not there yet, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've used Tutum for a little while now and I love it. I'm just wondering about what Dockers plans are for when Tutum leaves beta. It would be nice if it stayed free. The potential pricing seems decent enough at $7/node/month, but it could be better.

edit:

updated tentative pricing image url as it looks like someone has deleted it off the tutum slack team site.

[http://i.imgur.com/i5k8nkr.png](http://i.imgur.com/i5k8nkr.png)

<comment><USER20> "The requested file could not be found."

<comment><USER19> I've updated my post with a new url.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I jumped on Tutum immediately after it was announced, installed it across my test infrastructure, because it scratched an itch that was particularly hard for me. I like to think of myself as a good user / developer, and I submitted a few tickets with some bug reports and feedback, along with a few questions trying to clarify how they were doing what they did.

I have almost never been treated like such a piece of shit in my life. The attitude I got from multiple people on the Tutum team really drove home that they don't give a shit about loners like me, don't have time for my bug reports, and don't care what my questions are. It really left me thinking I must have said something inadvertently that totally offended them, but I couldn't find it anywhere when I looked.

I really hope I just got some of their team on a one-off bad day, or those people have since left, or something. It was really strange, and of course I immediately stopped using their software.

</comment><comment><USER22> Amazon Elastic Container Service is a robust offering and I can't see why anyone would choose Tutum over ECS.

Yes, you can run Tutum on AWS, but why? When products can't substantially differentiate themselves against AWS, the customer will choose AWS. Customers don't want to be stuck in choice paradox.

<comment><USER23> Because failover.

Seriously - Tutum lets me rebuild my infra on Digital Ocean if/when AWS dies, and quickly. ECS, by contrast, is just POOF in that scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm an avid Tutum fan and an early adopter. Explore and play with this tech it just get's nicer the more you use it. You can run Tutum on your own machines (including your laptop behind a firewall/NAT) with the Bring Your Own Node configuration. I have moved systems from AWS to Digital Ocean with a couple of clicks. I currently have regional failover on Digital Ocean which took me a few minutes to set up.

The whole user experience is awesomely simple. If I had to describe these guys I'd say they are the Digital Ocean of the docker ecosystem.

Their 'Stacks' are so similar to docker-compose that only minor edits are required - and I expect with this acquisition even that will go in time.

And yes, finally a revenue stream for Docker I can believe in!

</comment><comment><USER25> It's interesting, and logical, that Docker would buy something. I'm only just getting into Docker but everyone I talk to says something along the lines of "no one runs bare docker containers in Production".

I've also been using Tutum and it's made life really easy, especially on my BYONode. I just hope they don't price the product out of reach for us hobbyists.

<comment><USER26> > "no one runs bare docker containers in Production"

can you elaborate on this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Only a matter of time before Red Hat acquires Docker...

<comment><USER18> Yuck! Don't say such things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I somehow felt like the docker team was closer with the Rancher team, so I thought docker might acquire Rancher at some point. I think this is a move to produce revenue in the future while Rancher is yet another open source project to monetize.

<comment><USER10> We spend a lot of time with all companies in the ecosystem, and feel it's important to stay close and to support both their technical and business interests.

We're engaged with over 300 companies that are technically integrating in to Docker to enhance their product offerings, with 6-10 added every week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd like to know what Tatum offers in comparison to fabric8.io. It seems the "video intro" and "take it for a spin" links are the same, and not a video introduction. That's disappointing. Maybe someone in charge of the page can fix it please?

Searching for "Tatum video introduction" on a search engine only returns results about a certain movie star, which is not terribly helpful.

<comment><USER30> The name of the company is Tutum, not Tatum, maybe that will help your search results.

Here is another youtube video: Getting Started with Tutum [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnV92aHLmyE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnV92aHLmyE)

<comment><USER29> Wow, I totally misread that. I bet I'm not alone :) Thanks for the link KenCochrane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, that was fast... After the announcement of Amazon Container Registry docker had to make some move and this is a great one.

Congrats to the tutum team, they have built a really nice project that makes really easy to build and maintain container pipelines.

Can't wait to see the integrations with the other docker tools...

<comment><USER32> Speaking of Amazon, I thought that docker was going to hit their bottom line as now people could easily fully utilize their ec2 instances and thus cutting into their already thin margins. However they jumped past this problem with Lambda. Because in the end I don't want to run an operating system. I don't even want to run tomcat. I just want to run a function in tha cloud. Docker makes it easier to shovel around your application while lambda is the next phase of cloud development.

<comment><USER31> > Docker makes it easier to shovel around your application while lambda is the > next phase of cloud development.

Yes, lambda and friends (AWS Mobile Hub, JAWS Stack, etc) are the next paradigm, but it's not ripe yet. For instance the newly introduced cronjob only allows 5 mins periods as minimum, when for one of my projects I needed full cron precision (I was starting to build on Lambda and had to return to docker...)

Maybe in 6-12 months thing will be fully ready...

<comment><USER33> You should test out IronWorker which allows for 1-2 hours per task run, more languages, and supports docker images for your runtime environments. Although it not as price conscious as lambda it is definitely more feature rich and easy to use.

(I used to work for Iron.io)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is the recommended development environment for this? Docker Toolbox? What's the recommended setup?

</comment><comment><USER35> So that's why the "Sign in with Github" button was hidden behind a link this morning ... :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Great news!

</comment><comment><USER37> Hurray! :)</comment>


Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots/ <comment><USER2> Plugging the holes, even if you don't believe they are being exploited, is essential to restoring bipartisan trust in our elections.

The actual methods are quite ingenious and worthy of HN discussion. We really don't have anything in place to secure our elections or even determine how bad the fraud actually is.</comment>


Almost booting an iOS kernel in QEMU - <AUTHOR> https://worthdoingbadly.com/xnuqemu/ <comment><USER2> >..but XNU is now open source.

Well XNU has always been 'open-source' [1] for some time on Intel machines but its just that ARM support remained closed (until 2017) which is why the darwin-on-arm [2] project existed. But I'm assuming that the OP means that the ARM64 code was recently open-sourced in the XNU sources[3] making a possible open-source ARM port much simpler. I still find it quite interesting to see some regained attempts in emulating iOS; with Corellium being the furthest at doing this.

[1] ([https://opensource.apple.com](https://opensource.apple.com))

[2] ([https://github.com/darwin-on-arm/xnu](https://github.com/darwin-on- arm/xnu))

[3] ([https://github.com/apple/darwin- xnu/search?p=5&q=ARM64&unsco...](https://github.com/apple/darwin- xnu/search?p=5&q=ARM64&unscoped_q=ARM64))

</comment><comment><USER3> In a way, it seems strange nobody made a full-blown iPhone/iPad iOS emulator yet. Not a simulator like the one Apple makes, but an emulator like for game systems. I would guess the amount of information available about iPhone hardware and software would make it much easier to emulate than e.g. a gamecube, Wii, PS3, etc, especially for older models. Such an emulator could obviously be used for piracy, but could also be an intersting tool for a homebrew scene (custom firmware, developing iOS apps on Linux & Windows, etc.

Is there a practical reason why this would be hard or impossible? Or is it just for fear of Apple's lawyers?

<comment><USER4> It seems strange to me that there are no Chinese OEMs selling mobiles with iOS. I mean, I understand it's hard, but is it THAT hard?

<comment><USER5> You would probably need to hack the OS to disable updates etc to prevent Apple from remotely bricking your device.

<comment><USER6> Wrapping it with a firewall would be the easy part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I would love virtual iPhones. For testing apps, anonymously. But I doubt that I'd get an invite from Corellium, either :(

</comment><comment><USER8> Reads as an ad for Corellium...</comment>


Headphones can be hijacked to surreptitiously record audio (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/11/great-now-even-headphones-can-spy <comment><USER2> I expected this was another story about the Bose lawsuit

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bose-lawsuit- idUSKBN17L2BT](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bose-lawsuit-idUSKBN17L2BT)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13014435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13014435)</comment>


Researchers Say Women Secretly Desire Hairy Geeks - <AUTHOR> http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/02/19/1650248/Researchers-Say-Women-Secretly-Desire-Hairy-Geeks?from=twitter <comment><USER2> I wouldn't be so sure. The Daily Mail has a pretty terrible record when it comes to science reporting. See for instance [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate- ch...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change- global-warming-mojib-latif)

a Google search should come up with many more examples.

Please also consider linking directly to a newspaper story, instead of doing so by proxy through Slashdot. The Daily Mail is on the same level as the National Enquirer. Some may want to avoid reading trash.

</comment><comment><USER3> ... and never ever act upon that desire.</comment>


First-ever fiber optic cable between U.S. and India via Brazil and South Africa - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2017/11/06/iox-cable-ltd-to-provide-first-subsea-route-between-u-s-and-india-via-brazil-and-south-africa/ <comment><USER2> One of my all-time favorite Wired articles is "Mother Earth Mother Board". It is the epic adventure tale of laying down fiber in some unforgiving environments.

[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

<comment><USER3> I came to the comments section to make sure this article was posted, it's such a fantastic read. If you read it and are hungry for more, check out "How the World Was One" by Arthur C. Clarke. It's a fascinating history of telecommunications with a large focus on submarine cables.

[https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Was-Arthur- Clarke/dp/055307...](https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Was-Arthur- Clarke/dp/0553074407)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not knowing much about the cable market I fail to see the import of this. Touching at South Africa seems to be quite the detour between the US and India from my point of view.

<comment><USER5> NYC to India is something like 13000km via the Mediterranean.

NYC to South Africa is about the same distance.

South Africa to India is about 7000km, so that's the additional distance with this route. But perhaps it's more reliable, there are a lot of ships around Europe.

<comment><USER6> The Suez canal is full of fibre optic cables [1], don't think reliability is a big issue.

Latency through existing cables US<->Europe<->India is likely lower.

[1] [https://www.submarinecablemap.com/](https://www.submarinecablemap.com/)

<comment><USER7> According to that map they don't actually go through the man made canal. They go overland through Egypt.

<comment><USER6> You're right, but they go through the Gulf of Suez which is still an extremely busy area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to the Submarine Cable Map (linked elsewhere in the comments), there are already a number of cables between the USA, SA, and IN.

Is it the "contiguous" nature of this cable that is so novel?

<comment><USER8> In retrospect, I am very sorry for neglecting Brazil in my list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> great development - will not only help networking reliability between USA and India but for whole of South Asia.</comment>


Probably Predatory – Barely Legally - <AUTHOR> http://barelylegally.com/post/probably-predatory/ <comment><USER2> The underlying issue, IMHO, is that the AppStore has been designed in such a way that what Marco is doing is probably the sensible thing for him to do, as it only supports "hit-based" business models. Well, and scam-based ones.

Except that with software, such a hit-based model is even more skewed towards winner-takes-all than music is. So let's put the blame where the blame belongs: the ones creating the incentive structure, not the ones doing their best within that structure.

<comment><USER3> Why is such a model more skewed for software than for music?

<comment><USER2> Because most people listen to more different songs than they have (or need) different apps. If I have one to do app and am happy with it, there is strong disincentive to buy/use a different one.

Whereas if I have one hit song, chances are I'll buy another one, there really isn't any disincentive.

Or put another way: count the number of apps (you use) vs. the number of songs you listen to.</comment></comment></comment>


First thoughts on Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://www.byzantinereality.com/?p=868

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I've been doing Erlang now for a handful of projects for a year and a half, and I love it.

The syntax is a little jarring at first, more-so than most languages, but it's really not that bad. And as long as you stick with OTP, generic servers, and the like, you get to avoid some of issues that can make Erlang code harder to follow (naked bang message passing, spawning processes directly, etc).

Frankly, I think the syntactical warts (ending line variations, record syntax, if-statement construct, etc) are well worth it for the benefits of message passing, lightweight process spawning, pattern matching, code hot-swap, and particularly locational transparency.

At the very least, Erlang is an interestingly different enough language that I recommend it for anyone to spend a few weeks to learn at least the basics.

</comment><comment><USER3> This quote from the post says it all: "I actually haven't finished the book yet – I'm at the end of the first chapter".

It's great that the author is learning a new language, but maybe wait until you've actually done something with it or at least finished the book to write about it? First impressions don't mean much.

<comment><USER4> Actually, that's not what he said. Here's the full quote: "I'm at the end of the first chapter that explains how Erlang's concurrency features work"

A quick look shows that it's the sixth chapter. Either way, he's clear about this disclaimer, and his post was enough to peak my interest in this specific book.

For you, first impressions _do_ seem to mean much.

<comment><USER2> That was also the first chapter in the book where suddenly Erlang seemed freaking amazing. Up until then, it was just a functional language with an odd syntax. After the introduction to message passing and concurrency, I was in love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        Is it Erlang's semantics that really rub people the wrong way?
        ... after seeing O'Caml, Haskell, and Clojure before, Erlang feels
        a bit easier to get the hang of. Erlang's semantics indeed throw
        people off, especially those who know a C-style language.

I write in Haskell, I knew OCaml, Racket is a friend of mine. Erlang is no Clojure.

The problem with Erlang is not one of semantics, it's one of syntax. I find the syntax of Erlang jarringly bad.

Try this for a longer rant: <http://damienkatz.net/2008/03/what_sucks_abou.html>

<comment><USER6> If Erlang's syntax bothers you and like Clojure you should check out LFE (Lisp Flavored Erlang). It's Erlang with a Lisp sytax.</comment></comment>


BMW i3 Long Term Battery Capacity Report: Better Than Expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/24/bmw-i3-long-term-battery-capacity-report-better-expected/ <comment><USER2> There is the LeafSpy app for Nissan Leaf owners that lets you monitor and log (to DropBox) several battery parameters.

Unfortunately Nissan removed the 80% charge timer in newer models, so you have to estimate charge time if you don't want to hit 100%.

That being said, you do want to charge to 100% periodically so the cells can be equalized. You can see this happening if your EVSE can log current.

</comment><comment><USER3> The BMW i3 is a really nice car to drive around London for short trips. There's a pretty good charging infrastructure through ChargeNow and the car is nippy. It takes a short while to get used to the regenerative braking system and I particularly like the rear mounted camera for parking.

<comment><USER4> Is there anything special about the camera or did you previously have a vehicle without one? Rear view cameras will be mandatory on US cars starting with the 2018 MY.

<comment><USER5> > Rear view cameras will be mandatory on US cars starting with the 2018 MY.

Woah, never expected that. I remember thinking they'd be a gimmick when I first got one. Life changer.

<comment><USER6> I am 100% against those cameras on everyday cars(not trucks). In a few minutes im heading to the local pool to swim laps. That parking lot is a nightmare. Older people in the nicer/largest cars heads-down watching the screen while backing up. Ive seen far to many close calls. Cars should be limited to 0.01 mph while using such cameras.

Remember what happens next. They will want to remove mirrors. Then rear windows will go. Backing and changing lanes will become like instrument flying. Pedestrians and two-wheelers beware.

<comment><USER7> I agree to a certain extent. I believe backup cameras are this generation's equivalent of the automatic car. Where I grew up, you had pretty much no choice but to learn to drive using a manual/stick which in my (biased) opinion teaches you greater respect and understanding of a vehicle and a better appreciation of how to use the gears to your advantage in various conditions. I now have an automatic car and I've noticed it's so easy to just drop into a zen state on the highways which I didn't find so much with a manual car.

Perhaps it's a stretch, but I feel the same way about reverse cameras. We were taught to not rely solely on mirrors but to physically check over our shoulders before reversing, but so often these days (usually in SUV-dominated supermarket lots) I see people fire up their car, look down at the screen and start reversing without physically checking out the surrounding environment. The cameras are a great aid for sure, but I think over reliance on them is dangerous and I hope the basics will continue to be taught to learner drivers as cameras become more prevalent. Of course, soon none of us will be driving anyway so maybe it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't call cameras "this generation" anything. My experience is not that young people are relying upon these cameras. It's old people, people who cannot so easily look over their shoulders. Cameras are also, today, on newer and more expensive/larger cars generally bought by older people. It's like the pickup trucks with those little steps that fold out. They aren't marketing those to actual cowboys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> GM seems to have the best battery health system. Doesn't let you charge past 85%, 90%, always keeps 10% or 15% in reserve. Only reports the chunk between. Dedicated robust temperature control system.

Volt has been out since 2011 with as-far-as-I-know no battery degradation issues. Some people have driven well over 300,000 miles with no problems.

<comment><USER9> >Volt has been out since 2011 with as-far-as-I-know no battery degradation issues. Some people have driven well over 300,000 miles with no problems

This is nice but anectdotal evidence is useless when looking at failure rates. Does GM put out any actual data on the Volt/Bolt? Im really curious how they stack up against Toyota for reliability.

<comment><USER10> [http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt- ba...](http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt-battery- packs-replaced-due-general-capacity-degradation/)

I have a 2013 Volt with 67K (50K ev) miles and there is, so far, no change in ev range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an interesting article, but the cross-validation is perhaps suspect? It seems likely the 'percentage used' indicator is based on the same underlying measurements as the 'estimated capacity' service indicator. So it's quite likely illusory validation of the 4% loss figure.

</comment><comment><USER12> The i3s that I see in London don't appear to be plugged in, they seem owned by people who don't have that at home. I presume they plug in at work but without knowing that there is no way for knowing for sure.

Are people buying these things, doing a small amount of miles with them and powering them from the petrol engine on-board rather than plugging in? In that way getting preferential parking spaces at airports and in the city centre, no congestion charge needed? I am fine with people using them in 'Prius mode' if it does mean people that did rule out electric due to not having home infrastructure can actually go 'electric lite', running off petrol and opportunistic charging.

<comment><USER13> More likely that they plug it just around the corner.

If they don't have it near the entrance to their building it means that there is one very near by, the council will not put a new one if there is one within walking distance from your residence.

The street level charge spots usually have a hour limit for this reason even for resident parking.

Source: I live in central London(W2) and when inquiring with Westminster council about a charge spot they've directed me to 3, one at the end of my street and 2 in streets parallel to mine all within 5min walking distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> TL;DR: if manufacturer gives a guarantee for a component, the component will last for honoring the guarantee.

<comment><USER15> There is a catch. A coworker had the battery on his wife's Honda Insight go bad. No worries - it was only 18 months old, so get it replaced under warranty. Afterwards, they were informed that the new battery would be covered under Honda's replacement part warranty - 12 months. And not the remainder of the 8 year/80,000 mile original equipment warranty.

<comment><USER16> That can't be legal.

<comment><USER17> It likely is legal. The BestBuy extended warranties work the same way. If BestBuy ultimately needs to replace your product, then your extended warranty is finished.

<comment><USER16> Extended warranties are totally different from original warranties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why would someone buy an I3 instead of a Model 3? Model 3 seems to win on all fronts: looks, performance and value for money/price. Is i3 really just a POC for BMW?

<comment><USER19> The i3 is available _right now_ and the Model 3 isn't. Actually getting getting the car might be a consideration for a lot of people. My housemate has an i3 and it's a _fantastic_ vehicle - the best utilization of plan area of any vehicle I've ever been in.

<comment><USER20> This is hacker news, where allowing the theoretical, unavailable best to be the enemy of the available good is all part of the game :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> All the batteries in the world won't make the i3 pretty.

<comment><USER22> It's ugly on purpose to minimize sales.

<comment><USER23> This is unfortunately so true. I am waiting for the model 3 even though it might mean losing the sizeable German government subsidy, because the i3 is such an eyesore. BMW, if you're listening, stop being afraid of cannibalizing your petrol car sales and make a decent looking EV in the i3 price segment, because this just made you lose a sale to Tesla, and I'm far from alone here. Unless the reason is that the i3 is just a compliance car and you lose money making one, in which case, get your act together because it's 2017 and you risk doing a RIM vs Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is full of suspect data and shilling on a car that has gotten a lot of bad press. This feels like pure PR. Please respond if you disagree.</comment>


zfsonlinux: Linux 5.0 compat: SIMD compatibility - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/commit/e5db31349484e5e859c7a942eb15b98d68ce5b4d <comment><AUTHOR> Given that applications rely on performant file systems, banning ZFS from using the FPU of the hardware effectively broke userspace. Thank you, Linux kernel, for violating that cardinal rule for no reason or benefit.

<comment><USER2> "Don't break user space" has to simultaneously be one of the most parroted and least understood rules.</comment></comment>


What are the most indispensable books for indie hackers? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/what-are-the-most-indispensable-books-for-indie-hackers-e2ec3a13e9 <comment><USER2> Doing your own research, _visiting libraries_ , reading reviews, etc. These are the best way to find books that you never would have found otherwise.

Otherwise you're going to end up with the same old stuff (SICP, Release It!, GEB, Code Complete, blah blah blah). Those books are actually good but they are on every single list and even worse, some "modern classics" are actually complete dreck. You might impress your developer friends but you won't advance yourself.

For example when I was studying for my PhD in signal processing and machine learning (before machine learning became popular again) I had to learn a lot about functional analysis. I also needed to learn a small amount of measure theory; and to go appreciably deeper in to time-frequency analysis, probability, and statistics, than I had before.

I discovered many masterpieces of my own accord. I never would have seen them because one lesson I learned during my literature review and actually doing research is that very few people actually read the books and articles they cite. They merely copy bibliographies from one ancestor article to another without knowing why.

<comment><USER3> > Those books are actually good but they are on every single list and even > worse, some "modern classics" are actually complete dreck. You might impress > your developer friends but you won't advance yourself.

I don't get it. If these are good books and you have not read them, how will you not advance yourself by reading them?

<comment><USER4> I think he means if you read the ones that are vaunted but bad you won't advance yourself, not that you can't advance yourself by reading classics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick is in my mind the most revolutionary and essential business book for indie hackers in the last 20 years. It would have saved me $1.4 million in my attempt to beat craigslist at its own game a decade ago.

It illustrates in the most logical progression a set of easily implementable steps to ensure that your own confirmation bias doesn't sink your company.

<comment><USER6> I was surprised that one didn't make the list.

<comment><USER7> Agreed! I had listed it as an "honorable mention" on my response, but I think they only wanted one book per person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just want to recommend a service called eReaderIQ. It's a price tracking service for eBooks. Basically any book you've wanted to read has been available for $3 or less in the past year. I've saved a ton of money with this service.

\- [https://www.ereaderiq.com/](https://www.ereaderiq.com/)

You're welcome :)

<comment><USER9> Or just use LibGen like a true Internet patriot.

<comment><USER10> That's illegal.

<comment><USER11> On that note, I'd just like to add this thread from academia stack exchange.

[https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/112509/legality...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/112509/legality- of-downloading-books-from-websites-such-as-library-genesis)

<comment><USER12> Even if the company suing you will have a tough time proving their case, they can still bury you in legal fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's another vote for The E-Myth. I would recommend it to everyone working in any business. For example, if you are considering joining a company, you can use the principles described in the book as a way to evaluate that company. If you are starting something or a business owner trying to grow, it describes accurately the mistakes you might make and a path forward.

<comment><USER14> In a similar vein, Built To Sell (John Warrillow) was eye-opening for me when I first read it, focusing on building processes and systems so that you can remove yourself as a roadblock to increase chances of success. Almost an "if you love them, set them free" philosophy and written in a very readable style.

<comment><USER15> Do you recommend reading the newer books by John Warrillow? Or should I just read the classic Built to Sell?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One option no one mentioned: No book. Do first, read later. Experience trumps reading every time. At least I think that many people just started to work on something instead of reading first.

My favorites, which I read only after I launched a product:

Rework. About improving a product.

"This is Marketing" from Seth Godin. To get the right mindset about who the audience is.

</comment><comment><USER17> Start Small, Stay Small - by Rob Walling and Mike Taber

"Great how-to guide about being a micropreneur: an entrepreneur running many small but profitable businesses."

Here's a Sivers summary of the book

[https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall](https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall)

<comment><USER18> I think a new edition of this book is coming out soon.

<comment><USER19> Except I still haven't started working on it :grimacing:

I've been meaning to update this for years but hard to find the time. Right now MicroConf and TinySeed are keeping me busy, but it continues to be on my long-term list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Dip by Seth Godin is perhaps the essential book for an 'indie hacker'.

It's about identifying the difference between dips (good business ideas facing inevitable challenges) and cul-de-sacs (poor ideas that are not going anywhere).

Choice quotes:

> _Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations_

> _Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to > quit early and refocus their efforts on something new_

> _Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one > or the other....the opportunity cost of investing your life in something > that's not going to get better is just too high_

<comment><USER21> A bunch of hollow cliché phrases, like everything else by Seth Godin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For me most interesting are autobiography books where author is sharing his path from the start, instead of giving "10 rules of success" (which is his subjective insights summary of what worked for him).

The beauty of autobiography books is that we need to aggregate (generalize) these key insights based on the raw story ("subjectively raw" of-course) and our current situation.

The most valuable part for me is about overcoming hard problems.

The #1 book in my list is "Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight (The Founder of Nike). There is also an audiobook where Phil himself is read the first chapter.

</comment><comment><USER23> This title is a clever way of avoiding the stereotypical "Top X books for Y" that always seem to be an affiliate-mill article (anecdotally).

<comment><USER24> This article is listicle blog spam trash. Additionally offensive is it conflates "hacker" with "startup founder" (said with irony on "hacker news").

<comment><USER25> Indie hackers is well known and these guys are legit they don't put out affiliates spam.

<comment><USER26> They're also owned by Stripe which helps, since they don't really need the money that comes with being affiliate spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My favorite from the list is Traction. It is quite short and it clearly fit the type of person that I am: Developer who like to sit down and create some products, but haven't really thought about channels and distribution systematically before.

</comment><comment><USER28> MAKE Book by Pieter Levels

This guy is productive and successful, and likes to share knowledge and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Hard Thing About Hard Things is supposed to a good book for start ups/indie hackers. I listen to a lot of podcasts in this area and it's mentioned quite a lot.

[http://hardthings.bhorowitz.com/](http://hardthings.bhorowitz.com/)

<comment><USER30> If you don't mind me asking, what kind of podcasts do you listen to?

<comment><USER29> Startup grind

Indie Hackers

Build Your Saas

Founder Quest

Y Combinator

ReWork

Product Hunt Radio

Start Ups for the Rest of Us

Everyone Hates Marketers

The Art of Product

Masters of Scale

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The book: Small Giants.

This entire book is literally about companies that focus on deliberately growing but still staying excellent. Many were profitable and didn't raise a lot of outside funding. Many also were strongly owned by employees.

[https://www.amazon.com/Small-Giants-Companies- Instead-10th-A...](https://www.amazon.com/Small-Giants-Companies-Instead-10th- Anniversary/dp/014310960X)

</comment><comment><USER32> These are all MBA business books whist I could see some business books being useful.

Having 100% make me think the target audience are MBA students and not "hackers"

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind that IH'ers are trying to start their own independent internet- based bootstrapped businesses. Having joined the IH community recently, I can attest that the business side of things is where most IH'ers are lacking in terms of achieving that goal (myself included). Their technical skills tend to be "good enough". Hence the value placed on these types of books. Hope that helps to explain.

<comment><USER32> It does but not in they way I think you thought it did

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think some of the classic tech business books are also good for "indie hackers":

Andrew Grove's High Output Management

John Brooks' Business Adventures

Brad Felds and Jason Mendelson's Venture Deals

Antifragile is on the list, but Fooled by Randomness is better I think as it's shorter and contains almost all the ideas.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you liked E-myth, the Road Less Stupid is a great one for small companies or startups especially if you're struggling to move from an operator to an owner role

</comment><comment><USER35> Wait, this isn't about hacking at all. Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Not super familiar with the space, but ReWork by Jason Fried and DHH, founders of BaseCamp (DHH made Ruby on Rails), was pretty good. They provide a very different take on business and startups than typical on HN. They are almost anti VC, and really have some good points when it comes to making something and running a company differently than typical enterprise and startups do.

</comment><comment><USER37> There should be a disclaimer that these are mostly self-help books. I don't personally find these books useful.

<comment><USER38> I wonder why this is being downvoted.

The War of Art is undoubtedly a self-help book, and so is How to Make Friends and Influence people. Both contain little more than trivial platitudes IMO. I have not read the other books, but from the abstracts it looks like several more can be considered self-help books.

I was hoping for hands-on books like "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz & Hill or similar.

<comment><USER37> Or at least something like _The C Programming Language_. Or at least _Introduction to Linear Algebra_ by Gilbert Strang. Or at least _The Theory of Relational Databases_ by David Maier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Saw antifragile in the pic. Didn't see it In the post dissapointed

<comment><USER33> Its the fifth in the list. I tried to direct link to it within the article but couldn't from my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What exactly is a indie hacker?

<comment><USER41> [http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=What+exactly+is+a+indie+hacker...](http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=What+exactly+is+a+indie+hacker%3F)

<comment><USER40> That was the first thing I tried, but since the only relevant hit is the indiehackers side leads me to believe its s made up term and not actually a thing, and I wanted to confirm that. But thank you for your informative reply nonetheless, obvious you put a lot of effort in it!</comment></comment></comment>


K-Cups and EdTech - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com//blogs/technology-and-learning/k-cups-and-edtech

<comment><USER2> Really is a head scratcher: paying more money for worse coffee. Understand that convenience is a major factor, but kinda crazy it's enough to justify...</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use an app for far out reminders? - <AUTHOR> I am just curious if you use an app or calendar for reminders where you have to do something once or twice a year?
I for some reason I do not put these things on a calendar, and I fail to do them on time.
One example is calling the HVAC service company to come out and do the bi-annual inspection of the system.
By the time I do get around to calling them, they are booked out several weeks. <comment><USER2> Use the same system for near future reminders and far future reminders. Because it has your near future reminders that you check daily, you won't miss the far future reminders.

For me that's a to-do app, but for many people that's a calendar. Many calendars can also be set to send you email reminders in advance of events, in case you don't check your calendar daily.

Use whatever works for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> i use google agenda for that kind of appointments</comment>


Why I lift - <AUTHOR> https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2017/06/why-i-lift <comment><USER2> Lifting (free weights) has done more for my life than I could have ever imagined.

I was always the guy who thought only frat bros, meat heads, and convicts spent time lifting. I was dead wrong.

I've been lifting consistently for just over a year now, and while the physical changes are great, the mental changes are immense. I sleep better, hold on to anger less, am more focused, and have MORE energy. But the biggest lesson I've learned is how to fail consistently. I am at a point where I am failing a lift almost every week, but still make progress. This lesson has carried over into every avenue of my life.

I would encourage everyone (male and female) to at least try two weeks of starting strength or SL5x5. It takes 3 hours a week and the benefits show within the first few gym days. If you are an active person already but haven't tried lifting, try it. You won't get "too bulky" from picking up weights 3 times a week. Most people train HARD 5-7 days per week to achieve body-builder status, and it's not something you can get accidentally.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _But here 's the best part for me: lifting is an escape, in a way that most > other "leisure" activities (reading, watching TV, etc) are not. When I'm > doing a bench press, it is a simple battle between me and gravity. There are > no complex deadlocks to debug, no decisions around corporate strategy to > make, no challenges with children's education._

This. Lifting is my meditation, my center. When I was a kid I was very agitated and irritable...I was voted "Most Intense" as my high school senior superlative (and that was meant to be pejorative). I was also super skinny and picked on for that. People who only know me recently have told me they couldn't believe that was possible because I always seem so level-headed and well, bigger than most people...well years under the bar will be that kind of therapy for you.

Lifting / fitness, the whole thing has been my savior in a way. Without it I don't think I would have the skills to get me where I am today. It has also gotten me to appreciate the journey, and not simply reaching the end of a goal/todo item. You never "lift all the weight"...there's always more to lift, and it's an eternal race between you and what your body can produce. It's incredible.

</comment><comment><USER4> One thing that is omitted is stretching. Stretching is absolutely critical to preventing injury and helping you gain. At the very least, bend over to touch your toes, do lunges, and stretch out your chest. Anecdotally, I was having rotator cuff pain (both my dad and grandpa have ruined their right rotator cuffs) and I wasn't gaining on bench presses. Stretching out my pecs completely solved it.

And I also recommend StrongLifts 5x5.

<comment><USER5> Static stretching hasn't really been correlated with injury prevention or improved performance. Depending on the exercises you were doing, though, you might have achieved greater shoulder stability, which is important for the bench press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just got back from the gym a little while ago ending my third week of this program:

[https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro](https://www.julian.com/learn/muscle/intro)

It's been great and I actually look forward to going now. I spend 45min to an hour there so it doesn't take up a ton of time.

I want to move on to SL5x5 after this one but go to my apartment gym which does not have a barbell. Any suggestions/comments about a smith machine (which it does have) and/or dumbbells?

<comment><USER5> The smith machine is dangerous and suboptimal for most forms of training. If you want to do inverted rows as a stepping stone for pullups, go ahead. Otherwise, avoid them.

Dumbbells can be used for SSLP/SL, but are not ideal:

1) They make incremental loading, which is the core of these programs, very difficult. If you're lucky, your gym will have 2.5lb increments; if not, you may have to buy a pair of 2.5 magnet weights.

2) The lower body movements in these programs are most ideally performed with barbells; there aren't really good dumbbell analogues for squats, deadlifts, and especially power cleans.

However, for strength imbalances, especially in the upper body, they can be very helpful. Many trainees end up using dumbbell bench to this end. Dumbbell OHP/military press/Arnold press is also possible and probably good for hypertrophy of the upper back.

Ultimately, though, for the best results you'll want to do the programs as intended - with a barbell.</comment></comment>


Money Laundering via Author Impersonation on Amazon? - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/02/money-laundering-via-author-impersonation-on-amazon/ <comment><USER2> _Earlier this month, KrebsOnSecurity heard from a fraud investigator for a mid-sized bank who'd recently had several customers who got suckered into scams after searching for the customer support line for Amazon._

This is not just an Amazon problem, it's a Google problem. Bogus customer support numbers pop up in the top of search results, often through scammy SEO or AdWords campaigns, to snare the unwitting.

Long-term, it's tricks and scams and schemes like this that will erode people's trust in Amazon, Google, and other tech giants. They may think they can AI their way through content moderation, but it's clear their automated systems are not up to the task.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best/simplest site for weather? - <AUTHOR> I used to use forcast.io. Not sure what they did to it as it now routes to darksky, and is no longer simple like how it used to be.<p>What does HN community use for weather? <comment><USER2> make your own and customize just the way you like it! [https://enlight.ml/projects/weather/weather.html](https://enlight.ml/projects/weather/weather.html)</comment>


Charter prohibits working from home despite spread of coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/charter-coronavirus-work-home/ <comment><USER2> I think some people may just be shell-shocked and reacting too slowly.

My employer refused to allow working from home for the most part last week, up until Thursday.

After several days of union negotiations, they floated the idea on Friday of letting people request up to four days per two week pay period to be remote. That was at about 3 PM.

Just after 4 PM, an email went out saying that people were allowed to work remotely 5 days a week for the next month or two. So some of us got kind of upset that they were making it an individual decision. Somebody may have to come in, but most people shouldn't and some people can't. It needs to be collectively managed, in my opinion.

So then, today, around COB, there's another email saying everybody is _required_ to work remotely for the next couple weeks unless there is some specific exception.

So it's just dramatically evolving day by day.

<comment><USER3> > they floated the idea on Friday of letting people request up to four days > per two week pay period to be remote

I don't understand why do they think of it in terms of people requesting it like it's a perk? Even out of time of crisis it's not some luxury it's just a normal working arrangement.

<comment><USER2> Normally, it's allowed one day a week, but not at all for new employees, and not without advance approval.

One answer to why it's this way would be that's what the union contract was negotiated to be.

My inference is that government employees are considered to be lazy and/or like children, that you can't trust them in general to work on their own.

But I really wished people to understand it's neither a perk nor an entitlement now. It can't be an individual decision, because whether one person goes in depends on what other people do. Telling people they can stay home if they want makes it into a prisoner's dilemma situation. People (leadership and rank and file) are trapped by their individualistic thought patterns when the only solution is to _both_ do what you are told _and_ be told to do what is in the collective interest.

People sometimes talk about how other cultures don't prioritize the individual as much but they never sound like it actually makes sense, it's just kind of patronizing. Right now, it's making sense to me, but a lot of people (e.g. on my Facebook feed) seem to just be writhing in misery over trying to choose the best thing for themselves and guilt over other people not necessarily being able to do the same thing.

<comment><USER4> _> government employees_

Where did anyone mention government employees?

<comment><USER5> He did. He's op, he works for a government.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I saw his follow-up post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I really admire Nick Wheeler, the engineer in the article raising the issue, standing by his principles.

<comment><USER7> I work in the Denver area. Maybe I'll hit him up on LinkedIn to come work for my company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fuck this company, and others like it. I know nothing will happen in the end, but these executives should get imprisoned and barred from ever holding a leadership role ever again.

<comment><USER9> And 3 to 7 decades, it's going to happen again because anybody who remembered the crisis are either dead or had forgotten what should be proper response. Imprisonment isn't going to change anything.

<comment><USER8> If we had the will to imprison them, I figure we would also have the will to fix the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a little tone deaf honestly, and not for the reasons people might think.

Amazon factory workers can't dial it in. Nor can restaurant workers, or grocery shelf stockers, or gas station attendants, or truck mechanics, or of course almost everyone in the medical/police/fire profession.

Sure, people who can work from home effectively should. But there are also 300 million people desperately depending on supply lines staying up, and shelves staying stocked, manufacturing of basic goods, and food supply continuing.

Despite any "shelter in place" orders, there's probably a solid 30% of the employed population which one way or the other are doing mission critical work. Charter is providing mission critical services, and while a small percentage of their workforce probably could dial it in, I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of people there actually need to be on-site to do their job.

Maybe most of those people have to commute _in_ to the Bay Area though...

</comment><comment><USER11> They're too afraid that they'll have to upgrade the "middle mile" to accommodate teleworkers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to work for Spectrum, in Business Class tech support. Several friends still work there, in NOC and Enterprise tech support. All of them have laptops, "in case [they] ever have to work from home". Meanwhile, they're not allowed to work from home.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is comic book villain level evil.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a whole thread from @dhh about a few dozen others:

Head of thread: [https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1239286206803742721](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1239286206803742721)

> _Do you know of a tech company that's asking people who could work from home > to come to the office? Reply to this thread, so we can track these > irresponsible organizations, and remember their names even after this is > over._

Unrolled: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239286206803742721.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239286206803742721.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Does that mean Charter would potentially be liable for the deaths of anyone caused directly by this?

eg say a Charter employee catches COVID-19 at work, then one of their elderly relatives catches it from them + passes away

If there's a clear chain of transmission, and Charter refused to stop it... well...

</comment><comment><USER16> Glad to know this happened in Colorado, one less TeleCom to worry about (as if I was ever worried...)

</comment><comment><USER17> I know somebody at Charter. This is absolutely how they work. No WFH. No exceptions. None.

<comment><USER18> It's obvious. It requires the type of collaboration you can only get in person to figure out how to sell home phone, oversell data, mess up billing, charge people for devices they don't have, constantly spam customers, and most importantly, escape legal action.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sales or technical support. I'm talking back-end engineering and their software teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tomorrow's headline: "charter offers terminated employee job back. Employee refuses."

<comment><USER20> Has there ever been a case of a company obstinately following its own HR policies into the grave? E.g., no sick days allowed, but then everyone gets sick, so everyone is fired and now the company has no employees and ends up liquidating?

<comment> kube-system It's usually a slower process that results in failure.

Companies who lose employees will hire _someone_ to replace them. The more desperate they are, the lower quality the employees will be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just heard they _tested_ wfh for employees for a week probably as a publicity stunt and are making everyone return to the office come Monday with no definite plans to allow cloud/software engineers to work from home in the immediate future. There are a lot of older employees in that company. This is really unacceptable! The CEO was paid $98M in 2016 while the employees saw very little compensation gains. There was a strike for 5 months in 2017 to protest. It's clear where their priorities lie...

</comment><comment><USER22> i think they dodged a legal bullet when said fellow resigned in lieu of being fired.

<comment><USER23> Would it not be constructive dismissal even with the letter of resignation? He was forced to resign only due to pressure and due to the danger to himself.

<comment><USER22> yes it could be interesting if he wanted his job back badly enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Name and shame. It is the only way to move forward.

</comment><comment><USER25> i am grateful i work in a field where i can work from home. for some people around me, not going to work is synonymous to not working and not getting paid.

some people are laid off.

working from home is okay for some of us. but maybe we should not be taking it for granted...

<comment><USER26> I understand your sentiment, but disagree with the gist of it. I've been working from home for 20 years, and it IS fairly normal in tech. I mean, why should a 'cloud architect' have to go into an office to work on the 'cloud'?

I realize this isn't the case for all careers, but this always makes me wonder, should hourly employees feel special they get overtime pay because some people don't? Its just different norms for different positions...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I assume people will name and shame Elon Musk too: still way over his head - thinking he is smarter than the scientists.

<comment><USER28> He said the "panic" was dumb. Panic _is_ dumb. Well-reasoned remediations and precautions are not panic.

<comment><USER27> He immediately followed up by claiming that the number of accidents cause more deaths than COVID19....

The love for Elon Musk in this site is super strong! He is certainly infallible.</comment></comment></comment>


Programmers Don't "Build" Programs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jamesleonis.com/says/programmers-dont-build-programs/

<comment><USER2> ... and this is how we get crappy software. If anything we need more adherence to the construction, specifically, "review". In construction, things are reviewed, certified, analyzed, and tested.

I don't garden like I write software, and I definitely don't write software like I garden. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go do something about these ground squirrels eating all the tomatoes.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Software is a garden, and we are it's gardeners._

I have a garden. Weeds grow without my assistance. The veggies and flowers mostly do their own thing as well. I _wish_ new and strange things grew overnight in my IDE.

<comment><USER4> I'd say it's more like knitting than anything else.</comment></comment>


The United Nations has a radical, dangerous vision for the future of the Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/24/the-united-nations-has-a-radical-dangerous-vision-for-the-future-of-the-web/ <comment><USER2> The newspaper article is really exaggerating this report. Note how few actual quotes there are and how many "in other words". Read the report for yourself at:

[http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/reports/bb- wg-g...](http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/reports/bb-wg-gender- report2015.pdf)

It's mainly describing the current state of things, not advocating any specific solutions. The one mention of licensing is one bullet point in a chapter, not any kind of main focus. Half the actual suggestions are things that people are mentioning in these comments as _alternatives_.

<comment><USER3> The report is exaggerating. That's expected and not surprising.

Groups within UN are fighting for funding. You won't get funded if the problem you aim for does not receive attention. It won't receive attention unless it's shoking in some way. That's why's there "pandemic proportion", "staggering number", "sheer volume"\--not exactly scientific terminology.

The "report" should be called a "proposal".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to the article, "the UN believes that online platforms should be (a) generally responsible for the actions of their users and (b) specifically responsible for making sure those people aren't harassers."

Many websites already have problems with flippant takedown notices through the DMCA. This article leads me to believe that the UN wants to apply a similar process to eliminate "harassment", which is a fairly nebulous term. The benefits of this proposal seem minuscule, while the costs of making "online platforms generally responsible for the actions of their users" would be enormous. Why would anyone think this is a good idea?

<comment><USER5> Points a and b in that quote actually sound eminently reasonable to me. Online forums already have moderators to make sure discussion stays civil, and it sounds like a good idea to include "prevent people from organizing stalking and SWATting campaigns" in that.

<comment><USER6> The problem isn't if it's a good idea to moderate forums. Problem is when it becomes a liability not to. The possibility of fines, lawsuits or god forbid prison time can have the kind of chilling effects we can't even imagine.

<comment><USER5> No, the problem _is_ whether to moderate forums- it's not happening and when people try to come up with codes of conduct so they can moderate better, there's a huge outcry.

It would be fine if we had better moderation in more places, even without any laws. But even that's not happening.

<comment><USER7> That huge outcry isn't going to go away no matter how patiently a censor explains that censorship is good for everyone

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some people just don't understand software. They treat it as if it were something physical. For example, if I own a bar it is my responsibility to make sure my customers don't get too crazy and to make sure underage people don't drink. This law is relatively enforceable.

You can't apply this kind of thinking to the Internet. Software isn't a bar for many reasons. You can duplicate software trivially. You can't possibly monitor every copy of that software. For example, a site like reddit is open source (for the most part I think). So in theory anyone could just host their own reddit (or any other software). There are many open source web apps that you can easily deploy your own copy of today. Which brings me to my next point.

Where do you draw the line? Web sites are responsible for content their users post. Are web hosting companies responsible for the sites their customers post and therefore responsible for the comments too? What about ISPs? They let the data through. Shouldn't they also be monitoring it? What about hardware manufactures? They are letting the web hosting company run "bad" web sites.

If someone does something illegal on the Internet investigate it and blame the user. It's really as simple as that.

<comment><USER5> We have the exact same line-drawing question in the real world. All kind of infrastructure and different levels over ownership go into a place like a bar, but that doesn't mean the bar owner isn't responsible.

There is a similarly clear difference between an ISP (how the customer gets to the bar), a web host (the landlord, maybe), and the website itself (the bar).

On the other hand, investigating whether someone committed a crime is a little bit different online vs in the real world. Part of what websites could do is make it easier to run those investigations by making reporting easier- Twitter reporting, for example, is relatively hostile to people trying to report bad behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting analysis:

[https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/citation-games-by-the- unit...](https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/citation-games-by-the-united- nations-cyberviolence-e8bb1336c8d1)

 _Using the metric of removing duplicate citations, not counting broken links, those with little to no effort shown for those missing links (as in, not even bothering to check the website), and removing anything that didn't seem to exist, only 64% remained._

<comment><USER9> Not so long ago, we learned that the U.N. is a world-saving organization that can't even pay its own interns. Not because it thought was morally OK to not pay, but because they just didn't want to do the paperwork and rulemaking to offer their interns a pittance. Ignoring the likely possibility that this paper was partly compiled by the kind of work you get from unpaid laborers...I doubt that an institution that can't do the easy, moral thing for its most vulnerable employees is the type of institution that has the patience and attention to detail to double-check its own footnotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The concept is a little ridiculous. First, there is this link which actually shows that men receive more online bullying than women do:

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/01/the- darkest-...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/01/the-darkest-side- of-online-harassment-menacing-behavior/)

Second of all, the concept of policing every piece of content that appears on social media is also ridiculous. With this line of thinking, why stop at just social media?

Our e-mails, and in fact anything that can be deemed as messaging/communication of some sort should also be monitored. Sending a private google hangout message, a private facebook message, etc.

The policing of content should also pertain to individual websites, news organizations like the washington post (before any article is published, a government official should have to approve it), and perhaps we should even be forced to allow random inspections by the government in our houses to prevent domestic violence.

Obviously this concept is completely ridiculous, and I think the general public will agree.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think that in a few years we get a browser add-on which automatically all online harassments (at some cost of silencing false positives, as always). But then each person will be able to set their threshold, depending on one's sensitivity.

Global censorship actions (and especially be people not understanding Internet... or even worse - wanting to make the information flow top-down) are putting much greater burden... and risk.

While I don't want to downplay the online harassment, I (for a number of years) used Internet as the only tool to escape from it. (Online it is much easier to choose a place one is comfortable in.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the neologism "cyber-violence" is incredibly loaded terminology. They need to be called out on it.

Violence according the dictionary is "behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something."

There is no physical force over the internet. Being subject to harassment is not violence.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that "violence" isn't the subject matter in the first place. The subject is abusive behaviour. Abusive behaviour can involve physical violence but it can also involve things that aren't physical (e.g. threats of violence) or that are physical but not strictly violent (e.g. inappropriate touching).

But "cyber-abuse" makes it sound like we're talking about spam and virus attacks, so there's no useful term to slap "cyber" onto and call it a day. Not that that's a good way to name these problems in the first place.

"Cyber" bullying is just bullying. "Cyber" harassment is just harassment. Whether you do it face to face in person, remotely via phone or from the other side of the world using the Internet is not a useful distinction.

Of course "the other side" (not the actual victims, just those speaking on their behalf or portraying themselves as victims in order to suppress criticism) isn't really helping by crying wolf and spreading the idea that every single utterance in the world suddenly needs trigger warnings and gender neutral (or reverse gendered) language. Sometimes a cigar isn't a rape tool of the patriarchy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm quite surprised at the number of users calling for censorship on <u>Hacker News</u>....

<comment><USER15> Hackers have been wanting to "censor" the internet since September 1993: not to enforce top-down rules, but to keep it a group of people (hopefully all people, eventually) who respect social convention and respect each other. The group that thinks it's a free-for-all without rules is a late-coming one trying to claim the mantle of hackerdom. And in many cases, as with ESR's de- facto takeover of the Jargon File, they've succeeded in presenting themselves as the original hackers.

Don't be fooled. The technical design of the Internet and its serious non- resilience to spam, malware, and other various opportunists (because we all trusted that Internet users were _reasonable people_ ) should show you that none of this was in the original vision. "Be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you accept from others" worked because everyone respected that without enforcement, and there was no crowd demanding the _right_ to be liberal in what they sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amongst other things, the UN has some extremely dangerous leftist (like farrrrr left) tendencies, bordering on dystopian nanny-statist ideas. It's almost considered a cabal in political circles that I've worked in.

Christopher Hitchens gave a brilliant speech on why censorship should not be allowed called the Tyranny of Censorship.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcJxN1VlcuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcJxN1VlcuA)

Context: I've done UNDP security work in Afghanistan and worked at various US Embassies abroad.

</comment><comment><USER17> "The respect for and security of girls and women must at all times be front and center," the report reads...

(Except when we're selecting Saudi Arabia to chair our Human Rights Council: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anger-after-saudi- ar...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anger-after-saudi-arabia- chosen-to-head-key-un-human-rights-panel-10509716.html))

</comment><comment><USER18> Why "Future"? It's the present.

None of the most popular websites supports free speech, in the sense that they will not censor anything legal for them to distribute.

<comment><USER19> Child pornography is not free speech. Free speech is not "say whatever you want."

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure parent was referring to pornography, but to countless examples of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit censoring information that they find inconvenient (e.g. the fappening, r/fatpeoplehate, etc.).

> Free speech is not "say whatever you want."

Parent clearly defines "free speech" as "they will not censor anything legal", which the websites above unfortunately don't follow.

> Child pornography is not free speech.

Ironically, in many jurisdictions "child pornography" includes virtual child pornography and cartoons, which any sensible person would say should be free (we can see movies depicting children getting murdered, people getting decapitated and women getting raped, but not of 17 year olds having sex?!?)

<comment><USER20> > Reddit censoring information that they find inconvenient (e.g. the > fappening, r/fatpeoplehate, etc.)

Calling it information is being generous. As a private entity they simply don't have to suffer that speech. Fappening is probably illegal, and even if it were not it would be an acceptable courtesy call to remove it. Fatpeoplehate was about moderators harassing employees of imgur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope large tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are happy now. They started this. They were warned that if they "build the infrastructure" for censorship - even for the most heinous of crimes - _more requests will come_ for much more trivial stuff. Because it's easy to ask it of them once they've proven it _can be done_.

The same will be true of backdoors. As soon as they start enabling backdoors in China or India or Russia, you can bet not just the U.S. will want them enabled, but many other countries, and they'll all have various reasons for asking for them.

This is why, at least with the backdoor issue, they need to be _pro-active_ , and start building end-to-end encryption into their services and products _now_ , so they can actually say later on that they "can't" give access to the private communications of their users.

If they would've done this years ago, like pre-Snowden revelations, Russia and China (and soon EU) would've had fewer excuses to "worry about national security and privacy" and then ask them to build local data centers, costing them billions.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is so easy. Let the market decide. If such censorship is so fucking great, let a new startup create a censored social network and see if all the downtrodden people of the world flock to it, or see if they prefer to stick with the rest of the world in the places where they may speak freely about their own pet issues.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Last I checked, Facebook wasn't exactly a bastion of free speech. It seems like the market has indeed spoken, though I'd personally be very wary of ascribing any moral judgments from macro-level market transactions -- especially given that in practice we live in highly complicated mixed market societies, and not anything resembling laissez-faire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Policy makers consider the benefits, but not the costs. If we now need licensing and content monitoring this protects incumbents because only they have the resources to actually handle this, in the end we end up with a few big organizations and the. Surprise suprise we try to regulate them because they are too big.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now this, is bullshit. We cannot sacrifice every little freedom we have in the name of security.

I might get downvoted to hell for saying this, but women have to learn to be comfortable with some degree of harassment if the only alternative is to convert the internet into some limited speech zone.

<comment><USER24> As a society we have the prerogative to balance values like freedom from harassment and free speech. I fall strongly in favor of free speech myself, but nobody has to learn to get comfortable with something they find objectionable. Democracy means that people get to live in the society they want to live in.

<comment><USER25> Where I come from, in the American West, it is your job to fence your neighbor's cattle _out_ if you don't want them on your land. It is not his job to fence them _in_ so they stay on his land. This principle is enshrined in centuries of statues and legal precedent. It works really well.

Similarly, I claim that in a free and open society, with lively and vibrant debate constantly transpiring in the metaphorical agora, it is your job to _not be offended_ by things that other people say, not their job _to avoid offending you_.

<comment><USER15> What is the relevance of people being offended to this discussion? This is about threats and harassment, not being "offended".

Neither the original article nor any other comment in this thread talks about people being "offended". The UN report itself only mentions "offensive behaviour" or similar a few times: a small number of times in quoting other people's opinions or existing policies, once in regards to "sending offensive emails from victim's email account" (that is, it is not the "offensive" content per se that is a problem, but the impersonation), and once favorably quoting Facebook's policy: "We prohibit content deemed to be directly harmful, but allow content that is offensive or controversial. We define harmful content as anything organising real world violence, theft, or property destruction, or that directly inflicts emotional distress on a specific private individual (e.g., bullying)."

The threat to "lively and vibrant debate" here is entirely invented, and it is disingenuous for you to pretend that this discussion is about being "offended" by things that people say. The discussion here is about threats and harassment, which have no part in encouraging lively and vibrant debate, not about potentially "offensive" ideas.

<comment><USER7> A passionate defense of an unworkable mindset is a truly a sign of the munificence of our age.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry, I don't understand this comment. Which mindset do you believe is unworkable, which defense do you believe is passionate, in what way would you say our age is munificent, and is that a good or bad thing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm trying to imagine this article written by the NYT, or pre-Bezos WP.

The WP is feeling very vaguely and subtly an outlet for Bezos/Amazon's interests.

</comment><comment><USER27> I agree with the article that the changes propose are radical and dangerous. Instead, improvement could be achieved bottom up. For example, many women complain about online dating being an unpleasant experience for women. Some women decided to do something about it and started Bumble,

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/12/bumble- dat...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/12/bumble-dating-app- women-call-shots-whitney-wolfe)

A dating app that only lets women message men. It's an interesting idea and totally changes the dynamic.

If online harassment is a problem on dating sites, women can and have created a better solution for themselves in Bumble. Women can do the same with a safer Twitter and Facebook - if they want. It's never been easier to do so, with Kickstarter and other funding options.

Women are not a minority - they are over 50% of the population, and more than capable of solving problems like this, again, if they want. Apparently things were bad enough in dating for Bumble, but since there isn't a female-oriented Twitter or Facebook, I suspect the problems are overstated on those sites.</comment>


jQuery 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jquery.com/2016/06/09/jquery-3-0-final-released/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11759584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11759584)

<comment><USER3> Is this really a dupe, considering this is the final release, and that was the RC?

<comment><USER2> It's a tough call, but I think it has to be this way, or we'd have popular projects getting major threads with every incremental state change. That's fine in itself, of course, but front page slots are the most limited resource HN has.

(This is in no way a criticism of jQuery or its fine 3.0 release.)

<comment><USER4> I hope that this is applied on a case-by-case basis, _e.g._ Rails 5 RC1 was released more than a month ago, and the official release of Rails 5 will be major news when it happens and it would be a shame if it were 'dupe'd off of the front page.

fwiw, I'm glad that this article was on the front page, if only momentarily, because I had missed or forgotten about the previous RC announcement and am interested in this news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before this devolves into "why would anyone use jQuery anymore", I'd like to say congratulations! Thanks for continuing to refine a library that is essential to the web, has helped evolve many of its important APIs, and is ran by 90% of websites.</comment>


Why it's important to teach children philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://kinder.world/articles/solutions/why-its-important-to-teach-children-philosophy-21620 <comment><USER2> It's been a long time since I was in grammar school but remember that we were taught a sort of philosophy in the form of nursery rhymes, then the teacher would later discuss the moral of the story. This definitely didn't get as deep as reading a Ayn Rand novel but was a good introduction to critical thinking.</comment>


Punch Corona Using PoseNet.js to build a browser-based workout game - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxfdqaybwpA <comment><USER2> That looks much more reliable than I thought. I am planning to use Posenet to augment my workout game ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknXbyVJm3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknXbyVJm3c) ) with full body poses. Does the background influence the tracking much?</comment>


Chess2vec: Learning Vector Representations for Chess (2018) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.berkkapicioglu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/chess2vec_nips_2018_short.pdf <comment><USER2> I tried something similar, learning a chess representation, and move predictor with a simple linear fastText model: [https://github.com/thomasahle/fastchess](https://github.com/thomasahle/fastchess)

It turns out that you can get surprisingly good accuracy (27.5%) at predicting moves from the chess world championship, even though the model is linear and has no idea of piece interactions.

<comment><USER3> I don't know much about chess, so this is a sincere question. What sort of accuracy would be a baseline? So, on average, how many not-obviously-stupid possible moves are there per turn (for some reasonable value of "obviously")?

<comment><USER2> I have thought about this too, but I don't think there's an easy answer.

To get the number of _good_ moves in a position, one might look at the search distribution generated by stockfish or lc0, or a human grandmaster. They'd probably all consider at most 1-4 moves per position.

However, reducing the search to just the top four moves is not something you can do with a simple heuristic. It either takes a lot of engineering or advanced pattern matching. If we could do it easily, making a strong chess engine would be a walk in the park.

I've wondered if the accuracy I achieve stems simply from learning a reasonable opening book. If so the accuracy of the model should deteriorate in the middle and endgame.

That doesn't seem to be the case, however. You can try playing the `raw` linear model yourself by running

      play_chess.py -no-mcts

It plays surprisingly reasonable moves :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a weird thing. The PCA result, as expected, is basically what the moves of chess for the major pieces look like. Also, I don't think they understand what bitboards are for (move generation and evaluation in a fairly dense/high performance representation); this vector representation is just serial 1-hot encoding. There are alternate vector encodings which actually make more sense for a neural net or matrix representation of chess positions.

I guess the authors have a company that does some kind of NNMF thing on genetic data, which would explain their approach.

<comment><USER5> My overall impression is that this was a quick and dirty summer intern project. Nothing against quick and dirty projects but I'm not sure it really belongs on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been working on a similar idea of learning a latent vector representation of chess positions and moves. I'm not sure whether to be happy or disappointed that this paper is much more simplistic than what I've been trying to do.

They call it "machine learning", but they're just doing PCA and nonnegative matrix factorization, neither of which falls into the class of methods that most people think about when you say "machine learning." Their proposed prediction method will often (perhaps usually) predict illegal moves--it might propose moving a piece that isn't even on the board, for example. Understandably they don't show any examples of actually applying it.

<comment><USER6> Dimensionality reduction is absolutely a form of "machine learning". UMAP or Ivis are doing the same thing but utilize fancier methods so now they must be more relavent?

I'd be curious to see what happens when you combine the system with a system that removes the possibility of illegal moves. I bet accuracy will go dramatically up - especially if they utilize a really modern transformers based architecture for the vectorization part.

<comment><USER5> Dimensionality reduction more generally may well be a form of machine learning. Doing really simple dimensionality reduction and then a really stupid prediction method doesn't quite cut it as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER7> > doesn't quite cut it

I think the underlying assumption here is that some approaches are too simple to "cut it", ie to be called machine learning. And eg PCA is too simple, and so should be excluded, and perhaps categorised as "just" statistics or linear algebra depending on your point of view. But in my view, it's better to let go of this view which implicitly hypes ML in a damaging way. F = ma is still physics, even if simple. k-NN and PCA are still ML.

<comment><USER5> Eh, I disagree. Not from a normative point of view, but from a descriptivist one. Most people don't consider doing a PCA to be machine learning.

I'm a statistician, not a machine learning guy. PCA is a great statistical method. But doing a PCA and calling it machine learning seems a tad misleading.

<comment><USER7> Well, I certainly agree that many people use ML in this way. But to me it's just bad terminology. The thing that happens during ML -- the L part -- must be the same as what happens during statistical learning. Many (sophisticated) ML algorithms are statistical in nature, so there is nothing there that stops simple stat-learning algorithms from being ML algorithms. And there is nothing in the terminology that says ML has to be sophisticated relative to stat learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chess vectors make sense as an approach.</comment>