Ask HN: Optimal way to learn about the Linux kernel - <AUTHOR> I'm a associate embedded software engineer with a background in electrical engineering. I know that seems strange but I would like to come up to speed on the Linux kernel more so I can be more knowledgeable about embedded Linux.
The problem is that I not taken a "Introduction to Operating Systems" course before like most CS folks have. I believe I need to approach this first before diving into learning the Kernel.
What is the most optimal learning solution here for this. Reading a book gets a person so far so I was hoping for a more course like experience with some user interaction (labs/assignments, aka "hands on")? Has anyone else been in my shoes and if so what online courses or books did you find the most effective? I want to make sure that whatever material or resource I use is Linux driven. <comment><USER2> Write a character device driver for your machine. It can be a simple echo of what's written to it. You'll probably need to write device drivers or work with someone else's drivers when your project gets to the prototype stage.</comment>


YouTube Seeks Streaming Rights to TV Shows, Movies - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/youtube-seeks-streaming-right-to-tv-shows-movies-1449104356-lMyQjAxMTA1MjAyMzMwMjMyWj <comment><USER2> This is a smart move by YouTube, but as a consumer, exclusive streaming rights are annoying as hell. It means content services (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc.) become walled gardens. "Oh, you want to watch _Shawshank Redemption_? You have to go to this other service and pay _another_ monthly subscription." Not going to happen.

From a content creator (studio) perspective, I have to imagine this is ineffective. Might they make more money with "open" rights for anyone? "Doesn't matter who you are, pay us $0.50/hr for streaming this content and we're good."

Again, as a content _provider_ , absolutely you want exclusive content as a reason for people to join your service. (I have Netflix for _House of Cards_ and HBO for _Game of Thrones_.) But as a _creator_ your goal should be wide distribution.

<comment><USER3> > From a content creator (studio) perspective, I have to imagine this is > ineffective.

It's effective if you consider what their real goal is: to keep any one streaming provider from becoming too popular, and then in a position to start making demands from the creators. They're deathly afraid of streaming ending up like music did with iTunes, where Apple had the record companies in an iron grip until they were broken by streaming. Thus, they want to keep each service as weak as possible, so they can remain in a position to yank popular titles if any of them get too uppity.

And, honestly, it's working. For a while, it looked like Netflix would be _the_ movie-and-TV streaming provider, and everyone else was going to be an also-ran, but now Hulu and Amazon Video are respectable competitors. I don't really like that, but their success means that there will definitely never be one service which has everything. Everyone would just switch to that one to pay only one subscription, and that service would have way too much leverage over the creators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title is a little misleading, they are seeking streaming rights for their subscription service; they already have streaming rights as part of their rental service [https://www.youtube.com/user/movies](https://www.youtube.com/user/movies) as of a few years ago.

YouTube is a bit late to the game on this sort of thing. 5 years ago they were the only name in streaming video and they let Netflix blow by them by offering premium content that people want (kids might spend all day watching 5 min clips of video games and cat antics but adults want the premium content).

<comment><USER5> My view of what the industry was like 5 years ago, is that content creators only wanted to deal with small companies that they could control and that didn't have the bankroll to take it to the FCC. All of them were terrified of Google getting into the space and all of the contracts I saw could be canceled on a change of control. One of our counter parties explicitly mentioned concerns that we would get bought by Amazon or Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what stringent copyright takedown policies they'll agree to this time. Every time Google makes a content deal, it seems to become an even more aggressive copyright cop.

</comment><comment><USER7> > _YouTube Seeks Streaming Rights to TV Shows, Movies_

I find it hard to believe that they haven't attempted to do just that a long time ago. And probably many times since. I can only conclude that they were unwilling to give up certain rights or couldn't agree on revenue contracts in exchange for the rights to stream. Whereas the smaller companies (at the time) really had no choice and accepted those terms. Smaller companies like Netflix, Hulu, etc didn't have youtube's negotiating power, and streaming for youtube wasn't a make or break thing. They could take a pass if they so wanted. If netflix were to take a pass, it could've meant the end of their business.

Now youtube is watching companies like Netflix turn into direct competitors and has since changed its mind and is probably becoming more pliable. I think youtube had an established revenue model and these big companies (Fox, universal, etc) wanted more than youtube was willing to give up. Youtube should have realized, however, the internet is too dynamic. Sure, a direct competitor isn't going to pop up overnight, but you'd be surprised just how quick they can establish themselves.

<comment><USER8> Several streaming companies are mostly owned by the content owners. Which creates a conflict in terms of cross licensing.

ex: _Hulu is a joint venture of Disney–ABC Television Group_

<comment><USER7> Sure, but those ownerships are a recent development. They didn't own them from the beginning, or even for the majority of their existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like this is something you'd do _before_ you launch a paid streaming video service.

<comment><USER10> Well, their current offering is really: you get a streaming music service, and for the same price as any other streaming music service you also get an ad free YouTube experience, and the ability easily save YouTube videos for offline viewing. Additional video content is just sweetening the pot.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I thought it was worth it just for the music. I'm ecstatic to hear all this news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about sorting out the whole issue with GEMA in Germany for starters?

</comment><comment><USER13> Would having movies and TV shows make Youtube Red appeal to you, at $9.99/mo? It's cheaper than Netflix.. But I guess that will depend on the shows they get the rights for.

<comment><USER14> How is this "cheaper than Netflix" at $9.99 when Netflix starts at $7.99?

<comment><USER13> My bad, you're right. I mistook Netflix's family price for the starting one I think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how long it is before Google secures an exclusive NFL deal. That would really shake things up.

<comment><USER16> Such as with BT Sport in the UK, who outbid Sky for football rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You are the owner of the infrastructure, not the content. Whole different animal on the copyright law.</comment>


How do you align incentives in health-care between patient and hospital/HMO/PPO? - <AUTHOR>

There's so much innovation to be done in health care, and I think a fundamental shift that needs to happen is to align economic incentives between customer and company.
Hospitals/HMO's/PPO's are incentivized to maximize transactions. Whether it's a monthly premium, drug purchase, visit, or a procedure. The more of these, the better. They also have a small incentive to keep the patient healthy, but only healthy enough to continue making these transactions.  A patient, on the other hand, has the incentive to pay as little as possible to be healthy, to maximize personal happiness, productivity and longevity. What if a healthcare company's incentives were aligned with the patient? I've heard that in some health-care facilities in China a patient will pay a monthly fee when they are healthy, but if they get sick, they stop paying. What if something similar were done here?
A few of the problems to overcome if something like this were done:
1. Patients gaming the system - pretending to be sick so they don't have to pay premiums Potential solution: Create objective standards for what it means to be sick vs healthy. Have a patient submit to a quarterly blood test to have a full spectrum of different things tested, and then use results of blood test to define "sick."
2. Sickness/health is in many ways a lifestyle choice, so there's only so much a healthcare system can offer. If a person goes to a clinic where incentives are aligned, etc. but they go home and eat twinkies all day and sit in front of the TV, they will continue to get sick.
Potential solution Mandate healthy diet/regular exercise as part of the program health-care program, and/or start out targeting the healthier part of the population.
I think this is a really interesting idea (the general idea of aligning incentives) for how to fix healthcare. Would really like to hear HN's thoughts on this. <comment><USER2> Your proposed solution to 2) will be illegal in the US in 2014. It will be illegal to turn patients away (even if they don't comply), and you can't charge the unhealthy patients significantly more than the healthy ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that a part of the new health care legislation?</comment></comment>


Apocalypse Soon? - <AUTHOR> http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/1/34

<comment><USER2> I've long been a skeptic of the global warming alarmism out there based on the dire predictions being made. People are acting like this thing is going to be the end of the world.</comment>


Stop Comparing JSON and XML - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2015/11/16/json-vs-xml.html <comment><USER2> This article is pretty garbage. compares almost nothing about xml and instead compares the tooling around xml giving no thought to the tooling around json.

instead, let me give you my unsolicited opinion:

if you need to represent both the structure of your data and characteristics within that structure, xml is great because attributes are a really good way to do that. there's a reason most UIs are represented as XML.

if your data is just - well, data - use json. or better yet use edn

<comment><USER3> It's funny to say json and edn represent data, because they are both strictly UTF8 encoded - raw bytes have to be encoded somehow (with neither standard specifying a prefer erred method) to be represented. Why is this important? Sometimes we want to embed a binary formatted piece of data (e.g. an image) as part of our data.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that the point of the 'hashtags' in edn? If a #png arrives then your program is going to throw an exception unless you've registered a handler that reports success in decoding it?

In effect it doesn't matter than the encoding is arbitrary edn (e.g. a 150KB png could be a solitary bigint literal) because the tags prevent false- positive decodes and keep things "strongly typed".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is a great example "Worse is better"[1]. XML has a lot more functionality than JSON but very few people can fully understand all the X* family of specifications, whereas JSON is a _lot_ easier and handles majority of the use cases.

There are many, many real life situations where a developer needs to choose between using JSON, XML or YAML to store their configuration data, message formats etc. Simply stating that JSON is good only in one scenario and XML must be used in every other is over-simplification.

[1]: [https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html](https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html)

<comment><USER6> In all fairness, 99% of the time you will use a library to serialise and deserialize. So I always found this xml vs json debate a bit sterile. As long as it is possible to inspect the file visually ocasionally, they're both good enough. I don't know anyone who edits manually huge amounts of xml/json, and if they do, there is probably a better way.

<comment><USER7> One consideration that's worth thinking about is that XML serialization is larger (often not insignificantly) than the same data serialized as JSON.

On the other hand, XML can make error handling much easier by schema- validating received documents and thus rejecting a large class of invalid inputs at an early stage. This is particularly helpful if you're making something interoperable, like a public API.

So even when you're just using a library, there are ramifications to the decision.

<comment><USER6> Correct. But in the order of things I care the most about, using angle or curly brackets matters a lot less than problems like: can I serialize multi- dimensional arrays, dictionaries, arrays of bytes, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The entire article rests on this:

> JSON was not designed to have such features [as XPath, XML Schema, XSL, > etc.]

But this claim is not justified, just stated. And the supposed inferiority of eg. JSONPath vs XPath is not justified either.

I would actually claim that JSONPath is _superior_ to XPath. JSONPath is much simpler, easier to understand, easier to implement, and still fulfills the most common use cases. Also JSONPath can be evaluated on a streaming input, which is not possible for XPath in general (maybe some subset of XPath queries could support streaming).

</comment><comment><USER9> The main problem with comparing XML and JSON is that their use cases don't perfectly overlap. I work with complex text documents, typically encoded in TEI schema, and it would be insane to try to do this work in JSON. It's possible, but the result would be an incomprehensible mess.

Unfortunately, a lot of programming languages have poor support for XML, and standard libraries usually only give you XPath 1.0 compatibility. XPath 2.0 and XQuery 3.0/3.1 are far more powerful and flexible, but you need Saxon or a good XML database to make proper use of them.

<comment><USER10> I am yet to see an example that makes me say "this JSON file does not represent the data very well, I wish they used XML instead". Representing HTML/XML does not count.

<comment><USER11> Encode a hash table where key order matters (like the Python OrderedDict). Or a hash table with non-string keys (like a sky chart with XY coordinates). Or any other data structure which doesn't conform to a simple list/hash table format.

Right tool for the job. JSON is a great 80% encoding format, which handles most cases. The problem is that folks try to make it handle all cases (ironically, just like they did with XML).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sure, if you define "XML" to include algorithms that operate on it like XSLT and XPath, but define "JSON" to be just the data format, then the former is indeed more featureful.

<comment><USER13> That was my first thought, that there's tooling around JSON to do all of the above... for that matter straight python, js/node and other languages do very well processing JSON... if your encoding ensures no unescaped cr/lf, then a record per line in json + gz is awesome.

XML is literally too expressive, and you can't tell how to deserialize xml with a good fragment... json you can (at least better)... the query/expression syntax is even worse than learning/using a simple general purpose programming language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stop comparing JSON with XML... let me compare them to show why.. ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> The article misses the mark, but XML--the language itself, not the tooling-- does have an advantage: it is designed to be quite good at one thing that's often neglected despite being in its name: extensibility. XML provides enormous flexibility via namespaces and integrating many schemas that your application may or may not understand in one document. When done correctly, it can be a huge win in interoperability in heterogeneous environments and across versions.

That said, you could very well argue its additional complexity is often not worth the gain in most applications.

Of course, you can also define your own extensibility/interoperability conventions with any data serialization format, but the point is XML has it baked in the standard and already provides an accepted way of doing things that everyone has implemented.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's worth linking to the famous XML rant of Erik Naggum:

[http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum- xmlrant.html](http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html)

It's both very insightful and enjoyable to read.

</comment><comment><USER17> XML is interesting case in point that syntax matters. XPath and XSL are so awesome but barely anyone cares because XML.

<comment><USER18> It's easy enough to create an alternative syntax for it, one-to-one translation. For HTML (XHTML?) there are plenty examples already like Jade.

[http://jade-lang.com/](http://jade-lang.com/)

But people who are serious about XML-related technologies understand that syntax of XML is mostly fine, interoperability and existing tools matter way more. It would be hard for such an alternative syntax to catch on. People often forget that it is a direct descendant of SGML, I imagine for similar reasons - there were existing tools for it.

<comment><USER16> The reason it's "easy enough to create an alternative syntax for it, one-to- one translation" is because XML document is _a tree_. Just that. There's an argument to be had about tooling & specification ecosystem, but that can be replicated in other formats, and if all you want is hierarchical data representation, it's not worth it to poke your eyes out while working with human-unreadable format XML is.

<comment><USER18> What's important about XML isn't XML itself. It's specifications, standards, toolset. Just because it can be replicated doesn't it will be. That's probably man-centuries of work.

<comment><USER16> I agree. Though a big part of the XML ecosystem is made of dead ends and very domain-specific stuff. But either way, we need to be precise - let's evaluate XML and XML ecosystem separately. If you're not heavily exploiting the latter, XML is almost never a good choice - because alone by itself, it's just a tree notation that sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ok, let's take the points one by one.

XPath: JSON doesn't need this in, say, Python or Javascript. You write normal code once it's a Python/JS dict/array/list and you're done. I don't need yet another language, I have general purpose ones that will do just fine.

Attributes and namespaces: these can sort of be faked, but fair enough. But then you get discussions on what should be an attribute and what shouldn't...

Schema: pretty sure this exists for JSON

XSL: Ah, the poor man's Lisp macros... And, again, easier to do in code in a scripting language.

<comment><USER20> > XPath: JSON doesn't need this in, say, Python or Javascript

That's not exactly true. There are books in the library. Here's how I get some book's main character's name: library[5]['mainCharacters'][3]['name']. Except I want to know _all_ main character names in all books. This is a clear, simple request, there's no need for me to put 2 cycles here if I don't have to. So I would end implementing my own XPath here anyway, to write declarative stuff declaratively.

But then again, I don't have to, because JsonPath already exists and is just fine.

<comment><USER21> IMHO JSONPath is an unnecessary DSL when you have a sufficiently powerful and expressive language. It basically abstracts a less-powerful version of the essential higher-order functions.

E.g.:

> Here's how I get some book's main character's name: > library[5]['mainCharacters'][3]['name']. Except I want to know all main > character names in all books.

        library.flatMap(x => x.mainCharacters).map(x => x.name);

> This is a clear, simple request, there's no need for me to put 2 cycles here > if I don't have to.

Using higher-order functions (and a functional programming style) it's still declarative. Yes, there are still nested cycles but, just like in JSONPath, they're hidden in the abstraction.

Plus, not using a DSL but a fully-fledged programming/scripting language, you can store intermediate results, make more complex queries, etc. which is more often than not what you need.

__

I've used JSONPath mostly in Bash scripts to quickly hack some JSON manipulation, but I'm slowly transitioning into using more powerful scripting languages and not using it anymore.

I'm not really _that_ familiar with JSONPath though. Are there any use cases where it's really convenient?

<comment><USER20> I would say, that being a DSL is a benefit by itself. This is how the above example would look in Python:

        [character['name'] for book in library for character in book['mainCharacters']]

(Python also has maps and stuff, but it's considered non-idiomatic, plus flatten would be more awkward.)

First of all, syntax is quite different from what you use (Scala, I suppose?), when were we using JSONPath we could just copy 1 line from one project to another and that would be fine.

Moreover, both our implementations have the same problems: we assume every book has mainCharacters and every character has name. Would it be JSONPath — it doesn't matter, no 'mainCharacters' means path doesn't match the pattern, just skip it. In our cases this means exceptions.

And what if we want to get all 'name' fields from whatever object at whatever depth? Or 'name' of every object where 'color' is 'yellow'?

Now, if you consider dictionary structure much more nested (say, some AST) — processing that without errors would be quite painful. And you also would end up writing your own XPath (JSONPath), even with all your map's and reduce's.

Of course, should it get complicated enough we would end up needing to write something custom anyway, but stuff like JSONPath just helps to keep things simple when possible. That's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Actually the reverse is true: you should compare XML (and related tech) vs JSON vs other options (say HTTP headers) and choose what's best for you. I've seen projects that are all about editing books and stubbornly use JSON, where XML would let them have schemas, and I've seen huge chunks of XML being exchanged where a simple key value pair would suffice. Things like JSON Schema indicate that people are using JSON for things not intended for it, likewise XML can be put to bad use.

</comment><comment><USER23> The main strength of JSON is that it directly maps to simple data structures that are first class citizens in many programming languages like Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Golang, etc.

XML is a bit more complicated, and often need dedicated libraries to manage. Every time I try to get the nth text element of node X with elementtree, it's bit of a hassle.

</comment><comment> white-flame The metadata argument is rarely applicable. Metadata tends to be rich, and it's horrible to represent rich data in opaque string attribute values.

Rich metadata is therefore represented as child nodes, giving them similar child/sibling status as JSON children, and the semantic ambiguity of when to use XML attributes vs child nodes remains.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nonsense. They look very different, and that matters, at the very least. In particular I like that JSON has some sense of "type" built into the format, when you omit quotes you know it's a number or a boolean. You can get that (and better than that, really) with XML Schema (or old-school DTDs) but it's baked into JSON. Plus, dealing with JSON in a JavaScript interpreter is about as simple as it gets; only if you're programming in XML (e.g. with Ant) would you ever say the same about XML. It's quite nice to be able to "dig in" to JSON using normal, plain-vanilla JavaScript dereferencing tools and looping constructs.

As for the tooling around XML, that's okay, but it's almost always overkill, and it almost always turns out the overhead of the tooling becomes a problem in-and-of-itself.

Anyway, JSON is actually a better data format.

<comment><USER25> I think your point could have been made even better if instead of quotes/numbers/strings you would have illustrated the in-band typing using square brackets and arity. Two bytes for "there can be more", so much better than the plural/singular convention often seen in XML (rarely without some creative breaches closely nearby).

In hindsight, the biggest advantage of XML over JSON was that it was painful enough to make schemas popular, a quality JSON is lacking. Unlike schema languages, which do exist.

To me, XML tooling lost quite a bit of its appeal when I realized that all the typing available via the various schema languages is completely lost to the world of xsl/xpath/xquery. I understand the reasons for that, but that does not provide much consolation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is a point, but I think the wrong things are compared to indicate that it's "apples to oranges".

XML is designed towards a type of problem that is not an everyday programming problem. It is designed for a full-fledged _schema_ \- it builds on the lessons of SGML and its predecessors such as GML[0], for people who need those things, which has historically meant "documentation writers". DocBook and DITA do not really have equals at what they do, which is semantic, textual content with rich markup. (Yes, you like TeX. But it focuses on presentation for typesetting, not semantic meaning.)

This means that in practice XML is really useful for describing an abstract, pre-tokenized syntax. This is a useful tool from a language design perspective; it lets you take an intermediate position between human-friendly and machine-friendly formats, without going straight to binary data or writing a full string parser. When computer language tooling emits an XML AST, they give tool-writers who would like to manipulate or inspect the AST a major leg up.

Simpler forms like sexps or JSON exact additional overheads on that problem that can be nearly as bad as just writing a custom string parser, once you get beyond the "strings, numbers, and simple containers" cases that are basically about data serialization, not data parsing. You want to have nodes that have unique names or attributes once you get into the parsing problem, but they are superfluous if you have plain old data. And as soon as you get into mixing different types of documents validation becomes a major concern and XML has the right groundwork for that.

It's just that most people don't want or need to deal with data of that complexity, especially since XML as a plaintext document just looks like angle-bracket trash. For those needs they are better off writing in something that a string parser can work with and then using XML as an intermediate, if at all. Even for the documentation-writing situation, it's easier to write Markdown for 98% of the prose and then convert it to add the last 2%.

Basically, XML has been used for far too many things that it shouldn't, and the blame for that lies on some 90's-era hype machines that decided that XML would be the buzzword of the future and pushed it into every technology. We got some nice tooling out of it, but in the end, it's still most useful for a certain kind of document markup.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Languag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Language)

<comment><USER16> XML looks well for markup use - for documents with lots of text and sparse semantic tagging. Matching opening and closing tags is actually a pretty nice feature there.

RE AST, somehow Lisp managed to encode it in S-expressions since forever, and there was never a problem. In fact, writing Lisp code is mostly writing an AST directly. There is apparently no need for the additional syntactic sugar XML adds.

The one thing JSON misses that actually is important is symbol type. S-expressions have it, and at this point it's no longer "strings, numbers and basic containers" \- per code=data, you have everything you need to encode an AST conveniently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27>
        But XML has XPath, XMLSchema and XSLT and JSON doesn't

XML has those things because it's data model is hostile to every programming language in existence and you need tools designed specifically for it to manipulate it concisely.

JSON fits well with the list/map/primitve data model that is common to most scripting languages so those tools aren't needed, you can just use javascript or python, something you use everyday anyway and doesn't look alien.

        A similar document would look like this in XML

... plus encoding and schema declaration and also all the garbage involved with dealing with namespaces. Or, at least, don't sing praise to XMLSchema and namespaces if you aren't going to put them in your example.

PS. XML is a markup language, if your data is a text document with markup then XML is a good choice, otherwise leave it alone.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, what screenshot from "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is there for?

</comment><comment><USER28> This tool will help to convert json to xml [http://jsonformatter.org](http://jsonformatter.org)

</comment><comment><USER29> Not to mention that XML is generally more suitable for streamed i/o.

<comment><USER30> Except that it is generally less suitable for streamed I/O than linewise JSON. Remember that you don't need to stream a single big document. You can make a stream of several separate documents.

<comment><USER29> Provided your data can be chunked in that way, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looks like a troll...</comment>


Webtime Tracker – discover your browsing habits, time tracking at its best - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime-tracker/ppaojnbmmaigjmlpjaldnkgnklhicppk <comment><USER2> Very cool, this looks to also use heartbeats + timeout similar to how WakaTime [1] tracks coding activity.

1\. [https://wakatime.com/faq#what-happens-when-im- afk](https://wakatime.com/faq#what-happens-when-im-afk)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Webtime Tracker is a Google Chrome extension that keeps track of how you spend time on the web and presents the stats in a useful and intuitive way.

What you'll see \- Time spent on individual websites \- Detailed domain stats \- Total time spent browsing \- Usage visualized by colorful graphs

Extras \- Backup and restore, export to CSV \- Screenshots (e.g. for sharing) \- Works even offline

Statistics \- Today overview \- Daily averages \- All-time stats

Customizable features \- Idle time interval \- Doughnut graph gaps (for readability) \- Time tracker in icon</comment>


Ask hackers: Other good online entrepreneurial/business communities? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://startupping.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't one timesink enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> What, you sleep and eat or something? Psshh, mere mortal.

Here's a similar question I asked in proggit: <http://programming.reddit.com/goto?id=23yo7>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://biznik.com/> <http://www.konnects.com/> <http://www.AdvisorGarage.com> (never used any of them.. also try YahooGroups and Google Groups)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.foundread.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://startupflames.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.buildv1.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> You should checkout Cofoundr.com</comment>


Coroutines: A Million Stacks (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikemarcin.com/post/coroutine_a_million_stacks/ <comment><USER2> > Can you have 1 million entities and let them all think with stackful > coroutines and achieve acceptable frame rates?

Yes. With Erlang (or Elixir). Even have them preempt each others, accept connections and respond in a timely manner. If any crash, I they can be restarted without much of an issue. Just saw a few cluster nodes spike to above 1 millions processes recently, then recover, no big deal.

<comment><USER3> Well the above proves it's doable in C++ too. The issue hit upon is the time required to run a million of coroutines to completion (8s in the most optimized scenario). Would Erlang/Elixir do better? I don't know, but I wouldn't be so sure.

<comment><USER2> > Would Erlang/Elixir do better? I don't know, but I wouldn't be so sure.

Pretty sure it can. Let's give it a try:

        #!/usr/bin/env escript
        %%! +P 2000000

        %% run with ./spawn_n 1000000

        -mode(compile).

        main([NStr]) ->
            N = list_to_integer(NStr),
            T0 = erlang:system_time(millisecond),
            Parent = self(),
            Waiter = spawn(fun() -> Parent ! {final_result, wait(N, 0)} end),
            spawn_n(N, Waiter),
            Res = receive {final_result, R} -> R end,
            Dt = erlang:system_time(millisecond) - T0,
            io:format("Done in ~p sec result:~p~n", [Dt/1000.0, Res]),
            ok.

        wait(0, Acc) ->
            Acc;
        wait(N, Acc) ->
            receive {result, R} -> ok end,
            wait(N - 1, Acc + R).

        spawn_n(0, _Waiter) ->
            ok;
        spawn_n(N, Waiter) ->
            spawn(fun() -> Waiter ! {result, 1} end),
            spawn_n(N - 1, Waiter).

And it outputs:

        ./spawn_n 1000000
        Done in 1.613 sec result:1000000

In summary, it started 1M processes, all with isolated heaps, pre-emptable, with only a few KB of stack size. They didn't execute much just sent their result to a collector process and then exited. All in about 5x as fast as C++.

<comment><USER3> A most excellent answer :)

<comment><USER4> If the C++ code in comparison uses boost.coroutine2 library, then it's not surprising it performs poorly. Boost.coroutine2 library has an architectural flaw which causes it to throw (and then catch) an exception on coroutine completion. [https://github.com/boostorg/coroutine2/issues/25](https://github.com/boostorg/coroutine2/issues/25)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everything old is new again...

</comment><comment><USER6> if the stacks are mostly the same and you have far fewer processors than frames, you could use copy on write to share stacks

not useful but maybe interesting if you're into this kind of thing

<comment><USER7> I'd imagine most stacks get written to almost immediately on the first function call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you need that many you must use either a higher level language (Erlang/Go) or Rust futures.

<comment><USER9> I've seen C++ based systems that regularly harbor hundreds of thousands of stacks using quite minimal heap, 2M+ stacks when things get really busy (this, on a machine with 64GB of RAM). The primitives are a few hundred lines of pretty tame C++.

As much as I like Erlang/Go/Rust/etc., it's not a requirement.

<comment><USER10> How quickly could the process perform a simple operation, say compare or move, across all 2m+ stacks? I.e. how long is the latest stack frozen before it is given an opportunity to work?

<comment><USER11> Check out libdill[1] (in C): "Generally speaking, though, libdill's concurrency primitives are only a bit slower than basic C flow control statements. A context switch has been seen to execute in as little as 6 ns, with coroutine creation taking 26 ns. Passing a message through a channel takes about 40 ns."

Check also libmill[2] (from the same author), it's more Go'ish:

"It can execute up to 20 million coroutines and 50 million context switches per second."

1\. [http://libdill.org](http://libdill.org)

2\. [http://libmill.org](http://libmill.org)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An exploration of MakerDAO's governance incentives - <AUTHOR> https://www.scopelift.co/blog/fakerdao <comment><USER2> This is a simple, and thus great, way of using Makers incentive structure against itself.

While specific to the MakerDAO ecosystem, it effectively highlights the complexity and challenge in adequately creating a _decentralized_ governance structure.

Essentially, to remove centralized control, you must structure incentives such that the system ultimately acts as intended, but there is always going to be ways to subvert the incentive structure. The goal is that costs of conducting such activity are too much to be reasonably conducted.

It seems that these systems will take years and years in the wild before their incentive structures are iterated upon enough to finally get to a point where truly large business value will flow through it. Exercises like this are useful in either disproving this whole concept or incrementally improving it.

<comment><USER3> You basically described PoW (proof-of-work) mining, which was (imho) the actual innovation with Bitcoin. The current idea though is to build a byzantine fault tolerant system that doesn't require massive amounts of "wasted" power. I put wasted in quotes because it is actually doing something, it is just the output isn't useful for much more than validating the transactions.

Interestingly, Maker is currently built on top of (Ethereum) PoW. Some day, ETH2, which is PoS (proof-of-stake), will solve all the same issues you're talking about. Or at least that is the dream. We will then have a pretty amazing digital rube goldberg machine where we can sit back and watch the gears turn.

<comment><USER4> PoS will not solve anything. PoS is just obfuscated proof of work. The same amount of "resources" will be wasted in a PoS system, its just going to be a different type of resource.

Required reading

[http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow- cheapest/](http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/)

HN Discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16451187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16451187)

Also newer article [http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pos-still- pointless/](http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pos-still-pointless/)

<comment><USER5> That's not even close to being correct, and blogs from maximalists are never a good source of correct information.

Happy to walk you through what PoS looks like in 2020, but you can look up the information yourself too.

<comment><USER6> Tell me, what does PoS look like in 2020, apart from delayed?

ps. Using the word "maximalist" immediately shrinks your audience to other die-hard crypto fans.

<comment><USER5> I'm not in it for the audience.. in any case, maximalism is mostly a self- assigned title and the author of that blog describes himself as such

edit: how can something that is being discovered be late? The work on PoS is almost completely greenfield and far from trivial. Many people made many far too optimistic comments about how long it would take to get it right but no one can say it's late...

<comment><USER6> Right, so when you say you'll tell us the state of PoS in 2020, the answer is "currently unsolved".

<comment><USER5> There are testnest live for some time now but there is still plenty to do before anyone should trust their funds into the staking contracts.

edit: I mean, several dPoS networks went live without spending enough time considering the game theory attacks, but now we've seen them used on EOS and more recently on Steem so thats why I (personally) believe a real PoS is still a few months away at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The analogy with the Prisoners' Dilemma is interesting here, but doesn't feel quite right. In the comments, BenWang summarizes it like: "the effects of the attacker will happen to all token holders regardless of what you decide to do with your tokens, therefore, you might as well rent them out."

It seems that the MKR holder in this case could rent them out... or sell MKR and exit their position entirely. And this seriously discounts the fact that eroding Maker security is immediately obvious and can get priced into the MKR token very quickly, defeating the point of a few percentage points of yield.

It makes sense on some conceptual level, but it's not clear that the magnitudes of the incentives result in this toxic game theoretic equilibrium.</comment>


PS4 Will Require 300MB Update Out of the Box to Get Key Features - <AUTHOR> http://gaoom.com/2013/10/25/ps4-will-require-300mb-update-out-of-the-box-to-get-key-features/

<comment><USER2> I think this is going to become the norm for those type of devices. Not only does it help to uphold street dates it also allows the developers to perfect the features well after a traditional cutoff date to flash the hardware.</comment>


Seattle vacates hundreds of marijuana charges going back 30 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.theroot.com/seattle-vacates-hundreds-of-marijuana-possession-charge-1825622917 <comment><USER3> Actually, Seattle PROPOSED to vacate hundreds of marijuana charges going back 30 years.

I hope the proposal gets accepted, but I dislike clickbait headlines even more.

As I see it, the subtext on why TheRoot.com (1) wrote a misleading headline in that way was not only to clickbait readers, but also to function as way for The Root's journalist Angela Helm to use their media to pressure the courts into accepting the proposal.

Which is a noble intent, but I hate clickbait.

(1) TheRoot.com is part of the Gizmodo Media Group and focuses on Afro- American issues.

</comment><comment><USER4> I look forward to the day when all drug offenses are vacated, and all drugs are legal.

This is a cognitive liberty issue. One should be allowed to alter one's own consciousness any way one sees fit.

<comment><USER5> _One should be allowed to alter one 's own consciousness any way one sees fit_

Crime in the pursuit of drug addiction exists, meth- and cocaine-induced paranoia exists. There is a public health problem mixed in there. Anyone who thinks they can disregard the public health issue really needs an alcoholic in the family.

<comment><USER4> _" Crime in the pursuit of drug addiction exists, meth- and cocaine-induced paranoia exists. There is a public health problem mixed in there."_

Does that outweigh the whirlpool of violence that the War on Drugs has stirred up by its very existence? All the money funneled in to organized crime by the War on Drugs, enabling and incentivizing them to kill their rivals and corrupt the judicial and political system? All the people killed by police during drug raids? The decades of life wasted in prison by hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders where they are tortured, raped, killed, or groomed in to far more serious criminals? All the families broken up, devastating them emotionally and financially? All the children left to be raised by just one of the parents or made parentless when their parents are imprisoned or killed?

Crimes committed due to drug addiction are often committed in order to get money for the next fix. It's the illegality of drugs that keeps the prices so incredibly high that they're unaffordable to poor people. That need not be the case if they are made legal.

Cocaine paranoia is a medical issue, and it and other health issues related to drug use should be treated medically, not by throwing people in jail -- which doesn't work anyway. Drug use is rife in prison.

The War on Drugs is an abject failure that makes the failure of Prohibition pale in comparison.

<comment><USER6> There's more nuance here to discuss. One is throwing people in jail - you can still make production and distribution illegal while keeping the use itself legal. Another one is that availability of various drugs allows people to make relatively safer choices - see the difference in opioid addictions between states with different pot laws.

We can still jail people actively distributing/producing highly addictive drugs, while at the same time giving mostly free choice and helping rather than harming (potential) users. Monitoring actual results in the society can affect the thresholds of what's done.

<comment><USER4> _" We can still jail people actively distributing/producing highly addictive drugs"_

But that doesn't work, and leads to all the abuses and downsides of the War on Drugs, like encouraging and enabling organized crime, etc.

Alcohol and nicotine are some of the most addictive drugs out there, and yet we don't jail people for distributing or producing those.

Food is also highly addictive and there's a huge obesity epidemic in the US, and yet no one is suggesting imposing jail terms on the companies that make food or entice people to eat it.

Skydiving and other extreme sports are often described as highly addictive and are obviously dangerous, yet no one is trying to prohibit them. It's widely recognized that if people want to engage in those risky activities and other people want to provide them, it's a matter best left to the consenting adults engaging in those activities -- with perhaps some regulation to help make them as safe as possible.

<comment><USER6> > Alcohol and nicotine are some of the most addictive drugs out there, and yet > we don't jail people for distributing or producing those.

They are regulated to an extent. You will get fined for selling to minors, for example. Same for smuggling cigarettes and alcohol. And for misleading advertisements and fake medical research. I don't think those fines go far enough.

> Skydiving and other extreme sports are often described as highly addictive > and are obviously dangerous, yet no one is trying to prohibit them.

I'm not sure "highly addictive" works here. Do you have withdrawal symptoms if you stop? Does it make you unable to function and think clearly for a while? Is your judgement affected enough that you'd harm yourself or someone else to participate in the sport again? This is a "fun hobby" that will make you sad if you don't do it again, not addiction.

<comment><USER4> _" They [alcohol and nicotine] are regulated to an extent. You will get fined for selling to minors, for example."_

Legalization does not mean lack of any regulation. Alcohol and nicotine, which are legal, are regulated, as you point out. So are prescription (and even non- prescription) drugs. I am not opposed to forbidding sale of legal drugs to minors, though it's not perfectly clear cut (the age limit is particularly tricky to set, and often minors manage to get their hands on alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs anyway).

 _" Do you have withdrawal symptoms if you stop [skydiving]?"_

Actually, I have read of people who did feel like their depression was alleviated through participation in extreme sports like skydiving,[1] and who feel depressed if they don't go again for extended periods of time. So I think a psychological addiction (much like addiction to food where similar effects are seen) can apply.

 _" Does it make you unable to function and think clearly for a while? Is your judgement affected enough that you'd harm yourself or someone else to participate in the sport again?"_

Depression can affect your thought process, and can lead to harm of self or others, so yes, I think those are real risks of quitting for some people who get relief from depression through participation in extreme sports (or other perfectly legal activities which either help them to cope or alleviate their depression).

[1] - "Skydiving Cured My Depression" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837748)

<comment><USER6> Sorry, this still seems like a completely different situation to me. Depression was already there.

Heavy addiction: you have X problems, you escape via addiction, now you have X+addiction problems, you stop, you still have X+addiction+withdrawal.

Hobby: you have X problems, you find something that helps you with depression, you have X-1 problems, you stop, you have X problems again.

<comment><USER4> They are not the same, but they share two key properties: their danger and potential addictiveness.

Most people would not even seriously consider making extreme sports illegal, despite their danger and potential addictiveness, but it's those very same properties of some illegal drugs that are most frequently cited as the primary reasons for making them illegal.

If those are honestly the main reasons that so many drugs are illegal, then why not make extreme sports illegal as well, for those very same reasons?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seattle police have been fairly tolerant about marijuana over the years. In 2013 at Hempfest, an annual festival celebrating hemp (and its potent cousin), the police set up a booth handing out lunch box sized bags of Doritos with a sticker warning people not to smoke and drive, but otherwise enjoy the munchies. I-502 was the initiative that legalized pot stores and personal use.

[http://cannabisdestiny.com/seattle-hempfest-doritos- priced-a...](http://cannabisdestiny.com/seattle-hempfest-doritos-priced- at-50-on-ebay/)

<comment><USER8> > the police set up a booth handing out lunch box sized bags of Doritos with a > sticker warning people not to smoke and drive

Many people forget that there are alternatives to strong-arm policing. Community based interactions such as this are often both more effective at changing behaviour as well as more cost effective, bags of chips are way cheaper than roadblocks and field sobriety checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a great move! I am confused about the criteria though - <USER2> is _no way_ that there have only been 542 misdemeanor possession convictions in the last 30 years in Seattle... it's the 18th most populous city in the United States and, while safe, is far from the safest city. I can't find great numbers, but there are hundreds-of-thousands of possession arrests every year in this country. Does any one have specific information on what earns someone a judgment vacating their conviction?

<comment><USER10> Marijuana has been SPD's lowest priority for the past 15 years[0]. This is only _misdemeanor_ possession _convictions_. Not felony possession; not anyone who wasn't convicted. Not anyone who was stopped and searched on a pretext of marijuana possession, and then charged with something else.

I agree there are probably more people with records affected by marijuana possession, but it's a necessary first step and helps at least those 542.

[0]: [http://norml.org/news/2003/09/18/seattle-voters-approve- init...](http://norml.org/news/2003/09/18/seattle-voters-approve-initiative- making-marijuana-enforcement-city-s-lowest-priority)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My takeaway from this thread: People are tyrants. They want the freedom to enjoy their own lifestyle, but are not tolerant, and so do not want liberty generally. The want to use the State to force people with different values to refrain from impinging on their lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER12> In these kinds of discussions about marijuana I often see people supporting the legalization of all drugs (see current top post in this thread). As someone who disagrees with this stance (but has very little personal experience with drugs and is probably misinformed about some of these things), could someone give counter-arguments for my concerns? I'd like to better understand the point of view that all drugs should be legal instead of a very specific subset of "safe" drugs. (I do think that marijuana should be legalized)

1\. It's been medically shown that some drugs cause aggressive and violent behavior. Why should we allow an increase in that kind of behavior if it could be largely prevented as it is now?

2\. If all drugs become legalized, what's to prevent addiction to certain drugs sweeping across an entire population and devastating productivity? If drugs are more accessible it seems likely that more people would experiment with and become addicted to more debilitating drugs.

3\. It seems like whether drugs are legal or not, if you get addicted to some types of drugs you become effectively unable to earn an income. Even if legalizing drugs reduces the prices, aren't the people addicted to them still going to commit crimes to make the money they need since they still can't work normal jobs?

<comment><USER13> I don't think that a reasonable argument could be made for legalizing meth or heroin, for example. They're just too destructive/deadly. It's like how not wearing a seatbelt while driving is illegal, it's to protect you from yourself.

<comment><USER14> One argument would be that by legalizing these drugs, it's much easier to offer treatment and addiction therapy. Users are less likely to get help when their habit is illegal, and the stigma around illegal activities makes citizens less willing to fund social programs that might help because they view it as helping criminals who don't deserve their hard earned tax money.

<comment><USER13> I meant legalizing the sale of the drug, not usage. I don't think addicts should be considered criminals.

<comment><USER10> Criminalizing the supply chain has disadvantages, too. The government loses sales tax revenue and criminal organizations make large profits. Quality isn't controlled and is often dangerously polluted (e.g., fentanyl being sold as heroin).

Also, not all drug users are addicts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one step forward in a positive direction for the US. I'm very happy to hear my neighboring country taking a more common sense approach to drugs. First Korea and now this.. What the heck is up with the world.. People are finally waking up. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Two comments:

1.

        "...the move would affect 542 people who have weed
        convictions on their records..."

542 (people) /30 (years) / 12 (months) = 1.5 (convictions per month).

This is very low number for a metropolis at the scale of Seattle.

2\. Why is that "people of color" thing has to be mentioned here. If it's right, it is right. Leave the skin color aside Mr. City Attorney.

<comment><USER17>
      What the is that "people of color" thing
      has to be mentioned here. If it's right, it
      is right. Leave the skin color aside Mr. City
      Attorney.

It's mentioned because it's relevant! Maybe the background here isn't obvious, but marijuana convictions have been systemically used against people of color in a way they haven't generally been used against others. So understanding the disproportionate impact here, of which acknowledging it as true is the first step of many, is part of making this right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't support vacating the weed charges. I support legalization of weed and its products —- I think schedule 1 is wrong.

But people who broke the law (and got caught) when it was illegal are law breakers.

As Joey Diaz says —- if you got busted for weed, you're a momo.

If Seattle voters approve the vacating, then so be it. That's their prerogative. I don't support it though.

<comment><USER19> Would you support the imprisonment of someone who was proven to have smoked cannabis back when the state viewed it as illegal? Shouldn't we imprison all those people too because 'they broke a law when it was illegal'?

What an astoundingly dim/daft position.

Would you support the imprisonment of a doctor or woman who performed an abortion prior to Roe v Wade? How about two gay men performing sodomy?

What more important, some pedantic reverence to the law or focusing on what's ethical and not?

<comment><USER20> The difference is was the law immoral and now we are fixing that error, or did the law have good intent but now the politicians think that there is a better way to reach the solution. For example, if alcohol was taxed at 30% but someone only paid 20% tax, they would be jailed. If the tax got changed to 20% the person shouldn't be released because they broke a moral law. In your example of gay men being jailed, that law is immoral and therefore those people should be release after removing the law.

I don't think that jailing people who were consuming illegal drugs is an immoral law. Sure, the law may not be so good and should be changed. But, people who break moral laws are not good for our society.

<comment><USER19> >Would you support the imprisonment of someone who was proven to have smoked cannabis back when the state viewed it as illegal?

So you're arguing that: yes, the state should expend resources today to imprison past-crime even though it's legal today.

I wish I could have people like you foot the tax bill for imprisoning people, who decided for themselves what they could and could not put into their body, and not me.

<comment><USER20> There are many things that I wish that I wouldn't have to pay for. I would not pay for many of the bureaucratic waste that happens in Washington. But, unfortunately taxes do not work like that. All one can do is vote for different laws and convince others to agree with them. In the end the majority elects the politicians that make the rules.

<comment><USER19> firic: "[I'm ok with other people subsidizing my believe that ethical, two party consent should be imprisoned]"

<comment><USER20> Yes, just like I am okay outlawing duelling to the death, gambling to the death and selling yourself to slavery. Even if both parties consent.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Response to Sam Odio - <AUTHOR> http://jonathanstark.com/blog/2011/08/13/an-open-letter-to-sam-odio/

<comment><USER2> Some backstory here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2880126>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2880126>

Further, this exact item was submitted earlier today. It's obviously been killed because it's not showing up in searches, and I can't be bothered to turn on "Show Dead" and go looking for it by hand.

I wish HN had a filter so I could remove these sorts of items and get actual technical items.

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2883043>

A filter and a kill file would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't make any sense, what's the backstory here?

Edit: never mind, looked it up. <http://sam.odio.com/2011/08/12/i-took-625-jonathans-card/></comment>


LG says it will push out firmware update for spy TVs, but no apologies - <AUTHOR> http://grahamcluley.com/2013/11/lg-firmware-update-spy-tv/ <comment><USER2> Before this update hits, please y'all techies out there- log as much network traffic as you can. Then update, then compare if you see SSL traffic that wasn't there before the update. Also compare the DNS requests before & after update. Oh, and UDP packets too. Basically, just record days worth of traffic, before and after, and upload it so people(like me?) with free time can search for anything suspicious.

EDIT: Okay, for Danieru's & verandaguy's replies to my comment[1], be sure to set in your wireshark filter "ip.addr == [IP of TV]" so we don't see anything random internet-folk are not suppose to see. That filter is traffic that is only coming from or going to the TV. Also Danieru, if your CC is flying around unencrypted in network traffic... something and/or someone has made a mistake elsewhere.

EDIT2: I'll also take this time to promote [http://cloudshark.org/](http://cloudshark.org/) , not because I have anything to do with the website. I just think it's super cool. You can upload a pcap file and it'll give you a unique url you can share with others.

EDIT3: It'd be cooler still if you could actually capture the firmware binary being downloaded to the TV!

1\. [http://i.imgur.com/OHJAPGH.png](http://i.imgur.com/OHJAPGH.png)

<comment><USER3> Is it assumed the update will be OTA? For Sony TVs it can be put on a USB stick - which means there's a binary to reverse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I think my TV is spying on me."

90's: "You should talk to a psychiatrist."

2013: "You should talk to my cousin Ernie, he's an IT whiz."

via [https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/403584069923270656](https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/403584069923270656)

Says something about whats happened in technology and privacy over the last few decades.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Information such as channel, TV platform, broadcast source, etc. that is collected by certain LG Smart TVs is not personal but viewing information._

Wrong. If you would otherwise have to be in my house to know something, what you have is personal information.

<comment><USER6> (please note I'm not excusing LG just trying to parse the double speak)

So in FCC land cable operators know what you watch, their box is tuning to it and they're able to log this information for diagnostic purposes. They're also allowed to share some of this information as long as its not personally identifiable information. IE "2000 people viewed CSI NY" not J. Rockway from 123 Main St. viewed CSI NY".

They're trying to make the distinction here (though doing in poorly) likely to save themselves some privacy complaints later.

<comment><USER7> I have to admit being a little surprised about the uproar over the LG situation when I assumed it was common knowledge that cable/satellite boxes/DVRs are sending your viewing data back to the operating company.

<comment><USER8> > DVR

Which DVRs? Mine had better not be doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> " >> although the data is not retained by the server.

>Well, that's something I suppose. Although presumably it is retained for _some_ period of time, otherwise how would the adverts and recommendations be possible? " //

So, basically they flat-out lied about the data retention.

If the UK Information Commission doesn't apply the largest fine ever recorded it will show they're entirely toothless.

When will government stop protecting the financial interests of mega-corps and start doing something to favour the _demos_.

<comment><USER10> _> Well, that's something I suppose. Although presumably it is retained for some period of time, otherwise how would the adverts and recommendations be possible? " // So, basically they flat-out lied about the data retention._

That isn't the case. The system could build a representation of the viewers preferences when the data is received, then discard the data. That means the data isn't retained (for any normal definition of "retained").

<comment><USER9> It does hinge on the definition of retention - but the definition here is to contrast not being retained at all. So even retaining it long enough to digest it (which IMO is still data retention) is to be considered retention because the claim is that there is actually no retention at all.

~"Data is not retained" here should mean something like the port that data is being sent on is closed, or the packets input on that port are dropped by a firewall.

Minimal retention is still "retention".

<comment><USER10> Your terminology may make sense to you, but it isn't commonly used or understood that way.

The more common term for what you describe is "processed"

Additionally, there are legal issues around that definition. For example, redefining "retention" to really mean "processed" means that things like proxies may suddenly become liable for things like copyright violation.

<comment><USER9> A proxy or cache doesn't substantively process the data. Here they are processing it if they are constructing anonymised models from it as you suggest may be the case. If they're processing it then they need to retain it long enough to perform those operations.

In the case at hand if they're processing it then they've "retained" it long enough to do that which is contrary to the spirit of the statement that it was 'fine that data was being sent to them as they weren't using it'. They used different words but this is the point of contention.

Either they discarded the data without further processing, amalgamation, statistical analysis, model construction, archiving or anything else or they used the data.

If they used the data in any way then it's a constructive lie even if there is some weaselling way in which their statement can be construed to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know about others, but I don't need a stinking apology. I need to stay away from LG as a company per se, and its a great timing because this thanksgiving I'm getting 80" TV, and trust me, it WILL NOT be from LG.

Hope LG made up the $ difference by selling customers' info, or whatever else they do/did/continue doing with this data.

<comment><USER7> Apologies after getting caught are never genuine anyway, I don't know why it's gotten so trendy to call for people to "apologize" all the time, how about holding them accountable for the bad thing they actually did?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Le sigh. "Regrets concerns the reports may have caused" but yanno, not the oops, privacy didn't matter to us. LG: The place where customers are still numbers and lawyers get to write the press releases?

<comment><USER13> What the hell does 'le sigh' mean?

<comment><USER14> It's a reddit rage comic thing.

<comment><USER15> No, it's a Pepé Le Pew thing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think I should set up wireshark on my network asap. I never used my TV's "smart" features, and the only reason I even have it connected to the network is for its youtube app (because building a youtube app for roku apparently takes longer than building a rocket that can land itself...)

Also, I'm fairly sure my roku is sniffing my netflix usage as well: I recently started seeing ads on the roku start page for TV shows and movies that I'd just watched on netflix: has anyone else seen this behavior?

<comment><USER7> If advertising is involved, it almost certainly is sniffing everything it can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _even when this function is turned off by the viewers, it continues to transmit viewing information although the data is not retained by the server._

Does anyone buy the claim that their servers weren't retaining the data?

For this to be true, the TV would need to transmit to the server a notification that data should no longer be stored. While it's possible, I find it implausible that they would go to the trouble to do all of that, rather than just make it a simple client-side switch that just stops transmitting the snooped data.

<comment><USER18> They mean they haven't put the data received so far into long-term storage, because the feature wasn't considered to be in production. This is consistent with the initial report.

So to make this true, they just need to wipe their logs and not set up the database until the firmware has been pushed out.

I do wonder if erasing those logs would violate the data retention directive, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Notice how it doesn't explicitly say that it's an OTA update to cover TVs currently in use. It also doesn't say if it will happen automatically in the background or if the user will be prompted to update (or not). Given how close it is to Black Friday, what are the odds that the update doesn't roll out until well after Christmas, when all those new TVs are plugged in?

</comment><comment><USER20> Love the (metadata) buzzword thrown in. This is complete crap.

<comment><USER21> Yes, it seems that is the new word companies and governments are now using to describe data that isn't quite as sensitive as other data and thereby OK to collect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Serious question to those of you with networked TVs: why is your TV even on the network in the first place?

<comment><USER23> Netflix without a device like a roku attached.

<comment><USER22> Thanks. I have an Apple TV; I hadn't even considered the possibility for the TV itself to support services like Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are there any reports on other LG devices such as bluray players?

</comment><comment><USER25> lol @ the example they used: "Midget_porn_2013.avi".

</comment><comment><USER26> Then they can keep their TVs as well.

Shameless.

</comment><comment><USER27> I guess this is why class actions are sometimes good. Even though the lawyers are the one that enrich themselves, atleast the company suffers the monetary cost so that it will think twice before repeating such shenanigans.</comment>


Chrome battery status API (demo) - <AUTHOR> https://output.jsbin.com/battery-status-test <comment><AUTHOR> Source code link: [https://jsbin.com/battery-status- test/edit?html,output](https://jsbin.com/battery-status-test/edit?html,output)

P.S: I just found it while researching for my HTPC build. I didn't write this code.</comment>


UI design: When tags work (librarything.com) and when they don't (amazon.com) - <AUTHOR> http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/02/when-tags-works-and-when-they-dont.php <comment><AUTHOR> Amazon: ~1.3 million tags. LibraryThing: >13 million tags!</comment>


AIY Projects - <AUTHOR> https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/ <comment><USER2> Free with the current edition of the MagPi

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/)

<comment><USER3> (which is already sold out in the online store)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is an open source endpoint to the Google APIs?

Wow, I sure feel safe knowing that my data is going to Google and only Google.

<comment><USER5> It's not, for the project you have to setup a Google Cloud account, so you have the same restrictions like everyone else: 60 min of free service per month, then $0.006 per 15s.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I meant open source as in Open-Source, not "gratis".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That page was frustrating to navigate on a phone. Enough with the parallax scrolling fad already.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really like the idea since I have a Raspberry Pi 3 sitting around. Will be interested in future projects but really not feeling the UI. Way too much bouncing taking the focus away from the content.

The product is already good enough. Why try to make it so flashy?

</comment><comment><USER8> What machines is Google building and testing these sites on? This one page single handedly consumes a full CPU core and lags on my 2013 MBP.

<comment><USER7> I'm absolutely hating on the UI right now. So much bouncing...can they not?

<comment><USER9> I have a feeling it is meant to be all bouncy to spark an interest in kids when they visit the site.</comment></comment></comment>


Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Happiness [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/docs/2016-levitt.pdf <comment><USER3> My grandmother's family arrived at the docks in England in the early depression years, and flipped a coin. Heads, Australia; Tails, Canada.

I don't know how the coin affected their happiness with the decision they made. All I know is that two generations later, I'm sitting in -9C temperatures in mid-march because of "tails".

<comment><USER4> If they had gotten heads, you won't exist. :)

<comment><USER5> His/her consciousness might exist inside a different person though.

<comment><USER3> No, I pretty definitely wouldn't exist. My father's family has been in Canada a lot longer, and I'm half him.

<comment><USER5> Ok but maybe your father or mother would've had a baby with someone else, and then you'd be that person.

<comment><USER6> I'm not even the same person as who i was yesterday.

Everytime my stream of consciousness stops and starts I am a new person built from the thousands of lives that came before.

This is not a saddening fact but an enlightening one. We all stand on the shoulders of those that came before us.

<comment><USER7> I thought we stood on their heads...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I coin toss, but I don't let the outcome determine the action.

Instead I let how I _feel_ about the outcome determine the action.

Most of the time a coin toss is not required as I am quite decisive, but if I feel particularly paralysed by an opportunity or decision, and unable to determine the best course of action... then I will toss a coin and look at the outcome, and decide whether or not I feel at peace with the outcome, whether there is regret.

I act on the immediate feeling of the outcome, not the outcome itself.

<comment><USER9> I've read a few different books that say we make decisions from our gut or emotions--logic is only used to try and justify it to ourselves.

<comment><USER10> Yeap. There's some research that suggests the unconscious mind is better at making complex decisions then the conscious mind. [1][2]

"Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with" [1]

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8732-sleeping-on- it-b...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8732-sleeping-on-it-best-for- complex-decisions/) [2][http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/rightchoice.pdf](http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/rightchoice.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      The great majority of the recruitment for the study was done through social media associated with Freakonomics... in the recruiting for the study, I emphasized that I was only interested in people who were having a difficult time making a life decision... Finally, this is a group which is apparently attracted to the idea of using a coin toss to potentially resolve major life dilemmas.

Not that we should automatically dismiss the results, but that is a pretty important qualification.

Also:

      Empirical economists are increasingly moving from a role of consumers of data to producers of data. This paper represents an extreme expression of that trend. It is difficult to imagine how one could hope to answer the questions addressed in this paper without generating the data. As the prominence of social media grows, opportunities to recruit subject pools for randomized field experiments from broad swaths of the population will only increase.

As cool as that is, you've got to worry that if social scientists have the ability to conduct significant studies as a result of their popularity, we'll start to see a world where the most prolific social scientists are necessarily more and more like entertainers.

<comment><USER12> Levitt's been more entertainer than social scientist for a while now, and as for other social scientists wanting a broad section of candidates for field experiments, social media associated with the university or other third party, or even paid social has the same recruitment potential without the systematic biases of Freakonomics fans

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When stuck on a decision, sometimes I use this trick: I flip a coin, and while it's in the air, I pay close attention to how I _want_ it to land. The subconscious tends to show itself when I am tuned in at that moment. Then I just use that feeling as the decision and ignore the coin. No regrets so far!

<comment><USER14> Sopranos fan?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> During a corporate training once, our tables were given the task of deciding which of a set of personas would receive a liver transplant based on some provided biographical data. The big reveal was undoubtedly to be how our biases informed our decision.

I convinced the rest of the participants that choosing was in fact immoral and the only fair way to decide who lived and died was a lottery.

The explanation that Alice the loose woman (really! old material I guess) was getting a new liver because she was _lucky_ was not a well received.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand how it's 'more moral' to abdicate responsibility to the toss of a coin than to choose as best you can based on what you know. That seems like saying the 'moral' answer to a trolley problem is to run away from the lever so that whatever happens is 'not your fault'.

<comment><USER15> The trolley problem is an interesting frame.

For the sake of an unfamiliar reader, in the problem, we have a man standing by the buffers and an out of control trolley car. We're asked to choose between pulling a lever, which will divert the car to the buffers, thus killing the man but saving the people on board the car, or not pulling the lever, which results in the deaths of the trolley passengers but allows the man to live.

Choice one:

The out of control car is 'not your fault' but deliberately choosing to kill the man would be. You couldn't live with yourself knowing you'd been the cause of his death. You opt not to pull the lever.

Choice two:

That's crazy. None of this is your fault but it's your 'responsibility' to choose now. It's a simple utilitarian calculus - more lives = better. You pull the lever.

My problem with all this is that either response (and people split on the response) is nothing more than a reflection of the unconscious biases of the respondent. This is revealed when we discover that by changing the framing slightly - e.g. asking the question in another language (a different part of the brain is engaged = more utilitarians) or making the killing of the innocent man a direct act (you push him off an overpass = more 'not my faults') - changes the balance of responses in statistically significant ways.

The right answer, of course, is to toss a coin and do what it tells you.

<comment><USER17> I believe a lot of odd results that come out of hypotheticals lie with the fact that they're hypotheticals.

The trolley problem makes an inherent assumption that value can be summed by adding up people (i.e., more people > less people), and therefore there's only one truly correct answer, but that's not how decisions are actually made in the real world and there are very good reasons for that.

For instance: why is there a group of people and then the separate individual? Does the group have something in common? Is there something special about the individual? Someone made a judgment call when they created the situation. The end result is now unknown, and my answer would be that the decision therefore doesn't matter.

Choosing to do something would require performing another judgment call, which is actually very problematic. This is demonstrated fairly well by one of the reframings of the problem: the one where a surgeon kills a healthy person to save 5 dying patients. A world in which such things happen would be considered quite terrible by many, yes this seems to be a valid implementation of the trolley problem. The surgeon could then take his 5 patients and the one healthy person and recreate a trolley scenario and then let someone else deal with it. The correct answer, according to a person who doesn't want healthy travelers sacrificed for people who need organs, would be to not touch the lever. Yet, they do not have access to this information, so they do not know what the end result is. So the decision doesn't matter.

The responsibility is indeed with whoever has created the situation. Another party getting involved may make it better or worse by sheer luck but "more people > less people" is, in my opinion, a horrible philosophy and this implicit assumption should be thrown out of the problem. Once you do that, though, the problem disintegrates.

I would generally be wary of critique of intuition based on failure in hypotheticals. Intuition wasn't designed around hypotheticals and doesn't believe in them.

<comment><USER16> Everything both you and parent poster said boils down to "run away from the question because I don't like either of the answers." Which is a very human response, but you then throw the baby out with the bath water.

To be really useful, you need to consider these thought experiments in the _least convenient world_ \- assume that there is explicitly no way to avoid the central point ([http://lesswrong.com/lw/2k/the_least_convenient_possible_wor...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2k/the_least_convenient_possible_world/) for further reading). So in this case, it doesn't matter 'whose fault' the predicament is. You don't know anything about the individuals involved except the number killed by each of two choices. "Optimise net lives saved" is indeed a horrible strategy, but _under the least convenient possible circumstances_ can you come up with a better one?

Your comment on intuition failing on hypothetical scenarios is on the mark, and that's the point of this kind of scenario - to see _in what way_ intuition fails, and how it will fail in different directions based on presentation (eg. we'll passively let 5 people die rather than actively killing one, but we'll save 5 people even if it involves indirectly killing one.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,

and you're hampered by not having any,

the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,

is simply by spinning a penny.

No — not so that chance shall decide the affair

while you're passively standing there moping;

but the moment the penny is up in the air,

you suddenly know what you're hoping

-Piet Hein

Edit: HN is not friendly towards quoting poems.

</comment><comment><USER19> When I was 18 I left most of my decisions to a coin toss for about a month. It lead to some seriously interesting antics like randomly ending up at squat parties miles from home on a Sunday.

The adult part of me wish I kept a record of what happened as I could have published some of the stories. But the 18 year old me who was willing to decide his life by a toss of a coin was hardly going to be the same 18 year old who was responsible enough to keep a record of his activities.

For what it's worth though, it was a pretty fun month.

</comment><comment><USER20> I enjoy applying the I Ching[0] to decision making. It's like a coin toss, but on steroids

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/534289.The_I_Ching_or_Bo...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/534289.The_I_Ching_or_Book_of_Changes)

[#] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching)

<comment><USER21> I have used Tarot cards to give me some perspective on some descisions. As a side effect I start to experience a lot more of unexplainable synchronicities in my daily life and in connection with the decision. Most striking example: I was at a point where I needed to decide if I should break up with my girlfriend. I was doing the taro spread to get the answer and at the same time my girlfriend called and told me that she met this one guy and she would like to go on a date with him.

<comment><USER22> Being faithful to chance events is a great way to organise your knowledge - <USER2> basically subordinates facts to wit. Fight the facts! Become self-aware! That's how I think it works anyway.

Difficult to follow through with on the larger scale, though - which is where the little synchronicities come in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For a novelist's take on making life changing decisions based on chance, Luke Rhinehart's "The Dice Man" comes recommended.

<comment><USER24> "No Country For Old Men" also comes to mind

<comment><USER25> the dice man is about one guy basing every life decision around coin tossing. Funny, bit dated, worth a read imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"

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

</comment><comment><USER27> Stress. They say people will adapt to a "new normal" within 3-6 months of a major life change. I would argue that a person who is on the fence about a major life decision is maintaining a state of stress by not making the decision. Once they make the decision and commit to it, they will achieve the "new normal" in time, but will be freed from the stress of indecision. The relief of that stress should make them happier all by itself.

</comment><comment><USER28> _Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —_

 _I took the one less traveled by,_

 _And that has made all the difference._

It is worth remembering that Frost's point is that it actually doesn't make _any_ difference.

<comment><USER29> ??? Is that what those lines mean?

<comment><USER30> See this article [1] for an explanation of how the poem is supposedly taught & understood incorrectly. I tend to agree with the claim.

The crux is in the 2 paragraphs starting with "Frost's poem turns this expectation on its head", and the main claim is:

"According to this reading, then, the speaker will be claiming "ages and ages hence" that his decision made "all the difference" only because this is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices (as opposed to what was chosen for us or allotted to us by chance)."

[1] [https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most- misr...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misread-poem- in-america/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone ever come across Alain Badiou? And if so, what's his reputation like? All my small acquaintance with set theory etc has basically come second-hand from trying to read his book, and now I'm left with the probably unjustifiable impression that mathematical reasoning has to come to a crisis, and must admit arbitrariness as a kind of self-reflexive pivot.

As for why - I couldn't tell you, but it made sense at the time.

<comment><USER31> I read Badiou's _Number and Numbers_. The first half was a good introduction to the history of attempts to axiomatize various kinds of numbers. The second half was a so-so introduction to surreal numbers. The book seems like some notes that Badiou wrote for himself while studying mathematics. Not really sure where any of the reviewers and blurb-givers got the idea that the book had anything to do with philosophy or capitalism or politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Relevant and very entertaining read: The Dice Man

</comment><comment><USER33>
      Individuals who are told by the coin toss to make a change are much more likely to make a change and are happier six months later than those who were told by the  coin to maintain the status quo.

I wonder if they removed the coin and just split people into groups that maintain status quo and groups that always make the change if the results would be similar. Perhaps the urge people have to consider the change in the first place is a good indicator that it is a change they actually do want to commit to.

<comment><USER12> The theory is that a cohort _whose uncertainty over a decision is so close to 50 /50 that a coin toss has a large statistical effect on whether they make the change or not_[1] ought to be close to 50/50 on whether it has a desirable outcome in the event they change (allowing for a degree of risk aversion, and making the fairly standard economic assumptions that humans primarily optimise for an analogue of [future] satisfaction, and their errors in predicting their future satisfaction are random rather than systematically skewed towards underestimating or overestimating their future outcome)

In practice, it's likely the choice of _reported happiness over a six month followup period_ as the indicator of whether it worked is the major factor here; many negative aspects of a decision take much longer to take effect (get even more bored/frustrated with the new job, miss their ex despite the shortcomings in their relationship, realise that going back to school is costing a lot of money and not advancing them in any way)

It's possible that the larger fraction of people who are happy six months after making the change they agonised over is entirely cancelled out if you ask them after 24.

[1]the paper seems to suggest the coin had a statistically significant impact on the sample group's decision making even if their ex ante predictions of their probability of making the change were greater or less than 50%

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The title reminds me of No Country For Old Men.

[https://youtu.be/OLCL6OYbSTw](https://youtu.be/OLCL6OYbSTw)

</comment><comment><USER35> I look at it as follows: If you are really undecided about something, it really means that the two (or more) options are not discernible enough (given information you have), and so they are, from your perspective, very similar (they can lead to different outcomes but you do not know). So it kinda makes sense to decide it randomly.

</comment><comment><USER36> Kinda relevant piece art: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead)

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder how this study can be used as evidence against determinism, ie., that humans really do possess free will. If the coin toss relevantly affects the person's decision, then it seems like random chance plays a key role in affecting our experience, right?

<comment><USER38> I have strong view that there is no such thing as free will.In close scrutiny any definition of free will falls apart.

Wittgenstien's view that most philosophical problems of dissolve by understanding that the question involved is nonsensical or not defined properly.

I think events

1\. follow Cause -> Effect (Casual)

2\. Or they Random (If we don't find evidence for a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics)

There is no 3rd option. Some people try to derive free will from randomness, which means they are essentially saying that their "free will" is equivalent to blind selection without any regard for causes, which contradicts the normal common sense(nonsense?) use of the word.

<comment><USER39> I've made this argument to myself and I can't find fault with it, but it does really bother me. Can it be true that I have no control over my life? I find that hard to swallow at a gut level but can't explain how it might be otherwise.

<comment><USER40> It's not that you have no "control", it's that there is no "you".

You are the set of reactions to external stimuli that a certain system goes through.

<comment><USER38> One can also say that "you" cannot be separated from the "external" system?

Alan Watts -

"It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Makes me think of the novel White Teeth by Zadie Smith...

</comment><comment><USER42> I usually wait until I'm very tired, I sit in a couch and then ask myself "should I do X?". If I can get up it is a yes...

</comment><comment><USER43> This is why I love academic economics.</comment>


CanvasJS HTML5 and JavaScript Charts - <AUTHOR> http://canvasjs.com/

<comment><USER2> CC is not appropriate for software licenses. Per their FAQ:

[http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Com...](http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F)

Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software? We do not recommend it. Creative Commons licenses should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative. Unlike our licenses, which do not make mention of source or object code, these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software. Furthermore, our licenses are not compatible with the GPL, the most frequently used free software license.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks pretty good - so many options for graphs and charts these days.

Why per developer license? this is difficult to enforce and also annoying.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Looks good from what I saw during the brief moments I was able to get in. The site currently complains of not being able to make a db connection.</comment>


California amends rules to push vehicles toward hydrogen, electricity, biofuel - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/california-amends-rules-to-push-vehicles-toward-hydrogen-electricity-biofuel/ <comment><USER2> > One area of transportation that doesn't quite fit into that model is > aviation, but that sector is hard to decarbonize.

One way to reduce carbon emission from aviation is to build high speed rail, which is universally electric.</comment>


Anata No Warehouse (Creepiest Arcade in Japan) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFiLQ-Yhig <comment><USER2> visited here a while back, amazing place, not only is it worth seeing for the decor and rarer vintage arcade machines its also cheaper than most arcades</comment>


Feds will auction off $19M in Bitcoins from alleged Silk Road kingpin - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/k7E0OxkRUtg/

<comment><USER2> What point in time is that valuation based on? Are they worth more or less at this time?</comment>