Milk, orange juice, pedialyte more hydrating than water - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/06/30/milk-and-other-surprising-ways-to-stay-hydrated/ <comment><USER2> This is a terrible article about a study with really poor conclusions.

Are you more "hydrated" if your stomach is carrying around fluid for longer?

They test how much healthy young men pee out 2 hours after consuming something. The problem is, it's a dumb test. That 2 hours is pretty short when it comes to how long it takes things to empty from your stomach. With a full meal, your stomach would be a little more than half full at that two hour mark.

Just water gets dumped from your stomach really quickly, 50% in 10 minutes. Here's the rub... while it might not be sure based on the study design, it seems there's a real good chance that the only thing going on here is people carry milk and pedialyte around in their stomachs longer. That's it. No extra "hydration" no health benefits.

It would be akin to saying drinking 1L of water right away is more hydrating than drinking it in small increments over 2 hours. Is it more hydrating? Or did your body just have less time to turn it into urine?

The big assumption being made is equating "hydration" with how much fluid you didn't pee out after two hours. If it's not tied to some set of health metrics (and really if it isn't tied to a long term health study) it should say absolutely nothing about conclusions an average person should take.

<comment><USER3> I was going to write a scathing comment about the study, but you pretty much said it all. This study is really quite pointless.

What suprises me is that anyone with knowledge in physiology would call this study "brilliant". I would expect better of someone leading a laboratory and an education in biology. ([http://kins.uconn.edu/lawrence-e-armstrong- ph-d/](http://kins.uconn.edu/lawrence-e-armstrong-ph-d/))

<comment><USER2> From a scientific perspective, the study has plenty of value. Making models of how what you consume effects gastric emptying and urination patters... I could see that being super useful for, say, drug trials. How medicine travels through your digestive tract is important. Basic facts about the body's response to stiumli is important.

That is... as _long_ as you constrain yourself to only concluding the facts that are there. How fast your stomach empties and urination schedules ... these aren't facts the average person can draw any conclusions from.

Good for science, bad for stupid news articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >After all, if you drink a cup of water and then immediately excrete half that amount in your urine, you haven't added eight ounces to your water supply, but only four.

Seems like pretty flawed reasoning to me. The aim isn't to keep the liquid inside of you as "water supply".

Unless you're dehydrated in the serious sense (survival situation, diarrhea etc) there isn't really any need to drink something special. The body does an entire satisfactory job of balance electrolytes and getting rid of waste via urine if you just drink enough water.

<comment><USER5> Exactly... If you drink 8oz of water, and your kidneys got rid of 4oz, it's because you didn't need those 4oz (or because your kidneys needed to use that water to carry other stuff away with it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The guiding principle behind the new hydration index is that some fluids > last longer in your body than others

Is that all there is to it? Could it not happen that some drink caused the water supply in the body to decay as normal, but then continuing to even lower levels than before, for example?

> Lawrence Armstrong, a hydration expert

One wonders how there can be such a thing as a hydration expert if not even these basic things have been known until now.

> But don't forget that milk has many more calories than water, so don't > overdo it, either.

A bit beside the point, perhaps: What caloric content is there in water? Can it be said to have any at all? It makes you think about how to define it, really. On the one hand, we don't typically think of the energy as coming from the water, but in the other hand, water must be present for us to extract the energy from other molecules. In a situation where energetic molecules (but not water) are already present, then, it is the consumption of water that causes an increased amount of energy to be made available to our bodies. Similarly, a battery contains energy, but not until we add cables to connect it do we get access to it. In a sense, it is the addition of the cable that contributes the energy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Coconut water is supposedly quite hydrating as well and, unlike Gatorade, natural. It's a shame they did not test it but the reasoning applied to milk should carry over:

"Why is milk so efficient at rehydration? "Normally when you drink, it signals the kidneys to get rid of the extra water by producing more urine," Dr. Maughan said. "However, when beverages contain nutrients and electrolytes like sodium and potassium, as milk does, the stomach empties more slowly with a less dramatic effect on the kidneys.""

<comment><USER4> >Coconut water is supposedly quite hydrating as well

Is it? I like the stuff sure, but clever marketing and dubious blogs aside I've not seen anything supporting this.

<comment><USER8> In these cases it's extremely easy to get a gist of the research behind a certain topic by searching PubMed.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22257640](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22257640)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if this means that a latte would have a better kick than black coffee, because it would stay in your body longer? Assuming same amount of caffeine per litre.

<comment><USER5> It stays in your stomach longer. That's not useful to your body... Fluid is useful in your circulatory system, where your body can move it where it needs to be, or get rid of it.

The extra fat and sugar in the latte will stick around much longer...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Link to the actual study: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122)

PDF: [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/3/717.full.pdf+html](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/3/717.full.pdf+html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to see that they use cow milk as an example while there are, I suppose, a lot of other drinks where this argument applies. What about plant milk, tea, coffee, other juices etc...?

<comment><USER11> The article links to the study it was based on which tested more drinks: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122)

> Total urine masses over 4 h were smaller than the still-water control after > an oral rehydration solution (ORS), full-fat milk, and skimmed milk.

> Cumulative urine output at 4 h after ingestion of cola, diet cola, hot tea, > iced tea, coffee, lager, orange juice, sparkling water, and a sports drink > were not different from the response to water ingestion.

I don't know where the Hacker News submission got "orange juice is more hydrating than water" from.

<comment><USER12> >I don't know where the Hacker News submission got "orange juice is more hydrating than water" from.

They didn't just read the abstract like you did. There is a link on the page you hyperlinked to for the full text

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >A score higher than 1.0 indicated that more of the beverage remained in the body as compared to water, while a score lower than 1.0 indicated a higher excretion rate than water.

Then solid foods that need to be digested to get out the water would score even higher on this index. Condoms full of water would have an infinite score as the water would never show up in the urine. What I am saying here is that this is a stupid way to measure "hydration".

Speaking of stupid, why does HN have so many of these pointless diet things on the front page?

<comment><USER2> >Speaking of stupid, why does HN have so many of these pointless diet things on the front page?

People are really interested in their health. Lots of "hackers" would be super-interested in information that gave them conscious and definite ways to improve themselves.

The problem is that there's very little real information out there.

This study, if were framed properly, would have been at least mildly interesting.

Stomach emptying of fluids depends on the type of fluid... urination frequency too. Thirsty but don't want to pee all the time on a road trip or hacking marathon? Drink milk! Hack your body!

But instead they had to link it with "hydration" which is bollocks. It's not clear that anyone should care at all about hydration unless vigorous exercise or extreme heat is involved because your kidneys do a pretty good job, period.

<comment><USER14> self hacking the ultimate hacking ?

<comment><USER15> Body hacking, biohacking, neurohacking...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. Whodathunkit? Humans have been walking around dehydrated for tens of thousands of years.

Definitely sarcasm.

</comment><comment><USER17> Milk and orange juice? That's the basis of Ray Peat's anti-inflammatory diet.

He advocates drinking one liter of each every day (to which salt and sugar is added).

<comment><USER16> Because that won't hurt your pancreas at all. /s

<comment><USER17> He doesn't seem to think that would.

He says that polyunsaturated fatty acids are the cause of most diseases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did one of the experiments involve drinking a litre of coffee?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but not the test subjects.</comment></comment>


GhostShell hacker leaks 39M accounts in security "protest" - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/hacker-posts-39-million-accounts-online-in-security-protest/ <comment><USER2> The most interesting thing to me was the evidence posted that other hackers had already penetrated these systems, which I guess goes without saying when you have little to no security in place.

Many many years ago when I was younger and playing with buffer overflows and learning shellcode, I'm not saying that I'm proud of this either, but in my journeys I had breached a couple of online retailers, had full access to their databases and internal networks.. of course I alerted them via anonymous e-mails, but what always struck me was the amount of times that I encountered files from 'hackers' just saying that they were here or what have you. Many of them just placing files because they couldn't transverse the NAT, and others who had uploaded ftp scripts but had typos in them so the scripts didn't get deleted like they had planned. Evidence of crimes and theft laying all over the internal network for months or years, and nobody finding it.

At some point it's hard not to side with people like ghostshell, because when you're supposed to be responsible for important information, but have seemingly no interest in protecting it, at some point the system is bound to fall apart.

I'm reminded of something I read posted by l0pht, way back when, and they just said how much better they were than everyone else because they had jobs at burger king and were dedicated to spending all of their time penetrating networks while their opponents were a bunch of overpaid nobodies who hated their jobs and overall really didn't care, and that they would always win.

I think that still holds true today.

<comment><USER3> > The most interesting thing to me was the evidence posted that other hackers > had already penetrated these systems

Some 20 years ago it was common knowledge among hackers that the reason critical IT-infrastructure has not been used to do real harm was that "good" hackers locked destructive hackers out of systems they had pwned.

To me the most interesting thing is that information security is still not on the curriculum for devs. There is no fscking reason a power plant or cement plant needs a bidirectional connection to company headquarters except for saving a few bucks on skilled on-site personnel. And don't get me started on cloud-based IoT-idiocy.....

<comment><USER4> > Some 20 years ago it was common knowledge among hackers that the reason > critical IT-infrastructure has not been used to do real harm was that "good" > hackers locked destructive hackers out of systems they had pwned.

Can you elaborate, this is fascinating.

<comment><USER5> I was around during this time and can vouch for it. Back in the 90s there was really nothing like a computer security industry. Firewalls were things you heard about but almost never saw in practice. Systems were hooked up in ways which today would be considered gross negligence. University networks and Telenet were full of easily-accessible machines and networking equipment. One of the first times I got caught doing bad shit was on a SysV Unix system of the newspaper in the next town over. I had met another user on that system who was one of these vigilantes. He actually had caught me trying to root the box and deactivated my dialup login so that when I logged in, it spat out the motd and immediately disconnected. The message said to call a number for "support". I called the long distance number, and got questions and a lecture about my bad behavior. You know, being thirteen years old, I didn't think things through. I was just scared for my life that the cops were going to show up to my dad's house (they did later, for something different, but I digress). He was totally open about not working for the newspaper, and not being the regular sysop. He said he was another user trying to keep me from getting in real trouble.

There is a "telenet simulator" on the internet[0] that you should check out. This will give you some idea what it was like to use Sprint's Telenet system, which was a worldwide dialup network serving all kinds of juicy customers like banks, airlines, all kinds of businesses. This system had been devised and deployed long before the world wide web. Telenet had local dialups in most American cities[1]. Lots of those systems were using crap passwords, or defaults. You could use systems to dial other systems that weren't hooked into Telenet. It was tremendous fun exploring that network[2]. It was a hell of a lot of fun. Truly an exceptional time that I really have nostalgia for.

[0] [http://telehack.com/](http://telehack.com/)

[1] [http://textfiles.com/hacking/telnumbe.txt](http://textfiles.com/hacking/telnumbe.txt)

[2] [http://textfiles.com/hacking/telenet2.txt](http://textfiles.com/hacking/telenet2.txt)

<comment><USER4> wow, this is super interesting. I have actually used telnet and the telnet simulator. i think there used to be an old bbs or game online that was before my time that was still hooked up and one where you voild telnet in and play the oregon trail.

thanks for the info.

<comment><USER6> Telenet, not telnet. There is a _HUGE_ difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't a better "protest" have been to delete all the databases. That would harm the people responsible for the problem in the first place.

<comment><USER8> You've obviously never heard of backups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Direct link [http://pastebin.com/raw/aNmdgGg4](http://pastebin.com/raw/aNmdgGg4)

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened to hacker ethics? Screw over 39 million people to protest the sorry state of the security of a service they have been using?

Back in the good old days one would have secured the systems instead of harming the victims again.

GhostShell, please stay away from IoT or connected medical devices, I'm afraid you'll kill people just to make a point every security professional already understands.

<comment><USER4> I agree with joof. I consider this grey tipping towards white rather than black hat. s/he basically just automated default credentials or autologin attempts, the door was already wide open and there were already numerous pieces of evidence s/he wasn't the only person to know that. If you see a door wide open a curious hacker will look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's another classic team GhostShell zine

[http://pastebin.com/raw/tEX6yGX6](http://pastebin.com/raw/tEX6yGX6)

</comment><comment><USER11> > The size of the downloadable cache alone puts it at one of the largest > breaches this year -- but it could have been far larger, given time and > resources.

> "The worst part is that this is barely a fraction of what I could get my > hands on," the hacker said.

So why didn't GhostShell release everything he could get his hands on?

<comment><USER12> Because he didn't bother. His POC is more than enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading the title I had visions of digital vaccines.

</comment><comment><USER14> MongoDB

<comment><USER15> "NoSQL, or rather NoAuthentication, has been a huge gift to the hacker community. Just when I was worried that they'd finally patched all of the authentication bypass bugs in MySQL, new databases came into style that lack authentication by design"

[https://ghostbin.com/paste/6kho7](https://ghostbin.com/paste/6kho7)</comment></comment>


Japan Airlines' CEO pays himself less than the pilots, takes the bus to work - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/28/eveningnews/main4761136.shtml

<comment><USER2> They canceled the common share in December and gave the company away to the top executives in a private stock offering. These are not the benevolent capitalists you are looking for.

<http://www.jal.co.jp/en/other/info2010_0831.html> [http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/27/jal- idUSSGE6BQ08C2...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/27/jal- idUSSGE6BQ08C20101227)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone written a good book on Japanese corporate/management/business culture? I hear a lot of tidbits about it, both good and bad, mentioned in recurring news articles like this one. They're intriguing enough that I'd like to read something deeper and well-researched, but I can't seem to find anything that looks like a good overview book.

The only books I can find seem to either be of the "teach Westerners how to do business in Japan" variety (not my interest), or very specialist academic books and paper anthologies on narrow aspects.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you should take much stock in Japanese business culture. While there are some great aspects 'toyota way'/continuous improvement...

There's also a lot of drawbacks. The management by consensus, hammering the nail that sticks out, the lack of willingness to deal with real problems, putting cultural norms before economic logic -- these are all major issues with Japan that are partly responsible for why they have been stuck in an economic malaise for the last 20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I expected to read this as another '$1 a year salary' story, wherein the CEO was still _actually_ rich, but only brought in a meager 'salary', owing the rest to dividends.

What I got instead was a story about what seems to be a brilliant boss. He lowered his own salary along with everybody else's. He's accessible. He actually rides his planes and lets people know he's the CEO of the airline.

In short, he is accessible to both his customers and employees. In the startup world this probably isn't that uncommon -- when you have a staff of four or twenty, accessibility is easy to get. Wikipedia lists Japan Air as having over 30,000 employees.

This is impressive to me, however, it's worth pointing out that despite this practicality and accessibility, the article linked was written in 2009, and Japan Air filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.

<comment><USER6> _I expected to read this as another '$1 a year salary' story, wherein the CEO was still _actually_ rich, but only brought in a meager 'salary', owing the rest to dividends._

Without reference to this particular CEO, since I don't know him from Adam, much has been made of Japanese CEOs being compensated modestly and it is mostly an accounting fiction. For example, the CEO at a particular Japanese company might not be able to afford a dhh-style automobile, but if he desires to drive one, one will be made available for him from the corporate fleet. He lives, like many of his employees, in company housing, but his company- provided housing is decidedly _not_ in the dorms with the 22 year old trainees. He will, like many of his employees, spend the majority of his meals working officially or unofficially on company business, and most of these will end up on the expense account of either his firm or one of his business partners'. etc, etc

Compare it to being President: you may be cash-poor by the standards of the rich, but that is not a meaningful barrier to desired consumption.

Speaking of which: I recently filed my taxes in Japan. The Japanese equivalent of the Schedule C (small business tax return form) has, like the Schedule C, an entry for meals & entertainment. Mine read 0 yen. A helpful person informed me that that was anomalously low, and that, wink wink, the routine practice is to claim that the company paid for every meal because, wink wink, we all know how being a salaryman works.

<comment><USER7> So the difference is merely in career security, I guess.

Now I understand why CEO pay got so high so quickly: corporate job security plumneting. It corresponded with the rise of CEOs bouncing from one company to another and being executives for hire.

If you know you're set for life as an executive of a company, who needs a huge amount of personal wealth? But if you could be cut loose from your comfortable SVP gig due to circumstances beyond your control, you have a much greater need to be personally really comfortable. The company's not going to pay your country club dues for the rest of your life, after all.

I can't believe I didn't understand this before, but then I suppose I don't think about the realities of being a senior executive at a huge company.

The unfortunate part about this is that replacing cultural security with individual economic security almost always introduces inefficiencies. In this case, giving big company execs the incentives of a founder or entrepreneur doesn't give them the attitude of one.

<comment><USER8> A good place to look is professional athletes where careers are very short on average and the amount of money they earn seems absurd. I think in football I heard something like average pro career being 6 months. It's no wonder the contracts are frontloaded/bonus based. In a sport like hockey where salary is guaranteed no matter what, you don't see the same bonus but frontloading occurs on really long contracts to circumvent salary caps. Back to CEOs, it just looks like rational behavior given average job length and amount of money needed to maintain a lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Keep in mind that JAL is under chapter 11 bankruptcy, so it's not like JAL is full of cash.

I like his attitude more than those bank executives that got bailed out and paid themselves multi millions at the same time.

<comment><USER10> but of course, you have to understand - they _have_ to pay those guys millions, because how else would they attract the top talent? you know, that talent that led to untold numbers of wealth being systematically destroyed? You don't just find talent like that working for, say, $500k. You gotta pay _millions_ to get talent that capable.

<comment><USER11> yeah, because they'd go work for the _other_ investors who are making money hand over fist...you know...the _other_ Wall Street...because there are so many and their skill set and salary requirements translates so well to other industries.

<comment><USER12> You have to pay millions because other people on Wall Street are paying millions thus the best talent goes there.

What you're implying is that we should have top-down wage controls (i.e. a command economy) or bottom-up wage controls (i.e. collusion). The first is an idea which is seductive, but historically a failure. The second is illegal under our current rules and should remain illegal lest you want every department store to collude to pay their workers minimum wage + 1 cent.

<comment><USER11> I'd argue that if the government (us) hadn't bailed everybody out, the firms would fail and then they'd make $0. If a small firm could afford to pull in some of the unemployed traders, more power to them, but then it's an employer's economy and the salaries (and bonuses) would be more reasonable. The market would more or less work itself out (though it could be painful in the short term).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While a lot of what he does is admirable, I find it reprehensible that he pays himself so little (assuming he's not compensated in some other way). Either he is actually worth that little, or he's pretending to be worth less to make people feel better.

If it's the former, the airline should hire a new CEO.

If it's the latter, it's a petty pretense aimed at petty people. And a self- respecting "ordinary" person who has a sense of the value of her time would consider it a slap in her face if her boss doesn't see fit to apply the same sorts of standards to his time.

<comment><USER14> He's also going against a basic economic motivator:

" _The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid--and it's for your benefit, not his. Why? It might be because he isn't being paid for the work he does but, rather, to inspire you. In other words, we work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we'll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this 'tournament theory.'_ "

[http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/executive-compensation- tour...](http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/executive-compensation- tournament_cx_th_06work_0523pay.html)

<comment><USER15> I've heard this theory again and again and as someone who works in a (non- tech) industry where it is the norm for people at the bottom to work very hard for very little,while the bosses travel the world and live in huge beautiful homes, this does NOT seem to be the case in reality. Myself and my colleagues find it hard not to become bitter about it and to stay motivated to work hard. I only graduated 6 months ago but about half of my class has already become so discouraged by this system that they are thinking about - or already have- switched careers.

On the other hand, in my previous job the boss paid us As much as he could afford to ($17/hr, not bad for retail) and in his life was by no means rich at all. He drives a beat up car and wears second hand clothing. We all respected him so much and felt much more motivated to do well, and also felt like we were an actual part of his company and took it personally how well the company was doing. In my position now, and my colleagues agree, we feel totally cut off from the company and have no interest in how well a collection does (I work in fashion.)

Basically I feel like this theory only works if the CEO is overpaid and the workers are fairly paid. But in the end I think feeling part of a team is better for the company than feeling like you are in a tournament.

I would also like to add that 90k is hardly embarrassingly low. That is quite a comfortable wage that many people will never see in their life.

<comment><USER14> You're right, it only works if you believe in the possibility, i.e., you see your peers get promoted to those positions or start their own lines, etc.

A tech startup analogy is: a company issues an IPO or gets acquired.

You know it's a fairly rare event, and it may not happen to you, but you believe it's possible, so you're motivated to keep going.

<comment><USER16> An important factor is how much you feel in control of your fate (whether the control is real or imaginary is less important). Tech startups feel it's much more up to their skills and creativity to make it than a lowly employee working for the Man in a big bureaucratic multinational, even if statistically they have about the same chance. It's similar to why most people are more afraid of flying than driving, even though the former is much safer statistically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> JAL is my favorite airline. If I can, I always fly JAL. Sounds like bad ad copy, bu† it's true.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not to be negative but he might be doing it to avoid income taxes. So many silicon valley CEO's do that. The real questions are what is compensation + stock options. The article does not provide that information.

Nonetheless, its a good idea to appreciate people's value with good pay.

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. \- Francisco D'Acconia

</comment><comment><USER19> But how many times did he get a taxpayer funded bailout / corporate wellfare? The real value of the american CEOs isnt that the run profitable business, it's that they get other peope to pay for their fuck ups.

</comment><comment><USER20> Didn't Nishimatsu (JAL CEO) resign from his post?

</comment><comment><USER21> In the US he would get a boatload of money as retention bonus to stay on.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cynically, I reckon this kind of behaviour is about manipulating morale, tax and dividends. I applaud his actions - but I'd be very surprised if he wouldn't have benefited from any increase in company profitability.

</comment><comment><USER23> There's no nobility in poverty anymore.</comment>


From Europe, looking for sponsorships to go to SF's Node.js knockout - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for sponsorships to go to San Francisco http://nodeknockout.com. If you'd like your logo in the heart of SF tech scene and in the eyes of some juicy world-class tech companies, drop me an e-mail at email@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> EDIT:

the good fellows at @nodeknockout reserved a seat for me, if i can make it there, and provided more info about the event, with which i redacted a better ad:

i would like to travel to San Franscico to participate in the Node.js Knockout, which is a 48-hour coding contest to build web apps using node.js. Might you be interested in sponsoring me? Node.js is a framework that uses Google's wicked-fast v8 interpreter to let developers create real-time, event driven web apps entirely in javascript (on the server in addition to the browser). It's at the bleeding edge of a number of new web trends that forward-looking developers are extremely excited about. Over 400 people have signed up for the contest, and they are getting developers by the dozen to follow the contest on Twitter. The contest the backing of a number of sponsors like Github, Heroku, Joyent, and 10gen. Last year, Rails Rumble (a similar contest, our inspiration) had over 160 teams of developers participate, and got some good press. One team's entry from two years ago, Gentrify, was covered in a variety of news outlets including the New York Times (via VentureBeat syndication). You can see more at <http://www.nodeknockout.com> and get a sense of the developer enthusiasm on our twitter account: <http://www.twitter.com/node_knockout>. In return i can provide adspace in the blog i will setup to cover the event, my t-shirts, and possibly laptop, for your logo. I'm asking for sponsorships above 25€ to a blog logo, 50€ for t-shirt and 100€ for laptop. I'm also open to suggestions that could improve your ROI (Return of Investment). All expenses are related to travelling as the hosters provide food and drink.

Best regards,

José Moreira +351 91 867 41 50 irc://firstname.lastname@example.com <http://pt.linkedin.com/in/josemoreira> <http://djangopeople.net/josemoreira>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> finally got my <http://zemanel.posterous.com> up.

</comment><comment><USER2> upvoting bad movie

<comment><AUTHOR> nay sayers :P</comment></comment>


Pre-Seed Rounds Aren't Going Away, but Pre-Seed Funds Are - <AUTHOR> https://nextviewventures.com/blog/pre-seed-rounds-arent-going-away-but-pre-seed-funds-are/ <comment><USER2> >On the other side of the equation, as pre-seed firms have become more established, they too have raised larger funds and have the capacity to write checks of more than just a couple hundred thousand dollars which they were structurally constrained to previously

I guess not only the startup grows, the VCs also</comment>


Show HN: Auto-block personal events on your work calendar - <AUTHOR> https://lifeworkcalendar.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks,

We're super excited to launch LifeWork Calendar today.

We've already been hard at work building out a broader calendar management platform called Reclaim[1], and we wanted to start by solving a problem that nearly every busy professional experiences: the pain of juggling personal and work calendars, and missing out on life because of dumb scheduling snafus.

There currently is no easy way to make sure personal events show up on your work calendar to prevent your coworkers from booking over them. If you add your personal calendar to your work calendar, it only shows up for you and no one else.

If you create a team calendar for your personal events, it still only shows up to others if they make sure to add it to their calendar. The only "solution" that exists today is either creating duplicates of personal events on your work calendar or inviting your work calendar to personal events, which is both onerous and unreliable.

LifeWork Calendar solves this problem by automatically blocking personal events on your work calendar, creating "copies" of the work event without showing all your coworkers your personal details. Even if someone deletes or updates the event, LifeWork Calendar will keep the copy in sync. We even add some cool emojis and color-codes to the event copies so that you can easily distinguish them from work events.

In addition to solving this pain, we show you some basic but important stats: how much vacation and personal time you've been taking, how many hours of meetings you've attended, and how much free time you have on a regular basis.

It's easy to setup in under a couple minutes, it's free, and it's secure. We don't store any of your personal calendar information and we don't sell your data to any third parties. We also have a self-service delete option that will undo everything we added to your work calendar. Try it out and let us know what you think!

[1] [https://reclaimai.com](https://reclaimai.com)</comment>


Los Angeles learns to love its river - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14690082 <comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't usually submit this sort of thing to HN, but I found it to be an intriguing read. I've also lived in a city where the original river on which it was founded had, and still has, completely disappeared.

It will be interesting to see if anything ever comes of this.

Quote:

      That led to the first permits being issued, on a trial
      basis, to lead kayaking tours down a mile-and-a-half-long
      stretch.

      ...

      The 280 tickets to join the limited number of kayak tours
      sold out in the first 10 minutes. People kayaking down the
      LA river Kayaking down the river is an opportunity to
      explore nature in the heart of the city.

      Those who snapped up a "golden ticket" were delighted to
      get on the river, rather than just walk, bike or drive
      past it.</comment>


Show HN: Expiry.io -Reduce your churn rate by avoiding failed payments on Stripe - <AUTHOR> https://expiry.io

<comment><USER2> Great product which adds A LOT OF VALUE to the Stripe ecosystem. Congrats for the launch !

Axel Co-founder of SaaS Metrics [http://saas-metrics.com](http://saas- metrics.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created this tool last month, some great companies are already using it. Hope you'll like it too :)

</comment><comment><USER3> A small slice of the value chain, but quite valuable indeed ! Congrats :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Useful tool for all of us dealing with MRR.

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome product!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Show HN: An open source cross-platform minimalistic cryptocurrency tracker - <AUTHOR> https://harshjv.github.io/donut/ <comment><USER2> Good timing, BTC dropped from 1080€ to ~900€ today :-)

I don't know if it's just a problem with my windows 10 installation but the currency (USD, EUR etc.) dropdown is not clickable. With tab- and arrow-keys I can switch to EUR.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll investigate this issue and will attempt to fix it.

Thanks for trying it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What makes this minimalistic, rather than minimalist or minimal?

<comment><AUTHOR> Chose the wrong word from autocorrect suggestions :p

Thanks for spotting it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> LOL, believe or not I was thinking of building a similar app (only for bitcoin), also FOSS, also simple drop-down from the menu bar with [https://github.com/maxogden/menubar](https://github.com/maxogden/menubar) as base...

But my idea included react-stockcharts or react-sparklines... :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, it happens to me all the time. :p

Anyways, this is an open source application. Feel free to add features in it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is cool, but I wish coincap.io was more transparent about their data sourcing. Which exchange(s) is/are they sourcing from? This data can't be coming from ShapeShift (the owners of coincap.io), since prices on coincap.io are in USD while you cannot trade in fiat whatsoever on Shapeshift.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-) BTW you can change fiat currency in the app and on coincap's website as well.

<comment><USER5> Hm, I wonder if coincap just takes generic cryptocurrency prices and converts them at going exchange rates. I.e., the prices aren't 100% tradeable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Naive question: Why should I use this over CoinCap? I'm running it on Android and it has been a pretty sweet app to keep track of cc

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought of building this to keep an eye on prices without any efforts from the menu bar. So with no clicks, I can see current BTC price and I can filter out cryptocurrency of my interest with just 1 click. Also, it runs in background so that keeps 1 less tab open in my browser.

Plus, I am extending this app to accommodate tracking of holdings, so that would be another reason to use it on desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks very cool! How hard would it be to add a feature to keep track of your holdings per coin?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was about to add this feature but then focused on API migration for real- time updates. This feature is next on the list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great. Just a small question. Where do you get the prices from?

<comment><USER9> Looking at the source, it comes from [http://coincap.io](http://coincap.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. In older versions, I was using [https://coinmarketcap.com/api/](https://coinmarketcap.com/api/) but it lacks proper documentation and real-time updates. So switched to [https://coincap.io](https://coincap.io)</comment></comment></comment>


7-Elevens Are Becoming Lifelines for Japan's Elderly - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2016/08/how-7-elevens-are-becoming-lifelines-for-japans-elderly/493772/ <comment><USER2> The headline should be reversed. It's Japan's Elderly who have become 7-Elevens' Lifeline.

Competition in the industry is fierce. Chains are consolidating. Family Mart alone has bought AM/PM (2009), Cocostore (2015), and Circle-K (2016) over the last few years. Margins are becoming thin as traditional high margin items like the bento boxes and hot food items are under assault by Super market chains that (1) have begun offering these same items at bargain prices and (2) are staying open until later to cater to the long hours of corporate workers.

Convenience stores traditionally catered to the youth and "salary men", but with shifting demographics and shifting consumption patters of these traditional target segments, they have been eyeing the elderly as a "growth segment" since at least 2009 when I lived there as a "salary man".

<comment><USER3> Your comment seems to imply that 7-Eleven is in trouble, but it's still the biggest of the convenience store chains, which is why the other chains are consolidating. I don't know about their profits, but revenue is growing year after year, and their number of stores is also increasing. If anything, it would be the other chains who might need to rely on the elderly more.

[1] [http://mainichi.jp/premier/business/articles/20150707/biz/00...](http://mainichi.jp/premier/business/articles/20150707/biz/00m/010/015000c)

[2] [http://www.sej.co.jp/company/suii.html](http://www.sej.co.jp/company/suii.html)

<comment><USER2> Astute observation -- I wasn't aware of their competitive advantage, though I did understand them to be doing well (other than having the best jingle in their commercials).

But there are two passages that stand out to me from the mainichi article

> 2位以下のコンビニチェーンの顧客がセブン−イレブンに流れていることがわかります。

> > 今後、国内の個人消費支出の大きな伸びは期待できないでしょう。「このチェーン店の、この商品が好き!」と消費者から思われ、選ばれ続けることが、コンビニ各社が成長するために不可欠の条件となりそうです。

7-11 has done excellently against its competitors, stealing their customers away. But the industry as a whole has matured and has become a zero sum game. I would still contend that targeting the elderly as a growth segment that traditionally has not frequented convenience stores is an industry-wide growth bet that includes 7-11 as well.

<comment><USER3> I don't doubt that targeting the elderly as a growth segment would be a good idea for the entire industry. It's just that your original comment suggested 7-Eleven in particular was in danger, which didn't jive with my personal experience, so I looked up the numbers.

<comment><USER2> So much for sacrificing precision for sensationalism and a nice sounding headline. ;)

Chalk that one up to amateur copywriting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For Americans who are confused about how 7-11 might be a nice place to go and not just a place for soda, cigarettes and lottery tickets, in Japan 7-11 carries higher quality items than what you might find in the U.S. The same is also true of Denny's (an increasingly seedy establishment in the U.S.), which serves high quality seasonal dishes in Japan.

Here's an example: Breakfast [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGsrz4Rrxac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGsrz4Rrxac)

Dinner [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKG9Sue_Muk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKG9Sue_Muk)

Denny's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKOAR5aiF90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKOAR5aiF90)

<comment><USER5> > an increasingly seedy establishment in the U.S.

This varies quite a bit depending on where you are. We seem to have three different versions of Denny's here in the Dallas/Ft Worth area alone. One style thet looks like a classic diner, another that's your typical old Denny's architecture, and a few more that are brand new construction. I'm not sure if they're just testing out a concept, but it's been interesting to see that they're still branching out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The convenient stores in Taiwan are also super convenient by not only offering free WiFi, ticket buying, or bill payying,, but also like a mini-Staples + mini-Shoprite + mini-Starbucks where you could just print PDF or photos, picking up your online orderings, buying groceries, and even artisan latte. And their density in Taiwan is much higher than Starbucks you could find in Manhattan.

<comment><USER7> I was so happily surprised when I saw customers of Taipei's 7-11s picking up their online orderings at 11pm(Or whatever our) at the shop. I always thought such a thing should exist in Europe, where for some reason you are never home when the delivery arrives.

<comment><USER8> Well, Germany has so-called "Paketshops". Unfortunately, apart from gas stations and the like, those usually close at 18:00. Alternatively, there are always neighbours who can take the packet for you.

<comment><USER6> i think i saw this in the tv series of homeland s05 ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I was growing up as a baby boomer 7-11 was one of the hangouts like the malt shop was for kids of our parents generation.

But for the next generations it changed. Young people gathering was seen as a problem to be corrected. Local 7-11's started playing classical music specifically to get rid of kids loitering.

I never thought of it before but what they've done is make certain that the baby boomers will be the last generation to support 7-11 and after that they will all die out. Don't know if it's played out that way in Japan or not.

</comment><comment><USER10> Even though it's now Japanese owned, I've found the density of 7-11 to be so much higher in Taiwan and Thailand. Overall its a convenient place to go to whose prices are relatively set, products are safe, and money service legitimate. Given the franchise model you will find one on every block right now.

As a traveller in Asia its actually really just been a "safe" ATM spot for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is similar to an article about McDonald's restaurants in the US becoming de facto community centres.

Older people sitting there all day, free WiFi, clean washrooms, thousands of restaurants.

<comment><USER12> In the US Midwest its Caseys, a chain of folksy convenience stores. Every small town has one or two (one at each end of town). A couple tables inside allow for socializing. Every morning the old folks gather and talk over coffee. They're completely familiar to the behind-the-counter workers; clearly welcome to stay and drink coffee and chat. Reminds me of the old town diner or truck stop of my youth.

<comment><USER13> Waffle Houses are somewhat analogous in the US South. They're everywhere (there are 4 within a 15 minute drive of my house), but many people have a favorite one. We'll occasionally pop into one of the nearby ones after church on Sunday. Usually the same regulars in there and the staff know them by name and order. My daughter loves it because she loves watching them cook.

Fun fact, FEMA has a "Waffle House index" [0] to determine how damaging a weather event such as a hurricane or tornado outbreak has been based on how many Waffle Houses are still open and what they're serving.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Same thing in Thailand I'm given to understand. Much like Taiwan, you can do ANYTHING there, including getting a dose of free AC.

<comment><USER15> Yes. I currently live in a condo in Bangkok that has an always-open 7-11 in the building. Some of the interesting offerings:

\- I can pay pretty much any bill over the counter. (electricity, mobile/internet, ecommerce purchases from Lazada, flights booked with AirAsia, etc)

\- There's a wide selection of packaged & refrigerated food that they can warm up for you; microwave meals, various types of toasties, congee/noodles (these are self serve, but they provide the hot water), etc.

\- They sell alcohol in the fridges alongside soft drinks. I know that's normal in other parts of the world too, but coming from Australia, is unimaginable there.

\- I think there is also a catalog of stuff I can order and pay for in store and pick up later. Not 100% sure because I haven't tried that yet.

<comment><USER16> > but coming from Australia, is unimaginable there.

Kind of like drive-through alcohol shops in AU.

<comment><USER17> New Hampshire has the "state liquor store and safety rest stop":

[http://philip.greenspun.com/images/pcd2488/nh-state- liquor-2...](http://philip.greenspun.com/images/pcd2488/nh-state-liquor-21-21)

(in an odd remnant of Prohibition, New Hampshire only allows wine and liquor to be sold by government-run stores).

<comment><USER18> Beer and wine are available in NH from supermarkets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having lived in an Urban Renaissance complex that hosted a convenience store (not a 7-Eleven, but a local co-operative), I can certainly understand how seniors would stay social there. You'd always run into neighbours while grabbing groceries and end up chatting. The place worked as a good social hub.

</comment><comment><USER20> When i was in Japan a year ago i especially liked the convenience stores for their coffee. Family Mart in particular has excellent coffee that's really cheap compared to other places.

</comment><comment><USER21> But aren't these stores also more expensive than super markets? Looks weird after reading the article.

<comment><USER15> In Thailand at least, the prices are generally the same as supermarkets. I'm guessing it's the same in Japan.

In Australia there is definitely a massive gap between convenience store pricing and supermarket pricing, though. Probably to the point of paying 2x or 3x on some items.

<comment><USER22> I noticed the same comparing Thai 7-Elevens to those in the US. Nearly the same prices in Thai 7-Elevens and Thai supermarkets, whereas in the US there was a significant price difference (from what I recall, it's been a while since I've been back).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 7E Japan has better quality food compare to other countries. Food is fresh.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very William Gibson</comment>


Linode shuts down its classic Linode Manager on January 31 - <AUTHOR> https://www.linode.com/2019/11/18/notice-legacy-linode-manager-users <comment><AUTHOR> As it is evidenced in the comments under the announcement, many of us are disappointed about this change. We have started an open source project with a crowdfunding campaign to reimplement the classic Linode Manager: [https://www.patreon.com/linodeclassic](https://www.patreon.com/linodeclassic)</comment>


Erlang's sweet spot - <AUTHOR> http://www.sneal.net/blog/2009/10/19/ErlangsSweetSpot.aspx <comment><USER2> > I don't have numbers to prove this, but the Erlang implementation can also > be made faster with a lot less effort since each recursive call can be run > in parallel.

Ugh... untrue. Process creation is cheap in Erlang, but it's not that cheap. Naively parallelizing each recursive call loses big time. (And, yes, I've benchmarked this.)

You can get some gain by parallelizing the first couple recursive calls (up to the number of cores you have available) and then running the rest serially, but that uglifies the code quite a bit. And you're still not going to be as fast as the in-place C version.</comment>


Why is Revolut sending my information to Facebook? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mdrahony/why-is-revolut-sending-my-information-to-facebook-cc0e873632bd <comment><USER2> There is an interesting discussion on Revolut's community forums as well: [https://community.revolut.com/t/revolut-sending-data-to- face...](https://community.revolut.com/t/revolut-sending-data-to- facebook/39404)</comment>


Why We Sleep: A Tale of Institutional Failure - <AUTHOR> https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/03/24/why-we-sleep-a-tale-of-institutional-failure/ <comment><USER3> It took me a long time to recognize and be able to articulate the seriously detrimental effect of reading pop sci on my thinking.

"Knowing" incomplete, false, distorted, or misleading facts is often much worse than having no information, or having never even considered a topic.

If I read fiction, it may imply some fundamental lens on the world, but I think my brain is better able to recognize it as an opinion, or subjective.

But if I internalize the "truth" of dietary principles or basic psychology, I will make real choices and have my perceptions shaped to believe I am seeing the results of these choices ... and it is often completely wrong.

This can be subtly or devastatingly negative for my success and quality of life.

I think this problem is under considered. In recent years I have started realizing that most of what I read literally makes me dumber.

It's a thought that has more implications than I think most people want to consider. Especially people whose identity is connected to being someone who "knows" things.

<comment><USER4> Anyone else tired of learning and internalizing cool new concepts and then those ideas you had come to adopt and believe in gets debunked/disproven soon after? Might be better just to not believe anything so you don't get betrayed anymore lol

<comment><USER5> Thesis - antithesis - synthesis.

Question would be whether you are better off at the end. Did your journey through these concepts help you improve your own understanding and action?

<comment><USER4> For me, it feels like I've fallen face flat into a puddle of doubt. Yes, believing in some particular idea and putting it to practice felt great at the time, but _now_ the science has said it's bullshit and I'm wrong for believing in it. If I choose to keep believing in it because it makes me feel good, they're going to call me stupid and a science denier!

Half joking. I'd rather be stupid, get my sleep, and feel great. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm tired of the endless posts over Why We Sleep. The book attempts to cover hundreds of studies in an accessible way, and it largely succeeds. It's certainly fluffy at times (as are all popular books, by necessity), but if you didn't like its message, nitpicking at minor points doesn't refute the central thesis, and pretending it does is below the standards of even internet flame wars.

Like, this kind of exchange is exactly why academics try to avoid randos from the internet. They tend to seize on one point, declare victory, and refuse to change their minds. And when the academic doesn't grovel in compliance, they declare academia to be a failure. As far as I'm concerned, UC Berkeley responded perfectly.

<comment><USER7> Falsifying data is not being 'fluffy', it's academic misconduct. You might not personally care about this but academic norms exist for a reason. Universities are trusted institutions precisely because they follow these norms.

<comment><USER8> But" Why We Sleep" is not intended for an academic context, right?

I mean, obviously it wouldn't pass a "peer-review" analysis, but that is exactly what happens every time in science pop readings. Either we eliminate every science reading that is not strictly papers, or we accept some misinformation here and there.

<comment><USER9> The author apparently specifically states that the book is a scientific work. The article and comments go into this point further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The general message and key takeaway I got from the book was that sleep affects your health in various ways and getting a sufficient amount of higher quality sleep is better than not doing so.

Do any of these errors reverse that information? Is sleep actually harmful? Should we in fact be loading up on caffeine and alcohol and sleeping 3 hours a night? If not, then what's the point?

<comment><USER11> Did you need a full book to tell you that though? The fundamental problem with pop sci books is that very often the most important facts (and probably the only generally communicable facts) about the topic should not need more than a few dense pages in a long-form article. But you can't sell an article for twenty bucks so the professors who would love a million or two (do they make that much?) Just expand it into drivel and cut corners to "simplify" the prose and take creative license.

Even the greatest popsci book of all time, a brief history of time, is famously a tome almost no one ever reads fully[1]. Every popsci book I've taken up I can never finish because half of it would be repetitive BS and I'll come out of it not taking anymore takeaway points than what was in the article in Forbes promoting the book. The motivations for publishing popular science books by professors are probably to blame here, on top of the fundamental research ethics problems that plague academia nowadays.

1\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2018/03/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2018/03/14/what-made-hawkings-a-brief-history-of-time-so-immensely- popular/)

<comment><USER12> > Did you need a full book to tell you that though?

Yes, actually. The point of writing an entire book is to present enough evidence for the reader to come to the author's conclusion on their own.

The important part of reading a book, the part that has a chance of altering your behavior in the future, is spending time considering the subject matter from various different angles. That's what gives you the ability to recognize similarities between situations described in the book and situations that appear in your life. This ability to see the things that happen to you in a new light is the real value these books provide.

<comment><USER13> > The point of writing an entire book is to present enough evidence for the > reader to come to the author's conclusion on their own.

What a great quote. I'll be stealing that thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wait, why is this trimming controversial? The original paper is a little mediocre (would be down for generic criticism of relying on it), but this trimming seems to match the main drive of it.

Just read the paper, and the association is pretty clear there: fewer hours of sleep means more injuries. P = ~0.006 rr=.8 per hour of additional sleep. That's not a huge effect size, but I find that pretty believable from my lived experience. Lol, yes, p values, but does anyone think less sleep makes them more coordinated? I don't allow myself to drive long distances on less than 6h sleep based on my prior experience having tried.

For a lay audience explaining the data for the left most point would be hard. Why is 5h of sleep less injurious than 6h? Could be random chance (only 160 students in the study). Could be that those players are worse (coach pulls sleepy kid off the field).

I doubt the most uncharitable interpretation of Walker's trimming is correct (people who sleep 5h/night are better at sports and less likely to be injured).

This particular criticism rings hollow to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a data scientist, I feel like I have to deal with this shit at work all the time. The data matters and "we're data driven" unless the data disagrees with whomever you're talking to. If someone slices data in a shitty way, then you're being too pedantic when you point it out that they're implicitly making bad assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Alexey Guzey's post is probably worth reading first: [https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/](https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I wrote the comment below over a year ago, about how these popsci books are very unreliable sources of knowledge because of the perverse incentive structure (eg would this book have been written if the conclusion was 'we don't know how important sleep is, but it seems generally pretty important although this is difficult to prove and largely obvious'). It was downvoted pretty heavily.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18244061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18244061)

I mean, none of this is surprising.

<comment><USER18> I think your comment was down voted because it was a poor comment that didn't properly communicate your reasoning.

Specifically, note that your description of the comment is longer and contains more detail/clarification than the actual comment it describes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite quote from the article; "start off your book with a statement such as, 'None of the data in this book matters.' "

</comment><comment> rv-de I'm intrigued by the subject due to life long sleep issues. Mostly caused by bad habits. I enjoyed about 50% of the book and overall I appreciated that it got me some food for thought and back to working on my sleep quality. But other than that I had to say the book is really thin on material relative to its size. And the way the guy delved into subtopics like drugs and lucid dreaming left me quite skeptical about how deep he is into the field at all. That book could have been written by a student of medicine. There was nothing conveying any deeper understanding, interest or insight into sleep - <USER2> intuition.

</comment><comment><USER20> The protagonist's take on UBI is an interesting read in the context of under- evidenced speculation:

[https://guzey.com/economics/against-universal-basic- income/](https://guzey.com/economics/against-universal-basic-income/)

<comment><USER21> That does not address one of the main points of UBI: eliminating the welfare cliff

Like someone is on welfare and the welfare includes free health care insurance. Then they get a job, they do not get welfare anymore, but then they need to pay for insurance, so with the job they have less money than before.

</comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish If this is the strongest criticism someone who I know is knowledgeable and intelligent can muster, it gives me more confidence in the conclusions of the book.</comment>


Elon Musk Unveils Brain Computer Implanted in Pigs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-28/elon-musk-to-unveil-neuralink-brain-computer-implanted-in-pigs <comment><USER2> Unlimited digital access on Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg App. Cancel any time.

$34.99 $1.99/month __$415 $340 /year __

Billed at $34.99 monthly after 3 month introductory offer period. Cancel any time.

Wow. That is a big price!</comment>


Meditation Driven Development (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-development.html

<comment><USER2> The Zen Master Foyan (12th century China) wrote:

"Buddhism is an easily understood, energy-saving teaching; people strain themselves. Seeing them helpless, the ancients told people to try meditating quietly for a moment. These are good words, but later people did not understand the meaning of the ancients; they went off and sat like lumps with knitted brows and closed eyes, suppressing body and mind, waiting for enlightenment. How stupid! How foolish!"

I think you could find lots of interesting parallels between software development and religion. To a first approximation, it's all about old guys giving advice that's misunderstood and channeled into various schemes like consultancies and conferences and churches.

<comment><USER3> I only read the end of the article, but it seems the author agrees with you.

> Don't fall in to Tim's trap. Great developers create great software not > because they follow the strictures of some methodology but because they are > truly great, gifted artisans.

But I think this concept of self knowledge is integral to Buddhism at the least, and I know understanding it can be part of swallowing an iron hot ball in zen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with the general idea behind this article, which is : don't become religious about one method, one tool, one language...

However, the conclusion is really pessimistic !

"Great developers create great software not because they follow the strictures of some methodology but because they are truly great, gifted artisans."

So...non-gifted artisans will never produce great software ? We shouldn't try to increase the average quality of software by figuring out methods that work for the rest of us that are not "gifted" ?

<comment><USER5> So a buddhist monk walks up to a hotdog vendor and is asked what he wants to eat:

"Make me one with everything!" the Monk chuckles with a cheeky smile.

So the buddhist gets his hot dog and pays the hot dog vendor with a $20 bill. The vendor takes the money and expecting change the buddhist asks what is going on?

The smile is returned by the hotdog vendor; "Change must come from within".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's also the Hawthorne effect you can enjoy just by being vocal about your (random) methodology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

</comment><comment><USER7> Meditation does help in various aspects of life, including programming, but it disappoints me to see many people looking at meditation in a limited scope.

On the other hand, I realize that this is how many millions across the world get introduced and hopefully some of these millions will discover there is more.

</comment><comment><USER8> While this has its points there is something missing.

Why were Tim's (and his group's) projects failing before they sdopted MDD? Were many of them new at the company? Did they have a bad manager that left as they started MDD?

If their new methology is bogus something else must have changed.

<comment><USER9> In the story as given, it says many of Tim's projects etc failed before they adopted MDD. What happened was Tim changed to being a manager (after 15 years dev experience) _and_ formed a new team _and_ adopted MDD. They then attributed to MDD the success, when in fact the success was due to people.

This point is emphasised again later when he finds a new team in his org when MDD is failing. That team has a new manager (with 15 years dev experience), working with a new team and a new methodology QDD. Again, the team attributes success to QDD, not the people.

ie the success is down to people, not the process.

If you realise MDD (and QDD) is completely made up, that will probably explain things somewhat. Also subsitute MDD with Agile, and realise that Agile was created under similar circumstances and you'll probably get the point.

:-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fascinating parable about how "Software Movements" get started. Although, even if the initial effect observed is due to some sort of placebo effect, it might be worth it.

<comment><USER10> I didn't find it fascinating, but I think the point of the article wasn't that it's a placebo effect, but rather the meditation had nothing to do with it. The group was a hand-selected group of high-quality developers and they were going to do excellently with or without the meditation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the title, I thought there might be something insightful about the importance and difficulty of maintaining _concentration_ when working with the large, complex, abstract and mostly invisible structures that software consists of.

Instead it was just another riff on "we're doing it wrong"...

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps you may have missed this HN post, which may interest you more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9104759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9104759)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I enjoyed this

</comment><comment><USER13> Nailed it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Garbage. The thought of letting his team know about meditation was one-sided, it is what happens when you begin to meditate; you want everyone else to do it, too. And while that isn't a necessarily bad thing, this post is missing a lot of facts - how did the team respond to meditation on a personal level, how he managed to get everyone to meditate for 45 minutes out of the blue, and how many of people continued to use meditation all together; if any at all?

Like I said, garbage.</comment>


Show HN: Realtime Twitter Feeds using NodeJS & Socket.IO - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdn.pxnz.net/

<comment><USER2> Is there some sort of search filter? It took almost 30s before the first tweet showed up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is searching for 'sneeuw' the dutch word for snow, it just started snowing over here, and the reason the tweets are 'slow' is due to it being 02:21 over here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> is this open source?</comment>


A Git Horror Story: Repository Integrity with Signed Commits - alexis-d http://mikegerwitz.com/papers/git-horror-story

<comment><AUTHOR> 1201 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4007229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4007229)

461 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7827828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7827828)

This article reminds me of Schneir's article, [Are you sophisticated enough to recognize an Internet scam?]([https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2003/12/are_you_sop...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2003/12/are_you_sophisticate.html)), where he talks about "semantic attacks."</comment>


Who provides the Internet service to Internet Service Providers (ISP's)? - <AUTHOR> http://superuser.com/questions/399300/who-provides-the-internet-service-to-internet-service-providers-isps

<comment><USER2> good info</comment>


Must-know url hash techniques (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mgm-tp.com/2011/10/must-know-url-hashtechniques-for-ajax-applications/ <comment><USER2> With pushState, isn't this now irrelevant (and, as it has always been, ugly)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if you do not have to support older browsers, which I think a lot of webdevs still have to do, then I guess its probably irrelevant. But the history API implementations are (of course) different across browsers/platforms, so I'd recommend taking a look at history.js, if you want cross-browser RIA with good hashchange fallbacks.

<comment><USER3> Good one, didn't know about history.js!

I think the best pushState fallback is just allowing page reloads. Hashtags are probably just annoying and confusing for the user experience. Besides, there are other very effective ways to improve page load time.

<comment><USER4> I agree; the correct fallback is to load the webpage the "traditional" way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the URLs generated by Oracle's Application Express (which is my main source of income at the moment).

And you wind up using cookies anyhow to cross-check (ApEx does), because real applications tend to require authorisation as well as application state.

So, to recap:

1\. Uglier URLs

2\. Cookies anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the best solution for handling older browsers is to allow server rendering via loading the page the traditional way. Solving two problems: Keeping your urls looking like they should and also verify that your site is accessible for software that do not rely on JavaScript such as some search engines and other types of machines / software. I see little reason for messing up urls with hashchange, adds complexity when recreating correct state on bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER7> The author glosses over the fact that encoding of special characters in the hash is broken in firefox. As an application there's no way to know if you're getting the data you want or url encoded data. Base64 encoding (with replacing chars like $ which most im and email clients fail to autodetect as being part of the url) seems to be the only bet at the moment. Putting the data in the get request and ignoring it on the server also seems to work well.

<comment><USER5> Specifically, Base64Url. It's described in RFC4648 and is URL-safe.</comment></comment>


My mid-2009 math reading list - <AUTHOR> http://math-blog.com/2009/07/31/my-mid-2009-math-reading-list/ <comment><USER2> _The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number_ is an utter crap as hinted by a presence of a word "astonishing" in its title. I couldn't get past first 10 pages, it is really really bad. It is basically full of pearls like "if we subtract the weight of an electron from a diameter of an average donut and compensate for Thursday, we'll get the fifth digit of Phi. Isn't it amazing. Phi is everywhere."

</comment><comment><USER3> A suggestion for an addition (or replacement) for the list:

[http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John- Stillwell/dp/038...](http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John- Stillwell/dp/0387982892/)

Numbers and Geometry by John Stillwell is very readable and full of very interesting math problems, covering a lot of topics that are accessible to anyone with a good high school education but often aren't covered even by an undergraduate math degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aren't you helpful? Your little, seemingly harmless comment may cost me $50. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting list, but I'll wait to see the reviews. "A list of books I am currently reading" is quite a different beast than "A list of books I have read, and recommend."

</comment><comment><USER5> I just picked up Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers [[http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan- Gullberg...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan- Gullberg/dp/039304002X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1)]. I think this was posted in a comment on HN. Its a tome of a book, but from what I have seen so far, it looks really interesting.

Definitely not a quick summer read though IMO</comment>


Home entertainment implementations are pretty appalling - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31178.html <comment><USER3> This article and the earlier Samsung "smart" TV article [1] confirm my own observation that 99% of software running on consumer electronics devices (particularly set top media players and wireless routers) is utter crap, thrown together carelessly, probably at the last minute, by hardware people who have no clue about software. Again and again, you can see the same low/broken functionality and lack of polish (watch any media player as it changes video modes, for example. flash flash flash jump flash). The only redeeming quality of these software distributions is that their appalling security make them easy to root, at least allowing those who know better to go in and either fix things or install third party software written by people who give a damn.

It's like these companies spend a year getting the hardware ready, then at the last minute realize it needs software. So they find some monkey to barely manage to get ARM Linux slapped on to it so they can ship something.

It's gotten to the point where I really appreciate the attitude from some of the new up-and-coming set-top box manufacturers who basically say on their web site, "Screw it, we're a hardware company, here's how to get root and do it properly.", e.g. [2]

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616420) 2: [http://www.pivosgroup.com/](http://www.pivosgroup.com/)

<comment><USER4> I expected Apple TV to come in and crush it, rather like they did to the smartphone industry. It wasn't so long ago that I had a motorola flip phone that could play MP3s. _One. At. A. Time._

Apple TV is one of the better set-tops, but still far short of its potential. I attribute this to a "first we build the locks, then if there's anything left, we'll build the house" mentality forced on them by media companies. I wouldn't be surprised if every manufacturer more or less suffered from this and leaving in easy rootability is a form of subtle rebellion.

<comment><USER5> > I expected Apple TV to come in and crush it, rather like they did to the > smartphone industry.

Good luck unlocking/hacking an Apple device.

<comment><USER6> The jailbreaking scene seems to do a pretty good job of it.

<comment><USER7> There isn't a working jailbreak for AppleTV3. People have injected themselves into the existing apps changing where they look for video, but that's different to having local root.

<comment><USER6> Ok, but the GP said "Good luck unlocking/hacking an Apple device" not "... an Apple TV 3", implying that Apple devices are impenetrable fortresses of doom or something.

Full-blown iOS devices get jailbroken pretty quickly. I assume the difference here is that no one cares about the Apple TV, so there's little incentive to hack it (exaggeration, but the difference in Apple TV owners vs. iPhone owners is probably several orders of magnitude). Even if you did hack it, what's the point? There's no hard drive to store your pirated videos, and IIRC these things can stream videos from your PC out of the box anyway. If you're gonna install XBMC and bypass the Apple TV interface completely, why get an Apple TV in the first place?

<comment><USER5> Good points. I should've been clearer. I meant the scene is not such that there is enough work done that a relatively non-techie person can sift through the jailbreaking community work and apply it him/herself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently bought a Panasonic camera - in the compact travel zoom class. One feature is wifi support, where for example it can upload pictures to your computer. There are several places the camera lets you enter text such as names in face recognition, and in SSIDs. But for some unfathomable reason a Panasonic engineer added extra code so that spaces are disabled for wifi passwords. This was actual extra effort, and completely and utterly wrong. Spaces are allowed, every domestic access point I use has them, and everything else is perfectly happy with them including iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, Mac, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Roku. Oh and Panasonic TVs and bluray players (the "smart" ones).

It is impossible for Panasonic to find out about this or do anything about it, because like many companies they value interaction with their customers so little that it is outsourced to the lowest bidder. Those companies business model is to give out the same answers to the same questions over and over again. They cannot cope with an answer they don't already have. The one Panasonic uses in the US is even worse, refusing to tell Panasonic about the issue. They also have a cunning system where links to surveys after chats don't work, and the phone survey won't recognise giving them low scores!

If anyone is curious I wrote about the whole saga at [http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/support- tale.html](http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/support-tale.html)

<comment><USER9> _Five_ buttons, all for spaces? That would already be a sign to me that whoever designed that UI wasn't really thinking straight...

And I'm almost willing to bet that not letting you enter spaces might be the result of a "security fix" because they pass the contents of that field, unescaped, directly through to a wifi configuration shell script, and someone doing some testing discovered that spaces would "cause things to break", so the solution was to disallow spaces instead of performing escaping on the password string.

Also related: [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Securing-Secure- Security.asp...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Securing-Secure- Security.aspx)

Edit: while Googling around for some other devices that might have this interesting issue, I found... [https://github.com/xbianonpi/xbian-package- config-xbmc/issue...](https://github.com/xbianonpi/xbian-package-config- xbmc/issues/12)

Why is escaping input such a difficult concept to comprehend?

<comment><USER10> > Five buttons, all for spaces? That would already be a sign to me that > whoever designed that UI wasn't really thinking straight...

It's a sign to me that they're extremely lazy, or their code is so bad that making small exceptions are very difficult/brittle.

[http://imgb.mp/jvs.jpg](http://imgb.mp/jvs.jpg)

"Now that we're translating this UI to English, what do we do with all these buttons that aren't needed?" "Too much work trapping into the UI drawing code to hide them, let's just remap them to something else... how about space! That's harmless!"

<comment><USER9> I see what looks like the Japanese equivalents of single and double quote, full stop and comma, so it's still a bit puzzling why the English version doesn't have those there.

<comment><USER10> The "single and double" quote are actually Dakuten and Handakuten, which are essential parts of the language [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakuten](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakuten)

Good point about the punctuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problems extant in home entertainment products are only reflected throughout the rest of the "Internet of Things" ecosystem. Or as I prefer to think of it: security threat vector channel.

Consider: You've got a slew of products for which rapid iteration and obsolescence is a key attribute, profit margins are slim, cost pressures are immense, talent is limited (and not attracted by time and cost pressures), parts availability is arbitrary, capricious, and liable to change with little notice or reason (we've seen in the GM ignition switch recall what the implications of even a minor parts change can be, in a slightly different space).

A few years back I had the distinct pleasure of attempting to configure and deploy a major enterprise vendor's storage product on what the sales team promised, but the support team denied at pain of abuse to my firm, was supported under our OS. The company shall remain nameless, but rhymes with "hell".

What I eventually established was:

• The vendor itself had little or no real understanding of the equipment or its configuration.

• The documentation for the underlying technologies (all, as it happens, open source free software), ranged from quite good to abysmal. One README file consisted entirely of the text "Good things to read here.". We were less than gruntled.

• True support was actually a pass-through to the OS vendor, who, it turned out, wasn't in fact the source of our OS. We'd been sold something which didn't in fact exist (real support).

And that was for high-end enterprise-grade hardware.

The situation for the consumer-grade stuff, especially the _cheap_ consumer- grade stuff, is far, far worse.

Which is why I want the products I buy to have the absolute minimal amount of technology in them as possible or necessary. It's fewer opportunities to foul up.

<comment><USER12> I hate myself for saying this, but perhaps the only way to wake up these manufacturers is to make them liable for leaving the "security door" wide open. If they've followed good practices and at least _tried_ to get things right, that should be a strong defense. But if they've completely _ignored_ security, then they should be at risk too.

<comment><USER11> That will likely be a part of it. Though finding pockets to go after may be difficult as well: hardware and software components are already modular, there is the developer, the manufacturer, and often a "brand" who effectively purchases the tech and tosses a logo on it (Apple is an exception to this rule). To say nothing of transnational jurisdictions.

The complexity problem extends to the legal side as well. Much as I think liability could help, it's going to be hard to apply, particularly with lay attorneys, judges, and juries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apparently in order for a home network, with modern appliances to be secure you need to be at least a _geek_ these days.

You probably need a router that runs OpenWRT, Linux or BSD like caramobola2[1], to configure manually in order to monitor incoming and outgoing connections, blocking suspicious traffic.

Then you probably need something that can run XBMC[2] as a home entertainment system (atom HTPC works like a charm, I have one). Then a flashed dreambox PVR which runs linux too and you can do a lot of things but most importantly monitor everything.

So basically, anything that runs proprietary software is a security concern. Strangely, the more corporations try to build walled gardens the bigger the security risk is.

[1] [http://8devices.com/carambola-2](http://8devices.com/carambola-2)

[2] [http://xbmc.org/](http://xbmc.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> _This software has been written without any concern for security, and it listens on the network by default._

This dawned on me when I intended to switch over to FIOS due to problems with my cable internet connection. I moved all of my media and gaming devices first, then abruptly stopped, wondering why I would want to share a network with a bunch of devices I had no reason to trust. I know I can isolate them on my home network, and may eventually get around to it, but in the meantime, I'm using separate connections to different ISPs (which provides other benefits, as well).

<comment><USER15> _...wondering why I would want to share a network with a bunch of devices I had no reason to trust. I know I can isolate them on my home network..._

Unfortunately, it's actually quite difficult to do that properly with a typical broadband/WiFi box as supplied by most ISPs (at least here in the UK) by default. You need to step up to business-grade gear in most cases, which is both more expensive and beyond the technical knowledge of most consumers, and even then some otherwise respectable devices are regrettably lacking in flexibility when it comes to VLAN configuration and the like. I'm looking forward to the day when standard home user boxes allow you to do things like isolating certain physical ports or wireless networks by default, so hopefully running untrusted devices on independent networks becomes routine.

Even then, there's still the problem that if you want to watch some sort of streaming content off the Internet, whichever device(s) have that external connectivity could also pose a privacy risk if they have access to whichever devices are acting as home media servers. DLNA seems like a step in the right direction for connecting up home media devices, but I haven't seen much evidence of a robust security model being implemented so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I previously worked in a company where the main product was an IP camera. Most of the team was building a windows client to interface with the camera and I was a one man army to handle the software onboard. I'd say that most software people don't know what is hard with hardware (no pun intended, seriously).

Most of your time is spent around finding libraries that can be compiled for your board or fixing device drivers because of that slight board modification the hardware guys did. You also have to figure out how the proprietary hardware encoders work and make them work properly. If the documentation doesn't fit the implementation? Well you have this contact under nda agreement that will eventually say "I don't know either, have you asked in the forums?" after 2 weeks of back and forth. Also sometimes your device would just reboot and you'll spend time arguing with the hardware guys that linux don't just reboot for no reason. Did I mention having to worry about how your 64mb of ram get allocated and in which DSP pool?

Eventually, you'll find time to write code that will cause your device to do something meaningful.

Writing software for hardware is much harder than it seems, because you have to worry about all those things you take for granted when working with a x86 desktop. You can't upgrade often after shipping, so testing focuses on critical bugs instead of usability. I do agree than spending more resources would make sense, but consider this : Hiring a DSP specialist to get an H264 encoder to work would cost 80k$ in Montreal in 2007. This is something that is now free with newer chips, but just getting the hardware to work used to drain a lot of resources. Larger companies could have more money for that, but I do not know how they work internally so I can't speak for them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Spot on. I'm currently arguing with a retailer over a Toshiba television which can't play mp4 files reliably. It crashed and hangs regularly.

They want to send it for repair because to be honest they are fucking morons and however much explaining I do they don't realise that the manufacturer doesn't support any kind of firmware update. I want my money back so am having to take them to small claims court in the UK to force a refund under the sale of goods act because the item is not fit for purpose.

Between this and a Bravia EX which is buggy as hell I'm tempted to just buy something that will run a Linux based media center with a PC TFT and say fuck it to consumer appliances.

<comment><USER18> "consumer appliances."

All converged appliances suck, and probably always will, and the consumers are figuring it out, which will be the doom of the "convergence" meme.

Non-converged appliances usually work pretty well. My dumb TV displays whatever the HDMI flings at it, the separate optically connected surround sound system works beautifully, the computer hooked up to them just does its thing.

<comment><USER17> Spot on. I agree. I really miss the old Trinitron that this Bravia replaced. I hung onto that unit for nearly a decade and it never skipped a beat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The manufacturer could've made it more secure, but then you wouldn't be able to change the region code like that or do anything else to be in _control_ your device... security cuts both ways.

<comment><USER19> The only way to _really_ be sure that you control your devices is to use free/open source software.

<comment><USER20> Not really. FLOSS is about being in control of your software (being able to legally modify and distribute things), not making any guarantees about software behavior (including security).

Indeed, source code availability (much weaker than FLOSS) is very useful in software analysis. Nonetheless, while in most cases this is just tedious and boring work, one can still validate proprietary binary blobs. Obviously, that only applies to countries where reverse engineering is legal.

<comment><USER19> If you can't modify/replace the software on your device, do you really _control_ that device?

In my opinion, validation/analysis is a necessary but insufficient condition for control.

<comment><USER20> One can modify proprietary blobs, too. It's just insanely more complicated due to necessity to reverse engineer things and not universally legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only way to implement network-connected appliances safely is with open- source. It doesn't have to be under a permissive license, but it does have to allow the end user to change the code. Anything that is network-connected -HAS- to be update-able and independently verifiable. Anything less is a risk to all of us, like biologically unstable organisms released into a city would be.

<comment><USER22> I think issues like the heartbleed bug demonstrate that open source is not necessarily a credible defense against either incompetence or malice.

<comment><USER23> Heartbleed was discovered and fixed.

<comment><USER22> Eventually, it was disclosed publicly and fixed, yes. But the standard set of arguments for open source and 'all bugs being shallow' would have expected it to be caught and fixed almost immediately.

I'm not arguing that open source isn't a better system, just that it's not a guarantee of safety when compared to closed source in this regard - <USER2> systems have to have competent people actually caring enough to pore over the code and provide fixes. Consumers cannot be expected to manually review and audit every line of code in their networked devices, nor (apparently) can they reliably depend on someone else to do it for them.

<comment><USER24> Coverity and several other metrics seem to all conclude that over all, open source code is still more bug free than proprietary code.

[http://www.zdnet.com/coverity-finds-open-source-software- qua...](http://www.zdnet.com/coverity-finds-open-source-software-quality- better-than-proprietary-code-7000028514/)

If you seriously think that all bugs in open source are found and magically fixed immediately, I suspect you should try working as a community member / contributor of an open source software project.

<comment><USER22> >If you seriously think that all bugs in open source are found and magically fixed immediately

I don't think that at all. But, the heartbleed bug is an example of one which should have been, by all rights. It wasn't due to some complex crypto implementation, or an arcane syntactical edge case in C. It was a pointer bug. It was a simple, critical fault in a bit of software which had a lot of very qualified eyes on it, which a lot of people here would ridicule as a matter of course.

Now why, if something like that can happen with code most hackers and open source proponents care passionately about, should it be taken for granted that enough people are going to be validating dvd player and smart tv firmware for the end result to be better for the average end user than expecting whoever the manufacturer hires to do it?

<comment><USER24> Actually, per the actual OpenSSL maintainers, there are precious few eyes on the OpenSSL code.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/heartbleed...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/heartbleed- developer-error-regrets-oversight)

From Robin Segglelman, the maintainer who "accidentally" added the heartbleed bug:

""" ... OpenSSL is definitely under-resourced for its wide distribution. It has millions of users but only very few actually contribute to the project." """

I really think you should try joining and open source community and contributing some code. Then I suspect you'll understand that it is just as hard as any proprietary code (like that which I work on for $day_job). The difference is that Open Source code, even critical stuff that runs the internet, is often woefully understaffed and over expected to be perfect.

<comment><USER22> I stand corrected then.

>I really think you should try joining and open source community and contributing some code.

I have, not often though. Certainly not to anything critical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Last 5 SpaceX launches of 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/10/spacex-lines-five-launches-2018/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a good summary of the last 5 launches planned by SpaceX, no Falcon Heavy launches however. If they pull this off and hit 22 launches this year, they will be very close to the target of 26 launches per year (on average one every 2 weeks).

At which point I start to wonder just how much stuff is out there that people want to launch :-).</comment>