Internet Posting Removal Act - <AUTHOR> http://legiscan.com/IL/bill/SB1614

<comment><USER2> The first comment there (by Leslie Wheeler) summarizes the ridiculousness nicely:

"We may have an early candidate for Worst Illinois Senate Bill of 2013.

First of all, Illinois does not have jurisdiction over the entirety of the internet. Illinois has jurisdiction over Illinois. Geographical location isn't all that important to the web hosting industry - for the most part, a datacenter in Chicago is just as good as one in, say, Dallas or Seattle. This means that the only thing this bill would actually succeed in doing is driving internet-related business (both individual online businesses, as well as the infrastructure that supports them, ie, webhosting companies and datacenters) out of the state.

Good job representing our interests there, Ira.

More importantly, though, this is plainly unconstitutional. It's absolutely embarrassing that any elected representative of US citizens would suggest that there should be a host of state-defined rules that must be met before one is allowed to exercise their first amendment right to free speech.

Just for funsies, here's what SCOTUS thought of anonymous speech in McIntyre V. Ohio Elections Commission:

'Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views... Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation... at the hand of an intolerant society.'"

</comment><comment><USER3> Much as state senator Ira Silverstein would like to use his weirdly gerrymandered little slice of Chicago as a platform from which to repeal the First Amendment, I don't think we have to worry much that'll be successful doing so.

<comment> steve-howard Illinois Senate District 8 actually doesn't look all that weird:

[http://www.elections.il.gov/Downloads/VotingInformation/PDF/...](http://www.elections.il.gov/Downloads/VotingInformation/PDF/2011Districts/2011SenDist8.pdf)

At least it doesn't in comparison to the Congressional districts like, say District 4:

[http://www.elections.il.gov/Downloads/VotingInformation/PDF/...](http://www.elections.il.gov/Downloads/VotingInformation/PDF/2011Districts/2011CongDist4.pdf)

That narrow bit on the far west is just I-294. No residences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A quote: "Creates the Internet Posting Removal Act. Provides that a web site administrator shall, upon request, remove any posted comments posted by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate."

This has all sorts of constitutional-law and privacy ramifications. Anonymous public comment has a long history in political debate, and a law such as the link describes is a likely candidate for legal challenge.

This is not to argue tat anonymous comment isn't controversial -- it is -- but it's not a simple issue by any means.

Most of those who propose measures to limit anonymous comment try to clearly define the scope of their intentions -- for example, it might only apply to misstatements of fact, or potentially libelous remarks. This one simply makes it a requirement that comments be removed on request -- and it doesn't describe the standing of the requester or the basis of the request. I can hear the lawyers now -- "Your honor, this statute is overly broad and ambiguous."

</comment><comment><USER5> Full Text of the Bill:

<http://legiscan.com/IL/text/SB1614>

Choice quotes:

"Anonymous poster" means any individual who posts a message on a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards, or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.

"Web site administrator" means any person or entity that is responsible for maintaining a web site or managing the content or development of information provided on a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards, or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anonymous speech must be stopped! Because we all know how our country was almost ruined by those pseudonymous bastards, Ms. Silence Dogood and Poor Richard Saunders[1].

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_franklin>

<comment><USER7> Not to mention Publius:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps the text of bills should carry the names of the individuals who actually wrote them as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Upon request."

By anyone, it seems to read. Even by an anonymous requester.

Now anyone can be a censor.

<comment><USER10> That's a striking point right there. Perhaps it would be nice if in order to request a takedown you had to provide your own personal credentials. That would bring some fairness to the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case you're wondering why this bill is unconstitutional, the EFF provides a good summary of the underlying issues and how the Supreme Court has ruled in the past:

<https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity>

You'd think legislators would have read the Constitution before taking office, but yeah, I know I'm asking too much...

</comment><comment><USER12> In other news, it's being reported[1] that State Farm Insurance, headquartered in Bloomington, IL and employing lots of people in southern Illinois, has acquired several million feet of office space in Dallas.

I would say the Illinois legislature needs to fix their credit rating (lowest in the nation) before they try to outlaw internet nastygrams. They are equally as stupid and more evil than their neighbors in Indiana were in 1897, when they decided the value of PI was 3.2[2].

How is it dummies manage to land in legislatures, especially state legislatures, so often?

[1][http://activerain.com/blogsview/3622523/dallas-s-largest- off...](http://activerain.com/blogsview/3622523/dallas-s-largest-office-leas- ever) [2][http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/second%20level%20p...](http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/second%20level%20pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm)

</comment><comment><USER13> The Founding Fathers commented anonymously!

[http://www.carolinajournal.com/articles/display_story.html?i...](http://www.carolinajournal.com/articles/display_story.html?id=3573)

</comment><comment><USER14> I've lost track of the number proposed Internet laws that were obviously written by legislators lacking even a working understanding of what the Internet is or how it works.

</comment><comment><USER15> The full text of the bill makes clear that this should apply to private networks as well:

"...via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network."

</comment><comment><USER16> My guess is that the Senator got tired of people posting critical comments of him anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER17> Aaand, I have one less reason to ever start a company in Illinois.

</comment><comment> adam-f Yeah, 18.104.22.168 (or whatever coffee shop I'm posting from) is my correct IP address. I guarantee it. o_O</comment>


How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/ff-corning-gorilla-glass/ <comment><USER2> Why couldn't the images in the article have shown these:

 _Corning's headquarters in upstate New York looks like a Space Invaders alien: Designed by architect Kevin Roche in the early '90s, the structure fans out in staggered blocks. From the ground, though, the tinted windows and extended eaves make the building look more like a glossy, futuristic Japanese palace._

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Corning+headquarters&t...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Corning+headquarters&tbm=isch)

 _In some cases, a Prince Rupert's drop can explode with such force that it will actually emit a flash of light._

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Prince+Rupert's+drop&t...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Prince+Rupert's+drop&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER3> I got peeved with Corning the other day when I found out they let another company produce Pyrex-brand glass under license which is not borosilicate glass. The whole _point_ of Pyrex was resistance to heat, which you don't get with the cheaper soda-lime glass. At least I learned how to tell them apart (soda-lime has a blueish color, and borosilicate is clear).

<comment><USER4> Only in the US where Pyrex is made by World Kitchen. In Europe, Arc Internationl still uses borosilicate for Pyrex-brand glass. Also, FWIW, a popular US glass bakeware manufacturer claims tempered soda-lime glass is stronger while still as heat resistant as borosilicate:

<http://www.anchorhocking.com/Bakeware_Facts.html#BORSILICATE>

<comment><USER5> That's really funny, because a glass baking form made by Anchor shattered in my oven recently, spraying the whole oven with glass shards, ruining my food, and making it a huge pain to clean up.

So... as heat resistant as pyrex? Not in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      "The story of their collaboration—including Jobs' attempt to lecture Weeks on the principles of glass and his insistence that such a feat could be accomplished—is well known."

It's not well known to everyone. This is the first I've heard of this, and a quick search didn't turn up anything beyond the details in this article.

Excellent article otherwise!

<comment><USER7> From the Isaacson biography:

Jobs described the type of glass Apple wanted for the iPhone, and Weeks told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what they dubbed "gorilla glass." It was incredibly strong, but it had never found a market, so Corning quit making it. Jobs said he doubted it was good enough, and he started explaining to Weeks how glass was made. This amused Weeks, who of course knew more than Jobs about that topic. "Can you shut up," Weeks interjected, "and let me teach you some science?" Jobs was taken aback and fell silent. Weeks went to the whiteboard and gave a tutorial on the chemistry, which involved an ion-exchange process that produced a compression layer on the surface of the glass. This turned Jobs around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as Corning could make within six months. "We don't have the capacity," Weeks replied. "None of our plants make the glass now."

"Don't be afraid," Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident but not used to Jobs's reality distortion field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn't accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. "Yes, you can do it," he said. "Get your mind around it. You can do it."

<comment><USER8> Jobs. I sure respect the man. Uncompromising vision!

<comment><USER9> Really? Reading that I was thinking "what an asshole, no respect for the scientist and engineer talking to him."

<comment><USER10> (Weeks is actually an accountant by education)

<comment><USER11> Who was capable of explaining modern glassmaking. At some point, your degree stops mattering when talking about labels like "scientist" and "engineer".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Beautiful and what a fantastic attitude for a company that size. Reminds me of the old HP.

Glass is amazing material, if you like this nad you haven't seen them yet google for aerogel.

</comment><comment><USER13> "In some cases, a Prince Rupert's drop can explode with such force that it will actually emit a flash of light."

This got me wondering... and Google turned up a hit from an 1855 (!) edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica [1], and a fascinating Wikipedia article about triboluminescence [2].

What a cool world we live in!

[1] [http://books.google.com/books?id=92xBAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PA564&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=92xBAAAAcAAJ&lpg=PA564&ots=cRE1I06mtw&dq=prince%20ruperts%20drop%20flash%20of%20light&pg=PA564#v=onepage&q=prince%20ruperts%20drop%20flash%20of%20light&f=false)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence>

<comment><USER14> Ha, I had forgotten about the Wint-O-Green Lifesavers trick, and never had it explained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fantastic read! I like how old discoveries can become relevant again. Applications of lateral thinking really make a good read.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Scientists were soon hurling fortified tumblers off their nine-story facility and bombarding the glass, known internally as 0317, with frozen chickens."

What's the deal with frozen chicken tests? Don't some other objects, like tennis balls, work just the same but are a smaller hassle logistically?

<comment><USER16> Chickens are used to test airplane windshields for bird impact resistance[1]; perhaps that's why.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun>

<comment><USER17> "Why do our windscreens keep breaking?"

"Thaw the chicken"

(Yeah I know: <http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blthaw.htm>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For some reason, on Chrome, the linked article is teeny (text is completely unreadable).

Anyway - it's funny how some of the best discoveries are accidental. I don't know anything about Don Stookey, but I'm guessing this played a large part of his induction into the inventor's hall of fame. But he didn't really do anything, he didn't set out to make the next best glass, but he accidentally did. Usually hall of fames are for decided effort to do something awesome (like a baseball hall of fame, you need some luck, but its a lot of skill and practice).

I've been wondering lately about the sheer number of cracked iPhone 4/4S/ will be 5 screens. If this glass is so great, why does it break so frequently from small heights? Does the metal casing around it transfer the blunt of the force to the glass and make it crack? I haven't seen too many other phones with cracked screens, would a plastic casing surrounding the glass absorb some of the fall?

<comment><USER19> " he didn't really do anything"

I think what you are missing out, is that this invention came about from hard work, lots of experiments, and recognizing what he had on his hands when he saw it:

"Don Stookey knew he had botched the experiment. One day in 1952, the Corning Glass Works chemist placed a sample of photosensitive glass inside a furnace and set the temperature to 600 degrees Celsius. At some point during the run, a faulty controller let the temperature climb to 900 degrees C. Expecting a melted blob of glass and a ruined furnace, Stookey opened the door to discover that, weirdly, his lithium silicate had transformed into a milky white plate. When he tried to remove it, the sample slipped from the tongs and crashed to the floor. Instead of shattering, it bounced."

See Also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Discovery>

"It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a Petri dish containing Staphylococcus plate culture he mistakenly left open, was contaminated by blue-green mould, which formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded the mould released a substance that repressed the growth and lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and discovered it was a Penicillium mould, now known to be Penicillium notatum."

<comment><USER20> My favorite accidental discovery:

"It was initially studied for use in hypertension and angina pectoris. The first clinical trials were conducted in Morriston Hospital in Swansea. Phase I clinical trials under the direction of Ian Osterloh suggested that the drug had little effect on angina, but that it could induce marked penile erections."

Had someone not been paying close attention, Viagra would have died at phase I.

<comment><USER21> I think all of us with high blood pressure would have known something was up. <cough>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Gorilla glass is far from perfect material for smartphone displays, because it shatters so easily. There are pretty good plastic materials too, especially those used in eyeglasses. Apparently, glass still offers the best scratch- resistance, but I would rather have a non-shattering display.

<comment><USER23> Plastic isn't shatter-proof, either, especially not if it's sturdy enough and thin enough to be considered a replacement for gorilla glass.

Even if plastic were shatter-proof, I'd much rather have a display that's clear and breakable than one that's unbreakable but scratched all to hell. I've never had a pair of glasses (high-end plastic lenses) that didn't get noticeably scratched within a couple of years, and they get a lot less abuse than my phone.</comment></comment>


Why every programmer should have a Tiddlywiki - <AUTHOR> http://eriwen.com/tools/wikify-yourself/ <comment><USER3> Another vote for .txt files.

Easy to source-control and merge, easy to find stuff.

I can't help but think that someone, somewhere has a bloated XML-based API for doing this, probably requiring a server running a couple hundred megabytes worth of Java-based back-end. I'm old fashioned.

I don't anticipate a vanilla text file going out of fashion any time in the next hundred years or so.

<comment><USER4> Another vote for _.org_ files.

<http://orgmode.org/>

Of course not being an emacs user may make editing org mode files a little difficult. However, any system will do as long as its consistent. If not org- mode; txt2tags, markdown, etc can also serve in a pinch.

I think plain text is the de-facto universal format. There's also no restriction on presentation and interface. Your choice of tools are pretty wide open with plain text.

<comment><USER5> org-mode alone makes it worth dropping any other text editor in favor of Emacs. It's that good. It's that impressive. Really.

<comment><USER6> Vimwiki does an essentially equivalent thing, and there are numerous other tools for other environments. Your favored tool is really not that special. Sorry. =)

(Me, I just use Dropbox and vimwiki, and occasionally push it to a private Hg repo on BitBucket.)

<comment><USER7>
      Your favored tool is really not that special. Sorry. =)

Vimwiki isn't in the same league as Org mode. Sorry. For example, how can I create and edit spreadsheets using Vimwiki?

Read the entire manual to understand Org mode's power. It has no equivalent that I know of, and I searched thoroughly before giving up and learning Emacs.

<http://orgmode.org/manual/>

<comment><USER6> I've read it. Hell, I've used it, before I discarded emacs. Perhaps I should amend it with "unless you want to bend one tool to do the job of the others". Which I guess is half the point of emacs in general, so I apologize and retract my statement--it's quite special.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi, I'm a developer on TiddlyWiki.

I'm not sure if this is the done thing or not (I'm relatively new to posting on Hacker News so apologies if not) but if anyone wants an online version of TiddlyWiki (that handles revisions, multiple users, has a RESTful API, etc), then we're currently working on a service called TiddlySpace (<http://tiddlyspace.com>), which is basically an extensible online note taking app based on TiddlyWiki. It's on GitHub too.

<comment><USER9> Will there ever be chrome-support without the java file? It never worked for me, wich is sad because it looks great.

<comment><USER8> Not in the near future no. In the far future, it depends on how the new filesystem api turns out. There are some thoughts going on about using node for such things, though they are only that (thoughts) at the moment.

<comment><USER9> Sad to hear, i was really excited when i found tiddlywiki. But i can not move from chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These periodically recurring organization threads always motivate me to take another stab at adopting some kind of coherent approach to organizing my ideas.

Then I get depressed at how poorly thought out almost all the options are. I then become convinced that the only system that has been fairly well thought out is org-mode.

Then I fire up my emacs and the incredible frustrations and overwhelming disgust start to rise like a slow flood.

I load up my .org file and it's not wrapped. I can't read it. So I try to change the options. There are 5 incomprehensible word wrap options and none of them work. Then when I re-load my .org file, it hasn't saved the word wrapping setting.

I can't remember if it's shift-tab, alt-tab, command-shift.... one of them puts a TODO, another puts a new star, now suddenly I've reordered half of my lists...

Meanwhile, once I move a paragraph, emacs displays some kind of fragments of the characters in the previous location... what the hell is this?

I decide that I'd like to collaborate on a project -- org-mode seems like a great tool. But wait, I forgot that my collaborator is actually a NORMAL person. What is the chance that they will read the org-mode manual? Oh that's right, I'll just send them to the IRC channel.

Where was the calendar again?

I am literally in tears now. tears. This is the best personal organization software we have. It's 2011. Orgmode looks like my father's 1985 IBM terminal. Why do we always have to wait for Apple to inject a miniscule amount of actual DESIGN into software?

Please help me...

<comment><USER11> Try Evernote, OneNote or wikidPad instead :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Used to use a wiki (MediaWiki) to track source material for a book with another collaborator. Worked mostly fine, except for when the DB crashed. I remember that it was hard to extract data out of it.

Mainly I've kept most of my programming notes, records, todos, research and so on in flat text files. They are easy to view, edit, backup, exchange, copy from, and version. For my use cases, I find it a more appealing technical solution to a wiki, which requires infrastructure to back it.

If someone could come up with a git/wiki hybrid, that would be interesting.

<comment><USER13> Just to recommend something that people swear by, but I'm just getting around to trying out - orgmode on emacs (orgmode.org). Super-sophisticated organizer using text files. Source control can be used so you can get to the current version of the files wherever you are, and it has HTML export.

<comment><USER14> It also has LaTeX export, and spreadsheets, and lots of other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For personal notes I like Notational Velocity (<http://notational.net/>), saved as plain text files in my DropBox, and linked with SimpleNote (<http://simplenoteapp.com/>) for iPhone syncing.

<comment><USER16> Notational Velocity looks pretty cool, but is there an similar alternative for Windows?

<comment><USER17> Yes, ResophNotes. It's not just similar, it's a clone: <http://www.resoph.com/ResophNotes>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For a number of years I used the single file Python wiki pwyky (<http://infomesh.net/pwyky/>) running on a server to serve as a personal lab notebook.

I added general project notes, links to relevant resources and a chronological log of projects.

The biggest benefits for me were:

      * keep track of multiple projects;
      * reduce overhead of switching between projects.

There was, however, also a benefit for the wider community as well, because all of the pages were public--even the in-progress projects--people could make use of the knowledge I'd found so far, even if the project itself wasn't (ever :)) entirely documented.

When the server hosting my wiki, err, disappeared, I decided to create a service that would provide me the benefits I'd found and also make them available to other developers.

Labradoc is the result:

      * http://www.labradoc.com/

With Labradoc you can:

      * make general project notes with Markdown formatting;
      * keep a chronological log of project progress.

I posted a Show HN a couple of months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2669425>

Here's my own project list:

      * http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower

If you don't already keep a project log I encourage you to do so.

If you already keep a project log I encourage you to make more of it public (it's okay, the people that judge you badly for in-progress hacks you don't want to work with anyway :) ).

In either case, try out Labradoc and see how it suits your workflow.

</comment><comment><USER19> I find Evernote/Simplenote more effective for brain dumps. Evernote is especially useful for storing diagrams and photos of whiteboard diagrams.

<comment><USER20> While I prefer plain text in markdown, sometimes I store screenshots of code in Evernote to keep as as a reference about how I solved a problem. Its image indexing capabilities and mobile apps allow me to quickly search for something ubiquitously.

<http://i.imgur.com/gporh.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a big fan of using Notational Velocity for just these same reasons - <http://notational.net/>

<comment><USER22> Notational Velocity is great. Just point it to a dropbox folder and set it to use plain text files and you're set with syncing. There's even an equivalent program for Windows - <USER2> <http://www.resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html>.

<comment><USER23> Right, plaintext in dropbox? <tinfoil_hat> what about local encryption? saving personal notes in plaintext files...</tinfoil_hat>

<comment><USER24> It does in fact support encryption. I sync my data across dropbox as well.

<https://github.com/scrod/nv/wiki/Database-Security>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm hoping Asana largely solves these problems. I've been using it for about a week, just for personal projects and my work tasks, and it works wonderfully.

I can put links in comments and descriptions and easily reference them later, in a really usable way.

</comment><comment><USER26> I worked for a year at a company and training two people to do my job from a stack of my personal notebooks and insider knowledge was a nightmare. After that I decided to keep a personal wiki which was easily searchable. Having gone the .txt route in the past and found it wanting, I decided on the next best thing and went with a Tiddlywiki.

I document all processes I develop and additionally keep a journal every day, and one at a project level. It has more than once saved my butt working on multiple projects and has made me a better manager. I finally graduated from a Tiddlywiki as I ended up wanting to collaborate on entries far too often. A year into my wiki experiment I switched to MediaWiki and haven't looked back as I can simply add collaborators and more transparently keep track of contributions.

For others wanting to transition I made a little conversion script here: [http://www.itp.uzh.ch/~corbett/projects/code/tiddlywiki_to_m...](http://www.itp.uzh.ch/~corbett/projects/code/tiddlywiki_to_mediawiki.py)

Tl;dr Keeping a wiki as a developer: ~best decision ever.

</comment><comment><USER27> I write my notes in markdown and keep them in a git repository. A simple hook generates a collection of html documents that I host on my private server for reading while commuting.

<comment><USER28> It this a custom-made hook or are you using ikiwki? I use exactly the same setup with ikiwiki and yours sounds so familiar.

<comment><USER27> A custom hook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I spent a day a couple of years ago writing an app to solve this kind of problem, and more. File format is plain text files stored in directories. Every directory becomes a tab; every file becomes an entry, with the first line in every file being its title. Along with plain text files, .log files are kept; these keep a log of every edit to the .txt file.

Nothing is ever deleted. No edits are ever lost; the whole undo stack is always there, and if you undo to a particular point and edit it, it just becomes a new revision on top of the old undo stack. There is no save / load - the app uses the directory it was started from, and saves when no edits have occurred for 5 seconds.

It's a combination of notepad, brainstorming log, todo list, and general notes. I keep it in sync across multiple machines with dropbox.

<comment><USER30> And you could share this with everyone!

<comment><USER29> Downsides to sharing: it's written in Winforms on .NET (though I expect it would work with Mono just fine); the UI is minimal to reduce clutter, and relies primarily on shortcuts: Alt+Left/Right to select "page" (= text file in directory) - pages are sorted in order of last edit; Alt+Up/Down to select revision (aka undo / redo / playback); middle-click mouse to paste if nothing is selected, or to copy if something is; and some searching etc.

Wrapping it all up nicely to share it, document it etc. would take at least another day, but I have many other things on my plate at the moment...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would like to recommend this freeware lightweight structured text file editor. Definite upgrade over plain .txt files yet still extremely simple in every way. No browser/3rd party tool involvement needed. Its file format is human readable for the most part.

It supports all kinds of links in text: local, network files, internal pages (for wiki emulation). You can drag and drop links from web browser too.

<http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm>

I never stopped using this program since I found it several years ago.

<comment><USER17> For years I used a similar program called KeyNote. It had an absurd amount of text tricks up its sleeve and everything was accessible via keyboard shortcuts. Most people would cringe at its late 90s GUI (it's Borland Delphi!), but after hiding a couple toolbars and palettes, it became quite the handsome app.

<http://tranglos.com/free/keynote.html>

Unfortunately it's Windows-only. Now I only work on Linux and Mac and the only software that approaches it's level of usability is Notational Velocity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been using google docs for these kinds of notes, searchable, shareable and accessible anywhere I can get to gmail.

I may consider dropbox + txt files, but gdocs is working fine so far.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use Soywiki: <http://danielchoi.com/software/soywiki.html>

Toss something like this in your .bashrc or .zshrc to run it in MacVim and have an easy command:

      export SOYWIKI_VIM=mvim
      alias wiki='cd ~/wiki; soywiki'

Then just git init and push it up to a private GitHub repo, and you can check it and edit it on the go through the GitHub site.

</comment><comment><USER34> I find Tiddlywiki extremely cumbersome and awkward.

Instead, I use Simplenote; Flick Note on my Android device, Resophnotes and SyncPad for Chrome on my PC.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've since moved on to plain text files, but at my last job, when I left, I just had to delete a few more sensitive notes before passing my TiddyWiki file to my replacement and he had all my notes for the job. It was a technical sales role. I'd argue that a personal wiki is even more important for many other vocations than for programmers.

</comment><comment><USER36> My favorite use of TiddlyWiki was making it the index.html in my home/public_html directory on our internal company server.

I had network write access via network mount on my laptop and whoever else who just wanted to browse my notes could goto <http://internalcompanyserver/~myname/>

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally use github's gollum: <https://github.com/github/gollum> which is pretty awesome and git-backed.

Allows you to do all your wiki pages in markdown and a sleugh of other markup formats. Plus, did I mention git backed?!

</comment><comment><USER38> I use Zim Desktop Wiki - more reliable than Tiddlywiki, no need for a browser, version control

<comment><USER39> Another user of Zim Desktop Wiki. Almost as simple as notepad, stores as txt files, built in todos and calendars and plugin support. I just store the files in my Dropbox folder, that way I can get to the files even when I do not have zim installed.

</comment></comment><comment> steve-howard OneNote (part of Office since, I think, 2007) is actually great for keeping structured notes on meetings, projects, etc. I know a lot of programmers don't run Windows, but if you're not fazed by letting Microsoft handle the details (i.e. your stuff gets put on SkyDrive under a Live account), it's not a bad way to go. I set it up on my work machine after I'd been running it on my home computer for a while, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easily it loaded the notes I've had from past projects.

Disclosure: Microsoft intern (in a completely different division, and I've been using it for longer than I've been here). My opinions are mine. :)

</comment><comment><USER40> I wrote a personal wiki for Linux called Tomboy.

I've been working on Hackpad.com lately. It's a realtime wiki based on Etherpad. Pads are private by default, and you can invite people to edit them later.

I think it's better than tiddlywiki. Why not try it out?

<comment><USER41> Tomboy is one of my favorite apps of all time (even kept up a Snowy for a while to sync.) Of all the alternatives mentioned here (which I've tried time and time again) it's the only one with such a slick workflow. Popping multiple pages open like sticky notes, or one big page for reference was a killer feature for me.

I've been waffling between txt or Google Docs for a while now, mostly just for need of a strong mobile client, but miss my Tomboy littered desktops...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Yesterday I started a comment asking if I'm the only programmer that doesn't keep many notes. I actually don't keep that many, relying on my memory and falling back to code comments, revision history, and email when that fails.

But then as I read through more comments, I realized that I've tried almost every one of these note systems - Tiddlywiki, TODO.txt, Evernote, Springpad, OneNote, Moleskine notebooks and others - but have never stuck with any of them. The only system that's ever stuck for me is email. I keep trying to get better at recapping meetings and decisions in email so I can find them later.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have a collection of scripts, dotfiles, text note files, flat text data files, and ad hoc lightweight textual databases already to do this sort of thing. Doesn't require any special software, doesn't require a hosting server or active network connection, and yet I can edit, search, compress, refactor, version, backup and synch this data anyhow I want, anytime, essentially for free, and with an absolute minimum of moving parts. And using the same set of CLI tools I already must or at least should know anyway for my profession.

</comment><comment><USER44> I use MediaWiki now, I love it. It's free, and has really helped my organization. I use it for everything - passwords, API keys, links, random code snippets, etc. It's better than a text file to me, because both the structure and formatting ability encourages properly organizing data.

Though, it's most important to just have SOME well-greased system, no matter what the platform. If it's a text file that does it for you, great. If you spend 10 minutes trying to find a password - time to get a system.

</comment><comment><USER45> I use fossil (fossil-scm.org) for the same purpose. It is super nice that the wiki is integrated with the source code I'm working on _and_ the bug tracker.

</comment><comment><USER46> Garrett Lisi's An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything TiddlyWiki:

<http://deferentialgeometry.org/>

</comment><comment><USER47> Personally I'm using Dropbox for stuff like this, using PlainText on iOS devices, Notational Velocity (well, NvAlt) on my Mac and increasingly [Deft](<http://jblevins.org/projects/deft/>) from within Emacs.

I know, there's Org Mode, but I'm more a free-form guy, same reason why I never used one of those monstrously popular GTD applications…

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's a vote for Instiki (<http://instiki.org>), a super simple wiki clone written in Ruby (that's pretty straightforward to hack on, which is a pretty important consideration when using wikis for 'non-traditional' purposes).

<comment><USER49> That site has been spammed to hell. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I mainly use org-mode for detailed notes. Github (kind of) understands them so I now include README.org files.

I also recommend <http://workflowy.com> for capturing information. I'd pay for an iPad app that would sync with it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Took a nibble sometime back and was surprised by how well it did what it promised---that however was the problem. Hard to adapt to someone else's idea of a good time. I found it easier to revert to previous home grown methods and madness...

</comment><comment><USER52> I use Workflowy to do this stuff.

<comment><USER53> mmm workflowy I use for lists of tasks, but for notes I use tomboy (a gnome desktop wikilike program). They both have different uses and are suited to storing slightly different information lists != notes

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Any Mac users who are interested in having a personal wiki should take a hard look at VoodooPad (<http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/>).

</comment><comment><USER55> Can't save on latest dev chrome (15.0.854.0 dev), getting this error:

The original file '/home/yop/Documentos/wiki2/empty.html' does not appear to be a valid TiddlyWiki

</comment><comment><USER56> i use .txt

</comment><comment><USER57> I use MediaWiki myself.

</comment><comment><USER58> +1 Evernote

</comment><comment><USER59> I've been keeping a wikipedia on myself, _everything_ about me and who I am, what I've done and who I want to be in a wiki for the last 4 years. It has been the most illuminating thing I've ever done, and I'm so happy I took the plunge that first day. Everything is in it, taxes, dental, computers, girlfriends, projects, outcomes, desires, todo, and thousands of other categories.

Looking back on my life through the wikipedia, I see a very different person than my own memory remembers. You'd be astonished how much stuff your brain removes for lack of use. I just use bluefish editor with basic html files. I've got hotkeys to make templates and. The root node is my full name, even the universe itself falls under that category, because the only way I know the universe exists is through my observations. The most gratifying part is the page outlining my geneology, I have information documented about my DNA line going up 3 levels, and if you make a point to get really detailed information on your parents, grand parents and great grand parents (biological) You'll see health problems and DNA related hardware issues. I discovered programmers and a certain abilities/disabilities run in my mother's side, I'm a programmer. With enough analysis I could probably identify the gene sequences, and thus help my offspring by telling them what their problems are going to be before they experience them, by looking at dominant and recessive traits.

<comment><USER60> I really like this idea. What do you use to do this? Or what do you think would work best? I can't tell if Tiddlywiki would be good for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER61> Agreed! I too would like to know what you use to do this, and what type of encryption you're able to use.

<comment><USER59> My encryption is to keep everything on a hard drive that isn't connected to the internet. The insurance companies would no doubt like to see my timeline on my health category with a timeline on dates of every issue I have ever had with the hundreds of sub components of my body with everything from acne to heart trouble to ringing in ears to joint pain.

I have a category with everything I intend to do to the child if I have kids. I have a category with pictures of me every year from 3 days old to today. I do the same with my parents and grandparents (which is more spotty).

I have a category on all the friends I've ever had, what they liked, why they liked me, what I did to become aquainted, birthdays, their parents, all the information about them you would expect a close friend to have.

I've got all my tax returns back to 2005 (I started the wiki somewhere in 2007). My current net worth plotted on a chart, documented by what I did which caused certain plunges and rises in that graph.

A big category on girlfriends, kinds of women and what works with some. I can give you a cruise through every significant romantic event in my life from my first kiss back in college to sexual encounters. With photos of each girl. Each girl I dated given a full psycho analysis, funny how I searched out each edge of the (Smart, Sane, Pretty pick any two) triangle. I even dated a few (1 of 3) and (0 of 3). Big mistakes that haunt you.

I have a category of books I've read, and plotted those against my life timeline. What I've thought of them, how they changed me.

Anyone who got ahold of this wikipedia and had 20 hours to read it all would know as much about me as I know about me.

This wikipedia is what I want to see on dating websites, If I could include this on a dating website, and have all the girls do the same, it would make dating a lot easier. I imagine a post with dental records, tax returns, employment, income histories, aspirations, books read, history of diseases/conditions, family genetic lines, computers owned, friend structures, self psychoanalysis, and hundreds of other subjects which makes us unique from other humans.

A big worry is that the hard drive bricks iself or gets stolen, this wikipedia is worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. My backup strategy is to make a hard drive cloned image every 3 months with clonezilla, with the hd stored in a physically different location. so my wiki would even survive an fbi takedown where they steal all your stuff.

I've got all the programs I've ever written saved, so I can go back in time 4 years and see programs I wrote in C++, Visual Basic. It's like reviewing your essays from first grade, I can't bear to see them, my programming skill has gone up slowly but surly over time.

<comment><USER60> Wow, that's really amazing. I think I'd like to start doing the same kind of thing. What exactly to you use to accomplish all of this? What wiki? Plugins? Anything else? Do you have any other advice for someone wanting to get into this? Or something you would have liked to do differently from the start? Any advice you have would be wonderful.

<comment><USER59> "bluefish editor" freeware on top of a linux operating system (Fedora core). I suggest a more user friendly version of linux for non programmers. I've made short shell scripts which copy templates to different keyboard combinations. I have scripts which validate the html I've written. One of the things that bogs you down is getting image link text from camera/scanner into the html file, so I automated that as much as possible so It is just a matter of opening the scanner and hitting one hotkey which kicks off a script, and scans the image, puts in in the images folder (prompting me for a filename) saves it and injects the html into my bluefish editor. Same thing for photographs and videos on my camera. It's all gotta be (One click-add) or it will take hours each session just fiddling around with documents.

The real secret is adhering to the rules of a wikipedia. Nothing may be added without establishing its link and relevancy to another page. Also, Here is the secret sauce, a tough rule is that when you introduce a new page that links to an old subject, which introduces new information, or new evidence which contradicts old pages, you have to spend time and re-build the pages being linked to. I have a system where editing one significant page has the possibility of having me go back and change previous observations, the benefit is that it automates your thinking process. If you keep all your thoughts you ever have into a tight tree form, you can find that your human memory is upgraded a hundred times over. I was able to use process of elimination to determine which foods were causing my acne, and through continued graphing and elimination, was able to find what elements in which foods were causing it. Something many doctors would probably like to see. When I go to a new dentist, I sometimes bring along my entire history of each tooth, each operation i've had, i can see where that time I kissed the wrong girl caused a microbe party in my mouth which caused cavities. Though the dentists have no idea what microbes are in my mouth, through my wiki. I have a good idea. In some ways the wiki makes me a better dentist (to myself) than the professionals.

It's a wikipedia that treats myself like scientists would treat a newly discovered intelligent alien craft. Everything about it is described, graphed, analyzed, compared, and charted. Nothing about it is taken as a given. The part that keeps me coming back to it is my thirst for knowledge. When I browse hacker news, stackoverflow, and (years ago, digg), anything that struck me as useful for growing myself or growing knowledge was included. So now I have like 800 items in a list organized by category and awesomeness, that to this day when I look at it, I still see the importance. I have a category of guitar songs I can play, piano tunes, how I learned. etc.

Whenever I hear a song that provides a certain response, sadness, happiness, euphoria, depression. I write it down on a receipt, then when I get home I log it. So I have a series of songs I can play which seriously induce all these emotions. I try to stick to the happiness songs. there is a boat load of ones that cause the other emotions. As a result I have 30 songs that when I play, suddenly make me happier. Sometimes when I'm depressed I play the depression inducing songs and it makes me extremely depressed, and I can look at myself like a computer, an input output device, and I see that depression is only a response to external stimuli, if you can take control of your external environment, you can custom make your emotion for that hour/day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> blah. Blogging FTW :)</comment>


Why I Built an App for My Mom for Christmas - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@imkevinxu/why-i-built-an-app-for-my-mom-for-christmas-5891aed6d3c5

<comment><USER2> That app looks awesome, nice job Kevin. Also, I talk with my parents in France every day, so I totally get what you are saying.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is awesome Kevin - what do you plan on building on it other than messaging?</comment>


Local police fight crime with 18-ton armored military vehicles - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/26/5147098/local-police-fight-crime-with-18-ton-armored-military-vehicles

<comment><USER2> When all you have is a ha(u)mmer, you are in search for anything that might have some semblance of a nail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Give them MBT - M1 Abrams. You can never have too much weapons in the war on drugs. Since we are not winning it anyway - let the boys be boys and have some fun.</comment>


The Unexpected Entrepreneur: Interview with Joe Satriani - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-unexpected-entrepreneur-an-exclusive-interview-with-joe-satriani.html <comment><USER2> The whole interview is great, but the last few paragraphs on advice to young musicians are brilliantly helpful.

 _"Be voracious when it comes to uncovering the secrets of the music business and how people outside the music business behave as entrepreneurs."_

And I wish more of my fine art friends would embrace this mentality (primarily so they can keep making art):

 _"[Art and business] seem diametrically opposed, but I don 't think you can survive being just an artist or just a businessperson. If you're only business, you will lack the flair that attracts an audience. If you're only flair, you'll be taken advantage of."_

<comment><USER3> The last sentence was the kicker for me:

 _" You have to be both. Then you can surround yourself with smart people, secure in the knowledge you can control your own art and your own career-- because if you don't, someone else definitely will."_

I'm not much of an entrepreneur these days, but I know that the best way to succeed in life is to control your own destiny.

<comment><USER4> It's especially important if you're in a small artistic niche like instrumental rock that only connects with mainstream interest on very rare occasions, like Satch's Summer Song or Eric Johnson's Cliffs of Dover. Steve Morse handled this by becoming a commercial pilot, which gave him the latitude to focus on composing music that he himself found interesting, rather than trying to tap into what the market wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good read, and definitely something I've seen with my friends in the music industry who have carved out success. Being excellent at your craft alone won't get you where you want, it takes an equal amount of work & savvy on the business side to promote, set yourself up to do well financially, and control your direction.

The most successful that I've seen amongst my musician/songwriter/composer friends enter unorthodox spaces that have strong potential, such as creating high quality sample libraries for instruments like guitars for use in DAWs (digital audio workstations - software like FL Studio, Cubase, Logic, Reason, etc.), aggressive promotion via forums & writing articles of interest to their potential audience on their blogs, and networking in scenes such as indie game developer communities (via forums & IRC) & events such as GDC and Video Games Live. I have an acquaintance who even found success networking with musicians at concerts!

It's certainly a tough business to be in - you have to love it, both the music and business side.

</comment><comment><USER6> Smart guy. And I love this quote "I like to think that because I had the courage to take my shot, good fortune came my way, but it could have just as easily gone terribly wrong." Isn't that the truth and he has the humility to say it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always liked Joe Satriani's music and guitar talent, but every time I see an interview with him I'm so impressed with his intelligence and drive.

This is a video where a guitarist won a free lesson with Joe. It's incredible how much Joe can pack into a 45-minute lesson; it's obvious he's a fantastic teacher and he's totally dedicated to learning and improvement.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXk4gxcjVr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXk4gxcjVr8)

</comment><comment><USER8> I have been such a big fan of Satch ever since I heard "Summer Song" on the radio when I was in high school. It is great to learn about this side of his career, the stuff you see in the guitar magazines is (rightly so) more focused on his musicianship and composing sides.

<comment><USER3> Ahhh, "Summer Song", I remember you well! Many a day were spent driving in my Mustang with the windows down blasting this song. I've now been lucky enough to hear Satch play twice. He puts on an awesome show - highly recommended!

<comment><USER8> Yea, I saw G3 when it was him, Vai, and Petrucci, and it was amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _I just thought that it would be really great on two levels. Number one, artistically for me to play with people who could really kick my butt every night, and put the fear of God in my playing. I also thought the audience would really enjoy it because I did._

[http://www.guitar9.com/interview38.html](http://www.guitar9.com/interview38.html)

Which gets back to "Always be challenging yourself"

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands When you talk about things happening for a reason, this is pretty much the blueprint:

"We shared part of the building with Nolo Press, a company that made how-to books with tear-out pages for all sorts of legal situations. Their dumpster was right outside the door where we would hang out and have a smoke and a drink in between practicing, and it was always overflowing with damaged books. So we're out there wondering how we're ever going to make it in the music business and start absentmindedly flipping through books. One of them showed how to start all kinds of businesses."

</comment><comment><USER10> Theres alot of "put aside" in the beginning of the article. We just can't put them aside. He was my inspiration to learn guitar. Awesome read.

</comment><comment><USER11> This sounds very similar to the stories of micro-isv's that came about by doing a solo business and learning the business side of tech. Inspiring

</comment><comment><USER12> FTA: _It 's not complicated_

This is the beauty of starting a business in the USA. It really is that simple.

<comment><USER13> It depends on what business you are in. Some are more tightly regulated than others. For instance: healthcare, telecom, and finance.</comment></comment>


What a C program can do with a function pointer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frama-c.com/index.php?post/2013/08/24/Function-pointers-in-C

<comment><USER2> While from a syntactic point of view, the statement "there is almost nothing you can do in C with a function pointer" may be technically correct, there are all sorts of useful things you can do with them which the article could have mentioned in more detail: writing generic functions via call-backs, low-level object oriented programming, replacing production APIs with "mock objects" for testing, etc. I use them in my C code quite frequently.</comment>


Japanese hacker earns $13,174 for reporting Google security holes - <AUTHOR> http://d.hatena.ne.jp/masatokinugawa/20110207/google_security

<comment><USER2> Do folks want details? I'll translate if there is interest, but have some real work to do first.

<comment><USER2> And here you go:

<http://www.pastie.org/1536256>

P.S. If I were still doing this professionally, I would have been more careful on the editing and y'all would have been more careful on paying the $200 to $300 promptly. (The sky is the limit on translation if you have a high-value high-difficulty niche, and software security counts for both.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> At that rate, one would almost be tempted to do it full time. (That is 2 ~ 4 months of salary, depending on his seniority.)

<comment><USER3> Are Japanese salaries really that low?

Almost makes it worth outsourcing at the price.

<comment><USER2> Japanese salaries for engineers are really, really low compared to American salaries. In Nagoya, the well-known algorithm is about "age times 100k yen", so a 30 year old engineer makes on the order of $36.5k. Opportunities for improving this based on demonstrable ability are very limited when working for Japanese companies. (I hear there are some better options in Tokyo, particularly at foreign companies. Still, published average wages for one of the world's most expensive cities would seem substandard for virtually any American metropolis.)

<comment><USER4> I've been doing business with some companies in Tokyo recently, and I've come to realize that Nagoya is kind of an anomaly.

Tokyo can command about half-again what we get paid here in Nagoya. Although, that's still well below the average in America, I think.

Also, when looking at those salary rates, you have to make sure to look at SEs, not Programmers -- as there's a huge wage difference between the two (And you and I are definitely not mere programmers ;)

This site is really great for getting good salary info: <http://nensyu- labo.com/>

Here's the SE division: <http://nensyu-labo.com/syokugyou_se.htm> 平均年収:547.0万円 (does not include bonus)

And here's a run of the mill programmer <http://nensyu- labo.com/syokugyou_programer.htm> 平均年収:399.0万円 (does not include bonus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Russian gets ~20k$ [http://blog.quintura.com/2011/01/13/russian-sergey- glazunov-...](http://blog.quintura.com/2011/01/13/russian-sergey-glazunov- earned-20k-from-google-for-finding-bugs-in-chrome/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd be curious how many vulnerabilities he found that followed those three patterns. $13k is actually a lot to earn from the program (the average payout I've received per accepted vulnerability is ~$666). Regardless, those are some very nice finds. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> English version:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fd.hatena.ne.jp%2Fmasatokinugawa%2F20110207%2Fgoogle_security)

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty surprised that Google was allowing such blatantly obvious XSS attack vectors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> good job but I bet he wouldn't pass the job interview process at google.

<comment><USER10> IMO Finding live vulnerabilities (with a passion!) outweighs most scripted interviews.</comment></comment>


Ever wondered what the 'Free Public WiFi' networks you see everywhere are? - <AUTHOR> http://jstn.cc/post/63070826 <comment><USER2> That's a cool thing to know, thanks. You could definitely do some viral marketing this way if you were more devious than I.

<comment><USER3> The user has to try to connect to the AP in order to be "infected", so presumably this one became popular because so many people actually believed they would get "free public WiFi".

The SSID in your viral marketing scheme would have to lure people into connecting to it while at the same time advertising your product.

Sounds hard... anyone have any ideas?

<comment><USER4> "Free wifi by [YourDomain.com]" might be enough.

<comment><USER3> Ironically enough, if they connect they won't be able to access YourDomain.com.

<comment><USER4> So perhaps this is better as viral mudslinging, naming a competitor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> this was kind of well-publicized a while ago. thought it was common knowledge.

interesting case study of actual virality. i see two FPW's on my list right now.

<comment><USER6> Sorry - I tried to upmod, hit the wrong arrow, fail!

Why doesn't HN allow you to change your vote? Seems awfully arbitrary and heavy-handed.

<comment><USER7> _Why doesn't HN allow you to change your vote? Seems awfully arbitrary and heavy-handed._

So you don't vote arbitrarily, and avoid being heavy-handed.

<comment><USER8> Ha, that's the exact opposite reasoning to Aza Raskin's "use undo instead of a warning"... this is "make it irreversible as a warning"

<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning>

I think allowing a vote change here makes much more sense, FWIW. For the same reasons allowing post edits makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER9> You're right. We need to abolish editing.

<comment><USER10> Yea slashdot has no editing and it works well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder who started it? Pretty amazing. I see it in every country I visit.

<comment><USER12> i see it here in Cebu Philippines...

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again His initial suspision was the same thought I had. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER13> There was a problem with this at an Apple World-Wide Developer Conference a few years ago (2001?). Most people had the titanium (e.g Faraday Cage) powerbooks, and had terrible problems with the wireless.

So, when people couldn't connect to the wireless network, they would try to connect "manually," which sometimes meant they'd accidentally create a new network with the same name. The ad-hoc network grew pretty quickly from there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Heh, I visited a client's office today and there were two networks -- "Free Public Wifi" and "Free Internet". It amuses me because you plug into the Ethernet there and can't route to the outside world, but one employee can take their laptop to Starbucks, and all your company's internal information is stolen.

This make me laugh, and it makes me cry.

</comment><comment><USER15> Someone told me it was the software from a 3G but this makes a lot more sense.

Interesting mistake.

<comment><AUTHOR> It may be from the 3G software that the SSID name originally appeared. hpsetup and linksys are common names in this because there are many real AP's with these names by default and so the 'infection' would spread from multiple points.

It would be a miracle if there had only been a single "Free Public WiFi" AP that caused this 'outbreak' to originate and spread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have been seeing this at every airport I have been to. Now, I know. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I suspect that however this started, its familiarity now means it is popular network name among those either (1) genuinely offering free wifi, or (2) seeking to hijack info in transit.

</comment><comment><USER17> I read about this a few months ago while Googling, is truly fascinating. I tried spreading my own but couldn't seem to get it going. Wish I spent as much time in airports as I used to.

<comment><USER18> that doesnt make any sense. there should be loads of stuff like this then. why only Free Wifi whatever

<comment><USER17> My guess is that's the most obvious name you'd click in an airport or hotel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's pretty awesome.

Can Mac's with WiFi infect Windows machines, or only other Windows machines? I might have to try this...

<comment><USER19> You can create your own ad hoc network on a Mac. Airport menubar icon -> Create network then enter the name and select channel to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> if this thing spread liked crazy throughout the world, imagine what a real virus (as in virus in movies - say 12 monkeys) will do...</comment>


Show HN: BlueLight – Smarter mobile emergency response - <AUTHOR> https://www.getbluelight.com/

<comment><USER2> >Which brings us to BlueLight: Our app allows a user to move the map in order to fine-tune their reported location. That's fine, but what if someone took this to an extreme? What if a user in Texas pointed their map to UC Berkeley and made a call reporting a bogus location inside the campus? Because Murphy's Law dictates that if something can materialize it will materialize, we decided to be proactive. So we introduced a hard limit on how far one can move the map before they are considered "Out of Area" and emergency calling is disabled. Minor corrections are cool. Location spoofing for prank calls? Not cool. There will be no "swating" with BlueLight if we can help it!

>If conditions permit (cellular data _or_ WiFi is available)

Disable cell radio, spoof GPS location and we're done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi DKnoll,

To clarify, disabling the cell radio on a device would mean you can't place a phone call.

<comment><USER2> Android has an SIP client built-in, and the blog post states that it needs WiFi or cell network, not both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, My name is Motiejus, I'm the Android developer at BlueLight. I'm here with Preet Anand (preetnation), founder and Peter our architect.

Here are the challenges of the creating a system that needs to perform better than 911. [http://bluelightsafety.tumblr.com/post/110188595994/the- chal...](http://bluelightsafety.tumblr.com/post/110188595994/the-challenges- of-designing-a-better-911)</comment>


Ask HN: Why all the hate for Python 3? - <AUTHOR> Zed Shaw makes a case against Python 3 in his LPTHW, now. Personally, it rubs me the wrong way.
Another guy speaks and makes a rebuttal (https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/)
Guido has already said that Python 3 is the future of the language and development on Python 2 will come to an end.
Why does this seem to be so hard to accept? Why all the hate for 3.x?
I don't have a dog in the fight, but as a newcomer to the language, it's a bit unnerving. <comment><USER2> In large part because python 3 just wasn't worth using for the first few (probably five or six) years. The big reason so many of us use python is because of the wide range of libraries and modules that no longer worked.

And when selling it to people, it was usually "Oh, just do X, Y, and Z and you can port this library to Python 3". Not to mention all of the "Just write your python scripts to be backwards compatible".

So, as a user, I saw no reason to push it. A lot of hassle to not even really take advantage of anything to stay backwards compatible. And the moment we found a library that wasn't ported, we were back to 2.x.

Not to mention the zealots who would then explain to me how I was horribly wrong and that my firm is wrong and that we are bad people and blah blah blah blah blah.

These days it is a much easier sell in terms of compatibility as most (not all) major libraries have migrated. My personal work tends to be in python 3 and we try to make our in-house tools work for both (but 2.x is the priority). But most of our users are still going to use 2.x simply because there is no compelling reason to migrate (even if the migration is "Put parentheses after 'print'").

And the zealots are still annoying as hell.

And if 2.x really stops getting supported? I hope we'll migrate to 3, but there will be a lot of research and soul-searching first. Because now there are other languages with similar capabilities and if we are going to have to teach everyone something new, we might as well do it right.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are a beginner, choosing Python 3 is a no brainer.

One of the main reasons for all the hate towards Python 3 is because it is not backwards compatible with Python 2. So people who have a lot invested in Python 2 have to port the codebase to Python 3. Another issue is that some libraries have not been ported to Python 3. This is becoming less of an issue as all the major libraries have been ported to Python 3.

Anything Zed Shaw says (or anyone for that matter), cross check the facts before drawing conclusions.

<comment><USER4> What's more, choosing Python 3 was already a no-brainer for someone like me who was a Python beginner _five years ago_.

Don't worry... eventually we'll get Python 4 or something, and then all of us who learned Python 3 first will become the grumbling holdouts...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _Guido has already said that Python 3 is the future of the language and > development on Python 2 will come to an end._

That doesn't mean anything. Beyond a certain point a language is beyond the control of its original creator.

</comment><comment><USER6> Zed Shaw's position is that Python 3 is not suitable for the intended audience of _Learn Python the Hard Way._ His rationales (along with his response to criticism) was laid out a recent essay: [https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the- end-of-coder-influence/](https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the-end-of-coder- influence/)

Anyway, Zed Shaw is, in my opinion, worth paying attention to. This essay seems particularly relevant to the current kertuffle: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120821234313/http://learncodet...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120821234313/http://learncodethehardway.org/blog/AUG_19_2012.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Lots of library maintainers can't be arsed to put parentheses around their print statements (and perform the occasional slight change to other behaviors), or to run any of the automated tools that perform these compatibility-preserving changes. As a result, libraries maintained by these stubborn lazy people are not usable on python3, which makes beginners (who don't have a clear understanding of how these libraries are written and how easy it would be for them to perform the conversions themselves, because they still believe that "professionals" have some magic power other than the willingness to be persistent) wary of doing anything in python3.

It's very straightforward to write code that works in python 2 and python 3, and anyone learning python for the first time should be learning to write in that way. Ultimately, many of the compatibility changes are making things that have long been possible but considered poor style / bad habits no longer possible when doing so made the language easier to understand and behaviors more predictable (think print statement vs print function), or streamlining things that were originally bolted-on (think unicode).

<comment><USER8> Full disclosure: I do not work in Python. However, I found your explanation really enlightening and it brings up a further question. If there are tools that would make these libraries better in some automated fashion, would there be an opportunity for an open source project to basically go through all of the libraries and check them for compatibility and then run the automation to try to upgrade them and submit pull requests for the outcome if it turned the project from incompatible to compatible?

I live over in the Ruby and JavaScript realm of things. I can imagine running through every project on Ruby Gems or on NPM and through it would be a monstrous undertaking it would be useful to the community and to the projects themselves. Would this be possible on the Python side of things as well?

<comment><USER7> A properly written python2 module will already be python3 compatible, in most cases. Occasionally, modules that violate existing best practices will do so in ways that limit python3 compatibility. They can be fixed with automated tools that ship with python.

Package systems like pip have separate repositories for python2 and python3, and you can have both python2 and python3 installed along with pip3 and pip2, and a whole package set for each; a package that is not compatible with python3 won't be available from pip3. But, most packages were already compatible, and those that weren't have had many years to become compatible.

Any python package that currently doesn't support python3 is either no longer being maintained or is acting as a political statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't worry about them, loud minority. Zed Shaw's book, (I've read it) does rub people the wrong way in many communities. Don't worry about it, mostly it got ad hominem over the years (think Phil Fish). Just focus on your studies and to hell with the rest.

People arguing about other's technical choices in computing are just children grown to size L anyway. What do you care what others go their work with? There Is No One Good Way.

</comment><comment><USER10> I even heard a joke: Python 2 = North Korea Python 3 = South Korea

Except Swift 2 to Swift 3 has a good start, breaking as much source compatibility as they could is a great choice when the language is still young.

PHP 5.6 adopted UTF8 by default for security and Python 2 is mature and solve many problems in the past, I would say most programmers are lazy writing test suite as well.

You should start with Python 3 or Swift 3, both are a fine language for the modern world.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do people like any language? In the case of Python it wasn't that the syntax was the best syntax ever and the way it did object oriented programming was the best. It was that it came with so much pre-existing functionality ("batteries included").

So now there is an improved version called Python 3. OK, now we get into a discussion of why it is improved. That causes the always divisive discussion of how people _should_ be programming.

IMHO the biggest problem with Python 3 is the Unicode stuff. The world seems to be moving toward just using UTF-8 for everything. The approach taken by Python 3 seems pointlessly complex and inefficient at this point in time.

<comment><USER12> UTF-8 never bothered me in Python 3. Most of the time you don't have to think about encoding. The times you have to pass through the network just ".encode()" the string and you're fine.

Seriously, can you show me a case where you did encounter problems with UTF-8 in Python 3? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Because developers from cultures whose languages can be fully satisfied with the Latin-1 charset (which is the absolute majority in the developed world) don't get how important and essential Unicode is. But things are changing to better now, thankfully.

<comment><USER14> Python 2 had full Unicode support.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but not without effort the way it is in Python 3. Having to prefix strings with "u" and include the utf-8 encoding header _sometimes_ are definitely nuisances in Python 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only reason why I still use Python2.7.x instead of 3 is because I occasionally use old libraries/dependencies that have not yet been ported to python 3.x

Python 2.7 is about to "Expire" though, [https://pythonclock.org/](https://pythonclock.org/)

But as a newcomer, it depends on what you are doing, if your tooling is already python 3.x compatible, then I see no reason to stick with 2.7x

</comment><comment><USER15> > Guido has already said that Python 3 is the future of the language and > development on Python 2 will come to an end.

 _Eventually_ Python 2 will come to end. He issued this statement in the past and it didn't happen on the timeline he had hoped. At PyCon this year an extended life for Python 2 was announced, until 2020 IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER17> As few others have said, Python3 still does not have full support for popular libraries from Python2. Yes, it is getting there but not yet. For example, according to this site [0], Carbon is not supported by Python3 yet.

[0] [http://py3readiness.org/](http://py3readiness.org/)</comment>


Front Porch Going Big on Amazon Echo After Successful Pilot - <AUTHOR> https://seniorhousingnews.com/2018/04/01/front-porch-going-big-amazon-echo-successful-pilot/ <comment><AUTHOR> My parents are getting older and I can see a "voice first" initiative making a big difference in their lives. Heck, it's making a pretty big difference in my life and I just use it for weather and turning the TV on/off.</comment>


Ask HN: Apple iOS app rejection - what now? - <AUTHOR>

We're a startup that's just launched a new business, and part of that is some useful mobile apps to help take pictures from your phone and upload them to our webapp service. The photos aren't vital to the app, but it's a nice feature, especially since the stuff being captured is household things, i.e. for insurance records etc. so a walk-around phone is handy.
We submitted our iPhone/iPad app and it got (quickly) rejected by Apple for the reason we don't provide in-app billing. We're deciding what to do next so wanted to hear opinions from here.
Options would include:
- Free Plan. We don't currently have a free plan (just a trial) and our model doesn't really fit with that, but is that how other web connected apps get approved, i.e. is Evernote and Dropbox type apps available because they do in-app purchasing or can you argue if you have a free level of service?
- Do In-App billing. We use Recurly and have a great subscription service with lots of options. The work would be then to set up a dual system just for Apple?
- Forget iOS and just run with our Android version we have.
All advice appreciated! <comment><USER2> There is precedent in the app store for apps which require a subscription to work, and yet do not offer in-app subscriptions. For example, Kindle and Netflix. The way they comply with the guidelines is by removing _any_ link to the website where you can sign up. If there is no way for the user, via tapping in your app, to give you money outside of in-app purchasing, then the app should pass muster.

So you basically have 3 viable choices. The first is to offer in-app subscriptions, and live with the 30% cut that Apple takes. Note that this option is going to be the most convenient for your users, if you care about that sort of thing.

The second is to offer in-app purchasing for 43% more than the regular price. After Apple's 30% cut, this will leave you with the original subscription amount. Note that this is not particularly user-friendly because they're now paying 43% more for the same service.

The third is to remove any and all links to your site from the app. Make it very clear in your app description that this app requires an active subscription, and live with the fact that some users are braindead and will give you 1 star because your app doesn't work for them (because they don't have a subscription).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. The third option is exactly how we did the app, i.e. no sign up or pay link, just a login. Plus we very prominately say 'You need an active subscription'.

We obviously wouldn't want the 1-star reviews, but in some ways it's ok as the phone app is really just a utility helper for then main task at hand (photos) so it's not as if the app is useful without the subscription.

Do you have any app examples of the third option we could cite?

<comment><USER2> The Kindle app removed all links to their online store. I believe Netflix presents you with just a login form (if you haven't already logged in). I believe Dropbox does as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess really the question is can your service(business plan) afford 30 percent cut.

Start out with a free plan and later on add in-app billing if you think there is a market for it.

The appeal process is pretty strict and unless you change something your app would be rejected again. Apple is trying to make a point here and it will not allow discrepancies in their policy enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apple has pretty extensive support for monthly subscriptions via in-app purchases at this point and have already invented most of the wheel for you. Take a peek at those docs and see if it fits your model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Yes, we're going over those. It's a shame as we like our current solution, and this would be purely just for apple (and we don't sell books)

We were wondering about bothering to appeal even - has anyone actually 'won' or don't you even get to talk to someone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What you can't accomplish something like this with a mobile webapp? You can certainly provide upload capabilities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Access to the camera. The mobile app's only existence is really because of the ability to take pictures and preview/upload them in one easy step.</comment></comment>


Kickstarted: How one company is revolutionizing product development - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/20/2644358/kickstarter-success-product-development-revolution <comment><USER2> The problem is, Kickstarter is the sole arbiter of what gets presented to funders, and subsequently designed and developed.

Many a good idea have been rejected by their less-than-knowledgeable staff in their apparent attempt to unilaterally decide what is "cool" and what is not.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but this is a necessary drawback in my opinion. Kickstarter has a good reputation in terms of the quality of the projects and this is mainly due to the review process. As you say, the downside is that some projects don't make it in spite of their potential.

The same is true for Apple's App Store. Their review process has received a lot of criticism, but the advantage of Apple's filtering process has proven itself when compared to the Android Marketplace.

<comment><USER4> I see your point, but the same quality filters could be had simply by assigning tags, and allowing members to upvote projects.

Let me see what the staff decides is tagged HOT. Don't decide FOR me what is hot and what is not by exclusion.</comment></comment></comment>


You Need Business Cards - <AUTHOR> http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/04/23/you-need-business-cards

<comment><USER2> I have specific business cards for all my different projects (software, music, a volunteer position) and we're making cards for our upcoming launch as well. It's just the easiest way to give someone your contact info when you're out and about, and makes a more professional impression when networking.

gruseom, it's not about someone being a "suit", it's about making it easy to transfer your contact info in different situations. Sometimes a little piece of paper pre-printed is easier than finding a pen and paper or expecting someone to have a blackberry/iphone on hand. Plus, they're cheap. Not having a business card means throwing away offline word of mouth opportunities. To me, I want to see _smart_ people focused on making a great product. The impression you give also factors into what people think before even seeing your product.

I actually just ordered a holder for my moo cards, since I've forgotten once or twice recently to stock up before going out...

</comment><comment><USER3> You might need business cards, but do you really need to put the phrases "blogger" and "tech maven" on them? I think it would actually be more tasteful and relevant to say "has HUGE penis" and "awesomest person evar!!11" on them. Okay, maybe not :)

Just stick to your name, your company's name, and some contact information. Nobody cares that you're a blogger. Nobody cares about meaningless-but- grandiose titles either.

<comment><USER4> So what does everyone put on theirs? Single founder type people? I put "Founder, DedaSys LLC" on linkedin, but that sounds kind of stupid too. On my web page, I put "owner, operator, lead programmer, chef, and chief janitor", but that sounds kind of corny as well...

<comment><USER5> Just your name and your company's name. Your "title" is meaningless. If anyone asks, there's your conversation starter.

<comment><USER6> "Just your name and your company's name. Your "title" is meaningless. If anyone asks, there's your conversation starter."

Damn right.

I do too many varied things at my company to have a pithy-yet-accurate title.

When people ask I tell them, "I make stuff."

My title is not what I want anyone to care about. What matters is what I and my partners are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't need business cards as much as I need a business!

</comment><comment><USER8> We are doing A/B testing with our business cards, because we couldn't decide on which design we liked more.

<comment><USER9> Post images and set up a poll here?

<comment><USER10> a general business card images thread would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I picked mine up from the printers yesterday: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y>

<comment><USER12> This looks like a great movie, downloading it at this very moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You don't _need_ business cards. You need to get the other persons contact information and then followup as soon as possible. You can't rely on giving them a card and hoping they get in touch.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> show of hands - how many ppl made bcards for the first time, just for startup school?

(i wasn't there)

</comment><comment><USER14> For those of us on a student budget, VistaPrint.com cost me about $7 for 250 cards (and that includes the $2 it costs to take their logo off the back).

<comment><USER15> I'm never using them again. I ordered from VistaPrint and then started getting flooded with spam and phone calls (someone tried really hard to convince me to buy their website and SEO package).

<comment><USER9> You know, I've ordered from them 3 times and never had this happen. But then, I generally give fake phone numbers, so that may have been it. No email problems though.

I'll definitely check out overnightprints next time though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the last thread on this, overnightprints.com has great prices _and_ business cards with rounded corners, which is deliciously web 2.0.

<comment><USER17> always check retailmenot for coupons, you can get free shipping

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish this was posted just before startup school so I wouldn't have arrived with two business cards in my wallet and boxes at home.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pet rant: I hate business cards the way I hate suits. Just because _you_ like them does not mean _I_ need them.

I'd rather be (and be around) the kind of person who is way too focused on making a great product to give a fig about paraphernalia.

<comment><USER20> Eh, business cards have a lot more value than you give them credit for; calling them 'paraphernalia' makes me question how much biz dev experience you have. Also, I recommend you visit the book store and flip through a few design books with focus on identity systems...

It's also rather naive to assume someone is going to remember your name, phone number, company name, and email address because "you're special" and have the next billion dollar IP.

Lastly, how else are you suppose to get free lunch?! cmon, join teh party!

<comment><USER21> Alternatively, you could just be sure to get _their_ business card and then you can reply to them. Asking their email and typing it into your phone works well too. If you need someone to remember you, you should be the one to tAke the initiative and contact them later anyway.

That's not to say that business cards are bad, just that they're non essential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My favorite business card is Daniel Oceans. Clean, simple, and to the point.

<http://www.liongraphics.com/BusinessCards/Images/Hollyw6.gif></comment>


Using Dual N Back to train the brain - <AUTHOR> http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/tutorial.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have used Dual N Back for a while and seen that it is very effective to train my attention. How about you? Do you use it regularly and what are your results?</comment>