Digging Into Apple's Fusion Drive Details - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/digging-into-fusion-drive-details

<comment><USER2> So they seem to be trying to differentiate this from a typical HHD (besides the fact that it's two separate devices) by saying it's "not a cache", but practically speaking, are the benefits of "not duplicating" really worth it? Sure, you get 12.5% more space that way, but it seems like the performance implications would be almost exclusively negative.

On a typical HHD, under typical circumstances, all writes go to the SSD, and are copied to the HDD later on. So far so good; Apple's solution will do the same thing. And stuff being read gets copied to the SSD in both cases. Also great.

Now, suppose a file is loaded to the SSD and we never write to it. Now the SSD gets full, and the file has to be moved off of the SSD to make room. On a typical HHD, all that happens is the file gets deleted from the SSD. It's still on the HDD, so no further action is necessary. But on Apple's Fusion Drive, this file will have to be copied _back_ to the HDD.

Considering that some of the largest kinds of files (e.g. videos) are exactly the sort of thing you will want to put on the SSD and not modify, this seems like a pretty terrible idea.

<comment><USER3> Also, by not duplicating, you presumably increase probability of data loss considerably. Now you lose data if either of the devices (SSD, HDD) fails. That certainly seems a bad trade-off for a few percent more space.

<comment><USER4> But in a cache, if the main storage fails you can't just get the data off the cache anyway. On it's own it's not a filesystem the OS can read, as it's managed by the device driver. In theory the data is there, but there'd be no practical way to get at it. In a fusion drive, if one drive fails it looks like you'll still be able to recover the data on the other drive.

<comment><USER3> OK, but the probability of data loss is still worse than with a cache, because failure of (HDD or SSD) is likelier than failure of HDD alone.

<comment><USER4> But a HDD with a flash cache is still a hdd component and a flash component. Putting them in the same enclosure and using one of them as a cache for the other doesn't magically merge their combined MTBFs into a lower number.

<comment><USER2> That is correct. While gmac is technically correct that you have a higher expected amount of data lost with the non-caching system than you would with the caching system, but that's just the trivial fact that more space = higher loss expectation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "There are other hybrid models of blending SSD and mechanical disks to save money, but none of them are able to integrate with the OS and do it as intelligently as Apple is able to with Fusion Drive."

Seriously? Aside from hybrid drives, Windows has had a very similar technology since Vista (SSD's weren't as inexpensive back then, so it wasn't terribly well received), and of course there is ZFS with it's L2ARC.

The whole "it's not a cache" thing is a canard. Doing it right means doing it much like swap: you may have dupes in certain cases. Going beyond that actually hurts performance.

<comment><USER6> _The whole "it's not a cache" thing is a canard. Doing it right means doing it much like swap: you may have dupes in certain cases. Going beyond that actually hurts performance._

It's fundamentally _not_ a cache. If it were a cache, Fusion Drive would not increase the total storage space. Anandtech[1] seems to confirm this, noting that Fusion Drive creates a 4GB write buffer on the SSD and all read operations will influence a pinning algorithm which will move, not cache, frequently accessed files from the HDD onto the SSD.

ReadyBoost is exactly a cache, as is ZFS's ARC and L2ARC.

Now then, regarding the statement you question… yes, it is incorrect. ReadyBoost and L2ARC are pre-existing examples of "hybrid models of blending SSD and mechanical disks" that "integrate with the OS" and do so quite intelligently. You are correct to call out that statement. But it really does appear that Fusion Drive is not a cache, but a true unioning of SSDs and HDDs managed by the OS to ensure hot files are on the SSD whenever possible.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6406/understanding-apples- fusi...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6406/understanding-apples-fusion-drive)

<comment><USER7> The hybrid drive feature in Vista was Ready _Drive_ , not ReadyBoost. It never took off due to lack of driver support from manufacturers and/or Microsoft. Even so, you're right that techically it's a cache because copies are stored on both physical drives backing the logical one. I just wanted to point out that ReadyBoost was about using additional drives to use as caches, while ReadyDrive was about using hybrid drives.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyDrive#ReadyDrive>

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/gg4...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/gg463388.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if they can do a write log to the spinning rust (sequential write, pretty fast, slow on the SSD) and then periodically resolve the deltas. I played around briefly with a system which put metadata in a RAM disk (battery backed up to SSD) and actual data blocks on the disk. There was a huge benefit in that system of splitting the metadata i/o's from the read/write I/Os, really helped overall performance. I look forward to seeing the whitepaper on this tech if they publish it.

<comment><USER9> ZFS uses a log-structured filesystem journal, and in my experience can do a little less than twice as many 'random' writes to a spinning hard drive than that hard drive is capable of. Of course the random writes are actually sequential.

If you have a SSD log device configured, writes greater than 128k (IIRC) are sent directly to disk for performance reasons. This behavior is configurable and probably should be higher for modern SSDs... but anyway it's a neat idea that has been used in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's the poor man's (or rather consumer's) 3PAR!

HP 3PAR, StorSimple etc all have done it long time back but at a bigger scale. Apple is just scaling it down, and bringing it in front of the regular Joe (as regular as Apple customers tend to be) in a non-complex manner.

<comment><USER11> Tiered storage has been done before, this is true. However, they are dedicated systems. If "Fusion Drive" is at the OS level, that means it shares resources with the rest of the system which presents more/different challenges.

<comment><USER10> StorSimple implements auto-tiering at block level and presents an iscsi target block device transparently to the OS/Filesystem layer. It is built on top of already available open source linux iscsi target software. If Fusion was done in similar manner, it absolutely does not require any modifications to the regular OS/file system layers at all. The intelligent auto-tiering capable iSCSI target portion would be at the driver level well isolated from the rest of the OS/filesystem components. It probably even has more simplistic rules for tiering . Keep OS files/dir always on SSD. Apply tiering logic to app data using a simplistic LRU scheme. And there is only two tiers to deal with. I am no expert in Linux/iSCSI or auto-tiering, but I bet you this is something that a HP/3PAR or Dell Compellent can spin up at a very short notice using their existing technologies. Apple is very good at identifying a complex ( and in most cases an existing but end-user un-friendly) technology that has been under-utilized in consumer space and bring it down to consumer level and deliver it in a consumer-friendly manner and put a wonderful marketing spin on it with cool terminology (Retina display, Fusion drive)and possibly even patent some arcane & obvious variations of the main theme.

<comment><USER11> StorSimple, 3PAR, etc. all appear to be appliances. What I am trying to get as is subtle so I will try to be a little bit more explicit.

StorSimple can dominate the appliance it is made out of to provide its services. Fusion Drive cannot dominate the owner's machine.

<comment><USER10> This might be oversimplifying a bit \- How about keeping all OS files, app files etc on SSD. No auto-tiering of those. \- Then some equivalent of a 'cron job + filter driver' combo that moves data files to and from SSD to the 1/3TB disk? When I say filter driver, I am thinking of Windows file system mini- filter driver. Linux equivalent would be VFS I guess.

How difficult is it to implement some thing like that in a pre known 2 tier configuration context? And what would be the effectiveness of such a solution?

In Windows filter drivers have been used effectively to implement file tombstoning for archive purposes and utilizing reparse points/extended attributes to store the remote URI (for recalling file contents from remote archive upon intercepting a read request). It's not too hard to write a mini filter driver in Windows and use it in conjunction with reparse points to implement tombstoning in filesystem.

<comment><USER11> Mini-filters are FS level as are VFS solutions. How do you tell a thing that sits at the VFS level about multiple devices? You could probably do it, nothing storage engineers solve is unsolvable :)

It certainly seems unnatural.

Most of those appliance solutions (and probably Fusion Drive for that matter) implement their mojo at the block level and provide block device interfaces. This is to aid their seamlessness, it makes them a lot more straightforward to implement and it makes them a lot more flexible. I would have trouble believing it would be simpler to implement it at a mini-filter/VFS level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think its funny how Apple tries to solve its file system issues with SSDs. No other popular file system will get quite as unbearably slow when in heavy use as HFS+. No other file system will just randomly create errors and little corruptions here and there in regular use. No other popular OS will come to a complete halt as soon as it starts swapping because its file system can't handle it.

And instead of fixing that stuff, Apple is pushing SSDs to everyone. Way of the future.

<comment><USER13> Sorry but none of what you said is true.

There may be bugs and bugs in the past. But there is no systemic "this FS will lose data under heavy use" design fault. If there was then millions of people would have been affected.

And of course Apple is pushing SSD to fix a FS bug not because it is 10x faster and 1/4 the size of a mobile HDD.

<comment><USER12> HFS is producing errors all the time. Run Disk Utility to see them. They may not be fatal, but they happen.

Apple computers with HDDs do get unusably slow once they start swapping. So much so that it is usually impossible to terminate the memory-hungry application. With SSDs the computer becomes usable again. Just ask some plastic MacBook users.

So, what exactly is untrue about what I said? Just claiming that it is not is not very productive.

<comment><USER6> _So, what exactly is untrue about what I said?_

Potentially nothing, but it is all anecdotal. Where's the widespread or researched evidence of HFS (especially in its HFS+ or HFSX variants) being a slow and easily corruptible file system?

It's not like HFS is a rare and infrequently used file system – it's the primary filesystem for all Macs since System 3, for many iPods, and for all iOS devices.

The scaling limits present in HFS+ will rarely be hit by most users and, while not as resilient as more modern FSs, there are no inherent fatal design flaws with HFS that I'm aware of. Perhaps you've pushed HFS+ beyond its limits, or have usage patterns that trigger a rare fatal bug, but just claiming that something is true is not very productive either.

<comment><USER12> On many occasions, I tried to load some data set that would not fit in memory. Usually on accident. If I do that on Windows or Linux, the computer becomes slow, I cancel the operation, and everything is well again. Same with OS X and an SSD. On OS X with an HDD, the computer becomes completely unresponsive with no recovery beyond a forced reboot.

This happened particularly frequently with virtual machines and/or Matlab, both of which can very easily exhaust any amount of memory. But maybe no one else is doing stuff like that.

<comment><USER14> > This happened particularly frequently with virtual machines and/or Matlab, > both of which can very easily exhaust any amount of memory. But maybe no one > else is doing stuff like that.

I used to do a lot of heavy VM work on OSX - and back in the early days of VMWare Fusion v1 and later. I have never had the OS become unstable due to a storage bottleneck/thrashing.

Not that OSX is unbreakable, but it's been a whole lot better/more stable than my experience with Windows. At least on the Mac, a large chunk of the drivers are supported by the folks who wrote the OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like an interesting choice not use the fast disk as a cache. This is the design that Windows 7 and beyond went with. <http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/ff356869.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of Seagate's Momentus XT, except it sounds like the file management is done in the OS and not on the drive, and that the SSD is not being used as a cache.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt- revi...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review- finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd)

I'm guessing the SSD portion will be MLC?

Are there any other hybrid drives like this in the wild?

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised that the benchmarks for the Momentus XT are so good, especially since it only has 4 GB (8 for the newer model) of SSD. It would seem that in theory it would be better to just add 4 or 8 GB of DRAM to your main system, but apparently the drive only caches non-sequential data that isn't likely to be read quickly from the platters. I'm thinking of trying one on my aging MacBook Pro.

Anyway the Apple approach should be better because of the bigger SSD and more intelligent caching available at the OS level.

<comment><USER18> I installed the 750GB/8GB Momentus XT on my late 2008 MBP and it has been a breath of fresh air. Previously I had a 500GB WD Scorpio Black. That was fast but it vibrated a lot and I think battery life was worse than with the Momentus. I mainly use the machine for XCode and Visual Studio and now I am CPU bound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if this was implemented as a combination of LVM with an extended area for the Hot File Clustering [1], which currently reserves only 0.5% spinning boot disks for small files with a high temperature. Lots to speculate about, little to know at this point, it seems.

[1] <http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/misc/optimizations/#THREE>

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if it's this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Response_Technology>

Oh, it's probably not, because that page says the maximum size is 64GB.

(I work @ Intel and have no inside knowledge about this feature at all.)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really cool tech. Not only does it solve the problem of "having more stuff than I can fit on an SSD I can afford" but "long-term storage that I still need periodic random access to but I/O performance is not paramount, but heavens no, it needs to be faster than a tape backup"</comment>


Ask HN: How to feel the internet? - <AUTHOR>

I've recently become fascinated by Brain Machine Brain Interfaces or (BMBIs) and similar technologies such as haptic feedback. Do any of you know any good resources for diving deeper into this subject? I love the idea of being able to feel the internet. <comment><USER2> cup its balls</comment>


Ask HN: How do Google recruiters work? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys!
A google recruited reached out to me on Linkedin.
I'm as giddy and anxious as a high school girl.
The recruiter said it's "casual" but it's clearly more than that. It'd be for a google cloud role.
Technical solution engineer.
Could anyone give me the rundown on what to expect? <comment><USER2> Given that this is a Google recruiter, disappointment with perhaps a vague sense of misuse.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's about as exciting as having sent in your resume and hearing back from them. So not nothing, but don't picture yourself getting chair massages while sipping draft kombucha just yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> You'll chat with a recruiter then get scheduled for a phone screen, which may lead to an in person interview. Pretty standard stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you don't have a copy of Cracking The Coding Interview I'd suggest getting one. Also:

[https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview- university](https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university)

</comment><comment><USER6> Slowly. Very. Very. Slowly.

(Also, no matter what anyone says, at least until you have a written offer, they can and will decline you at any time. Be careful.)</comment>


Orbital's statement regarding ORB-3 launch mishap - <AUTHOR> http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/MissionUpdates/Orb-3/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently there is going to be a press conference [1] starting at around 9:00pm EDT. Not too many details yet, hopefully we'll hear more soon.

[1] [http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html)</comment>


Facebook's Darth Vader Grip On Game Publishers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/11/facebook-darth-vader-zynga/ <comment><USER2> Huh. FB app spam never bothered me because each time I saw one I wasn't interested in, I clicked "Hide" and never saw it again. Was that not what everyone else did?

<comment><USER3> I did even more. I installed Fluff Busting Purity

<http://www.fbpurity.com/>

so that I don't even have to see the first notification. I also remove friends from my feed if that's all that ever posts from their profiles, and I unfriend them entirely (this is rare) if they have nothing better to do with their time than play Facebook games.</comment></comment>


Scaling Meteor to 20,000 Users in 7 days - <AUTHOR> http://blog.differential.com/scaling-meteor-to-20000-users-in-7-days/

<comment><USER2> I have absolutely no idea what Brave actually is, even after watching the video. But nice to hear that Meteor can handle this. I would not want to see the Modulus bill... But still shows that performance in Meteor is very much following the 80/20 rule. Don't mess up the basics and Moore's Law will help you out.

<comment><USER3> thank you, I think I was the only one. I have no idea what Brave is. A sports app? something like quizz duel?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Vitabee – list your favorite products, get paid when people buy - <AUTHOR> https://www.getvitabee.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Looking for some feedback on a project! If you're willing:

1\. What other uses can you see for this? (e.g. a 'Burningman essentials' list)

2\. What channels should we incorporate other than Amazon (e.g. Overstock.com)?

3\. We've heard feedback that 5% isn't appealing enough. What percentage would be appealing? Would Amazon credit be more appealing?

4\. Are you currently a consumer of these products (vitamins, cosmetics, etc)? If so, how did you decide on those products and where do you normally buy them from? What inspires you to try a new product?

5\. If you made a Vitabee plan, would you be comfortable posting on your social media / sharing with your friends? Why or why not? [Not asking you to make one - just seeing if people are comfortable recommending]</comment>


Ask HN: Private vs. Public Hospitals-which one is the best? - <AUTHOR> For treatment to patients. <comment><USER2> It depends on in which country you are asking.

<comment><AUTHOR> India</comment></comment>


The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 – Kazuo Ishiguro [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2017/press.pdf <comment><USER2> I submitted this 2014 essay from Ishiguro, but no point in having 2 separate threads for the same Nobel Prize news/discussion.

Thought some folks here would be interested in how a famous novelist does "crunch" weeks". In this 2014 op-ed for the Guardian, he describes how it took 4 weeks for him to create his most famous novel, "The Remains of the Day":

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo- ishiguro...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-ishiguro-the- remains-of-the-day-guardian-book-club)

tl;dr

\- Had the first chapter written the previous summer, but made no progress on it for about a year.

\- Even though he couldn't write that year, he did a "substantial amount of 'research'" about British life/politics/servitude of that time period. This is what led to his 4-week "Crash" session being productive:

> _he decision when to start the actual writing of a novel – to begin > composing the story itself – always seems to me a crucial one. How much > should one know before starting on the prose? It's damaging to start too > early, equally so to start too late. I think with Remains I got lucky: the > Crash came just at the right point, when I knew just enough._

During the 4-week "crash", he had a dedicated study in a house he recently moved in; his previous 2 novels were written at his dining table.

His process during the 4-weeks was not at all structured (in the traditional sense):

> _Throughout the Crash, I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style or if > something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I'd established in > the story that morning. The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing > and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I > let them remain and ploughed on._

Note that he didn't _finish_ the novel in 4 weeks. But he did reach the critical mass to make it a complete idea and story:

> _I kept it up for the four weeks, and at the end of it I had more or less > the entire novel down: though of course a lot more time would be required to > write it all up properly, the vital imaginative breakthroughs had all come > during the Crash._

<comment><USER3> For anyone who hasn't seen the movie based on the novel, I would highly recommending watching it[0]. Superb, nuanced performances by Sir Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. The movie would also serve as an introduction to the Merchant-Ivory oeuvre[1].

[0] The Remains of the Day (1993) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107943/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107943/)

[1] Merchant Ivory Productions [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Ivory_Productions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Ivory_Productions)

<comment><USER4> Yesterday, after I heard this news, I searched for this movie as an entry point to his works, with the hope of later reading a book by him.

Unfortunately could not find the movie anywhere (YouTube has some bad versions). If anyone has any pointers, to where we can find it online, would be good.

<comment><USER5> For free? Amazon and iTunes both have it available for rent / purchase.

Well-worth the money. It's stunningly produced, faithful to the novel, and both Hopkins and Thompson are outstanding.

<comment><USER4> No not for free, of course. But streaming which I can purchase. Don't have iTunes, but have 3 services (Netflix, Amazon Prime and HotStar) in India. None of them seem to have it.

Ideally, I want to be able to just buy a movie from somewhere, without needing to subscribe to the entire service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pro tip: "Never Let Me Go" is best read if you know absolutely nothing about its plot.

<comment><USER7> Oh good. Now I won't read it, since I've already seen MST3K really speak to this issue [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WspeHC7eoOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WspeHC7eoOI)

<comment><USER5> I hope you're being sarcastic! I was "spoiled" going in, but if anything it strengthens the novel's undercurrent of dread & enhances the contrast between the importance imbued by the children into their prosaic struggles and the unfathomable horror of their ultimate fate.

The premise is really just the launching point for what the book is about. It's not explored in at all the manner you'd expect from a typical "dystopian sci-fi" novel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great! Not that the Nobel prize means anything to me, but I simply love Kazuo Ishiguro. His surreal novels are always moving to me. I absolutely love how he plays with unreliable narrators, like in "The Remains of the Day", "A Pale View of Hills" and "When We Were Orphans". He shows how they are flawed, sometimes self-sabotaging, but we (or rather, I) still empathize with them.

The ending of "The Remains of the Day" always moves me, almost to tears. How the butler, having realized he threw his life away for people who were not worth it, is at it again, repeating the same mistakes and having learned (almost) nothing. And still, I root for him.

<comment><USER9> Here is my question (as someone who also loves Ishiguro and has mixed but generally positive feelings about the prize):

if the committee picks an author you adore, doesn't that increase your respect for the prize?

And make you want to check out other authors who won it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a Goodreads tag[1] where I've tried to gather as many "definitive" or "best" books by Literature Nobel winners as I could find. (Subjective, of course: based on Goodreads scores, thegreatestbooks.org ranking, etc.) I've never even heard of a lot of the winners over the years, so I thought it might help vary up my reading a bit. Will look forward to adding a new name!

[1]: [https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2196584-archagon?shelf...](https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2196584-archagon?shelf=nobel- laureates)

<comment><USER11> Oh, that's very nice! I added your list to one of my lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm very happy about this, what a good choice.

To me, Ishiguro's most distinguishing characteristic is the tremendous empathy for the people he portrays. Even his weaker novels manage to take you deep into these characters that seem to carry decades within every thought and expression, even though it may ultimately come at the expense of world- building for the plot at hand (I'm thinking of "Buried Giant"). And of course his best novels are something else, like crystals.

</comment><comment><USER13> Never Let Me Go is relevant and chilling. Most books fade in my memory; this isn't one of them.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can get behind this one. Never Let Me Go haunts me to this day. Buried Giant was disappointing but everything else he wrote is fabulous.

<comment><USER15> +1 for _Never Let Me Go_. I read it last week and found it very moving. Mark Romanek's film version is excellent too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're willing to give it the space needed I'd definitely recommend The Unconsoled[1]. It's by quite a long way the best description of dream state that I've ever read.

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

<comment><USER10> Is it audiobook-able, or does he play with the structure of the text?

<comment><USER16> It suspect it would be OK, albeit confusing. On the other hand, it doesn't exist on Audible so maybe not?

<comment><USER10> Google tells me there's an audiobook version out there, probably. (Audiobooks seem to be the only way I can get myself to read these days!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am the sole not happy one on this selection. There must have been a reason why he was not in any short list. I'm only a movie expert but the 5 movies based on his books are all overly simplistic, cheasy and just terrible. Still better than Jelinek though.</comment>


On Building Coding Confidence - <AUTHOR> http://iheanyi.com/blog/on-building-coding-confidence/ <comment><USER2> This generally rings true for me, it is almost required for developers to be continuously learning and honing skills as new patterns, technologies, and tools emerge. It is also generally helpful for developers to pursue side projects.

However, I disagree with the author on the specific point of how CS curricula are preparing students for "real life" development. The issue is not necessarily that there are specific tools students aren't being exposed to, it is that they often are not exposed to certain classes of tools at all (such as source control, deployment/build tools, etc...)

There is an excellent post on Coding Horror that covers this: [http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-should-we-teach-computer- sc...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-should-we-teach-computer-science/)</comment>


Clojure is not a Lisp [2009] - <AUTHOR> http://jng.imagine27.com/index.php/2009-08-19-011225_clojure_the_false_lisp.html

<comment><USER2> I still don't understand why Clojure isn't a Lisp. Because it's built on the JVM? Because it encourages using immutable data structures? Because it's becoming popular? Someone point out the key paragraph I missed connecting "Clojure is imperfect and hyped" to "Clojure is not a Lisp".

<comment><USER3> I haven't read the article, but when I say, in a certain context, that I don't consider clojure a Lisp, what I might mean is that clojure is not descendant from the original McCarty lisp. You can trace Common Lisps or Emacs Lisps roots from MACLISP back to that. In such a context where the definition of "lisp" is sufficiently narrow, I might call languages like clojure and scheme "lisp like languages", or "distant dialects".

It isn't any different from saying Linux is not Unix, but the various BSDs are. It doesn't really matter at all, and when used in the wrong context, such phrases can be confusing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What ergonomic keyboard/mouse do you recommend? - <AUTHOR> After a few years of typing and coding on my macbook, I've recently discovered a slight discomfort in my wrist. Now I'm starting to realize the importance of ergonomic keyboard/mouse.<p>So, what makes a good ergonomic keyboard or mouse? What should one be looking for? Also, are there any ergonomic keyboards for mac? Most of them seem to be made by microsoft. <comment><USER3> The microsoft keyboards work well enough on Macs: <http://david.rothlis.net/keyboards/microsoft_natural_osx/>

<comment><USER4> The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is just an awesome keyboard.

I bought my first copy of this keyboard when my wrists started hurting about 5 years ago. It was the only keyboard in the store where my wrists didn't hurt just looking at the thing.

(I solved my wrist problem by going to the physical therapist - <USER2> recommended stretches for my particular injury. I also took the arms off my office chair, as my particular injury was caused by resting my elbows too long on the armrest. AND I switched to the MS 4000 AND I switched to Dvorak.)

I _thought_ the trick to many ergo keyboards was the split keyboard, so you can keep your wrists parallel to your forearms instead of having to bend your wrists out to get your fingers parallel to each other. But not sure how much of that is fact and how much of it is folklore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I'm going to go with this keyboard based on your recommendation, because I also just switched to Dvorak and it's great to know that this keyboard worked for someone typing on Dvorak layout. Thank you!

<comment><USER5> Definitely good. Have one myself. Just one issue seems to occur quite often, and that's that the space bar can either or both loud and sticky. And if your on the short keyboard welcome back to the number pad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/contoured.htm>

I personally know 2 people who had their wrist pains go away after they started using this keyboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did some research, and I think at this point I'm going to go with this: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. :D

<comment><USER6> I would recommend switching to Dvorak layout,if you have the time and energy to do that. I switched to Dvorak a year ago and the amount of wrist/finger movement is much less than that with Qwerty(I did it to increase my typing speed, not because of RSI).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been a programmer for 22 years. I started having that problem. Don't rest your wrist on anything for very long. Stretch your wrist by bending your hand in a few directions. And for sure, get up often. I didn't get up enough, and it ruined my legs and hips. Had to get both hips replaced. A little DMSO might bring down the swelling in your wrists. Google, "DMSO" and see how to use it. Wash before putting it on your skin.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow! Thanks for sharing your experience. I will make sure I get up often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have the wired Microsoft keyboard and it is fabulous. I switched to the wireless Logitech keyboard and it is terrible for productivity. It's like those Dell/HP keyboards where the keys are smaller and crammed closer together. It also doesn't have much of a curve to it. I would not buy it again nor would I recommend it, but the Microsoft keyboard is a definite winner.

</comment><comment><USER9> Das keyboard, nothing beats that 80's IBM style and mechanical push distance, so light on the fingers you barley even have to push down.

</comment><comment><USER10> Both wrists or just the dominant one?

I gave up on a mouse entirely and switched to a Wacom tablet full time. There's a learning curve for sure, but it basically cured my wrist discomfort. Plus you can have lots of fun in Photoshop. It did end my first person shooter hobby though.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha first person shooter on a Wacom? Must be a sight to see, can you make a vine? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would recommend you a mechanical keyboard or a capacitative one. They cost a lot, but they endure for years and typing in a mechanical keyboard just kick ass all other ergonomic keyboards imho.

</comment><comment><USER12> Funny - I switched to an Apple keyboard a few years ago because I found it much more comfortable to have a keyboard with shorter key travel.

<comment><AUTHOR> But I did hear that Apple keyboard is horrible for your wrists. I've been using the apple keyboard with my iMac for a few years and then recently I started noticing wrist pains. Correlation is not causation, but just to be on the safe side I'm going to get a more ergonomic keyboard.</comment></comment>


New developments in the Opus audio codec - <AUTHOR> http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/celt/demo3.shtml

<comment><USER2> This is an awesome page. The discussion about tonality really resonated with me (no pun intended) because it irritates me when switching audio sources at how "squashed" they can sound. For a while I had some macros on my G15 keyboard to change settings in the audio mixer based on music, games, or general computer sounds. If Opus can do a reasonable job on a wide variety of inputs automatically it will be a wonderful contribution.

</comment><comment><USER3> > And we haven't even started using NEON yet.

That is almost concerning, because even though it seems like overkill to gpu accelerate audio decoding (that the copy and latency overhead isn't worth it) I imagine it will require quite a bit of refactoring to make a SIMD decoder (or encoder). But that will be absolutely necessary to see Opus adoption as the web audio standard where mobile devices need every watt of energy savings possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> NEON isn't GPU, it's just the ARM equivalent to SSE/MMX. (Though a fair bit nicer to work with).

It doesn't require extensive refactoring. There are patches to use SIMD that aren't merged yet— though pure C improvements have tended to be more important since NEON isn't available on all ARM parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish support for Opus was better in popular players. I tried building a RTP + RTSP streaming server using libopus, but even VLC couldn't play it.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is Opus support in VLC, but I don't believe that RTP is working for it there yet. (Obviously simple HTTP streaming works)

<comment><USER4> I think it's because the Opus decoder in VLC expects to find a Ogg container, which is a no-go for streaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> No go for RTP— as thats not the standard and an additional container doesn't provide anything useful, but its fantastic for HTTP streaming.

<comment><USER4> I guess I should clarify streaming as in low-latency live streaming, where RTP is necessary - and Opus would be a perfect fit with its very low algorithmic delay.

<comment><USER5> Chrome and Firefox should both support Opus over RTP now as part of WebRTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given how contentious the environment surrounding audio codecs have been over the years, Opus (and Silk, too) just seems too good to be true. Am I missing a devil in the details?

Otherwise, I'm excited at the possibilities this provides when used in open source projects that utilize open protocols to deliver audio end-to-end (peer- to-peer) over the network.

</comment><comment><USER7> the following is not true, see below: warning: don't visit the linked site on opera mobile. It seems to download something bigger and also froze the browser for me.

edit: sorry, false alarm! that was something else. the site loads perfectly fine (and I am honestly happy about every site that does not differentiate between desktop and mobile clients but serves a readable, clearly structured, "static" page like that!).

edit 2: even the audio samples worked flawlessly. the accompanying displays not though.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome. Who would have guessed that ultra-low-latency low-bandwidth perceptual coding of audio would involve neural networks and hidden Markov models? It seems obvious when you put it that way, but I certainly wouldn't have predicted it.

</comment><comment><USER9> how does the cpu usage compare to vorbis? (and then to mp3?) i assume the variable bitrate uses less cpu, or?

(b/c i just have to have 40 tabs open, steam, and a mp3 player at all times)

<comment><USER10> CPU usage in the decoder is currently higher than Vorbis, though most of the difference is due to having less optimizations. As for the encoder, it's already faster than Vorbis and should become even faster in the future. I haven't checked, but I suspect the same is true when compared to MP3. That being said, the complexity is pretty much negligible on a desktop machine.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. I tested a while back and found opusenc consistently slower than oggenc. I don't remember the specifics, but I'm surprised a 27% improvement was enough to make up the difference.

It's not negligible to me, as I'm running a music server on a Raspberry Pi that needs to transcode audio, and the Pi can only transcode FLAC to Vorbis at 1.8x realtime. This makes it terribly sensitive to background tasks — anything else going on tends to prevent it from keeping up. So I'm quite glad you all are optimizing for ARM :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh. On a Raspberry Pi you should be using the Opus encoder compiled as fixed point. It will be a _ton_ faster than Vorbis, as the floating point on the rpi is very slow and there is no fixed point vorbis encoder. (Unfortunately, if your input requires resampling, there isn't currently an option to compile the opus-tools front end to use the fixed point resampler, so that will add some slowdown— I guess that should go up in priority)

Although ... rpi ugh. I often feel that device was an evil scheme to turn people off of arm. It is _remarkably_ slow for its cost and power consumption. For $100 you can have an arm device which is easily 32x faster for most DSP- ish stuff, and which draws similar power.

<comment><USER11> Good to know, thanks :) What's this $100 ARM device you speak of?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.ph...](http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135341370451)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Gold mining guide – 8th November released - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/howtotoken/status/928268987158417408 <comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about that? Are there any Zcash miners who will switch to BTG?</comment>


Techmeme is now writing its own headlines - <AUTHOR> http://news.techmeme.com/130906/headlines <comment><USER2> _" You're changing the words that publishers use, and that's wrong." It's adding to the words publishers use, and it's long been an accepted practice on aggregation sites like Drudge Report, Arts & Letters Daily, and many more._

It should be noted that this appears to be the opposite philosophy of Hacker News's headline rewrites, which focus more on minimalism and succinctness, for better or for worse.

<comment><USER3> For worse, since we complain about it endlessly. Headlines should do their job quietly, not cause this uproar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a moment there I thought they were saying that _the site itself_ wrote its own headlines. You know, with artificial intelligence etc. _That_ would have peaked my interest.

Alas, no. They use people.

</comment><comment><USER5> The nut of why they're doing it (and relevant to sites like HN as well):

 _[C]licking on stories merely to discover what they 're about is a frustrating chore. Unlike most other news sites, we'd rather save our readers clicks than force them through a maze of pages to catch up on news. Techmeme therefore values headlines rich on specifics: headlines with names, numbers, and active verbs. Headlines that function as abstracts.

Unfortunately for us, publishers understandably write headlines suiting their own needs, and not necessarily ours. The reasons for this are numerous, and varied:

[…useful list of original-headline problems elided…]

As a result, Techmeme is often forced either to post a story with a nebulous headline, wait for a publication that rewrites the news with a clear headline (leading many publishers to wonder why) or pass on stories altogether. Since all of these choices are far from ideal, we've now resolved to produce Techmeme-optimized titles "in-house"._

I'd love to see an HN/Reddit-like site that, just as it has a never-ending tournament for story ranking, has a mini-tournament on each story for the most informative headline.

<comment><USER6> Why stop at a headline? Why not a /.-like summary or quote that represents the article? Headlines are made for enticing clicks, not informing the reader.

<comment><USER3> The headlines purpose is to inform the reader so they will be enticed to read more. If it doesn't do this, it's a badly written headline, it doesn't need to be patched, but re-written right.

<comment><USER5> Enticement is a goal of providers with certain models. Readers want an accurate indication of whether the target contains new and useful information. These goals can often conflict. Techmeme is more aligned with the readers, here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One annoying thing about Techmeme is the linked tweets, they are just snarky comments from famed critics on twitter. Majority of the time, they do not add any value but a tongue in cheek remark. I would like them to be more selective in linking tweets, and adding insightful tweets.

</comment><comment><USER8> YC Hacker News is an aggregator based on voting. Techmeme is an aggregator based on human editing.

The new change should not be surprising.</comment>


Whoever built the Boston Marathon bombs is still on the loose (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/2018/01/19/boston-marathon-bomb-maker-loose-776742.html <comment><USER2> There was a lot of strange stuff going on with the FBI in the Tsarnaev case. Agents from the Boston FBI office traveled to Florida and shot Ibragim Todashev and then couldn't get their story straight about whether he attacked FBI agents with a broom or a samurai sword or a table.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a CNN story from 2015 making a case that they had help with the bombs: [https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/us/boston-marathon-bombing- tr...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/us/boston-marathon-bombing-trial- help/index.html)

It doesn't speculate who helped them. Some details, though. Like their claim that they used directions from the Al Queda Inspire magazine. Some details on parts like Christmas lights and RC car parts, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nope.

My father-in-law met the Tsarnaev brothers. They were out shopping for electric switches. My father-in-law worked in an electric supply store that didn't stock the right type of switch, so he directed them to a store that would have the needed part. He later recognized them, leading to the store video being seized as evidence and helping to track them down.

Feeling of guilt over helping the Tsarnaev brothers gnawed at him, worsening the bad lifestyle choices that led to his death before he could testify.

I don't think they'd go shopping for a switch if they didn't intend to build the device. There might have been a local co-conspirator such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife. Wikipedia says: Her web history included searches for "If your husband becomes a shahid, what are the rewards for you?" and "the rewards for the wife of Mujahedeen."

</comment><comment><USER5> > [District Attorney] Blodgett gave no explanation

> The FBI declined to answer

It's a sad state of affairs when authorities see no reason to even bother with any kind of justification for what is obviously a much deeper issue. This is one of the very things that set democracies apart - accountability towards the people.

<comment><USER6> In the London terrorist knife attack a few days ago, the killer had a fake bomb vest on, he was already neutralised but police shot him when he showed them the fake vest. There'll be an investigation whether this shooting was justified. It probably is, because they probably thought the vest was real and he was about to trigger the detonator, but I'm glad there's still scrutiny of lethal police action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's awfully hard to believe an article that is dead set on sensationalizing and demonizing everyday materials:

> _metallic BBs, electrical wires, batteries, cellphone parts, circuit boards_

> _hobby fuse and wires, batteries, dismantled cellphones, fire starters_

> _Thermite ... recipe for chlorine gas_

> _plastic zip ties like the ones used by police when they are making large- > scale arrests_

> _knives, decorative swords, a loaded 9 mm pistol and a large, fully loaded > Russian bolt action rifle, along with several hundred rounds of high-caliber > ammunition._

> _machete, steel wool, a Duraflame log, coffee grinders and shards of metal > shavings_

Who _doesn 't_ have most of these " _ominous materials_ ", for basic every day civil purposes? And if someone needs a written recipe for chlorine gas, I doubt their ability to make _bread_ without burning down the kitchen.

Sure, the article also contains details that do indicate the making of bombs (although once again, playing with explosives can be just good clean fun), and more importantly actual connection to the crimes. It's just not good that the majority of their narrative is built on innuendo and further marginalizing their audience with ominous fear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Having a few of these things, in isolation, would be no cause for alarm. It's all of them taken together and stashed away in a bedroom, along with the bizarre behavior of both Morley and the FBI, which makes it seem very suspicious.

<comment><USER7> Your comment is basically continuing the innuendo train. All of these things, taken together, are perfectly reasonable to have, period. It sounds like his "bedroom" was his only personal space away from his mother, so once again nothing notable. And "stashed" is yet another baseless pejorative.

I do agree there are other pertinent details that are the actual cause for concern, especially regarding the FBI. But why not stick to those rather than illustrating some scary sounding but ultimately innocuous motif around the suspect?

I'm thinking the dynamic is that the journalist has no idea what the real world is actually like (eg associating "wires" with movie bombs, rather than realizing they're in literally every electric device), but has been trained to embellish their writing with descriptive words, and so they've resorted to crafting a narrative of fear of general odds and ends. Perhaps they should have visited the witchcraft victims' memorial one town south to remind themselves what such fearmongering leads to.

<comment><USER8> I think if you have all of those things, in toto, in your basement all where they belong, it's normal. Those specific things, hidden in your bedroom, are enough to make your parents ask questions. If he was a homemade pyrotechnics enthusiast, it'd be perfectly normal. Was he?

Also, LOL at the bag of perlite. It's almost as if someone told him to go to the hardware store to buy fertilizer for a "fertilizer bomb", and this guy gets a bag of chemically inert soil amendment instead.

<comment><USER7> I'd say that many of those things, by themselves, are enough for parents to ask questions. Questions like "do I think my son is mature enough to have firearms under my roof" and "are these flammable things stored responsibly" ? But personal judgment and implied criminality are entirely different beasts.

Thanks for mentioning the perlite, I missed had that. I love how it's presented uncritically - sounds like thermite! I wonder if he had some deadly diatomaceous earth as well? Maybe I'm just taking it too seriously and the whole article is actually meant to be a comic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not that it's even close to relevant to the story, but wow, suddenly my childhood wish that my first name, Morley, was more well known has come true.

Be careful what you wish for...

<comment><USER10> Did you know that you own a chain of famous chicken shops in South London?

You even have merchandise!

[https://www.morleyslondon.com/collections/all](https://www.morleyslondon.com/collections/all)

<comment><USER11> Also the name of the fictional cigarettes used frequently by CSM on the X-Files

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting story, but why would the FBI protect Morley? What would be their motive?

<comment><USER13> No idea, but based on the way they returned the evidence to local authorities and claiming they couldn't find anything makes me wonder if they committed a serious breach of protocol at some point (i.e. an FBI agent or informant gave the suspect live bomb-making materials constituting entrapment, etc.)

<comment><USER14> Yes, this sounds like the most likely explanation - they were already involved in some way, and admitting it would be far worse than merely not catching the bomber. Wasn't there something like this with Mexican gunrunning? And isn't there already a record of the FBI effectively creating suspects by "recruiting" them as terrorists?

<comment><USER15> Yep, here's a case of the FBI recruiting a "terrorist" for the publicity of stopping an attack on a holiday:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Portland_car_bomb_plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Portland_car_bomb_plot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Random fact -

The FBI put out a version of Inspire which had the 'How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom' which had some sort of malware or corruption when it came out.

From memory when viewing it became corrupt specifically during the 'How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom'. I assumed in a unpatched system it'd overflow or something.

Never seen the sandy hook crew try and link this, but there could be a fair argument the FBI supplied the instructions of 'How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom' to a lot of people, and perhaps even the bombers doing this honey pot.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lead-paint, tobacco, and anti-personnel mine manufacturing executives live out their lives and retire peacefully with no danger of arrest or prosecution.

<comment><USER18> I get your drift on mines, and tobacco after 1960 is pretty clear even if users were mostly aware, but lead was the best additive for oil base paints out there, and few issues exist if you don't actively eat it. It is still used in much paint worldwide, and in mast art paints. Even abspestos is still being produced, and to a small extent, sold in the usa. Both are still only illegal to use in certain circumstances, although nearly defacto banned thanks to very successful civil mesotheiloma and lead exposure litigation.

<comment><USER17> Lead dust gets into the air. It is directly responsible for thousands upon thousands of murders. The decline in violent crime is a direct result of decreasing childhood exposure.

<comment><USER19> Maybe that's why so many murders happen in Michigan? The lead in their Flint River contaminated their water supply and this type of poisoning gives people trouble with their brain.

<comment><USER20> The lead was not in the source water or the main water supply. The chemistry of the water supply was not properly maintained and the water dissolved lead from the pipes supplying the homes.

The main source of the lead was the supply lines between the water mains and the homes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Boston Bombings and the CIA Connection. Graham Fuller and Uncle Ruslan Tsarnaev - [https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-boston-bombings-and-the- ci...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-boston-bombings-and-the-cia- connection-graham-fuller-and-uncle-ruslan-tsarnaev/5335416)

<comment><USER22> the above article on globalresearch.ca was posted a couple of times here and it appears to veer off into batshit conspiratorial nonsense about fake blood and injuries towards the end. pinch of salt required whilst reading.

see also [https://www.wired.com/2013/04/boston-marathon- conspiracies/](https://www.wired.com/2013/04/boston-marathon-conspiracies/)

<comment><USER21> True, but I think that the uncle's connections in Washington enabled the brother's and their family's entry to the US. After that it is simply another case of maladaptation to their new situation, conversion to extremism, the deed, and then clean-up of a potentially embarrassing situation. It's basically "blowback" from the covert operations to use Islamic extremism against the USSR and Russia.

<comment><USER23> > uncle's connections in Washington

The uncle, then still Tsarnaev, lived by his father in law in Maryland and while living there incorporated there "the Congress of Chechen International Organizations".

See my other post here.

> It's basically "blowback" from the covert operations to use Islamic > extremism against the USSR and Russia.

That's how one part of the whole story can be interpreted.

One of the most interesting titles from The Washington Post I've read was: "The Taliban indoctrinates kids with jihadist textbooks paid for by the U.S." (2014)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/the- taliban-indoctrinates-kids-with-jihadist-textbooks-paid-for-by-the-u-s/)

"As The Washington Post reported in 2002, the United States had spent _millions of dollars_ beginning in the 1980s to produce and disseminate anti- Soviet textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren. The books encouraged a jihadist outlook, which was useful propaganda at the time for a Washington driven by the imperatives of the Cold War."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would guess the FBI has sophisticated means of tracking purchases and probably had their eyes on him for that reason. It's possible he really did have a mental breakdown and bought all that after reading too much redpill post-attacks. Who knows.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is from 2018. Since then have there been any substantial new developments?

<comment><USER26> Couldn't find much, but looks like the author is releasing a second book in April: [https://twitter.com/MicheleMcPhee/status/1201618338746519552...](https://twitter.com/MicheleMcPhee/status/1201618338746519552?s=20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think we found the next popular crime podcast. :)</comment>


Network programming with Go (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://jannewmarch.gitbooks.io/network-programming-with-go-golang-/content/ <comment><USER2> Go was the language where I went from being scared of writing things that use network to understanding & enjoying it.

<comment><USER3> That and other things too. It's definitely the new C IMO. I like how the author contrasts it with Java, ___" There were many things that did not copy across due to the comparative richness of the Java libraries..."_ __. Of course, I like Java about the same as I like Go (both great languages). But if you are used to the wealth of pre-made data structures in Java you 'll find arrays, slices and maps in Go to be somewhat limiting at first. You'll soon get it though and start doing really cool things with Go.

<comment><USER4> Rust is the new C. Go is the new Oberon.

<comment><USER5> Go was inspired by both C and Oberon:

[https://talks.golang.org/2015/gophercon- goevolution.slide#17](https://talks.golang.org/2015/gophercon- goevolution.slide#17)

[https://talks.golang.org/2015/gophercon- goevolution.slide#29](https://talks.golang.org/2015/gophercon- goevolution.slide#29)

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ReKdcpNyQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ReKdcpNyQg)

Rust is too complex to be compared to C. It's more like C++ plus ML.

<comment><USER6> * Rust is too complex to be compared to C. It's more like C++ plus ML. *

Rust is far, far less complex than C++. ML must be a large negative term in that formula.

<comment><USER7> I think of it as a multidimensional space where Rust is a linear combination of the C++ and ML vectors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anybody wants a go library for hacking around with network programming I wrote a golang only wrapper around the linux zero-copy socket syscall. It also has some network utilities along with it:

[https://github.com/nathanjsweet/zsocket](https://github.com/nathanjsweet/zsocket)

</comment><comment><USER9> How viable is this, since author said he wrote it in 2012? To me it looks okay, but I am willing to take opinion from someone more experienced with Go.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER10> It serves as a great reference, the code in there runs with small changes, I know this because I ran the code myself when I was contemplating adding content from this book to my own FOSS ebook ([https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti- textboo...](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/)), I emailed the Professor and he gave his permission, but I skipped on adding chapters because this book itself was available via the author's home page and there was no point in me adding it to my tutorial, I am glad this is now available via gitbooks!

Since Go is backward compatible, it is in the contract somewhere, you can refer this book even though it was written a long long time ago!

<comment><USER11> > it is in the contract somewhere

[https://golang.org/doc/go1compat](https://golang.org/doc/go1compat)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was immediately concerned seeing a "Security" section that includes a "Public key encryption" chapter. And indeed, I was (not) disappointed.

The symmetric encryption section mentions only Blowfish (!? - not even in the stdlib) and DES (!! - not even 3DES), not AES. There is of course no mention of authentication, or AEADs. But it gets worse. The API presented is Cipher.Encrypt which is CATASTROPHIC. Cipher.Encrypt is a _low-low-level_ API that only encrypts the first block worth of data, AND LEAVES THE REST UNENCRYPTED. It's meant to be used by CBC/CTR/GCM block mode implementations, of which there is no mention at all.

This is all it says about, you know, encrypting real data:

> The algorithms are block algorithms. That is they work on blocks of data. If > your data is not aligned to the block size, then you will have to pad it > with extra blanks at the end.

This is the kind of advice which guarantees me a job forever. It's way worse than ECB.

The "Data integrity" section mentions MD4 (for which I can and did create a collision on my laptop in a few hundred lines of code) and recommends the broken MD5, converting the result into 4 uint32 for... some reason? It then calls HMAC a "variation" of a hash, while it's a completely different (and more useful) tool.

The public key chapter only mentions RSA, which is completely useless/dangerous on its own, and probably not what you should use in 2017, and offers a code snippet to generate a 512 bit key. 512. The stuff that academics break for fun.

The X.509 chapter makes a CA cert instead of a leaf.

The TLS section needlessly sets config.Rand and sets config.Time TO A FIXED VALUE, which off the top of my head _might_ only break connections after a few minutes and not their security. Maybe. (And uses a funny "[0:]" with a needless 0, which I guess is a C-ism.)

> Security is a huge area in itself, and in this chapter we have barely > touched on it. However, the major concepts have been covered.

The whole section should just have been a link to [https://github.com/gtank/cryptopasta](https://github.com/gtank/cryptopasta) not to be harmful, but as it is, it is actively toxic.

I'm not saying anything about the quality of the rest of the book, but if you write a book on X where X != cryptography, please don't try to teach the user how to use cryptography. Or how to secure a gun.

<comment><USER13> Well, I got the impression that the book is an introduction, targeting newbies. Some things look out of place there, like cryptography and distributed systems. Maybe he needed to fill the pages, I don't know. But don't take it seriously, nobody is really going to look at those things and understand what they are about or make any use of them. People are going to have to learn a lot more to even get to a reliable networking service in Go, this book is not going to cut it.

<comment><USER14> >they are about or make any use of them

I can't stress enough how wrong this is. The majority of mediocre programmers will take anything written in a book as gospel. When their boss tells them to encrypt the customer data, there is a non negligible chance they will go straight to a cryptography section in a book they read and copy it.

<comment><USER15> That's true, but no book can cover everything about every topic. Even if they put the disclaimer that examples are not to be just copy&pasted, superficial people will still do exactly that. Because that's what superficial people do. And IMHO it's not up to book authors to fix the flows in human nature...

<comment><USER12> So if you lack the space, time or expertise to cover cryptography, you don't.

There is no positive value in that section. Readers will only be hurt by it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't close the side menu to read the article on Android Chrome [http://i.imgur.com/mHGr2jb.png](http://i.imgur.com/mHGr2jb.png)

<comment><USER17> Click the hamburger icon in the upper right corner.

<comment><USER18> There are horizontal lines on Safari in the upper left corner that closes the sidebar.

If I don't close the sidebar, for whatever reason, Safari blanks the page on mouseover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm waiting for one.</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody using only OmniAuth for authentication? - <AUTHOR>

Is this a good idea? Assuming you are targeting a global mass market audience, how do you pick which strategies to use? Or do you just use all on the list? Has anyone created a best practice login UI for such a use case? <comment><USER2> "Global mass market" meaning? try to have a more focused definition for your audience. It all depends on the audience in general. For example, if you're making an e-commerce site, you wouldn't want to limit it to just folks who have a twitter/facebook account...but then again that depends on what you're selling. If however you were making some sort of a social app that leverages people's connections already, then there's really no need to use any other authentication strategy than OAUTH. So I'd say think about your target audience and make your decision.

</comment><comment><USER3> twitter and facebook enough.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Answer a Question of Stephen Hawking - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sudoask.com/stephen-hawking-ask-mark-zuckerberg-answer/ I would like to know a unified theory of gravity and the other forces. Which of the big questions in science would you like to know the answer to and why? <comment><AUTHOR> Stephen Hawking: I would like to know a unifed theory of gravity and the other forces. Which of the big question would you like to know the answer to and why ?

Mark Zuckerberg: That's a pretty good one! I'm most interested in questions about people. What will enable us live forever? How do we cure all diseases? How does the brain work? How does learning work and how we can empower humans to learn million times mores? I also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is.1</comment>


Show HN: Open source Android app building a network of barometers - <AUTHOR> https://market.android.com/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork&1.3.2

<comment><USER2> Cool idea. A couple questions I have about it:

Are graphs available on the website? (I tried clicking through to cumulonimbus.ca but it was not loading.)

Does it account for elevation? A change of elevation of 100 m is about 12 mbar of pressure, comparable to a modest weather event. You could use ground topography to correct, but people working in midtown Manhattan skyscrapers would be a noisy signal, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently the data isn't available outside the app, but I'm working on that and should have that out within a couple of weeks. My focus so far has been growing the user base, so the web interface has lagged. Coming soon!

For elevation, we currently attempt no fixes. The attitude I've held so far has been that this is the primary reason for building a _network_, since a single barometer cannot be trusted. However, your Manhattan scenario is interesting: what if most people are constantly changing elevation? Hm. I'll work on that one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a wonderful idea, especially since the area covered by cell phones vastly surpasses that of weather stations. Unfortunately, there's a very real privacy concern of which you must remain cognizant: storing a time series of the paired barometer reading and GPS coordinates. This information is personally identifiable, even if the device ID is just a unique string of numbers.

I'm not sure how you're storing the data, but I would suggest to store _only_ the GPS coordinates and barometer reading, normalizing both to have the same approximation error.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Unfortunately, there's a very real privacy concern of which you must remain > cognizant: storing a time series of the paired barometer reading and GPS > coordinates. This information is personally identifiable, even if the device > ID is just a unique string of numbers.

Yes, this has been a complication from the start. Here's our current policy/methods: We delete all data after 1 month and we let users remove all of their submitted data completely. We never show anyone's actual location on the map (coordinates are fudged by a few hundred meters).

I do want to store some data longer than 1 month in the future as will be helpful to use for data mining, looking for patterns, etc. But first I will have to find a way to carefully anonymize it.

<comment><USER3> I'd surprisingly prefer storing all data indefinitely and _not_ allowing users to delete what they submitted if and only if you _also_ eliminate any way to group locations by a device.

This data is just too dangerous, even in spite of innocuous intentions. Data breaches happen, National Security Letters remain threats, and targeting ads based on a user's current location will tempt anyone. You will fill your users with confidence if you remove your ability to group the data points.

Moreover, you shouldn't discount the importance of historical barometric data. At some point, it might no longer be practical to store the data in its most atomic state, but maybe rolled up to a periodic snapshot (maybe hourly) of some geographic region.

What data would you be looking to store for longer than a month?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the developer for this project. Currently only the Motorola Xoom and the Galaxy Nexus can submit readings, but all devices 3.1+ can download the app. Let me know what you think, any comments, suggestions, etc.

In the long run, we're working towards improving short-term, local weather prediction by adding this new pool of unprecedented data to the mix.

Edit: Source available at <http://cumulonimbus.ca>

</comment><comment><USER4> More data is nice, but the experience with citizen-operated weather stations suggests that the data is useless without extensive quality control. Calibration is hard, and mobile sensors are particularly challenging. What happens when one of the sensors goes into a climate-controlled building, then takes an elevator to the 30th floor?

<comment><AUTHOR> So, part of this is an experiment. I don't think anybody's done such fast and distributed crowdsourcing of weather data before, so I'm not sure how useful the data will end up being. As far as a single user entering a building, taking elevators, etc, I'm not concerned since those data points will stand out from the nearby readings and can easily be discarded. However, a point raised in another comment here is, what if most users in an area (say Manhattan) are constantly changing elevation. That very well may pose a problem. We'll see. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thats great, surprisingly there are already a few submissions in my area (São Paulo / BR) even if the Galaxy Nexus was not launched here yet and the only device with a barometer is the Xoom. I think it is a revolutionary idea that can change the way we see weather forecasts and I am really excited about it.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a very cool idea. Sadly I don't have a Galaxy Nexus in order to participate (just bought a Galaxy S2, wondering if I will regret that choice) but I can't wait to see how this kind of thing turns out in a year or two when a ton of people have these devices.

<comment><USER7> Slightly offtopic - have you noticed anything lacking in GS2, compared to what newer handsets have? I was going to do the same and can't find anything apart from raw processing power that I'd miss.

<comment><USER6> Not really. I actually came from having tried a Windows Phone (Samsung Focus S) for nearly a month which was incredibly light and thin, so the GS2 actually feels quite bulky to me- the 4.5" screen is honestly a little too big for my liking, but given that the Galaxy Nexus is bigger still I don't see any very viable alternatives.

Another thing to note is that the AT&T SG2 (the one I have, the 'Skyrocket' LTE version) is very new, and really don't have any fully functional custom ROMs yet. I'm using a half-baked CyanogenMod version and there are still plenty of issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic: But why does those phones have barometers build in? What are those normally used for?

<comment><USER9> The altitude input helps speed up the GPS lock process.

[http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-galaxy-nexus- barometer-i...](http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-galaxy-nexus-barometer-is- for-faster-gps-lock-20111020/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any page that displays aggregate data without having to install the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but I'm working on it! So far every line of code I've written has been in effort to directly increase barometer reading submissions. That's coming along nicely, so one of our next steps is to redo the website and include a map and graphs of the data there as well.</comment></comment>


End of the road for RC4 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/end-of-the-road-for-rc4/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish we'd done this earlier -- I'm pretty sure nothing bad has resulted from supporting RC4 a few months longer than we would have liked, but as we've seen from Google's "aggressive" push to end SHA1, it's the only way to move things forward.

Friends don't let friends use RC4 in 2015.

</comment><comment><USER2> Meanwhile, Youtube still supports RC4. And SSL3! (WTF, guys!) I'm still waiting for them to jump on the bandwagon.

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=r3---sn- jjpux...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=r3---sn- jjpuxm5n-2pue.googlevideo.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is RC4 is super efficient, especially for devices like Android phones which don't have AES-NI and run on battery (both for the CPU and the radio...). Deprecating RC4 in that environment has real cost for end users, as well as for the server operator.</comment></comment>


More on the war against photography - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Is-a-mans-home-still-his-castle-101681398.html

<comment><USER2> "The castle walls may be crumbling and decayed, but they invaders can be fought back and the walls rebuilt."

I want to think so. I really do. But all I see is the erosion continuing. More and more _you_ can't photograph or videotape the police (regardless of what the law actually says). Why? For your protection. On the other hand, _they_ and other government organizations can photograph and videotape you all they want and you have no recourse. Why? For your protection.

I have long held a theory that as freedoms erode, good men and women will not wish to be engaged in the violation of said freedoms. Therefore they will naturally not want to be a part of law enforcement. This means that, over time, law enforcement will be dominated more and more by those who don't give a damn about your liberty and will abuse it however they see fit.

<comment><USER3> Thankfully law enforcement, ultimately, is responsible to the electorate. This whole thing is our (collective) fault. The American people have gladly exchanged essential freedom for the promise of security from a threat that was never terribly real to begin with.

\- We flocked to suburbs because cities just aren't safe.

\- We turned into a nation of helicopter parents terrified that our children were surely going to be kidnapped at any moment.

\- We elected politicians who promised to be "tough on crime" giving us such gems as mandatory minimum sentencing, huge prison terms for petty crimes, trying 15 year old kids as adults, etc...

\- We massively increased the number of police on our streets.

And we did all of this, despite the fact that statistically we we're actually never in much of anything resembling danger. I remember folks in Cabot Arkansas (where I attended high school for two years) freaking out over a perceived gang problem. It was ridiculous then, but they made sure to hire a few more police officers to keep an eye on it.

Americans have proven to be two things: 1) terrified and 2) really bad at math. Our reporters don't understand statistics and our soccer moms are even worse.

That's why I'm greatly amused about all the fighting we do over national politics. Who cares about Obama... you should be fighting tooth and nail over your mayor. The person who is in charge of your police and ultimately much more likely to impact your freedom.

How many folks have made this an issue locally? I haven't heard a peep here in Denver.

<comment><USER4> Crime wasn't always an imaginary problem in this country. In fact, not too long ago it was a major problem (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States>). Right now we have almost half the level of violent crime and homicide we had about 20 years ago. Some cities, like New York, had even higher crime rates in the 80's and 90's compared to now than the country as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The United States: Land of the free, home of the biggest prison population in the world.

In all seriousness, I wish more USians were aware of how much of the rest of the world views the current state of your nation. I could address this specific point, but I just feel it's irrelevant in light of the much bigger issues. I think that this clip is quite insightful to the prevailing attitude in Britain and much of Europe:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE>

At 3:06, Jimmy Carr says "I'd very much like to say something hilarious, but something must be done." Take note of his tone - it's not the indignation usually aimed at America. There's no sense that he thinks you should know better. It's the same tone he would use to talk about a humanitarian disaster in the developing world. He's just sad. We're describing "slavery by the backdoor" and we're not even angry.

We don't view you as "the evil empire", not any more. We don't hate you, we just don't have the heart to. We pity you. We pity what you have become and what you may yet become. You look to many of us like a punched-out former heavyweight - once great, now just an incoherent wreck, old and infirm before your time.

When hurricane Katrina hit, many of us agreed with Kanye West's sentiment that "George Bush does not care about black people". Five years on, many of us have come to believe that the US is just becoming incapable of managing its own affairs. I'm not sure which is a sadder thing to believe.

Us Brits can empathise to an extent - we used to have an empire on which the sun never set, now we're just a drizzly little island with a few rotten banks and a rubbish football team. Where we can't empathise is that we've always been able to feed our poor and sick and old. Since 1948 we've had a right to a hospital bed, regardless of our means. We used to think that you were unwilling, but now we're not sure whether you're just unable.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704...](http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704913304575370950363737746.html)

<comment><USER6> Meh. I am well aware of how the rest of the world views the U.S., having spent a fair amount of time traveling around it. In Europe I got a sense that a lot of people were rooting for the U.S. to fail, and that those sentiments tended to cloud their otherwise sound judgement. Like for example the girl from Greece I met who swore that 9/11 was a CIA-instigated plot, and said everyone she knew agreed. Or the French guy who was berating America for backing dictatorships in the Mid-East and Africa, while his own government merrily sells them the guns and bombs needed to prolong the oppression. During Bush II I lived in Spain for a time, and the amount of distortions and outright fabrications that appeared in the papers there about things our leaders had said or done never ceased to amaze me.

And then we have the Brits, who never miss a chance to loudly empathize with what it's like to live in an "ex-empire", and boast about NHS--you know, the institution under which my friend waited 13 months to get a knee operation. (That's a long time to be crippled.) Of course, who knows how long that will last, what that hideous budget deficit you're now forced to confront.

The mistake people from other countries always seem to make when it comes to us Americans is that they mistake our politeness for ignorance. We're not blind to our deficiencies, our yours; we're just too polite to go around rubbing them in.

You could learn something from that.

<comment><USER7> Aside from appearing petty ('someone was mean about America, I'll be mean about their country'), I wouldn't raise the issue of healthcare as an example of America doing things right. You have one of the worst healthcare systems in any developed nation!

My wife is American and when we were first married, we had a discussion about where we would live. I didn't want to leave Scotland, so she moved here. Now she would refuse to move back to the US, even after the election of Obama in the US and Cameron here.

America is a deeply confusing and terrifying country to many people. It's a country that doesn't appear to care about its citizens in any meaningful way - and its citizens appear to be largely in favour of this. There are very deep cultural divides between the UK and the US, divides that are easily missed due to the common language and shared history.

In any event, this particular issue is in no way an American one. The same problem of overzealous police reaction to photographers is widely reported in the UK, to the extent of questions being asked in Parliament and the ACPO issuing guidance telling the plod on the beat to stop harassing photographers, which said plod largely ignore, especially in London.

I think it's pretty much inevitable. Our governments are spending so much time pounding out the 'BE AFRAID, BE ALERT' message that any push back against that is perceived as a direct attack, and is treated as such. The answer is to stop the paranoia about terrorists, but neither of our countries new governments seem keen to do that.

<comment><USER4> American culture is very sink-or-swim. There isn't as much cultural demand for a safety net. I attribute this to our cultural memory of the frontier. Europeans think of welfare as a country taking care of its citizens--Americans are more likely to think of it as forcing hardworking, productive people to support those who can't be bothered to work for a living.

Incidentally, it's a misnomer that the US has one of the worse healthcare systems in any developed nation. The US has the single best healthcare system in human history, if you can afford it. Some people from countries with socialized medicine actually come here to have stuff done, since they'd rather pay to travel and have medical care in the US rather than wait in the queue in their own country. What the US lacks is a way of making the full use of that system available to everyone.

<comment><USER8> > The US has the single best healthcare system in human history, if you can > afford it.

It's that _if you can afford it_ that makes it _worst healthcare systems in any developed nation_ in some people's eyes.

Everyone is comparing apples to oranges when it comes to this stuff.

System 1: Everyone has health care but it may be subject to wait-listing which leads to major problems.

System 2: A percentage of the population can't afford basic care but those that can, get exceptional care. Emergency care is typically available to everyone through public hospitals regardless of ability to pay but if you can afford part of it, it has the potential bankrupt you.

The systems reflect cultural bias.

Note: Any system has the potential to become rationed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 3Gs users attempt class action suit - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/04/sensational_lawsuit_accuses_apple_of_turning_iphone_3g_into_ibrick.html

<comment><USER2> 3G not 3Gs

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm all for automatic updates, but all things considered I should be able to downgrade. Right now I simply don't update my phone for a period of time to make sure it doesn't introduce bugs or kill apps I use.

i.e. Pandora worked fantastic on my iPod touch until I updated to ios4 which caused pandora to crash about every ten minutes. Last time I checked the issues is still unresolved, but better.

</comment><comment><USER4> While Apple attempted to offer updates to the core system for much older devices, some other smartphone manufacturers often don't release updates even the base system from the software company have updated that already. See Android phone's 2.2 froyo availability as an example.

What Apple is wrong is to force 3G users to upgrade, given that quite a lot of _new_ features are only available to 3GS and beyond.

Also it is actually possible to downgrade from iOS 4 for 3G models, but it seems to be impossible to restore data to iOS 3.X from the backups of iOS 4.X.

</comment><comment><USER5> I upgraded my old 3G to iOS 4.1 last night and the performance is pretty much on par with that of 3.1.3 (Which I had previously downgraded to from 4.0).

<comment><USER6> It takes some time to degrade, I can only assume Mail, Safari, etc. leak memory over time (or maybe start fragmenting?).

That said, I'm not sure a lawsuit is the appropriate solution.

I'm curious whether iOS uses compressed memory swap techniques (e.g. Linux's compcache or whatever it's currently called) and if not, if anyone has tried such a thing on a jailbroken iPhone 3G. I'd give it a go if I had the time.

<comment><USER7> I switched back from 3.x to 4.1 about a week after 4.1 came out, and the slowness has been almost unnoticable. And I've now been on 4.1 longer than 4.0, so I haven't degraded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I regretted upgrading to 3.x when it came out too. iOS 4.x was even worse.

* I have had iTunes crash apparently from taking too long to load.

* Answering a phone call takes at least 10+ seconds I would estimate. I click answer or slide the bar and it sits there loading the actual phone application.

* Battery life is abysmal if I turn on 3G or Bluetooth. Maybe lucky to make it through the day.

</comment><comment><USER9> About a year ago I got $37.50 from Apple for my wife's iPod Nano (1st gen) which for whatever reason was made out of really soft plastic. It got scratched almost immediately. The lawsuit took on the order of three years IIRC, from start to payout. In other words, all the iPhone 3G owners there: even if this lawsuit against Apple is won, you won't get a cent for your next upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER10> I never upgraded because my 3G is jailbroken and I didn't feel like the hassle, but didn't update 4.1 fix the speed problem? Wouldn't this trash their whole case? The article mentions 4.1 but doesn't mention any of the consequences.

<comment><USER6> 4.1 did improve the situation noticeably, but it's still rather sluggish unless you hard reboot very frequently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we admit now that fragmentation is going to be a problem for everyone and Apple is not immune to it.

<comment><USER12> Well, you could argue that the 4.0 update was an active stance against fragmentation, by rendering all old devices unusable and therefore forcing customers onto a commond new platform: the iPhone 4.

<comment><USER13> You do know that that's the central complaint of the lawsuit? And that had Apple stated publicly that the 3G phones were no longer supported, that would have been just fine. I own multiple apple products and the one thing that's sure to make me contemplate my choices in a less than favorable light is the idea that I can't trust an update not to break functionality.

<comment><USER11> i googled but unable to find link. Can you provide a link where they stated the iphone 3G is no longer supported, they stated features would not be supported but not the phone itself. Major release features of 4.1 was to support 3G.

<comment><USER13> Note the use of the word 'had' in my comment. In normal english usage that represents an 'if' statement.

The english language is a wonderful instrument, too bad there are so many deaf to it's charm.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can HN allow longer title submissions? - <AUTHOR> I've been an HN user for more than 10 years, and remember when the "title" field for submnissions could hold 100 characters. Then it dropped to 90, and for many years the max length has been 80 characters.
The problem I am encountering more and more often is news article titles are getting longer. I believe this is because digital news headlines are no longer tied to legacy print publications (which often require short headlines to fit within a limited physical space on the page) and a desire among news orgs to leverage title keywords to rank higher in search.
While I can edit these headlines down to fit 80 characters, they often lose critical meaning or details. For instance, I just submitted an LA Times article whose original title was:
Newsom's shorter California bullet train plan likely to run out of money before completion
The original title is 90 chars. Removing the governor's name reduces the length to 81 characters. At that point there's no easy fixes aside from removing "shorter" from the title, at which point it's not really clear what plan is being referred to.
I typically submit between 1 and 10 items to HN every week (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ilamont), and have to perform similar edits on many of them. I know I am not alone.
Is there any good reason to continue restricting the headline length for HN submissions? If not, can it be reset to a length more in line with modern digital news styles? <comment><USER2> "Newsom's shorter bullet train plan likely to run out of money before completion" (79 chars)

"CA governor's bullet train plan likely to run out of money before completion" (76 chars)

"California governor's bullet train plan likely under-funded" (59)

> _modern digital news styles_

A lot of modern headlines, even in highly-reputable publications, have been affected by the BuzzFeed full-sentence-clickbait style, which makes it a lot harder to skim for topics you want.

This works well on publications' websites because they have columns, categories, tags, and by-lines that help identify the topic better. HN has none of these, and the host domain next to the title is becoming less and less useful (mostly due to Medium).

</comment><comment><USER3> _California bullet train plan to run out of money_ is more than sufficient to convey what the article is about. It provides more than enough info to decide whether to click on it.

Shorter is always better when you want to attract someone's attention.</comment>


Firefox disabled my extensions - <AUTHOR> http://sergimansilla.com/blog/firefox-disabled-my-extensions/

<comment><USER2> The same happened to me, though I think his point would have made more strongly if he had acknowledged at any point that he was running a beta version. So normal people still have some time (6 weeks or so?) before this is an issue for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will be an issue nevertheless, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anybody still wondering why users are scared to upgrade stuff?

<comment><USER4> Isn't this cat-and-mouse issue between extension vetting and new Firefox versions always present when running Firefox beta? I assumed it was one of the tradeoffs, i.e., parts may be broken...?

<comment><USER5> No. This is a new feature that disables all unsigned extensions. It will be in the next version of the normal Firefox. The setting to allow unsigned extensions will be removed in the version after that (or so I've read).

Chrome has done something similar for a few years now, but (unlike Firefox) Chrome allows white-listing extensions via Group Policy.</comment></comment></comment>