Ask HN: What does breakdown feel like? - <AUTHOR>

Those who've gone through it, how does it feel like?
I am in a situation strange to me; I don't know if it's a breakdown. I actually overworked for past 7 months or so (18 hours on extreme days, 8-10+ on average), and now I can't write code. I don't want to. Something in me has given up something. It's like a ship is stuck in middle of very peaceful sea with no water or wind current whatsoever. I have little money left but I don't care about it. Nothing is motivating me ahead. Learning something new always work as an escape plan for me, but even that is not working. I don't want to play games or read sci-fi or anything that want me to move a finger. I am lying in my bed all day long doing nothing.
What shall I make of this situation? Is this what people call breakdown? Or am I out of fuel for good? I don't see any exit myself; sometime I get frustrated with myself and want to end everything (for a man self is the world). But I don't.
I used to really really love programming; I have spent 70% of my life in front of my computer since I got one of my own (about 5 years ago). It was always fun, I was never tired or bored. About 7 month ago I got a big project (I used to make small apps/websites for pocket money earlier) and I started giving it my all. It brought me even bigger project from same client (also my mentor); I gave it my all too (spent 10+ hours a day on it). And the third project I got from same client is even bigger. For about a two months, I worked on it with full dedication. Then for past month, I started slowing down. But I still pushed. And then suddenly I couldn't think clear. All of a sudden the project wasn't interesting at all. I used to love it when I started. I am physically well now, can think clear. But I still can't code. I don't know why.
I've always loved programming, and the fact that I am not doing it for no reason is killing me. <comment><USER2> That sounds like burnout, and possibly depression. It does get better. I went through a _very_ bad bout of it in 2010 (my last 6 months at the day job prior to quitting was a 90+ hour a week death march) and lost essentially six months after quitting. (I did an honest week of work over the entire interval, and only clearly remember two days of it.) I have had a struggle or two with depression since then but late 2010 through now were the best years of my life, by quite a lot.

I'd encourage you to see a professional, and re-connect with the things you like in the world that aren't working. Also, it was a big surprise to me, but the guys saying Exercise And Diet Matter were actually right all those years. I know your body is saying "Go to the gym? Oh, eff that, there's a perfectly good bed right here." but if you can force yourself to do it every day, even for 15 or 20 minutes to start, it does a world of good.

<comment><USER3> If you like walks, force yourself to go for a 1-hour walk every day for a week. Even better if the walk is together with a friend you can chat with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have gone through the same situation. If you let it go like I did, get worse. Believe it or not, you're going through depression. Things I advise you to do and you will not do:

\- Most importantly, go visit a professional, one who specializes in emotional intelligence. \- Make sports more than half an hour a day every day. \- Switch to a healthy diet, no snuff, no alcochol, and low in sugar. \- Lower the workload or leave it for a few months. \- Give yourself time, and changes of activities, places and people.

By doing these steps you will again be the same. If you need anything you can contact me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

I don't know if I can get professionals who specialise in emotional intelligence here in Bangalore (India). Most psychiatrists I can see online have "drug rehab" like words highlighted.

More physical activity is what I gonna do next (will join a gym next morning). Changing activities is something I wonder how I can do. I spend almost all my time on computer, it has never been a problem until now. And I have changed places a 3 months back. I came from my home to Bangalore dreaming of a city overflowing with tech geeks (although all I could find were people doing their "jobs"). And I don't think I can leave it for few months, I am 100% on my own in this city; in a month I will run out of funds and have to get myself fit for work before that happens.

> If you need anything you can contact me.

Thanks. Your words are enough, I think I am the only one who can do something about anything else I need.

<comment><USER4> Good luck! If I dont misunderstand you, the only thing that you will do is make sport...that doesn't look enough, but if work for you, nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > sometime I get frustrated with myself and want to end everything (for a man > self is the world). But I don't.

Thoughts like this are very worrying. Ease reach out to a friend or family and talk to them. If it's possible please seek meic help for this.

In England you can call your GP. Or you can self refer to your local Mental Health services -- do a wh search for the name of your county and "IAPT" (improved access to psychological therapies).

</comment><comment><USER6> On OSDC '08 there was a lightning talk being held about depression and burnout. As a later step, the Bluehackers.org Group has been established.

This cannot replace the help from a professional but they provide good reads / resources on the subject.

HTH - You're not alone!

[http://bluehackers.org/howto](http://bluehackers.org/howto)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer. I highly appreciate that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> having been recently beset with some really bad life things, i seek solace in my son who is my best friend, inspiration, and reason for living. a few minutes with him, and i am ok for a while. but mostly after being screwed so many times in the past few years by jobs, infosec industry, ... its hard to wake up happy just waiting for the other shoe to drop. constantly looking over my shoulder waiting for something bad to happen is not a fun way to live, but at least i realize the trigger.

this is my own depression and i am going to just put it out there that you have your own depression too. take it one day at a time, get comfort from the little things.

</comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like a matter for a professional. If you've got health insurance there might be a certain amount covered under your plan. I've seen psychologists in the past and it did a world a good. If for no other reason than it helps you understand yourself better.

</comment><comment><USER9> But you're _not_ not doing it for no reason; you have burnout, because you crammed too much of it into too short of a time.

Pace yourself; the race goes not to the swift but those who endure.

Delta the occasional sprint.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure if it's a burnout. I am perfectly sound physically. I had a small period of time when I couldn't think clear, it spanned 2-3 weeks though so may be can't call it small; I barely remember few memories of that time. But it was 3 months back and I snapped out of it as soon as I got physically well and was as productive as I am normally.

Now although I am physically sound, I am unable to concentrate. I can't focus for no apparent physical reason other than this feeling of too bored to live. May be I am actually depressed, and should go get some counselling.

<comment><USER9> "Burnout" applies just as much to the brain as the body... as if they're different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like depression to me, but I'm not a doctor. Go see one.</comment>


Tracking.js – Computer vision library for the browser - <AUTHOR> https://trackingjs.com <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/jeeliz/jeelizAR](https://github.com/jeeliz/jeelizAR)

They seem to be doing a better job.

</comment><comment><USER3> All camera examples are broken.

(GET ERROR )[https://trackingjs.com/bower/tracking.js/examples/[object%20...](https://trackingjs.com/bower/tracking.js/examples/\[object%20MediaStream\]) 404

</comment><comment><USER4> With all the comments about broken on Chrome & Firefox, where does this work?

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't work in Safari. Doesn't work in Firefox. Doesn't work in Chrome.

The last update to the GitHub repo was over a year ago. Yay dead projects on the front page.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious... how does a non-working project rise to the top?

<comment><USER5> People don't bother to look before voting. IMO, HN should at least require clicking through to the actual URL before allowing someone to vote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No worky on Chrome.

<comment><USER8> Not working on Firefox (Linux) either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dead project

<comment><USER10> 'bower install' is a dead give away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> broken in firefox and chrome on windows

</comment><comment><USER12> all examples broken on chrome</comment>


Show HN: Kosmi – Hang out with friends and family online - <AUTHOR> https://kosmi.io <comment><AUTHOR> Been developing this platform for over a year.

It allows you to create virtual rooms where you can chat with room members using webcam and microphone and run realtime apps that include:

\- Screensharing(useful for e.g. Netflix)

\- Cowatching video player

\- SNES and NES Emulators

\- Virtual cardtable

\- Poker with Playmoney

\- Quake 3 in-browser!

\- Synced YouTube player

and many more coming.

<comment><USER2> I would love to know the legal implications of running a service where people are able to stream copyrighted content to others, or to share subscription services like Netflix in violation of its TOS.

<comment><USER3> This is like every other service that supports screen sharing, is it not?

<comment><USER2> Except that _this_ service explicitly says it's for "watching movies or TV shows on Netflix together online."

<comment><USER4> justin.tv almost exclusively was for chatting/watching copyrighted videos/tv shows together online (later rebranded and sold for ~$1B as twitch.tv)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is cool, I'm especially interested in YouTube synching so I can share videos with my daughter when she is at her moms. Also so she can chat with her friends while school is canceled and they can watch stuff together. (hopefully being able to talk to each other too?)

<comment><USER6> I'm surprised I haven't seen this before (or if it's been around, it hasn't been more popular). In person you often show people videos and via podcasts I often hear people haphazardly trying to play videos simultaneously.

<comment><USER7> I created Togethr.TV in 2013 ([https://togethr.tv](https://togethr.tv)). People can watch videos together and chat (text/audio) and some other features. It never took off much unfortunately. I didn't touch the code since some time already but it is still working fine, the site is currently having about 15k monthly users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised that even public rooms require a request to join from the lobby page. Though I also know that direct room links do let you in to the channel which is what you'd be passing around to your friends.

And I was also surprised that when someone sends me a join request, it completely blots my screen out with a modal. Seems like this would be very annoying if you were actually running a channel. I think that needs some attention. For example, am I ruining someone's experience by constantly sending them join requests?

Online hangout was always a dream of mine ever since my friends and I used socks to tie the home phone around our heads so we could talk while playing Unreal Tournament online together. Always cool to see people trying to work on this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice work! How are things working so far on iPads?

\- "Create a room" should be actionable on the sidebar

\- Don't know how niche this is these days, but I would love to see Freeze Tag supported in Arena: [https://openarena.fandom.com/wiki/ModCompat/Ultra_Freeze](https://openarena.fandom.com/wiki/ModCompat/Ultra_Freeze)

</comment><comment><USER10> I was just reading about On-nomi (オン飲み) - drinking online. Was a Boing Boing post at [https://boingboing.net/2020/03/13/on- nomi.html](https://boingboing.net/2020/03/13/on-nomi.html) Perhaps this needs to be added for us mandatory-work-from-home people can have a beer later with co-workers.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great. Been looking for a way to create a "virtual water cooler" for our team as we move 40+ people remote. Does the room always exist, and people can hop in and out? What's the business model? IE how can we pay for the service/support the mission?

<comment><USER12> We've been using [https://team.video](https://team.video) for our calls and working sessions in rooms that we hop in and out

<comment><USER11> Oh yeah. And the room never closes, right?

<comment><USER12> No, it never closes because is a URL that you can always come back. We stay in there working for hours, sometimes with multiple screen sharing at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love this! Especially the fact that you can launch an OpenArena server so easily! Played a lot of Quake 3 Arena during my college days. Hadn't heard of OpenArena before. Thanks!

EDIT: Is there a way to store and load a config file? Or have the binds stored permanently?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Unfortunately the config file is not export/importable right now but I might add support for that later!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of rabb.it. Very disappointed to see a link to Discord and lack of link to source. I was hoping this was going to be free software, but now I'm thinking it's unlikely. Playing OpenArena in the browser is an interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> Are you planning any features to help with online teaching (e.g. whiteboard support)?

<comment><USER10> Really timely question with so many school systems being closed down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool idea especially for people living in different country than their families.

Will it remain free?

What is the privacy policy? Will my data (video/audio) be kept on the servers? I couldn't find such info in the website.

<comment><AUTHOR> The video and audio is all p2p. It never touches our servers.

Text chat is kept on the server but you can permanently delete all your messages any time from your profile settings.

As for remaining free, I plan to keep the current featureset free!

<comment><USER16> Thank you man :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tried it now with a non-tech savvy person.

* Mobile version hid the chat and everything.

* It was not clear how to start video chat.

* Audio wasn't working at all, even after 10 minutes of trying to get it to work (permissions were granted). At this point I'm not sure if it's a feature or a bug.

* Half of the apps aren't available.

I'm sorry, but in the current state it is not usable for me, or anyone I know, at all. Compared to whereby, hangouts, etc I'm not sure which currently existing features it really offers that are better.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry to hear your bad experience. contact me on discord and I'll try to help you work out those issues!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm always disappointed when things like this aren't partially or fully open sourced.

Makes me wonder what the profit model is, and when the thing is going to die forever.

<comment><USER5> I'm impressed when I see people actually build something that they believe in, rather than just work for the man.

This looks to me like more than someone could build in their free time while they work for a soul sucking corporation. I mean, maybe, but it's not possible for everyone. I hope he or she figures out a way of making a living at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> awesome work!

how are you funding this? what are the backend requirements on your part to run this site?

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks slick, seems to work real well on mobile too. Good work!

I noticed when creating a private room there's no auth, would it be possible to have something simple even like a shared password so you need something more than just the link to join? Also would it be possible to make it request audio and/or video access by default when joining, rather than making it a user action?

<comment><USER21> What's wrong with a link and no password?

Seems like the rooms are meant to be fairly disposable, so any situation where you would normally "change the room password", you instead just change rooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I suggest removing the NES/SNES emulator part as it will cause Nintendo to send you a Cease and Desist letter. Or probably more.

<comment><USER23> If he's not hosting copyrighted ROMs himself, then it should be fine. Sony couldn't beat Bleem! in court:

[https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video- games/is...](https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video- games/issues/issue_117/2295-Best-Little-Emulator-Ever-Made)

<comment><USER22> Emulators live in a very grey legal territory.

They are the product of reverse engineering of proprietary schematics/designs/programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great idea especially with a lot of people staying home in light of COVID-19. I've been considering ways to stay connected with friends and family now that I'm spending more time alone.

I've been considering doing regular Google Hangouts with open invites to make hanging out feel more spontaneous.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is pretty cool - I'm wondering what like, makes it different than just having a zoom call or something on discord? I can tell it's different I just don't know how to articulate it and I'm curious how you'd differentiate it from other ways to hang out online?

Looks really cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say the difference lies in the ability to start interactive apps in addition to chatting/communicating

<comment><USER26> That deck of cards thing looks awesome. Probably good to use even if you are in the same physical room!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been hosting a YouTube trippy video room for 30 minutes now. My only suggestion is to kill the pop over modal every time somebody wants to join. Kills your ability to interact as the modal can pop up anytime

Should just let anyone pop in without the need to accept every individual person

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning to add the ability to skip the need to request to join public rooms soon!

<comment><USER8> They're talking about how you, the room host, get an entire "user wants to join" modal that disrupts the whole UI every time someone wants to join the room. You should just add requests to the sidebar or something, not use a modal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is very cool! Tried it now with my friends. The main complaint is that a grid view would be better than vertical (or horizontal) bars. Also would be nice to have done indication which anonymous animal is which video. Thanks for this!

</comment><comment><USER28> I noticed your contact is in a discord channel and my first thought was how this is differentiated from discord. If people are actually contacting you on discord and this is "installation free", why not make that contact via your own service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. the only reason i list discord as a contact is because my platform doesn't offer private messages yet.

For anything that doesn't need to be private you can simply ask around on the public chat on the platform :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thanks. This looks cool.

A question: when trying to play SNES games, it requires an .sfc file. This is for japanese games for the SNES.

Is is possible to make it run .smc files ? those are american versions, much easier to find, with english text by default.

<comment><USER30> SFC and SMC files are usually identical. It's just a different choice in file extension.

"SMC" comes from Super MagiCom, a floppy-based cart copying device for backup/piracy. The original .smc files produced by the device contained a 512 byte header. Since it's pretty easy to detect and ignore most emulators do. If not, it's easily removed.

Because .smc is in reference to effectively a piracy device, the new preferred file extension is .sfc and has been for a while now.

(In case it is not obvious, the file format is nominally just a raw dump of the ROM on the cartridge with no added headers.)

(Note 2: if you are looking for a way to run homebrew/patches/etc on a real SNES/SFC nowadays, sd2snes is probably the absolute best option.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's a really bad name for the Arab world :P

<comment><USER32> What does it mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's bit funny - "kosmi" means "hair" (plural) in bulgarian, actually bodyhair. Just sayin ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> Great tool; watched videos with a couple pals who haven't been in the same room together for a decade!

</comment><comment><USER35> Do you host your own server for brokering connections between users? How do you manage it?

</comment><comment><USER36> We tried this tonight for some Jackbox games and it worked great. Thanks so much!

</comment><comment><USER37> Nice.

On an iPad screen sharing did not work for me. Not that is was expecting that it would.

</comment><comment><USER38> Vel gert, til hamingju! / Well done, congratulations!

<comment><AUTHOR> takk!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Seems like a lite, streamlined Second Life to me.

</comment><comment><USER40> Are you utilising webrtc to achieve this?

</comment><comment><USER41> Reminds me of The Sierra Network.

</comment><comment><USER42> this could get extremely popular as a rabb.it replacement</comment>


Ask HN: who's hiring computer science interns summer 2014? - <AUTHOR>

My sister is in her fourth year of computer science in a canadian university and is looking for a challenging coop position. <comment><USER2> At Khan Academy, we are! Check out [https://www.khanacademy.org/careers/interns](https://www.khanacademy.org/careers/interns) for more info.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! I'll point her to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know Amazon hires for their internship program from Canadian universities, and I imagine Microsoft and Google do the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, but it's too late for her to apply to summer. She was too busy with her projects due to heavy course load and so didn't really apply.</comment></comment>


The Hideous Name (1985) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/the-hideous-name.pdf <comment><USER2> Follow-up by Russ Cox: [https://research.swtch.com/name](https://research.swtch.com/name).

<comment><USER3> The lambda calculus has got to be one of the worst notations in CS. It's taught as if it was a timeless given, when the reality is that the men who defined it didn't care about how easy it would be to read or learn. They were only interested in deeper mathematical issues, so the lambda calculus syntax is just a minimum viable tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I never liked this essay because it attacked a problem from the wrong perspective. Uniformity of reference is a desirable goal (I'm a Lisp programmer, how could I say otherwise? :-) but should not become a fetish. Not all names have equivalent semantics.

In the case of email, the "unix" approach described requires a lot of knowledge on the part of the user: hence foovax!kremvax!ourgateway!mymachine!you requires a hell of a lot of network connectivity knowledge! While saying "mit.edu will know what to do with this MIT address or else will let me know" is much easier and meets the "cloud" promise of the original 1970s TCP papers, even if the latter was talking solely about routing. The baroque (and transitional) email addresses described are actually appropriate: "I know some extra routing info and though I can't do it, SU-CSLI.ARPA can" (amusingly I used to use that very machine!)

And the same is true of the filesystem naming; while I agree that the VMS naming architecture was a bit baroque, the (optional) explicit version info was available to everyone, as if you could refer to a particular git revision from any program.</comment>


Google Is Eating Apple's Ecosystem for Lunch - <AUTHOR> https://char.gd/blog/2018/google-is-eating-apples-ecosystem-for-lunch <comment><USER2> Vendor lock in through making products working together is not only present in Apple's ecosystem but in Google's and also Facebook .

It looks like they changed their ecosystem to use Google Products because they have more feature that they want. All of these decisions are valid. To be honest the biggest issue with Google is the support and longevity of the software that they create. On Apple it seems like they are slowly moving to more of a service oriented platform and are attempting to overhaul it but at the cost of their Prosumers.

I really hope that eventually in the "post screen era" that we don't have to buy devices that are owned by one company.

<comment><USER3> I don't see facebook surviving long term, they have close to no hardware presence (with the exception of oculus) and all their products are constantly challenged in one way or another. Very few people I know actually use facebook and even WhatsApp adoption is pretty low and inconsistent. In other words none of their products are essential or irreplaceable the way Google and Apple products are to some people.

<comment><USER4> _Very few people I know actually use facebook and even WhatsApp adoption is pretty low and inconsistent._

If very people you know use Facebook and Facebook has over 210 million users in the United States ([https://www.statista.com/statistics/398136/us-facebook- user-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/398136/us-facebook-user-age- groups/)) isn't that the definition of "anecdote is not data"?

If you look at the daily usage numbers of Facebook and Instagram, the data doesn't support your conclusion.

If Apple one day said they weren't going to allow Facebook on their phone, who do you think it would hurt more - Facebook or Apple (ignoring the fact that the FB experience is a lot better in the browser.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This horrifies me!

Can't think of anything I would want less than one of the big 5 US companies spying on me everywhere all the time.

<comment><USER6> What about headcrabs attaching to your face?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I wouldn't want that either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I clicked "flag" because this strikes me exactly as an unmarked advertisement.

<comment><USER9> I agree, this feels and reads like an ad. Also, the word "Amazon" appears zero times and this is an article about voice assistants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All of my devices are Apple devices. A crappy Dell laptop and my disasstifaction with Windows led me to switch to Apple 12 years ago. I loved the Mac operating system and that momentum got me to buy iPads and their phones. I use Apple Music. I use iDrive.

I don't use Siri. Apple Maps sucks and as a result I don't use CarPlay. Apple Music search sucks. There's a bunch of thing now in Apple's ecosystem that don't "just work". More and more I find myself telling my wife that Apple is slipping. Privacy concerns are the only thing keeping off of Google's system but it won't be long before the hostile nature of Apples system forces me to abandon ship.

I think Apple ought to spend a year concentrating on fixing the increasing number of annoyances and stop doing stupid things like keeping Google maps off Car Play. What's the point of adding features that don't "just work"?

<comment><USER11> I'm in the same boat, and resolved never to buy a new iPhone again since from a consumer perspective I believe the premium cost is unjustified. I bought my most recent iPhone on Swappa but I'm getting closer to the point where I leave Apple altogether.

Last week I had to connect my iPhone to my computer (despite wireless sync being enabled), use iTunes to copy audiobook files to my phone, and then for some reason I can only access them in the iBooks app on the phone, despite them not being available in the app of the same name on my Mac. It reminded me of Bill Gates' famous MovieMaker rant.

One more thing...if I want to watch video files on my iOS device, why do I need to use an obscure app called TV? Would it make sense if I had to use an app called Radio to listen to audio files?

<comment><USER12> There are tons of simple ways to get those files into any video or book reader you want. Using iTunes you could have loaded them into the app if your choice as well. Granted it would be nice if iTunes had defaults for which apps what files went to, but this is entirely eliminated using the files app, airdrop, cloud services etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google photos is one of the most amazing and useful apps I've ever used. Being able to search on the contents of a photo is the first real 21st app that I've run across, in my opinion.

However I'll never move to Android. I've tried it and it just isn't as good as iOS. I'm not saying iOS is great but it's ceetainly better in my opinion.

Things like FaceTime are very easy for my parents and relatives to understand vs something like Skype or google hangouts. Photostream sharing is also a very easy and intuitive way for me to share pics of the kids with my relatives as well.

The biggest thing for me, though, was the fact that iMessage and iPhone was uncrackable by the fbi. It's a very public fight they had to keep our data secure.

</comment><comment><USER14> An interesting take on Google vs Apple. I would have loved to hear at least something about Alexa. I'm a hardcore Apple and Amazon user (plenty of Google too). I see myself staying imperfectly hybrid for awhile. (Edit:) the observation of post-screen being a way to be connected but not distracted was a real revelation. Would love that....

</comment><comment><USER15> Amazon's Echo is far ahead of Google Home in sales. They're trying to get voice in everything. Many companies were showing off Alexa built into their products at CES.

Voice as a user interface is almost here:

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user- inte...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user-interface-is- almost-here/)

How long before a significant amount of search is simply asking some device a question and being told the answer?

<comment><USER16> Is Alexa launched for non US? European market is pretty big and needs support for non English languages (Google home is already launched in a bunch of European countries).

Similar to Apple with the iPhone, Amazon dominance on voice interfaces might end up being only true for the US market.

<comment><USER17> Apple iPhone does really well in Asia. Not sure where you think dominance is only true for the USA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, we all know that the google services are pretty convenient, but the problem is much less their functionality as the things 'you have to do' in order to use them, like:

\- load all your images on their servers

\- load all your documents on their servers

\- load all your mails on their servers

\- load all your contacts on their servers

\- load all your appointments on their servers

\- load all your...

That way it is completely non-transparent what they are doing with your data. I mean for every app on our smartphone we have a detailed list of permissions, but for google its just 'take it all'?!?

<comment><USER19> There are detailed user agreements for photos, drive and calendar that are comparable to other services, and agencies salivating at the thought of winning a class action privacy lawsuit. Google has to be pretty careful, because all it takes is one whistleblower and even Donald Trump won't be able to evict them from the global news cycle.

And it's not like Apple's any different here, or like it's realistic to try and do these sorts of things from local resources.

I've been working on moving a lot of my data and services off the cloud and it's very hard even if you know what you're doing. You need to be able to build a home lab, have some solution for connectivity to your home (most people have never heard of ngrok, dyndns simply doesn't work well for many use cases), and spend lots of money on storage. This isn't like renting more expensive cloud computing services, the cost is below $25USD a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yeah, my "workflow" when I get in the car:

1: "hey Siri, open google" -> opens google app

2: "ok google, navigate to [name of destination] -> opens it in google maps...

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't disagree that technically that Google is better at this kind of stuff than Apple, but "millions" of devices is vague. Google doesn't release numbers. How many has it sold?

Everything he says is technically possible, but how many people are both technical enough to set this stuff up and care enough to even bother? I know people who have smart speakers, but most of them just use them for music.

</comment><comment><USER21> Almost all of the magical things described are exactly why I will never own one of these. Google makes money off of knowing everything about you. Orwell's "1984" is a bit ridiculous, but with respect to technology, we are almost there. At least Apple still makes money off of selling things, I think there is at least a better chance of privacy with them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can I buy into the google software ecosystem + Google Home without trading in my MBP/iPhone/iPad for a Chromebook/Pixel/Nexus?

<comment><USER23> You can use the search engine, Gmail, YouTube, Youtube TV, Google Maps, Google Chrome and Google Analytics all on an iPhone or Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here we go again...

Ok a couple of quick quotes:

"I say 'OK Google, goodbye when I leave the house to turn off the lights" k. I just turn off the lights. Why do I need a Google Home to do that? Why can't I do that with Homekit or Echo?

" grew frustrated by Apple's terrible iCloud pricing, and how seemingly great Google Photos appeared to be"

iCloud's pricing isn't terrible, it's just fine. They don't mine my photos and data, and I pay $2.99/month for 200gb. Some people don't understand that "free" photo storage isn't actually free.

"First, Google Assistant alongside Google Home is wild. When you own a Pixel, saying OK Google at home activates your speakers and your phone"

 _yawn_

"Apple's direction, for better or for worse, is to lock you into a single track and make it agonizing to use anything but the official services"

Really?

Look, I think the Pixel 2 is a great phone and Google has some great products, even if I disagree with their business practices, but this article is over- the-top bad.

</comment><comment><USER25> Has anyone here tried using Purism? They're claiming that they provide 'high- quality privacy, security, and freedom focused computers and software.' They have their own OS and software. I'm tempted to buy one of their laptops and put on an order for their upcoming mobile phone. Does anyone have any experience with this company and its products? Do you lose a lot when you move from the evil 5?

[https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/)

<comment><USER26> Your comment has nothing to do with Google, Apple, ecosystems, lunch, or assistants. It's difficult to interpret it as anything but spam or trolling.</comment></comment>


Waymo's 461 Questions for Levandowski - <AUTHOR> https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3891211-Waymo-Uber-Docket-835-Waymo-Q-s-to-Levandowski.html#document/p3 <comment><USER2> Would be a better read if there were no redacted parts :P</comment>


How would you commercialize my startup, Gifty.co.nz? - <AUTHOR>

I put together Gifty.co.nz for a friend's wedding, but a lot of others have already used it and found it helpful. So I'm planning to commercialize it, probably through businesses (or shopping malls or whatever) rather than through individuals.
Any thoughts? If Gifty were your startup, how would you commercialize it?
Also, as most of you are U.S.-ites, is the New Zealand .co.nz domain off-putting? (I've tried finding more out about the squatted-on domain Gifty.com, but I don't know where to start trying to acquire that -- anyone have an experience there?) <comment><USER2> I would implement product feeds from retailers (available from the big affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Linkshare, Share-a-Sale, etc). You would earn a commission on sales generated through these products. Since the model is about generating purchases, it seems to make perfect since to get a piece of that transaction. I am not sure, as a user, that I would pay to maintain a list because there are similar free options available on the web (thinking mainly about wedding registries like weddingchannel.com).

Get the .com if you want to have universal acceptance of the brand. A large percentage of the population assumes that every website is a .com, so if you stick with the .co.nz you will essentially be delivering free traffic to the gifty.com domain owner (since many people will just use the .com out of habit).

Its likely that the domain squatter will want more than you are willing to pay for the domain. You are best off just spending a few hours on the domain registrar of your choice trying to find an alternative name that is descriptive and available.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the useful comments.

The main difference between Gifty and traditional gift registries is that with gift registries you're tied to a particular store, say "Bed, Bath & Beyond". With Gifty you can add gifts to your list from whatever store. I'm biased, but I think this is a fairly big advantage.

Actually, I'm probably more keen to capture the NZ market at this stage, but you're probably right about .com's for universal appeal.

<comment><USER2> My pleasure. The only follow up point I would make is that if you decide to expand beyond NZ and have built the brand about the localized extension, then you may have some headaches to deal with down the road. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It might work on a large scale in conjunction with shopping malls. Or better yet, in conjunction with many specialty retailers.

Typically, in the U.S. people use wedding registries from stores. They go to a store and are given a scanner and scan the things they want. Then they tell people what stores they are registered at, and people sign in and get a list. they then pick something and when they purchase it (either online or at the store) they just hand the teller the barcode and the gift is automatically removed from the list. No chance of four toasters.

Naturally, this mans people register at large, well known stores, so their friends across the country will have somewhere to go to get them a gift. It makes no sense to register at a tiny store if many of your friends from back home or college can never get there to purchase a gift because it is far away.

So, in the U.S., breaking into the wedding/babyshower market might be hard, unless you can come up with a unique way to compete.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note to others: if you're asking people to check out your site, please make the title a link or at the very least post a link so we don't have to do it ourselves.

Link: <http://gifty.co.nz/>

</comment><comment><USER3> What does "without doubling up" mean? Is this like a wedding registry where you can all chip in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yes, that isn't the clearest, is it? I mean "without buying doubles of things for the wedding couple." Like three toasters.

I'm thinking about the multiple-people-chipping-in thing, but I haven't implemented that yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are plenty of sites that let you make a wedding registry for free. You seem to have the same service, but you are charging $30 for it. I think in order to commercialize, you would need to offer something more valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, there are quite a few free ones. I did a fair bit of hunting 6 months ago, and I have yet to find one that's free, good-looking, and doesn't require a big sign-up process for the guests. (If you can point me to some I've missed, fire away.)

So I figured I'd try for good-looking and not requiring the sign-up process, and make it _inexpensive_. :-)

Edit: something that makes me believe I'm not too far off is that plenty of people have already been quite willing to pay the NZ$30 to use Gifty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found the user interface prevented me from even making a list. I'll stick to the pastebin for making simple lists, or emacs, or google spreadsheets, or a piece of paper...

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? I'm very interested to know how the UI prevented you from starting a list. Do you mean a bug or a useability issue? Please explain, and if there's an issue there, I'll fix it.

The problem with pastebins / Google spreadsheets / etc for wedding lists is that 1) they look icky and not at all wedding-ish, and 2) they're quite techie instead of being tailored for wedding guests.

<comment><USER4> You require "NZ $30" for the service of creating a list, and sharing it with my friends. You also require filling out 8 different fields before people can even see what the UI for list-making is like. That's a pretty high barrier before the user even knows what you are offering.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's quite possible I'm unclear, but I made it so you can start a list and try it out for free ... you only have to pay when you want to share it with your guests. Also, you can try out the demo list as much as you want (either as the bride or groom, or as a guest).

In short, you can try it out with one click ("demo list"). What do you think I can improve on to make that clearer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> .co.nz is very offputting

Giftyapp.com is available. Some other alternatives as well that beat using .co.nz

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious why it's off-putting. Is New Zealand that bad a place? :-) Or does it just strike non-NZers as parochial?

<comment><USER7> Speaking as someone who owns a .tv, anything other than .com is just a bad idea. People just don't understand there are things other than .com.</comment></comment></comment>


Origins of using "so" as a sentence opener - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2010/06/17/origins-of-using-so.html

<comment><USER2> Started noticing that at HP in Corvallis in the 90s, must have spread northward back then.</comment>


Show HN: Helping Canadians find homes around good schools/neighbourhoods - <AUTHOR> https://getinsightico.com/# <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

After months of customer development and prototyping, we've decided to build an online real estate marketplace for Canadian families to find the perfect home.

We've just launched our MVP and would love to get your feedback on the app.

Thanks!</comment>


Guthrie's One Trial Theory - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Ray_Guthrie#One_trial_theory <comment><USER2> Is it just me or is the article terribly written? It reads like it was the work of a single high-school age enthusiast of its subject:

"His simple nature carried into his teachings where he took great pride in working with and teaching students."

<comment><USER3> A lot of wikipedia is terribly written.

The particular sentence that you point out was written in 2009 by Nmsawyer who was the first person to fully flesh out an article on Guthrie. This was their only edit to wikipedia, so it very well could have been some school assignment.</comment></comment>


Gates' Review of Academically-Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Education/Academically-Adrift?WT.mc_id=11_01_2012_Adrift_tw&WT.tsrc=Twitter

<comment><USER2> Can someone give this a meaningful title? Like perhaps, "Bill Gates comments on the state of higher education" ?

I think this is a bot produced post...</comment>


The Bullshit Machine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@umairh/the-bullshit-machine-df95646d0383

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to figure out if this was purposefully meant to be ironic.

</comment><comment><USER3> Boredom is a problem of depth and duration.</comment>


The most recommended startup books of all time - <AUTHOR> https://www.daolf.com/posts/25-best-startup-books <comment><USER2> Great, another artificial list of Amazon affiliate links (tag=daolf-20).

He submits it _again_ 3 hours later[0] wrapped in a tweetstorm.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338389)</comment>


Twitter drops lawsuit, saying summons has been withdrawn - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/twitter-lawsuit-idUSL1N1HF13U <comment><USER2> > The Justice Department, which defends federal agencies in court, declined to > comment. The Homeland Security Department, which issued the summons, had no > immediate comment.

I hate that these kind of cases almost always end up getting the silent treatment. I'm not an American, but I think governmental institutions and agencies should be bound by law to provide an answer to the public for some of their actions, and I think this is such a case. It is important that people get to know why the government wanted this information and who is responsible for issuing the order in the first place, but I guess that's never gonna happen when politicians and officials doesn't want to answer for their actions like the rest of the people has to do.

<comment><USER3> I know we'd all prefer a heartfelt apology when the government beuracy mistreats us, but dropping it isn't such a bad thing.

The worst thing that can happen is that they don't ever reconsider things, never back down, and they dig in even harder every confrontation no matter the circumstances.

All in all, I think the outcome is on the good side of the spectrum.

<comment><USER4> Well, dropping it may or may not be a bad thing, but it's really the only option that Twitter had anyway.

If the government withdrew the summons, and Twitter went ahead with their suit, the case would have been mooted by the summons withdrawal anyway, and would have been dismissed.

They could potentially amend the suit for damages to recoup the cost of compliance with an erroneous and arbitrary action, but given qualified immunity, it would be a _very_ high bar indeed, and would almost certainly set the wrong kind of precedent (which is to say that it would reinforce existing precedent.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Needless to say the Streisand effect[1] hit hard here. The account[2] had apparently under 40K followers before all of this; now it clocks north of 160K followers.

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

[2] [https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis](https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis)

<comment><USER6> There is no way they didn't see that one coming and if there was they are even more incompetent than they seem.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14058290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14058290)

If I could predict that so could just about everybody else.

So, obviously they won't be trying this particular avenue again, is there a list of such accounts?

<comment><USER7> Here's a list, though I don'tk now how maintained it is: [http://www.core77.com/posts/60230/Heres-a-List-of-All-the- US...](http://www.core77.com/posts/60230/Heres-a-List-of-All-the-US-Govts- Rogue-Twitter-Accounts-Fighting-Trumps-Crackdown-on-Science)

<comment><USER6> Thank you.

I checked all of them quickly, there are a few duds in them but most seem legit, but quite a few are not too active (last tweet a while ago). So likely that list is not actively maintained but it's a good starting point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A bit of a non-story but I felt obliged to follow up after the initial discussion attracted more interest than I expected yesterday.

<comment><USER6> This is actually an excellent service. Many times I see some news item come by and then months later I find myself wondering whatever came of it. At least in this case there is some follow-up, plenty of times there is no follow-up at all. The people consuming the media have a short attention span, but the media themselves also have a short attention span.

There ought to be a 'google news' like facility that you could go to in order to see what came of something that was in the news. We could call it dejanews ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events) sort-of manages that, but also highlights the limitations of the linear/textual.

I have a vision of a better way to organize information for the 21st century and beyond, but alas this comment box is too small to contain it.

<comment><USER6> > but alas this comment box is too small to contain it.

At the lower right there is a little triangle that you can use to drag it larger ;)

<comment><USER8> There actually _is_ a size limit to HN comments.

That said a link to elsewheere can work as well.

<comment><USER9> To both you and jacquesm, I may be reading too much into it but that sounded like a riff on the famous last part of Fermat's Last Theorem.

 _" It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers._

 _I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain. "_

<comment><USER6> Of course it was a riff on that. No need to spoil the joke by explaining it (twice, at that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This case reminds of what Turkey has become under Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Knowing how these things go, this guys never stop. They failed this time. Next time, they'll try harder until insulting the president becomes a criminal offence. It won't happens all at once, but we're heading in that direction.

By the way, The Turkish govt will come after you, no matter what country you live in, if you dare insult their leader.

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of the FBI backing down in the San Bernardino iPhone case... like, we tried a bully tactic, we got called on it, let's back down to avoid any legal precedent being set.

Tho IANAL so, not sure if there is the same sort of legal precedent issues involved here?

</comment><comment><USER12> Why would Twitter need to file a lawsuit? Couldn't they simply not comply and wait for the government to file a lawsuit? And isn't the latter what happened with Apple and the encrypted iPhone?

<comment><USER13> Maybe this solves the matter more quickly. Also gets it out to the public, who they expect to be on their side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still left wondering why they were so interested in this one particular account. It seems like there has to be more to the story than they will ever let be known.

Maybe they really did have the evil intent of attempting to chill all criticism of the government, but there is so much of it everywhere, could that have really been effective?

Or was it more to do with the appearance of this one twitter account being from someone on the inside?

Guess we'll never really know.

<comment><USER15> > Or was it more to do with the appearance of this one twitter account being > from someone on the inside?

That's the best theory I've come up with: given the general panic about leaks and that agency's particular aura of entrenched us-vs-them thinking it seems likely that there's a serious effort to find out whether an employee is behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I envy these large companies. If they get an unfair, unconstitutional, or just unlawful "request" from the government they can fight back with their legal counsel.

The rest of us? Good luck staying out of jail.

</comment><comment><USER17> Posted a few hours ago here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14062305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14062305)</comment>


Sequoia Capital Hires Yahoo's Jess Lee as First Woman U.S. Investing Partner - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-20/sequoia-capital-hires-yahoo-s-jess-lee-as-first-woman-u-s-investing-partner <comment><USER2> This is just great.

I have a couple of mutual friends with Jess Lee from my time at Stanford, and no one from back in the day thought she was exactly the type to become a venture capitalist.

The rest of her story is probably more well-publicized: choosing a PM job at Google as opposed to an engineering job at Intuit, turning from a No. 1 Polyvore fan to its CEO who led its acquisition by Yahoo! And now, she's the first (honestly, I am surprised that she's the first) US investing partner at Sequoia.

There are many things I am not particularly fond of about Silicon Valley, but her well-deserved ascent in the valley embodies so much of the positive qualities about Silicon Valley.</comment>


Connect to #openerp, #odoo in your application with ERPpeek - <AUTHOR> http://wirtel.be/posts/en/2014/06/13/using_erppeek_to_discuss_with_openerp/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, If you are using OpenERP, Odoo, I need your feedback to improve this series. Thank you so much.

Stephane</comment>


Why Segment Chose Go, gRPC, and Envoy to Build Their New Config API - sahin-boydas https://stackshare.io/nzoschke/decisions/101229315381856666 <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. There's a lot more to say about this stack, particularly learnings of grpc and envoy over 6 months. But overall I think the service framework and service proxy pattern is really powerful.

<comment><USER2> I would love to hear how you are managing protofiles across repositories. Do you have a central repository for protofiles? It's something we're trying to figure out with our GRPC implementation.

<comment><USER3> This is something I've pondered myself, but haven't got a chance to play around with. My idea was simply to integrate it with make (or whatever build tool/script you prefer) where it pulls the .proto file from master in git unless you specify a branch. The downside is that you aren't versioning the protoc file with the client.

It's probably best to separate the proto file for server and client and treat it as a dependency.

If you're using a mono-repo the solution is possibly a little simpler.

<comment><USER4> I recently built something like this: [https://github.com/reverbdotcom/protopkg](https://github.com/reverbdotcom/protopkg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work in a small shop, much "behind the times", and recently tried introducing gRPC. It went okay. The problem is it was a hard sell and for our limited needs, a lot of gRPC's features weren't something we didn't happily solve with REST. Some of the other more complex features that REST didn't support were things we didn't feel we needed. All together, gRPC was a big burden for me to push, with little payoff for people. I think I was the only one that liked it, and even I disliked parts of it.

So before pulling the switch too far, I decided to take a step back and assess with benefits we _all_ got from gRPC. Mainly it was Protobuf spec, RPC design _(ie not REST verbs and whatnot)_ , and code generation.

Because those were the things we all agreed upon, I went with Twirp[0]. It's been a great experience so far. The rollout is just a bit ahead of where our gRPC was, and it's been mostly effortless.

The most effortless thing? I've got an _(internal)_ API user switching from the old REST API to the proto RPC spec, and all they're changing is the URL and a few field naming schemes. It's still JSON for them. They're not generating code, they're not doing anything. It all "just works", which is pretty impressive.

TL;DR: We love simpler options that let us gain the benefits of Protobufs, without the complexity of gRPC when we don't need it.

[0]: [https://blog.twitch.tv/twirp-a-sweet-new-rpc-framework- for-g...](https://blog.twitch.tv/twirp-a-sweet-new-rpc-framework-for- go-5f2febbf35f)

<comment><USER6> I work on GRPC. Twirp is serious competitor to GRPC due to being easier to use (as you noticed) and gets most of the benefits just by using Protobuf. It's a problem for us because it's hard to explain the value added.

For me, the reason to use GRPC is because there is a very good story about the boring details of networking. The stuff that would make other programmers eyes glaze over but are nonetheless important, has basically been solved by GRPC. What happens when the connection gets dropped but you haven't sent the RPC yet? Does it try to find another server to send it to? Does it time out? What happens if the DNS entries change after you connect? Does it even use all the addresses that DNS returned? If the connection has been idle for for 30 minutes, does it keep it around or shut it down? How does it even know if the connection is good after being idle so long? Home routers have a bad habit of breaking connections due to their NAT.

For most of these problems, TCP and UDP only gives you the tools to solve them, but don't do so out of the box. Coming back to Twirp, I don't recall seeing these things addressed in their code, (except what Go's net and http library already provide). If you don't care about those networking details (and it's completely legitimate if you don't, some people don't need to), then I think Twirp's API is much more pleasant to use, and still gets you 80% of the benefit of GRPC.

<comment><USER7> Grpc is _the_ enterprise ready and high-performance rpc infrastructure, I cannot believe Google still cannot figure out the right pitch.

There isn't anything in the world that can match grpcs features and still perform at the same level, plus Google's decades of large scale use.

Guys, I am so disappointed at how Google push it's internal technology. People won't come to you without pitching, be smart...

<comment><USER8> PM for gRPC here. Feedback received! :) What would you like to see us do more of?

<comment><USER9> Unrelated to the above comment, but could you all please maintain an Ubuntu PPA with binary builds? We're trying to use gRPC at my shop in C++ and the build is a huge pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This might be a dumb question, but why translate REST to gRPC and not expose the gRPC services directly?

<comment><USER11> Browsers don't speak grpc natively. There is a separate spec for browser support, but it's a very new project [https://github.com/grpc/grpc- web/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/grpc/grpc- web/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Loved the article and no criticisms towards it, but hate all the highlighted keywords. Made it really hard to scan the page because the grey blobs just grab my eyes and won't let go.

</comment><comment><USER8> PM for gRPC here. Thank you for writing this up! Do you folks secure inter service RPCs in some way? eg mTLS? How do you see your stack evolving over time?

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious how you're doing authorization in Envoy. Is it a JWT-based httpfilter?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

We use the envoy authz filter.

For every incoming request envoy first calls out to a custom auth check service with all the request metadata like path and http headers.

The auth service can return a "fail" response which indicates to not forward the original request any further. Or it can return a "pass" response plus data to add to the original request headers.

Docs here:

[https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/configuration/ht...](https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/configuration/http_filters/ext_authz_filter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am getting an application error on page load. Can't load page.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using lots of Go lately.

In analytics space, for example, we built end points in Go which collect data and post it to Bigquery or Redshift.

Helping startup create their data pipelines.

We use Go everywhere whenever we need to glue things together.

One cool thing about Go is that it doesn't take much time to understand what's happening in the codebase which we've is good for dodging mistakes in app receicijg billions of events per week.</comment>


What a Googol-to-One Gear Ratio Looks Like - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/20/03/heres-what-a-googol-to-one-gear-ratio-looks-like <comment><USER2> Now, drive it from the other end. I want to see the end nearest the camera exceed the speed of light.

<comment><USER3> One would have to apply relativistic corrections in order to properly calculate the speed at the other end.

Realistically, though, the limiting factor in that gear system is the strength of the gear teeth. Something would break before one end moved at light-speed, or before the other end lifted the planet Jupiter.

<comment><USER4> Hehe, that would be a nice question for [https://what- if.xkcd.com/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/). (Actually maybe not, but it made me think of that, a whole bunch of weird question that have even weirder answers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507809)</comment>


Micro benchmarks – what can possibly go wrong - <AUTHOR> https://genodians.org/skalk/2020-06-18-micro-benchmarking <comment><USER2> Kudos to Stefan for having the wisdom and energy to go down that rabbit hole.

I recently added an APM screen to a product to show certain execution timings in a convenient manner.

But the primary timing of interest, page load time, turned out to be fine, and it was auth time across each page that was a problem (it's twice as fast now), similar to what Stefan found.

So exposing performance data is usually useful, despite the initial and intended reason behind doing so.</comment>