The Experience Economy - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2018/the-experience-economy/ <comment><USER2> It is 2018 and companies still don't know why most customers buy specific stuff.

One interpretation, which is Qualtrics'/SAP's persuasively written here, is that you need extremely fine grained transaction data matched to surveys.

But people have been collecting transactional information correlated to experiences for a while now.

Did it occur to anyone that the right interpretation of the data is that people don't need most of the shit they buy?

And I don't even mean some kind of microeconomic / utilitarian / mathy / psychological thing. Just that we are in boom times, and people are stupid and buy things in boom times.

<comment><USER3> People don't need most of the shit they buy in general. We don't need literature, music, cinema, fine tasting food, or any of that stuff.

Not sure what that's supposed to mean, though.

Certainly humans have crossed the boundary where they can care about things that go beyond their needs and satisfy other desires.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue that we do need all of those things. Their persistence throughout human history suggests so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People don't buy products or services. They buy better versions of themselves or their businesses.

They buy the results promised not the method to delivering the results.

<comment><USER6> I agree with the general sentiment, but this idea has its limits: people also purchase loot and other digital products compulsively.

I don't believe they do it to be « better versions of themselves ».

<comment><USER7> I think this is the exact motivation. They believe they'll be better version of themselves with some more in-game bling. Presumably you wouldn't consider them better, but what matters is that the buyers themselves believe the blingier-but-poorer version 2 will be better.

I don't think in-game loot is more bogus than IRL loot like designer handbags or alloy rims. At least in-game loot doesn't end up in landfills.</comment></comment></comment>


Rebuilding our Support Tech architecture - <AUTHOR> https://eng.lyft.com/move-thoughtfully-and-dont-be-afraid-to-change-things-ab9fc4fd0cf2 <comment><USER2> I found the database design portion of this to border on... if just felt like they were trying to model the most basic of design decisions as some kind of technical achievement. seemed to me they were trying to garner tech 'street cred' without something to be worthy of credit, not sure i understood.

</comment><comment><USER3> >the popular hacker mentality of "move fast and break things."

This is really slanderous to the hacker ethos - this is really more of a startup-cult slogan. :)

<comment><USER4> It's the motto of people who don't mind being fired a lot.

[https://xkcd.com/1428/](https://xkcd.com/1428/)

<comment><USER5> Everyone has a test server. Some people are just lucky enough to have a separate production server.</comment></comment></comment>


Wake up Barnes & Noble, Bookstores 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.brittanymlaughlin.com/

<comment><USER2> It's a huge problem and I'm glad someone took a crack at identifying how large retail chains can stay relevant. I think it's spot on.</comment>


New Jersey Open Data Initiative - <AUTHOR> http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2016/Bills/S1000/727_I1.HTM <comment><USER2> It's all about the format:

My city's school district makes images of the spreadsheets and then publishes them in a pdf. USELESS

<comment><USER3> While deplorable from an accessibility standpoint, at least the data is available and out in the open to the public. One small step in the right direction.

EDIT: Tabula[1] is an open source tool to extract tables from PDFs into CSV/Excel format in case one really needs to process data trapped in PDF documents.

[1] [http://tabula.technology](http://tabula.technology)

<comment><USER4> Does Tabula do OCR? That's what would be required for tables embedded as images.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, it doesn't. From [https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula](https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula):

> Caveat: Tabula only works on text-based PDFs, not scanned documents. If you > can click-and-drag to select text in your table in a PDF viewer (even if the > output is disorganized trash), then your PDF is text-based and Tabula should > work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yay: "…the bill requires the Department of the Treasury to establish an unique, dedicated, easily navigable Internet website which will offer to the public all available appropriate[0] existing and future electronic data sets maintained by each State department and agency."

Not so yay: generally nobody's going to be liable for incomplete or inaccurate data, with an exception of "gross negligence, willful and wanton misconduct, or intentional misconduct".

Understandable: "No personally identifiable information would be posted online"

Unclear: "State departments and agencies would not be required to make data sets available upon demand"

[0] It seems that the availability and appropriateness is where things might stall. What if a department gives the Treasurer a dataset full of personally identifiable information? They thus fulfill their duty per this bill, the dataset is available, and yet public sees nothing, unless Treasury goes an extra mile and takes care of anonymizing the dataset.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Given how things work in NJ, I'm pretty skeptical real insight will come of this, much more likely to just be a PR thing for state agencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm involved with Bath Hacked (UK) a community interest company set up in partnership with the local council which actively hunts out council data sets that can be published in the data store.

The site: [https://www.bathhacked.org/](https://www.bathhacked.org/) The data store: [https://data.bathhacked.org/](https://data.bathhacked.org/)

We run hackathons and also reach out to various organisations for data sets that although we may not be able to publish in the datastore, can result in very interesting tools.

The most recent data we got our hands on was the bike share hire programme. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AfocuESnSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AfocuESnSg)

<comment><USER8> I'm unsure why I'm being downvoted, but I think it's probably to do with qualifying why Bath Hacked is important and had been mentioned in Parliament and is used as a national example.

Bath and North East Somerset council now have a policy to open as much data as possible to the public, directly as a result of BH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are __zero __accountability clauses in this bill. If administrators can 't be held accountable for providing complete, accurate, and parsable data then what the public could expect is cherry-picked, bottom of the barrel information that is of little to no value.

</comment><comment><USER10> Has google won and coerced a government to make personal data available to them to harvest?

<comment><USER11> From the text of the law:

"No personally identifiable information shall be posted online unless the identified individual has consented to the posting or the posting is necessary to fulfill the lawful purposes or duties of the department or agency."

<comment><USER12> Always read the T&Cs!</comment></comment></comment>


So you want to learn to code - <AUTHOR> http://oncoding.posterous.com/so-you-want-to-learn-to-code

<comment> X-Istence This is an extremely poor article. I am still considered young in the industry at 24 but even I know plenty of programmers that graduated with me that hadn't started programming until they got to college who are absolutely fantastic and have high level jobs at Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Rockstar Games, TakeTwo, Blizzard and others.

I don't think you need to start programming at a young age to become an excellent programmer. The biggest issue I've seen is that people have a hard time understanding the hard and fast rules of logic and other people just get it. I know people that have programmed since they were 8 that still have problems programming even simpler projects but they enjoy the challenge and can solve problems that they have (such as doing VBA scripts in Excel).

There was a fellow student in one of my classes who wanted to become better so badly that he would always ask some of us who were stronger at programming for advice and tips and he would follow each one. He had been programming since he was 7 and his dad was a software engineer. This guy at the end of college was a mediocre programmer at best and not for a lack of trying, he simply had issues changing his thought process to fit that of programming. It was really sad watching him fail after trying so hard. So far has he been through multiple tech jobs/programming positions and it seems he is really down on his luck.

I don't think any of the criteria mentioned really makes much of a difference. Just because I pick up a new language and play around with it doesn't mean that I am an good programmer. Just because I've been programming since I was 10 doesn't mean I am a good programmer. Yes, for some people that is the case, but not for most.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You guys seem to be missing the real point I was trying to make here.

We are in a Not Enough Programmers Boom and it will be followed by a deflations in about 4 or 5 years. I taught CS during the mid 1980's during one of these.

Most of the people who are going to 'learn to code' don't really want to be programmers - they want a job. They aren't going to be competitive when the Bust happens, so they would be better off planning their careers for when that happens than living under the illusion that they are going to be Programmers.

I didn't write this 'poor article' for you guys. I wrote it for the rest of the poor slumps who are being conned by the 'Learn to Code!!!!' hype.

Lighten up.

</comment><comment><USER2> Normally I agree that negative feedback isn't useful, but I feel a certain protective outrage at the idea of a journeyman developer reading this and taking it at face value.

People who sit at a computer and don't move for five hours are not role models. And it's sad that in 40 years of development, the author feels the need to repeat baseless stereotypes and jaded opinions.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you wrote this for the "learn to code" people... here's an issue...

You ask several questions of the reader:

"Do you attend Code Retreats? If you do, do you actually write code or do you watch the other guy?"

"Do you create Rails Gems or Python modules in your spare time?"

"Do you try out every new language that you hear about? If you do, how much code do you write? A few hundred lines or do you write an entire subsystem consisting of at least 10,000?"

If the person answers "yes" to these questions, then they're not your "learning to code" audience you claim this article is for, they're people who already know to code. So you're basically saying "If you don't know how to code already you probably shouldn't learn to code." That is horrible advice.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yet another random article perpetuating the concept of the "real coder".

Are there things called "real lawyers"? "Real Doctors"? "Real Falafel makers"?

Coding started as a hobby for most "real coders" and ever since the industry has had a hard on for "real coders" - to the point where if you aren't a "real coder" your ONLY choice of action is to go into project management or sales?

Good god, what a messed up industry we have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Every field has stars and 'everybody else'. Physicians know who to send send their family members to. Quality chef's command more respect and make higher quality food. etc. I speak from experience.

The same is true in programming.

<comment><USER4> No... every field as a spectrum of talent. From "stars" to "very good" to "competent" to "don't go near that one".

There are VERY FEW "stars". So few that you cannot possibly skew the entire talent base into two buckets (stars, and also rans) as this article does. It's shortsighted and extremely damaging advice, especially for new programmers.

You also cannot hinge your business on hiring only stars - if you do, you're going to spend far too much time finding unicorns when you could be executing with a solid base of professionals. In no other industry have I seen this obsession with finding the "real coder" or the "rockstar developer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _First - how old are you? If you're more than 8 or 9 and aren't already writing code, there's a good chance you're not a 'hard core hacker'_

How daft.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure why people need to start coding at 8 or 9 to be a star coder. I've seen many people who started in college and have become excellent coders.

</comment><comment><USER7> Article summary: If you're not a prodigy, it's not worth your time because you'll never be any good.

<comment><USER8> I read that into it also. It strips everyone into stars and job-occupiers. But I think it leaves out another _really_ important subset of people who can identify those of their peers who are prodigies, and absorb their thought train and problem solving patterns through osmosis. If you're sitting next to the smartest guys in the room, and you have the right mix of social skills and an appreciation of process, you're bound to have it rub off on you.</comment></comment>


Lenovo Develops Slider Keyboards for Tablets - <AUTHOR> http://www.maindevice.com/2012/05/28/lenovo-slider-keyboards-tablets/ While the customers are getting used with the virtual keyboards and even some of the latest BlackBerry models are moving away from the iconic physical keyboard, Lenovo suggests a different approach. The Chinese company invents the "handgrip keyboard", which the users – who still like to tap their words on physical keys – can attach it to the tablets... <comment><USER2> Someone trying to build something new rather than just aping the iPhone. More please.

<comment><USER3> We'll definitely keep you posted with more news as we get them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it would be cool if they could attach a full size keyboard to the tablet. Maybe on a hinge or something...

<comment><USER3> Why don't you choose the Asus Transformer for that? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks cool, but they have a massive problem: nobody wants to learn how to use a keyboard again. The only people they are going to be able to sell this to are a few geeks. The general public will find the idea of a keyboard you can't see too scary.

<comment><USER6> But keys you can't tell apart (i.e., touchscreen keyboards) have become widely accepted. I don't think people are so resistant to change - you just have to make it worth their while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty interesting. Definitely useful for the tablet. You can hold the tablet up and type. Hope they go through with it to build it.

<comment><USER3> I hope to as well, but taking it with a grain of salt...It's interesting that Razor still keeps the Fiona project concept on the website.</comment></comment>


How to Deploy .NET Apps to Private PaaS - <AUTHOR> http://www.activestate.com/blog/2012/07/how-deploy-net-apps-stackato-20

<comment><USER2> Stackato v2.0 now supports *nix and .Net applications - here are the release notes for everything that V2.0 includes <http://docs.stackato.com/reference/release-notes.html></comment>


Apple, Adobe and Openness: Let's Get Real - <AUTHOR> http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/05/apple-adobe-and-openness-lets-get-real.html

<comment><USER2> I have to say, the Air applications I use regularly (Hulu and Pandora One) both work very well on Linux and Windows. They are kind of resource hogs, but then so is iTunes, so it's really a case of the pot calling the kettle black on the performance front too. When Apple does cross-platform, they're not really that good at it. Google and the FOSS community is fantastic at it, and Adobe is middling.

Really, the primary thing that bothers me about Flash is the way it locks in my content. However, it's clear that I'm not getting the content served via Adobe Air without kill strings attached, so it's a symptom of a larger problem in the market, and not itself the source.

<comment><USER3> +1. Hooray for neutral-based perspectives and criticism.

<comment><USER4> _When Apple does cross-platform, they're not really that good at it. Google and the FOSS community is fantastic at it, and Adobe is middling._

For some value of 'fantastic' which is close to meh. In general, the FOSS stuff that has zero-effort portability isn't the prettiest, especially when evaluated in terms of the native platform they're running on. The prettiest FOSS software is far from zero-effort portability.

(Yes, this includes my own beloved Smalltalks.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, insightful article. It portrays the story taking the early years of cooperation between Apple and Adobe into account.

 _> I was working at Apple when this process happened, and I can tell you that it was searing. Apple had invested countless hours and dollars marketing those products as prominent reasons to buy Macs, and then we saw that investment turned against us when the apps were made available on Windows._

</comment><comment><USER6>
        There's an old quote attributed to Napoleon, "If you start to take
        Vienna, take Vienna." Adobe failed to take Vienna. Note to other
        tech companies: Don't declare your intention to take over the
        world; do it first and explain later. (By the way, this explains
        both Apple's strategy and Chinese foreign policy, but I digress.)

</comment><comment><USER4> If Adobe had more of a clue, I'd feel more sympathetic. They have a track record of putting annoying marketing ahead of good software and the user experience.

<comment><USER3> I'm having a hard time thinking of a software company (who works for profit) that hasn't put annoying marketing ahead of good software or UX.

Trendy hate tends to be very specific.

<comment><USER4> In today's world, you don't have to be specific, so much as aimed at the worst offenders. No one is sinless, but there is an order of magnitude difference between the least guilty and the most.

My hate isn't trendy. It's born of experience. One day, I was tracing down some process eating up cycles after I installed an Adobe suite to read PDFs. Lo and behold, it's a VB script process in the background to promote some sort of integration marketdroid crap with MS Office.

I stop using Adobe, and my PDF reading is faster and my machine has more cycles I can use.

<comment><USER3> > "I stop using Adobe, and my PDF reading is faster and my machine has more > cycles I can use."

Great. I agree that Adobe has some pretty shitty software. No doubt.

My point is that Apple has some shitty software as well. iTunes comes to mind.

\---

Shitty Adobe software: "I stop using Adobe"

Shitty Microsoft software: "I stopped using Micro$oft"

Shitty Apple software: <insert external fault here>

<comment><USER4> Either you can't see ahead one logical step, or didn't take the time. (or this is a game to make me type the obvious)

For me, Shitty isn't a Boolean. It's a quantity or a qualitative assessment. I use Microsoft and Apple software because those particular examples haven't exceeded the threshold.

Adobe is in a different league. Different order of magnitude, really.

(And for the record, Mobile Me chased me off because it exceeded the threshold awhile back.)

<comment><USER3> Trouble is, you're talking about _you_. Who may be perfectly logical and make sound decisions in the software you use based on the _quantified_ experience.

I've used enough Adobe software to confidently say that _all_ of their software is not shitty. In fact, a few tools are indispensable. Photoshop, Aftereffects, Premier come to mind.

In this "Adobe vs. the world" motif, all I see is: Adobe the dirtbag, and Apple the renegade hero with faults that preclude their existence.

I, for one, am sick of it. While some of it has plenty of merit, the rest of it is tea-bagging, Republican-style fact-swaying that results in false information and a false result.

Due to the assumptions laid forth for the "greater cause", we end up with no resolve. Just a table of "how we feel about Adobe" to reference without the bother to verify any positions or information or learn any lessons going forward.

The gang mob anti-Flash movement carries with it an original truth that no longer exists in it's current form. Which is: The Flash Player platform should be open. I tend to agree.

But what we end up with is: Death to plug-in arch (a complete opposite of open-web, IMO), death to experimental UI, death to technique that exists outside of W3C. Not understanding that Flash compilers are open source. Not understanding that frameworks like Flash carry with it underestimated advantages to moving the web forward.

This comment will likely get downvoted (if anyone even reads this far before deciding I am _pro adobe_ ) and some dude with a backhanded comment goes up. Logical? Nope. Trendy. Yes.

We're not learning anything from Adobe nor is Adobe learning anything from their market. That's their problem, true.

But it's 2010 and we're getting video in our browsers...finally. And the bad guy is Adobe.

Think about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very good analysis of the relationship between the two companies and the goals of each one. But I disagree on this passage:

 _As a PostScript developer you were welcome to work with Adobe's low-quality font technology, but Adobe refused to allow any developer to access its proprietary high-quality APIs.

Sounds like something Apple would do, doesn't it?_

There are a lot of things I, as a developer, don't like in Apple decisions on iPhone development and App Store policies, but to my record I've never seen such a behavior from Apple.

Apple does not deny developers to use high quality technologies for its platforms, apart of the private API, but that's another matter.

So I might miss something, but in my opinion, if you work on an Apple platform you get from Apple all the technologies to work on it.

<comment><USER2> >Apple does not deny developers to use high quality technologies for its platforms, apart of the private API, but that's another matter.

No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly the matter. Only Apple apps can multitask.

It's an understandable design decision, but it's certainly a parallel. (And to be completely fair it's changing, but you're being intellectually dishonest.)

<comment><USER7> Yes, this is a point I wasn't thinking about. But in iPhone OS 4 multitasking is coming and is similar to the android one.

But I think (my personal opinion, not backed by any data) that this was a decision based on technical matters. From the quoted passage it seems that Adobe was keeping the technology for itself to outpace competition. I don't think this applies to Apple using multitasking while developers can't.

<comment><USER8> It is similar to Android in the sense, that it works using the same principles.

It is not similar in the sense, that on iPhone you have some specific usage scenarios you can use with multitasking. On Android, it is open-ended, you can multitask for any reason you come up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the exception of Tamarin, I don't recognize any of Adobe's open source contributions (perhaps that's because I'm not a Flash developer).

Apple on the other hand has released a lot of great software under open source licenses: WebKit, launchd, bonjour, Darwin, libdispatch, etc.

Adobe calling Flash open compared to the corpus of actually open software that Apple has produced is disingenuous, in my opinion.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, Apple had to release WebKit, due to KHTML license (the same for CUPS).

Other Apple open source software has exactly zero adoption outside OSX, which is also a reason why they are open source. Apple knew they will be not adopted.

<comment><USER10> I believe some substantial chunks of Apple open source (Grand Central Dispatch and LLVM) have been or are being adopted by FreeBSD. I'm not sure how much, though, these are part of the FreeBSD project itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Here's a list of some major PC software products. Do you know what they all have in common? They were first successful on Apple systems, and only later took off in the PC world."

Call me crazy, but maybe the PC is easier to develop for. At least the software listed there is still available for the Mac. When Apple bought Emagic, production of the PC version of their digital audio workstation Logic ceased.

I remember the year Photoshop's sales for PC were higher than Photoshop's sales on the Mac. More and more, the myth that Macs are better for creative software eroded.

Nonetheless, it does basically boil down to philosophical differences. I'm still a big fan of my iPhone and will probably even get the iPhone HD (or whatever), but Apple's made it very difficult for me to transfer that enthusiasm to anything else they do.

<comment><USER4> _Call me crazy, but maybe the PC is easier to develop for._

Not crazy, but maybe confused. Wouldn't _market share_ be a better explanation? The profit motive is the primary motivation to develop for any platform. It easily trumps ease of development.

<comment><USER8> At the time, Win32s/Win32 was definitely easier to develop for than MacOS classic.

While Win16 was definitely very similar to MacOS classic, Win32 brought better multitasking and memory management, so developers could tell good bye to memory handles and locking/unlocking them.

The tools for Win32 development were also better. There was a range of compilers and IDEs you could choose from (not only Microsoft, but also Borland or Watcom). For MacOS, you had the terrible Apple tools or Codewarrior kit.

Note that the apps that were created on PC, never crossed to Mac (e.g. AutoCAD or 3D Studio).

I'm not saying that PC market share was not primary motivator, but at the time, PCs were technically better.

<comment><USER4> AFAIK "is" is present tense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"Unfortunately, the development of those standards has been incredibly slow and political"_

I think this is a critical point. It appears that most large software companies participate in standards bodies, simply to look out for their own interests.

<comment><USER6> "The civil service was united in its desire to make sure that the common market didn't work. That's why we went into it."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIXH3-A8zMI>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "A platform vendor is responsible for articulating exactly what developers will and will not be permitted to do, before they invest time and money."

Apple has a history of being very capricious about that.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd have more sympathy for Adobe if:

\- Visiting Youtube didn't result in all 8 bars on my menubar, representing my 3GHz CPU, shoot to 80%.

\- The developers that wrote the god forsakened CS4 installer got the same treatment as terrorists.

\- Products weren't being held in beta forever and shipped in a reasonable timeframe.

<comment><USER4> I guess shipping stuff in beta is ok. (Google)</comment></comment>


Amazon Atlas: The "Highly Confidential" locations of Amazon's data centers - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/amazon-atlas/ <comment><USER2> How come WikiLeaks is distributing this? I don't see any meaningful connection to government transparency or even corporate transparency... this has nothing to do with abuse of power, it is completely normal and rightful for a company to keep its infrastructure locations secret. Some of this could be found through public records, etc. and that fine to post, but internal operating procedures are not.

Sure, it's fun to look at. But the only people who will really benefit from this being leaked are AWS competitors and malicious actors intending to disrupt international communications.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't the CIA have a contract with Amazon to use AWS?

<comment><USER4> So?

<comment><USER5> That is the connection to government transparency.

The CIA is storing massive amounts of our data somewhere, so shouldn't we have the right to know where?

<comment><USER6> I don't believe so, not if the risk to the general public is great enough.

<comment><USER7> The public is far more at risk with the CIA around to begin with, so long as it continues to carry out bullshit interventions around the world that so often come back to bite us. The primary impediment to enumerating these risks is the CIA's lack of transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Top 10 most boring building in the most boring part of town with no food truck for miles."

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazon- web-services-data-center/423147/)

Seriously, besides the DoD contract angle, what's the point in publishing this data?

</comment><comment><USER9> As a resident of Ashburn, VA the locations are hardly a secret. Just about everyone in the area who cares to know, knows. I drive past the place in the header image of [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazon- web-services-data-center/423147/) on the way home from the Sterling Wal-Mart. My next door neighbor is an HVAC tech for Amazon, and he's only barely secretive about where they are (to me anyway). Everyone at Old Ox and Crooked Run breweries seems to know, etc.

<comment><USER10> Agree.

The Google Maps tiles are labeled "Amazon Datacenter Complex" or such on at least one cluster. I don't mean Wikileak's pins, I mean the public rendered tiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The address in Palo Alto is right off University Avenue behind the Walgreens. The one in Luxembourg is an office building as well. I don't see much value unless one wants to destabilize internet infrastructure.

<comment><USER12> Most of the ones in the Bay Area are, to my knowledge relatively small "retail" colo spaces.

200 Paul, 528 Bryant is PAIX, 11 Great Oaks is Equinix. SV2 got shut down years ago. I don't remember AWS ever being in 3000 Corvin, which is a tiny, poorly powered data center.

As an example of how old this data is, I reported to someone in 2014 time frame that led data center operations for some AWS regions including North America. He told stories of vacating 200 Paul, I'm guessing in the pre-2010 timeframe.

In any case, none of this information is that big of a secret. It's all in the public record. It's pretty hard to build something that size and with that degree of power consumption without others noticing. There's generally plenty of news media about such things:

[http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/local- news/20170317/amazon-k...](http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/local- news/20170317/amazon-keeps-building-data-centers-in-umatilla-morrow-counties)

<comment><USER13> I thought the datacenters on Corvin were newer; I've spent a lot of time at the Walsh Ave ones next to Nvidia and Corvin stuff looked new.

<comment><USER12> I just checked and you are correct. I guess they probably leveled the old building, which was 3030 Corvin. Anyone that was there in the mid 2000s remembers when Facebook heated the place up and they had box fans every where, an extra generator parked in the parking lot, etc.

<comment><USER13> Makes sense, I never visited that area until a job I started in 2011.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great! Now I'll know where to go when I need to restart my EC2 instance.

</comment><comment><USER15> The timing on the release of this information is very _interesting_, considering:

"Currently, Amazon is one of the leading contenders for an up to $10 billion contract to build a private cloud for the Department of Defense. [...] Bids on this contract are due tomorrow."

</comment><comment><USER16> >"In some cases, Amazon uses pseudonyms to obscure its presence. For example, at its IAD77 data center, the document states that "Amazon is known as 'Vandalay Industries' on badges and all correspondence with building manager"."

This made me laugh. Vandalay Industries is a reference to a very funny Seinfeld episode. Someone at AWS has a good sense of humor:

[http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/Vandelay_Industries](http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/Vandelay_Industries)

<comment><USER17> Seems like using 'Vandalay Industries' is a terrible idea. Doesn't everyone* know that anything called 'Vandalay Industries' is an obvious fake?

* Maybe anyone over a certain age? Do people under... I dunno, 40? 30?... watch much Seinfeld? Seems like TV shows are largely generational things... I'm aware of MASH and Dick Van Dyke, but I wouldn't get the semi obscure jokes from those shows since they were on when I was super young.

<comment><USER18> I'd guess the goal is more to keep this list from coming up in public records searches than to serve as a truly effective disguise. I can't imagine the datacenter employees are expected to lie to everyone about where they work.

<comment><USER19> Which reminds me of the article on HN a few months/years back about how you could identify most spies because they all appeared the same way in embassy listings (which was all public information).

With a lot of things like this, you're really squatting at a particular point in the effort-reward curve. You're not going to make something of this scale absolutely secret; there are hundreds of people involved, deliveries of material over years, and ongoing services. It's not like Amazon can bury the workers on site after they finish their work, like people always claim the pharaohs of old did but probably didn't.

But being a _little_ secret might solve some problems, so if there are low- effort ways to make it a little secret, you go ahead and do those. You make a shell company, even if it has a stupid name. You don't tell contractors or delivery people who the real owner is. You don't drive up to the building in a car that says "AMAZON1" on the license plate.

It's not going to keep the place totally secret, but if it makes a few things easier - you get fewer break-ins, you have fewer troubles with the local planning boards, whatever - it's probably worth the tiny bit of effort.

(Also, did you know that Dick Van Dyke is still alive and active? He's in the new Mary Poppins.)

<comment><USER16> >"Which reminds me of the article on HN a few months/years back about how you could identify most spies because they all appeared the same way in embassy listings (which was all public information)."

Might you have a link to this post?

<comment><USER19> "How to Spot a Spook": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335310)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems to be outdated. One of the folks named in the document as responsible for a China site is not working for Amazon since a few years ago and is now at Google Cloud, according to his linkedin.

</comment><comment><USER21> Again you can clearly see WikiLeaka mission: Randomly attacking and potentially damaging businesse.

</comment><comment><USER22> Their justification for releasing this is crap.

<comment><USER23> But they made a 'game' of it! /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like others, I'm confused to the reasoning of the leak. What public good does it promote? What can anyone do with this information that is productive?

</comment><comment><USER25> I agree with many of the others. I don't see how this information could be useful for anything except someone with malicious intent.

</comment><comment><USER26> The leaked document is from October 2015.

It's missing new regions in Ohio, Mumbai, Seoul, Canada, Paris, and GovCloud.

</comment><comment><USER27> This release shows how desperate wikileaks is. Very old and outdated data that is far from secret. We should all simply ignore them nowedays, thank them for what they did in the past and tell them to move on. The only reason I see why they published is: get some new media attention because tomorrow they might get a contract with Y who we dont like blabla.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wikileaks, if you leak _everything_ indiscriminately like this you're like that gossipy person no one likes or trusts.

</comment><comment><USER29> The most shocking thing in this release is that amazon internally uses Twiki. Happy hacking, black hats!

</comment><comment><USER30> The metadata of the PDF doesn't seem to include a date, but it's not particularly new. It doesn't have the London or Paris availability zones listed.

<comment><USER31> Doesn't it say late 2015 in the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> ..geo-awareness fail? or faith in bombing range containment?

[https://imgur.com/HcVFJ0K](https://imgur.com/HcVFJ0K)

</comment><comment><USER33> Amazon competitors, like Google and Microsoft, already study these things through their mapping products. <yawn>

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting. A company which wants my real name as a customer is using fake company names to hide away.

</comment><comment><USER35> This looks old. It doesn't include their Columbus data centers for example.

</comment><comment><USER36> Would it be possible to find the general location by checking ping times?

</comment><comment><USER37> Not the most exciting, or revealing of leaks. Less interesting, then, say, their leaks of Turkish dessert recipes[0]. Great attempt at clickbait though!

Compare the locations with [https://www.internetexchangemap.com/](https://www.internetexchangemap.com/) and you'll see that most of these are just the natural locations for datacenters. Most of these locations are within a few kilometers, sometimes within a few hundred meters, of other commercial datacenters.

They generally fall within: Close to major population and finance centers with affordable power, abundant fiber, and local/state governments willing to give subsidies... like every other datacenter.

0\. [https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/757649656650297345](https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/757649656650297345)

</comment><comment><USER38> A lot of the locations look more like POPs, not data centers. The multiple in Brazil are just coloc and meet-me sites run by local companies (UOL, Algar, TIVIT).

What a shitty service, WikiLeaks...

</comment><comment><USER39> This in no way harms Amazon in terms of security, though it may have a PR implication or possibly allow others to take Amazon to task in some way.

Security by obscurity cannot be relied upon.

<comment><USER40> Well, Amazon had a very deliberate policy of keeping this stuff secret, and went to some lengths to keep it that way.

I agree it's hardly a death-knell for them, it's more of a hiccup, but they didn't want this to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've lost all respect for Wikileaks. How about actually leaking documents on day, I dunno, how the Chinese government is trying to brainwash Uighurs and erase their culture and religion? Instead, it's always the US that's been the bad guy, and now it's not even really the government directly. There's no cultural suppression or a larger public benefit from knowing where amazon data centers are located.

What a joke.

<comment><USER41> You're assuming that anyone with these sorts of documents:

1) wants to leak them (most of the Chinese people who I've met in China, especially those who work in a government or military capacity, will bend over backwards to defend China from any level of perceived foreign criticism)

2) has the capability to leak them (most Chinese people are unlikely to know much about Wikileaks)

<comment><USER42> Pretty safe to assume wikileaks will not show up in Google Dragonfly searches.</comment></comment></comment>


Launch HN: Remote company culture book for the Slack generation - <AUTHOR> https://www.ahoyteam.com/guide <comment><USER2> How come the text is centered instead of left or justified?</comment>


Google/Apple  May Face Legal Action In Investigation Of Free Games For Kids - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/12/oft-probes-freemium-kids-apps/

<comment><USER2> [http://mclear.co.uk/2011/03/09/should-we-be-showing- online-a...](http://mclear.co.uk/2011/03/09/should-we-be-showing-online- adverts-to-kids-in-primary-schools/) covers this issue with a bit more clarity.</comment>


Debugging Behind the Iron Curtain - <AUTHOR> https://www.jakepoz.com/debugging-behind-the-iron-curtain/ <comment><USER2> This is a great story but unlikely to be true given the radiation doses that would need to be involved.</comment>


The Rise and Fall and Rise of Virtual Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality <comment><USER2> They don't mention _Snow Crash_ , which makes me really sad. eXistenZ is, though, so I suppose that's something. :(

<comment><USER3> It was 1993, late .. I was in the Embarcadero, something like the 36th floor, to play some Spectre VR at Velocity/Peninsula, where the game was made. My pal who worked there had been working late, so we blew some millions of tank pixels way. It was bliss. Doom had hit too, so we spent a few hours at that, and then back to Spectre VR again. Testing his networking code. By the time we walked out satisfied it was working, it was Saturday morning, and the sun was up in San Francisco. As we left his office, he gave me "Snow Crash" to take with me, for it was company reading and he'd read it already. It was motivating.

On the ground level of Embarcadero, as we left to trudge into our bunks across the bay, there was one of the first headset-VR shop/setups, running .. I think .. 'Dino'. It made me puke if I played for a few minutes, but it was neat that 'VR', back then, 'was coming .. soon'.

A few years later, there were the flight-sim centers around the SGI neighborhood. HUD's of pixels, or something.

Anyway, I still like to read Snow Crash every few years or so. Next month I'll probably do a workshop with some Dutch friends in Den Haag, with their new Occulus Rift headsets.. so to this old grizzly, it seems people want VR, even still. Gotta solve the puke factor, at least in my case, first though ..

<comment><USER4> I've read Snow Crash yearly since I discovered the book some 14 years ago. I guess that's how I deal with the fact that Stephenson often doesn't know how to end a novel. I ached for a VR world like the Metaverse for a long time back then, but of course everything has always fallen well short of the mark. Maybe World of Warcraft came closest for me, to the degree I became immersed in Azeroth, but it was still obviously not the dream.

<comment><USER5> He _has_ gotten better at endings. Both _Anathem_ and _Reamde_ did wrap up (though they also leave open the option for sequels or prequels).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a better article on this whole thing that I've kept bookmarked since I saw I first saw it.

[http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces- rea...](http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-real- data.html)

<comment><USER5> Oddly, both VR essays utterly fail to load or render w/o JS active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone want to compile a plain text version of this?

<comment><USER8> If you block voxmedia.com this page loads as a wall of text. Here's a copy [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cach...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2Fa%2Fvirtual- reality)

<comment><USER9> Thanks. More than 27,000 words....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They forgot to add "Sponsored post".

<comment><USER11> yeah, its not like that feature covers the occulus rift, the sony morpheus, and if they'll even succeed at all.

great sponsorship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> works poorly in firefox

</comment><comment><USER13> maybe VR is real this time, but I've seen nothing but hype.

though Carmack promotes it, his in-depth technical reports convinced me we're a tremendously long way off. it might be OK for particular orientations and movement directions.

<comment> atom-morgan Have you watched any of the reaction videos on YouTube? I don't think we've seen anything like this with VR before.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Combine that with the Oculus DK2 getting almost universal acclaim from users, with a very small subset of software thus far that supports the new SDK and positional tracking, and this seems like it'll be a very big deal.</comment></comment></comment>


Optimize noisy, high resolution images into rather "tiny" files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colbyn/imager-bench-2019-11-2 <comment><USER2> This is awesome, I've been using compression.ai - but this beats it with comparable quality, at nearly half the size.</comment>


Venezuela arrests 4 bitcoin miners as trading highs continue - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinist.com/venezuela-arrests-bitcoin-miners/ <comment><USER2> There was an interesting article few months back about Bitcoin mining in Venezuela[0].

TL;DR _" Bitcoin mining is arguably the best possible use of electricity in Venezuela because it's providing the country with what it needs most—a relatively stable currency that retains its value across borders."_

[http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/28/the-secret- dangerous-w...](http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/28/the-secret-dangerous- world-of)

<comment><USER3> The article seems very anti-socialist:

> ... making life tolerable—if not always easy—in the midst of a socialist > hell.

I have no idea how it is in Venezuela, but as a citizen of former socialist / now capitalist republic I take such articles with a grain of salt.

One could also argue that they are basically stealing the (heavily subsidized) energy from other citizens of Venezuela. In capitalism such thing would be normal, but in socialism it is far from it.

<comment><USER4> No. In (idea) capitalism it would be normal for the energy to be sold and a price emerging from the supply and demand.

They are not 'stealing' the energy 'from other citizens' they are using the energy that the bad repressive government of Venezuela provides. Its the governments prorogative to subsidize energy, and they have to deal with the consequences.

I however agree that 'in the midst of a socialist hell' is not an apportierte way to write an article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live in Venezuela and just looked at my electricity invoice: In November I paid 0,00004 USD/kWh. The prices were raised in December: 0,00016 USD/kWh. If you prefer having your own generator, diesel fuel is 0,0000001 $/L. You can get 7356000 Liters for one dollar. So basically energy is free.

<comment><USER6> Those diesel prices in USD?

<comment><USER7> I assume the prices are in Bolivars and that they haven't been reajusted by the government in a while, despite the hyperinflation.

<comment><USER8> I know that in Venezuela fuel is extremely cheap. After all, they produce lots of petroleum and they follow the political decision to use some of this oil to drop the prices in the internal market, even when exportation prices would make them get more money selling all the oil to foreign countries.

<comment><USER9> >"Venezuela: We have calculated the price of diesel using the 2012 benchmark results from the German Development Agency. Then, we updated the data with up- to-date currency values and information on the change in international petroleum prices. Based on these estimates, the price of diesel is 0 U.S. Dollar. For comparison, the average price of diesel in the world for this period is 0.91 U.S. Dollar. " [http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Venezuela/diesel_prices/](http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Venezuela/diesel_prices/)

Wow.

Edit: It looks like the price is so low scripts are breaking all over the place: "The price of diesel in Venezuela is 0 EUR per liter which is 100% lower than the average world price." [http://www.mytravelcost.com/Venezuela/gas- prices/](http://www.mytravelcost.com/Venezuela/gas-prices/) [http://www.mytravelcost.com/Venezuela/gas- prices/](http://www.mytravelcost.com/Venezuela/gas-prices/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of all the places to mine Bitcoin, why Venezuela? Is the electricity subsidized enough to justify all the other headaches associates with running an operation out of there?

With the instability of their currency I can understand why someone would want to use or buy bitcoin, but why mine there?

<comment><USER11> I'm from Venezuela, and happen to know a few people that are mining bitcoin down there. Electricity is incredibly cheap! You practically don't have to factor electricity costs in your operation. Yes, the grid is very unstable, but you can always by generators that run on gasoline (which is also incredibly cheap! a full tank of gas for your car will cost less than 0.1 USD.)

Now, this is obviously horrible for the environment. But what can you expect when your own currency is being rapidly destroyed by the power-hungry idiots that have taken hold of the country. Let's hope for a brighter future.

<comment><USER12> Can you shed a light on how is the situation there? The media made it seem like nobody is surviving right over there. I hope you are safe.

<comment><USER11> I have actually been living in Canada for 4 years now. Everything is a very hairy mess; I was there in the summer of 2015 and remember thinking "Wow! Things can't get possibly worst than this", and then I went back unexpectedly late this year and I can't tell you how much worst things are looking.

The infrastructure is collapsing, finding food to eat is a game of going to every supermarket in the city, among other things. I think my Dad puts it really well when he says that Venezuela has had a reversal of all the progress we made for decades; people have lost a lot of their values simply because life is so tough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Venezuela has arrested a group of Bitcoin miners for allegedly "affecting > stability" of the country's electricity supply.

I don't understand. Does Venezuela have some law that says people aren't allowed to use too much electricity for "X"? The article is a bit light on details. Thenagain, maybe this is just business as usual in a country on the verge of collapse.

<comment><USER14> Whether or not there's a specific law for it is irrelevant, sadly.

Government doesn't like it, therefore government shuts it down. If it wasn't for "affecting stability of electricity supply", it would probably be "affecting stability of the economy" or something else.

<comment><USER15> Every government has laws that can be applied to pretty much any activity if interpreted broadly enough. What not every government has is a functioning court system that keeps them from getting interpreted that broadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are good reasons for wanting to mine. The official currency is extremely devalued and essentially not trusted. Everyone wants us dollars, and bitcoin is better as well.

And remember it's not just a matter of having money. Everything is rationed harshly, so you can't just go into a grocery store and fill up your cart everyday, even if you happen to have money which most people do not.

The irony is that oil is effectively free. No food but plenty of oil. Most of the problems are the result of government leadership making bad decisions over a long period.

If you're traveling down there for business ask what you can bring to donate. If you fill up all extra space in your luggage from the US it can be a godsend to bring diapers, and other stuff that is hard to get but desperately needed.

</comment><comment><USER17> It doesn't say it in the article, but they were actually stealing the power. Therefore it's non-news... just something that would happen in every in any country when the thieves get caught.</comment>


Show HN: Hemmingwurst – Make your writing bolder and clearerer - <AUTHOR> http://hemmingwurst.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Ah.. what's the purpose of this? I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was something I threw together for fun. Hemmingway App claims to make your writing "bold and clear" and I thought it would be funny to make something that took that slogan literally (i.e. bold font face and transparency).</comment></comment>


The Joys of Unix – NSA Cryptolog (1978) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/stream/cryptolog_42#page/n16/mode/1up

<comment><USER2> Interesting that he praises the RAND editor. It's a branch of editors that has entirely died out as far as I can tell, on Unix at least. The source code for RAND E19 can still be found, but I couldn't get it running.

<comment><USER3> I also failed to find recent information on RAND's "e" editor, but from reading the article the interface/commands seem extremely similar to Vi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Crytolog magazines are always interesting.

One thing that intrigued me were the mentions of the POGOL language. There seem to be no mentions of it on the internet, which makes me suspect it is either an arcane language specific to a 3-letter agency. That agency may either be IBM or NSA.. both seem equally as likely.

<comment><USER5> There were a _lot_ of ALGOL variants around in the 1960s & 70s if you look at the Wikipedia page for ALGOL, including one called GOGOL for the PDP-1. My first guess would be that POGOL was an ALGOL-a-like for the IBM-360, perhaps developed internally by the NSA?

<comment><USER4> I would assume an ALGOL variant.

Given that this was in '78 (which is quite late in ALGOL's lifetime), it's possibly the "P" referred to the P-porting kit for Pascal[1]?

That's speculation of course, but the ALGOL name variations generally did mean something.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)#T...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_\(programming_language\)#The_Pascal- P_system)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All this on a minicomputer that costs a mere $300,000? No way!

Off the top of my head, I'd guess that would run you $6m today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone happen to know why the shell got named a "shell"?

<comment><USER7> Just speculation, but perhaps it's because it "wraps" the kernel. ie. the kernel's shell...

<comment><USER8> That was always my understanding. In older mainframe operating systems, the command interpreter was more integral to the OS. In Unix, it's just a process. Its function is to run programs for the user, so it is in some sense a shell around the OS seen by the user.

<comment><USER9> That's the way I see it and to extend the analogy a bit further Unix, et el. are like a hermit crab that can trade one shell for another if there is a good reason to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I became, in fact, less and less of a programmer at all, and more and more simply a procedure-writer who tacked together canned routines or previously debugged POGOL steps to do dull things in a dull way". This was when the author had to work with layers of accidental complexity of the IBM 360s, before discovering Unix. It gives hope to know that such complexity existed even in 1978, but that it was simply bad engineering, as the advent of Unix later proved.

I marked two snippets from Coders at Work where Guy Steele and Ken Thompson both lament the increasing number of layers in modern computing. It is perhaps inevitable, but it is worth wondering at.

##

Seibel: What has changed the most in the way you think about programming now, vs. then? Other than learning that bubble sort is not the greatest sorting technique.

Steele: I guess to me the biggest change is that nowadays you can't possibly know everything that's going on in the computer. There are things that are absolutely out of your control because it's impossible to know everything about all the software. Back in the '70s a computer had only 4,000 words of memory. It was possible to do a core dump and inspect every word to see if it was what you expected. It was reasonable to read the source listings of the operating system and see how that worked. And I did that—I studied the disk routines and the card-reader routines and wrote variants of my own. I felt as if I understood how the entire IBM 1130 worked. Or at least as much as I cared to know. You just can't do that anymore.

##

Seibel: Reading the history of Unix, it seems like you guys basically invented an operating system because you wanted a way to play with this computer. So in order to do what today might be a very basic thing, such as write a game or something on a computer, well, you had to write a whole operating system. You needed to write compilers and build a lot of infrastructure to be able to do anything. I'm sure all of that was fun for its own sake. But I wonder if maybe the complexity of modern programming that we talked about before, with all these layers that fit together, is that just the modern equivalent of, "Well, first step is you have to build your own operating system"? At least you don't have to do that anymore.

Thompson: But it's worse than that. The operating system is not only given; it's mandatory. If you interview somebody coming out of computer science right now, they don't understand the underlying computing at all. It's really, really scary how abstract they are from what a computer is or even the theory of computing. They just don't understand it.

Seibel: I was thinking about your advice to your son to go into biology instead of computing. Isn't there something about programming—the intellectual fun of defining a process that can be enacted for you by these magical machines—that's the same whether you're operating very close to the hardware or at an abstract level?

Thompson: It's addictive. But you wouldn't want to tell your kid to go into crack. And I think it's changed. It might just be my aging, but it seems like when you're just building another layer on top of another layer on top of another layer, you don't really get the benefit of writing, say, a DFA. I think by necessity algorithms—new algorithms are just getting more complex over time. A new algorithm to do something is based on 50 other little algorithms. Back when I was a kid you were doing these little algorithms and they were fun. You could understand them without it being an accounting job where you divide it up into cases and this case is solved by this algorithm that you read about but you don't really know and on and on. So it's different. I really believe it's different and most of it is because the whole thing is layered over time and we're dealing with layers. It might be that I'm too much of a curmudgeon to understand layers.

<comment><USER11> This got me thinking: I wonder if places like St. John's College[1] might eventually take up teaching directly from Turing and von Neumann. Maybe one day those sorts of great-books focused liberal arts colleges will be the only places left teaching the low-level stuff and the basic principles of computing, outside a handful of hyper-focused engineering programs designed to meet the limited need for some people in the industry who understand it well.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapoli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_\(Annapolis/Santa_Fe\))

(I can't speak to the rigor of that program from direct experience, but look at the reading list—it's not all the fluffy philosophy and literary criticism that many imagine when they think of liberal arts programs. They cover the major Greek mathematicians in the first two years, then it's off to enlightenment-era mathematics—John von Neumann or Turing, and maybe even something like TAoCP, wouldn't be out of place)

<comment><USER12> The on St. John's grad I know well used to have a copy of a book including "On Computable Numbers" on his mantelpiece. He has worked in the tech business for many years.</comment></comment></comment>


The new horsemen: why American riot police embraced the bicycle - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jun/15/the-new-horsemen-why-american-riot-police-embraced-the-bicycle <comment><USER2> > "The bikes are a form of de-escalation in themselves. If you go into any > group of people, almost everyone has ridden a bike. It means you have > something in common, something to talk about."

I once had a stick too, doesn't make me want to chat with the guys in body armor and helmet-cameras.

<comment><USER3> Yeah but if a cop ride a motocycle and you do too, things tend to be smoother. Simple things...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > And they have disc brakes, which was the whole reason the department chose a > local company – back in 2005, when they were shopping for the bikes, the big > companies such as Kona couldn't provide them.

I seriously doubt "the whole reason" they went local was because they couldn't find disc brakes in 2005. This is trivial to fact check, just look at Kona's catalog from 2004: [http://www.konabikeworld.com/tech/catalog/catalog_2k4.htm](http://www.konabikeworld.com/tech/catalog/catalog_2k4.htm) Every mountain bike that's not a BMX or DJ has disk brakes.

<comment><USER5> Also disc brakes aren't really helpful when you are just riding around in the city, just higher maintenance. It would probably be better to just get some decent rim brakes.

<comment> norea-armozel Depends. As I use to bicycle all over my hometown during my college days rim brakes could be a problem when it rained or snowed. Mostly because the obvious problem of getting a solid grip on the rim is impeded by the moisture. I'm not sure if a disc brake is any better in this capacity but if it is even marginally better then if I was a PD using bikes to get riot police around I would accept the cost of the maintenance of a disc brake over rim ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        > some observers calling [police using
        > bikes] evidence of the militarisation
        > of policing

Oh come on. Police using armoured vehicles, maybe. Pushbikes? Sounds like my kind of cop.

<comment><USER7> It's lazy journalism: "some observers", "some critics", "a source close to", "insiders say" ... generic, unsubstantiated claims to support a position or a straw man.

<comment><USER6> To give the journalist credit, he did then name and quote someone with this view - it was sufficiently asinine that I didn't bother including it in my quote

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article was well written. I liked the detail they went into describing the bike setup. Going to a 1x11 gear setup is interesting.

The idea about mobility is very true today and in the future. Less people own cars and are restricted normally by foot themselves in protest situations.

<comment><USER9> the great side effect is that it can keep their people healthy both from not sitting in cars all day to the simple act of peddling around. throw in as pointed out that they are closer to the community as an extra benefit. even having them on bikes may encourage kids and others to ride more.

still it must be recognized you need a stable environment where police are not forced back into cars and armored vehicles. America's protests tend to be under the snide remark "first world problems" but they can sometimes still highlight issues faced by others outside the country. What we can do with a lot less is some of the recent irresponsible behavior put forth by certain "PACs" and late night people.

* OT, first time I have encountered this form of funding for an online paper. donate people

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like they went a bit overkill with the bikes. They don't need an expensive fork and disc brakes, a cheap one with rim brakes would work just fine.

<comment><USER10> As long as they aren't buying many more than 1 per year per officer it doesn't matter a whole lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "It gives them tactical advantages"

As "critical mass' demonstrations show, bicycles are a tactical advantage for protesters too.

<comment><USER12> You also get the benefits of being able to change between pedestrian and road user modes. In road user mode the highway code applies and you can be just regular traffic and not hemmed in.

The London Critical Mass riders were crucial back in the day for taking ownership of the highway, so that pedestrian protestors can then do the classic march up the road, unmolested by cars. Reclaim The Streets was therefore reliant on bikes.</comment></comment>


Atom: Editor window startup is slow - <AUTHOR> https://www.github.com/atom/atom/issues/2654 <comment><USER2> 3 things made me drop Atom:

1\. The slow startup time in question

2\. The huge editor software file size. I am not leaving 400mb for "yet another text editor"

3\. I had become very dependent on some Sublime plugins for my work and the Atom counterparts were a long ways off being up to par.

The thing that first made me excited about atom was that being built around Chromium I thought we could finally have an editor with a nice Chrome-like web view with real-time update built into it, as a tab or something.

However, I noticed a thread on it in Atom (can't find it now), and it sounded like the core of Atom's security prevented such a thing from ever being built, so it would remain an unfulfilled desire. Oh well.

<comment><USER3> Not only the start up time, it seems to hog memory and bog down my Macbook Air (4GB) after using it for awhile. I'm not entirely sure if it was the length of time I had Atom open or the size of the project. I usually have Chrome running with a small Vagrant box. After a few hours it was unbearably slow to even switch between open files.

I closed Atom and my memory pressure dropped considerably. Installed Brackets and the pressure is still low even with Chrome and a box running yet.

This probably isn't an issue for people with 8+ GB of ram though, unless it actually has a memory leak.

<comment><USER4> Well duh, it's built on web technologies. These are probably the most bloated, inefficient, and memory-hogging things humanity has built on a computer to date.

Honestly, nobody who adopted Atom should ever be surprised by any single aspect of its sluggishness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best comment is batjko's about how Atom is stuck in no mans land between text editor and IDE. One you expect to open near instantly, the other you'd forgive for a few minutes of loading.

[https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/2654#issuecomment-501372...](https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/2654#issuecomment-50137294)

<comment><USER6> > the other you'd forgive for a few minutes of loading.

No I wouldn't. What features do IDEs have which makes "a few minutes" a forgivable startup time (which I'll arbitrarily define as "time until key presses cause characters to show up on screen")

Especially in a world where Web apps are "slow" if they take a few seconds to load, and a bunch of work is going into replacing OS init systems to get their boot times under 10 seconds.

I didn't forgive Eclipse and Netbeans for their slugishness and bloat (they're the only programs I've seen with progress bars for _exiting_!). I've since switched to Emacs, which straddles the divide between text-editor, IDE and operating system.

Even loaded with extensions, written in LISP, running in a single thread, it loads in a few seconds.

<comment><USER7> I think his point is that if you were the type of developer who uses an IDE, you are willing to accept the slow start up time. You clearly are not willing to deal with that, and as such are not ever going to be happy.

Some tools take a while to warm up, use them or don't.

<comment><USER8> I _am_ the type of developer who uses an IDE. The problem is that I would usually get my work done in Vim _while waiting for the IDE to load_. After a few instances of finding myself working in Vim with Eclipse loaded and idle in the background, I just stopped opening Eclipse altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just installed it for the first time, opened a few files and it seemed OK, then I read the comments here.

Next I tried rearranging the tabs around and it took seconds? for the drop of the drag-n-drop motion to register.

This is why I lol about everything being re-invented in the browser and rewritten in javascript. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

<comment><USER10> > Next I tried rearranging the tabs around and it took seconds? for the drop > of the drag-n-drop motion to register.

Not seeing that, at all. What you've described just sounds like the default delay OSX puts on tap/three-finger drag motions though.

<comment><USER9> I'm running windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was always going to happen, Atom was always doomed to fail.

Why was that technology stack used to develop Atom? A browser window to render a text editor?

If Atom wanted to take over the world, it should have chosen a technology stack that made it run AT LEAST as quick as Sublime Text. Instead we got Eclipse. Therefore, it's never going to get traction outside a niche.

LESSON LEARNED: Choose a technology stack that benefits the end user, not one that suits the developer of the software.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the reason I stopped using Atom. It seems great but the performance was terrible, especially next to sublime.

<comment><USER13> Same for me, Sublime is faster and that give you an awesome sensation. I used Atom for a couple of weeks three months ago, i stopped the same moment i reopened Sublime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is this on the front page? It's a well known fact and I wouldn't expect much from an alpha-stage software (premature optimization, etc.).

<comment><USER15> It really depends on your expectation. Back when I created the Arora browser (2008) one common complaint was how starting up a new browser (firefox,ie,safari) took so long so no one should have cared about the startup speed. But as a developer I cared because I was also a user and regularly kept the load time under a second and much more closer to 100ms (with Qt in memory). As you approach commodity status (like browsers were back then) load times are one of the easy things that cause you to lose users. It was a pretty basic optimization problem. Defer loading of assets that are not needed, tricks like showing something to the user even if they can't actually interact with it for another 15ms, removing expensive computation that can occur seconds/minutes later (does the disk cache really need to check for expired stuff _right now_ on startup?) This was regularly tested with a "big data" such as a large disk cache, a history measured in years, etc. After those architectural decisions were made then it was basic profiling and fixing hotspots, improving algorithms and going beyond my application I went through and fixing issues in underlying libraries such as in Qt where I made fixes which not only improved my startup time, but every single Qt application.

Startup speed matters, sometimes a lot, sometimes not so much. It is both interesting because optimizations are a common problem in our field and the different approaches that can be taken are interesting to discuss, but it is also interesting taking a look at how this particular project cares about startup speed and what they have decided to prioritize over it (the social / project management aspect).

<comment><USER16> Your post reminds me of when Chrome was first released, and how startup time (and speed in general) was one of their primary concerns. They had (and probably still have) a whole suite of performance tests that, amongst other things, measure startup time.

With that in mind, if they didn't have those optimizations, Atom would probably be an order of magnitude slower to start up than it is today. It's all a matter of non-functional requirements and priorities, I guess.

On the other hand: as the saying goes, "make it work, make it pretty, make it fast" \- which can be interpreted in various ways, like "working software is more important than fast software" (aka avoid premature optimization), and "a well-designed application is easy to optimize".

<comment><USER17> For an intensely interactive application such as a text editor, performance is part of "make it work". If the screen is lagging behind keypresses, or trivial commands (e.g. the mentioned reordering of tabs) take long enough to wonder whether the program is hung, the basic contract of user interface has been broken. Basing the core of a text editor (not only scripting, as in Emacs, but input, rendering, event handling, data structures) on low-performance technology is as wrong as, say, designing it for single-byte character sets only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> But still no acknowledgement that on Retina MBPs it spins up fans and uses >100% CPU?

<comment><USER19> I had this issue with older versions but I've been using Atom as my primary editor on a rMBP for the last couple of months with no CPU usage issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Atom is just too sluggish for day to day use.

</comment><comment><USER21> Atom's tech stack choice is interesting. I have had several Mac app projects in mind where I really desired something more lightweight and webby than Objective-C, and toyed with the idea of using Node-Webkit or Atom Shell.

But I have always put it off:

\- The performance challenges are daunting. For complicated, heavily data- oriented UIs like Atom's that require low latency and efficient memory usage, it's nowhere close to native.

\- I'm growing increasingly tired of dynamically typed languages. What I want is to be able to implement native GUI code in a fast, statically typed language (ObjC is fine for this); and then write high-level logic in a scripting-type language. But:

\- The divide between native (ie., the shell) code and app code is very hard. Atom Shell actually relies on a special IPC mechanism to let the JS code talk to the native shell, and all the IPC calls have to implemented manually [1]. Surprisingly, there isn't anything like MacRuby/RubyMotion's Cocoa bridge.

I'm intimately familiar with ObjC/Cocoa, and it's a great language and framework, but I feel like as UI framework go, it's a bit antiquated; the "amount of code to productive, visible UI effect" ratio is very high. Way too little of my code ends up being actual app code, and way too much ends up being non-reusable, hand-coded, pixel-perfect-tuned logic to handle things like reshuffling UI components with animation. As a former Delphi developer, it's amazing to me that GUI development is actually _harder_ today than it was in 1998.

Just look at Shoes [2] for how simple a UI framework _could_ be. It's not something I would/could use myself, but it certainly gets a bunch of things right.

[1] [https://github.com/atom/atom- shell/blob/master/atom/browser/...](https://github.com/atom/atom- shell/blob/master/atom/browser/lib/rpc-server.coffee)

[2] [http://shoesrb.com](http://shoesrb.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a snippet of email I sent to a friend just a few days ago. Besides the slow startup, I think these numbers speak for themselves...:

        $ sudo ps_mem
         Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

        [...]
        412.0 KiB + 137.5 KiB = 549.5 KiB       vi
        [...]
         12.2 MiB +   2.7 MiB =  14.9 MiB       gvim
        [...]
        968.9 MiB +  94.3 MiB =   1.0 GiB       atom (7)

That's with no file loaded in any of the editors, gvim brimming with plugins, Atom freshly installed. Sad, really.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder what they could do to work around this hypothetically (ignoring whether it is a valid priority or how hard it would be).

Would it be possible to immediately 'show' something (ideally the content of the file) until the whole editor/browser runtime starts up?

<comment><USER23> Have a hidden atom loaded and all initialized and then fork it for each new window -- then it is all preloaded and ready to go. :) Might be a bit tricky to get a unique environment each time, but then add an init function to do that.

Or have an on computer startup process (yuck), that basically warms the atom cache for you. I know Microsoft Office does this or did this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The other issue I have with Atom that really bothers me is its text rendering. I can not understand why a font that is usable and readable in Sublime Text at 13pt is terrible in Atom. I have to have my fonts set to 3-4pt higher than what I use in Sublime.

</comment><comment><USER25> I leave it open for this reason. But honestly most of my more robust editors are _slightly_ slow to start and I keep them running if I think I'll need them. If I need super quick and light I fall back to vim.

</comment><comment><USER26> After trying Atom, I was thrilled with the concepts I was seeing. That said, I've been waiting for it to mature a bit before using it full time. Based on these comments it looks like it might be a while longer.

</comment><comment><USER27> Developing on fast computers with SSDs can increase productivity, but I wonder if during some development phases of some apps, you should use a slower computer to "dogfood" on.

</comment><comment><USER28> In my opinion, if you're starting atom more than a handful of times per day you're using it incorrectly. Try nano instead!

<comment><USER29> And that's just your opinion. Other people, myself included, use their editor in a different way and slow startup time is an important consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Its slowness is what has stopped me from even considering dropping sublime. Hopefully once it hits beta it will be alot faster.

</comment><comment><USER31> Couldn't they do what IntelliJ does and spin off some threads to handle the work in the background ?

<comment><USER32> The problem is really its architecture rather than its implementation. The only way to fix the performance aspects of Atom (slugishness, RAM and CPU usage) is to start over and redesign it from a perspective of performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really don't understand the problem. If your concentration span is _that_ short, what are you doing writing software professionally?

How often do you start up an editor per day? If the editor offers tools that save you more time than that, you won.

It's like refusing to use a chainsaw instead of a handsaw because it's a 2 minute walk to get it.

EDIT: I talked before my turn. I thought this was just about initial startup, but apparently it's about each editor window. Thanks schrodinger.

<comment><USER34> Have you used it? It's not just start up that's slow, it every time you open a new window. So if you go to type a git commit message, 5 second lag until it shows up. Double click a text file (after atom is already open), 5 seconds.

If it was just the initial startup, I'd be compelled to agree with you.

<comment><USER33> Admittedly I have not. I stand corrected.</comment></comment></comment>


Make Room - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/buying-breather?src=mp

<comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of naps and finding place to sleep for 20 min outside your own home or office is really difficult - harder than finding a place for a phone call or a run or to plug in your laptop or have a conversation with people.</comment>


Bullshit Job Title Generator - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/TimPietrusky/pen/CxiHF <comment><USER2> This is great, reminds me of a story from when I was an intern.

In 2002 I was working at Freddie Mac for an internal business unit as a summer intern. I was tasked to create our internal group's website. After a week or two of my boss not producing a mission statement, I went online to the Dilbert mission statement generator, downloaded about 50 randomly generated ones, then slapped them into a script that would randomly display one every time the page loaded. My boss never really caught on, other programmers in the unit loved it, and I'm pretty sure nobody ever realised that our mission statement was both randomly generated AND changing with every page load.

<comment><USER3> This sounds like it should be the subject of a Dilbert article!

<comment><USER2> Sadly, they took down the random mission statement generator from Dilbert.com, so you can't find any examples, but they were hilariously great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Ultra Error Expert" \-- I can stand behind that. I take some functioning code and make it non-functioning in no time!

<comment><USER5> I like to come into work at night, open a cpp file somewhere deep in our code base... then remove a semi colon.

<comment><USER6> I hope you write #line 9000 on the previous line to add to the confusion?

<comment><USER7> I swear sometimes I think you guys have no soul. That's downright evil.

<comment><USER8> In a C codebase, I would prefer '#define struct union' tucked away in a shared header. Compiles just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I once worked in a declining startup where the boss came up with increasingly unlikely product names for the increasingly desperate things we developers were tasked to create. The more insignificant a piece of software was, the fancier a name it ended up with. We coped with this in our way, by writing a bullshit name generator using word components from previous product names. It did end up having a few "hits" where some of the generated names would turn into actual products (despite the boss being blissfully unaware of our little name generator pisstake).

<comment><AUTHOR> You should share the generator with us! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always said that when I start a company I'm going to give out really meaningless titles like "Super Nintendo" and "Stealth Bomber", and make sure they go on the business cards.

</comment><comment><USER11> I nearly spit my coffee out when I read: _Über Chrome Dick_

Sounds like robot porn.

At my last startup I actually got to choose my title and chose _Lead Guitar_. It just confused the hell out of people so I changed it to Lead Developer.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Codepen.io Ultra Un-Usable iPhone Site Tester." Aw well. :/

<comment><USER13> "Ultra Un-Usable." Ouch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This remembers me of the "Spiegel-Online" jobtitle-generator which came in a "casino-bandit" style.

This one: [http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsleben/jobtitel- generato...](http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsleben/jobtitel-generator- neue-berufsbezeichungen-fuer-angeber-und-aufschneider-a-771682.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is really funny too :D Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've got "Ultra HackerNews Admin".

<comment><USER16> So we should come to you when a title needs to be changed from now on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems accurate. I've seen just as many RockStar and Ninja titles through this as I do in real life.

Fun tool.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Ultra Marketing CTO". Is that returned by oxymoron_generate() ?

</comment><comment><USER19> > Only the best Future Pizza Reheater

Well, I know what I'm doing tonight.

Reminds me a bit of [http://chillwitchnamemagic.com/](http://chillwitchnamemagic.com/) for chillwave bands.

</comment><comment><USER20> Definitely fun. A few of the random's seemed familiar enough that I wanted to search through old business cards and Linkin contacts to see if someone I know was actually using them ;-)

<comment><USER21> I think these job titles are more likely to show up in a HN job post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Please tell me that people don't put Sithlord in job titles...

</comment><comment><USER23> Does LinkedIn provide an API or was it unapproved web crawling?

</comment><comment><USER24> First-Class NULL Search Expert - sounds pretty awesome to me!

</comment><comment><USER13> Spent long nights working on that complicated Backbone/jQuery/Ember app? Be a "Javascript Pizza Reheater."

Now I'm wondering what they have for Python users.

</comment><comment><USER25> First Class Internet Explorer Bitch! I need this title.

</comment><comment><USER26> "JavaScript Search Expert"

Bulls-eye! That's every javascript coder i know of. Who writes javascript anyway just Google it, someone already did it.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Holy web slut" I think ill skip out on the business stationery with that one. However the title is pretty close to the truth.

</comment><comment><USER28> My favorite real life bullshit job title is "Chief Innovation Officer".

Care to stand up and be counted? I know you read HN. ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> #24 "Creative Bitch" \- Jesse

</comment><comment><USER30> I first read Sithlord as Shitlord...

<comment><USER31> Which actually would make sense as a bullshit job title, taken in context with the memes of certain online communities...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "First Class Professional Dick" would definitely get someone's attention.

<comment><USER33> Louis C.K. called himself that in Live at the Beacon Theater. At least "being a professional dick paid to fly first class" ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> WordPress Expert, Twitter Expert, Internet Evangelist - I have seen those in RL.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Awesome future bitch".. okay it has to be a little realistic.

</comment><comment><USER36> So, apparently I'm "Only The Best Yahoo CTO"...

</comment><comment><USER37> I got "Sexy Undefined Evangelist".

Going straight up to my résumé.

</comment><comment><USER38> But I am a "Brilliant Internet Explorer Dick"

</comment><comment><USER6> Apparently I "♥ Android Dick" _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER39> I almost lost my shit when it said Holy Java Dick

</comment><comment><USER40> UI Engineer?

Web Engineer?

/I kid because it's true.

</comment><comment><USER41> First Class Android Slut.

</comment><comment><USER42> good stuff. Time to update my Linkedin profile

</comment><comment><USER43> "Beautiful Frontend Dick"</comment>


Meetings are probably the most actionable way of transforming organizations - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wisembly-jam/meetings-are-probably-the-most-actionable-way-of-transforming-business-organisation-b30f46707d07 <comment><USER2> It literally took 5 clicks to get to their website from that article. and it was all routed through product hunt. so, if you go to twitter PH gets credit, if you go from medium to twitter to PH, PH gets credit.

Overall, the product seemed like a great idea for orgs.

problem I see is changing "meeting types" is going to need C level buy in.</comment>


[Old] Taking payments online (in Europe) in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://jamesmaskell.co.uk/2013/online-payments-in-2013/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wondering if anybody has an update as to the best payment solution in the UK?

</comment><comment><USER2> Stripe has expanded to a few countries in Europe, including UK.

[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global)</comment>


Weekend MVP for Twitter app from Lean Startup Machine - <AUTHOR> http://socialchangelog.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Five of us spent this weekend at Lean Startup Machine SF working on a MVP of an app that analyzes your Twitter engagement to help you reach your audience better.

<http://sf.theleanstartupmachine.com/>

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it would help if the app did something other than forcing you to connect with Twitter. The MVP shouldn't really be a landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm testing to see if there is a need/interest for such a product which is the entire purpose of MVPs.</comment></comment>