Scientists use ML to find an antibiotic able to kill superbugs in mice - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/20/machine-learning-finds-novel-antibiotic-able-to-kill-superbugs/ <comment><USER2> This paper shows what can be done when you carefully run an ML program alongside a wet lab experimental program tailored to feed back into the ML program. The results end up far more interesting than some recent "ML aided drug discovery" papers in that they actually discovered a drug that functions very differently than known antibiotics (AB).

Even though the structures that came out look AB-like, they work differently than known ABs, probably by disrupting the pH gradient across the cell membrane. Other ABs might do the same as part of their activity, but work better under different conditions than this one. The result is an innovative structure, and a molecule that can hit resistant strains.

Combining ML and wet lab is the real way we'll get new drugs. You need to regularly check in with a high content ground truth or you'll come up with either uninteresting or useless results. I'm a bit biased though, that's what we do at my company ;)

<comment><USER3> People have been doing this exact thing for two decades at least but obviously with less computing power. There's literally nothing new about the idea. The real trick is being incredibly lucky and finding something that actually works in humans after multiple trials. I'm sure you know this based on your comment and this isn't really directed at you (truly wish you best of luck, I really hope the computing power and skill we have saves lives) but I absolutely hate these types of articles, which I've seen becoming more frequent the past year. AI + scientific challenge + possibility = puff article. This is the type of semi-hysterical reporting I expect from a local news station.

<comment><USER4> > There's literally nothing new about the idea. The real trick is being > incredibly lucky and finding something that actually works in humans after > multiple trials.

I guess I'm not sure where the dismissiveness is coming from here. Are claiming this could have been trivially done before? If so, why didn't you or someone else do it already?

Or are you claiming it's an uninteresting result that is not worthy of publication or attention?

<comment><USER3> I'm saying I'm tired of the puff piece articles and reddit style headlines. I was saying NN's and other "AI" style models has been used in this way for decades for these types of things. 0 disrespect to the actual science; the paper is great and I truly hope it works in humans. We need more drugs against the inevitable fight against drug resistance.

<comment><USER4> Okay, fine... what do you want to be different about the situation, then?

Do you not want any non-technical summary articles like this to be written? So that only those with the training to understand a Cell journal article would be able to learn anything about the result?

Or do you prefer that no journal articles be published that rely on 2020-era NN models, because older articles based on less state-of-the-art NNs have been published already?

<comment><USER3> I'd much prefer there be more detail in the article about AI research in drug discovery, how it still needs clinical trials in humans. I agree with the sub- comment as well. I think your last question doesn't make sense to me though as I haven't said anything similar to that.

But I think you raise an interesting point about non-technical summary articles: what do they do and who are they for? Does the non-technical public need to know about this research? Do they gain anything vs. reading the study's actual summary? I'm not sure. I do think there isn't much for non- technical people to get from this article that would be useful. I think the best reason would be for younger people to pique their interest in the field. Though, I honestly don't know the answer.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, good points. I guess such non-tech articles serve several purposes.

I do think this one gives non-technical people get something useful, though. More broadly, it'll increase science understanding among the non- scientist/non-technical public, at least on this topic, and good does tend to come out of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting here that the breakthrough seems to come from the computer search not suffering from epistemological block. It doesn't think, therefore it is also not bound by conventional patterns of thought, such as the bias a researcher may show when thinking that this known compound is not an antibiotic, when it is in fact an antibiotic compound.

</comment><comment><USER6> > That is an especially pressing challenge in the development of new > antibiotics, because a lack of economic incentives has caused pharmaceutical > companies to pull back from the search for badly needed treatments. Each > year in the U.S., drug-resistant bacteria and fungi cause more than 2.8 > million infections and 35,000 deaths, with more than a third of fatalities > attributable to C. diff, according to the the Centers for Disease Control > and Prevention.

How big does the market have to be to commercially viable for research and development? Nearly 3M potential patients at a couple hundred dollars per course is nearing a $1B/year.

<comment><USER7> At least one disincentive is that if you do find an amazing new antibiotic effective against certain strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria, antibiotic stewardship means the medical community will try and use it only where necessary to slow any adaptation to the new drug. That makes your potential patient population much smaller.

<comment><USER8> Here's an interesting thought. Let's say that the number of possible antibiotics that can be discovered is so high that bacteria cannot simultaneously be resistant to all of them (plant immune systems, which involve a lot of small moleculea, indicate that this may be possible). Then, this game theory trap where stewards are guarding what we have so that pharma doesn't want to make anything new is both pointless _and_ self-perpeuating, because we will never reach the point where we realize we've beaten resistance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not an expert in ML/Biology, but I wonder if doing so won't completely eliminate all of humankind's diseases, but shift the battle from one between humans and bacteria/viruses, to one where ML takes the place of humans by proxy (say we let this ML vs superbugs play out over centuries). I wonder to what direction evolutionary pressure in the face of ML would take bacteria.

Perhaps a super smart bug.

<comment><USER10> Molecular biology is not that easy. Selecting a promising molecule is only a small fraction of the work. If you know the molecule you still have to be able to replicate and bring it to the place where it is required. So even if AI can support the process still a lot of plain old biochemistry is needed. AI is just one of many tools. And as you can read in the article a lot of trials are required by the regulatory authorities before the drug can be applied to humans.

<comment><USER11> True but it's interesting that once you have an oracle that given a molecule provides you with an antibiotic score, you can show it directly molecules that are easy to produce and or likely safe for humans. This should help significantly.

<comment><USER10> It will not go without replication, trials and production, regardless what oracle you have. And keep in mind that the oracle has a quite significant error rate. You won't get an immediate solution, just proposals. And whether or how a drug works is also dependent on the environment and there are dynamic aspects and complex processes within a cell extending over space and time. It's much more complex than speech recognition or self-driving cars.

<comment><USER9> We speak in hypotheticals of course, but barring any physics defying barriers here, one can imagine a future where those issues you raised have been addressed (e.g improved simulation/ML techniques, less red tape, faster trials, greater accessibility to treatment). Even now, I think mankind's immune defense is no longer confined to itself, but must be thought of as a bigger system that extends to the pharmaceutical industrial complex. Any sufficiently ambitious bacteria is basically taking on not just us, but also the collective work of all researchers diligently working on the next super bug killer.

<comment><USER10> You are invited to try it. You will not be able to avoid the laws of nature, and there will also be many legal hurdles. But if you make a big step forward, you will undoubtedly be a Nobel Prize candidate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A medicinal chemist take on it: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/02/20/ma...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/02/20/machine- learning-for-antibiotics)

</comment><comment><USER13> Decades ago when I worked in a lab, "high-throughput screening" was definitely on the list of buzzwords.

Given what I saw back then, I'm struggling to understand how there could possibly be "a library [..] of 6,111 molecules at various stages of investigation for human diseases" (a.k.a. "Drug Repurposing Hub") which hasn't already been partially or fully screened for interesting antibiotic activity.

Could it be there's more fame (and funding) in a project where you can publish a paper and get headlines about "ML" and "superbugs", than in actually testing a library of existing compounds to see if any of them kill E. coli?

<comment><USER14> For DD, it seems initial screening of as many phages, microbes and compounds as possible using highly-automated brute force might be plenty efficient to test their effectivenesses against every horrible, resistant and opportunistic pathogen for candidate identification. Maybe flying drones out to collect samples in as many random places (public places, restrooms, dirt and even more random places) as possible, generating more samples than a team of humans ever could.

There doesn't seem to be any "One True Way," but a holistic synthesis of collection, identification and selection methods.

<comment><USER13> > highly-automated brute force might be plenty efficient

Hasn't this been going on in one form or another for many decades?

When I was in this field (20+ years ago) I got to visit labs at Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham, Zeneca and so on.

Even back then they were proudly showing off lab robots which allowed them to run large-scale screening experiments.

Not sure any of this stuff is quite as revolutionary as it looks.

<comment><USER15> I did a stint at GSK about 13 years ago. The large scale mechanised experiments also produced big databases of compounds and their properties and mechanisms to make these accessible to researchers and build bigger clusters of systems to run models on. There was a lot of talk of ML but implementation was nowhere near the scale we see nowadays. I think what has changed significantly is the scale, second to that the methods including algorithms and methods to feed back real data into it. It's an evolutionary improvement but I sense it's one of those things where one lucky step in the evolution could make a big difference in productivity.

<comment><USER13> > one lucky step in the evolution could make a big difference in productivity

There's also the issue of ROI. Is Big Pharma really expecting to find an antibiotic blockbuster drug?

20+ years ago there was a distinct lack of excitement around antibiotics in general, at least from the commercial types.

Q: Is there more expectation/excitement/R&D budget now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's becoming apparent is the fundamental nature of applied mathematics and ML/AI/DL to our future.

Our education system needs to adapt, include this as a mandatory part of a college education (BRIC countries are including this at the high school level). A degree in pure AI/ML without mastery over impactful problems and it's underlying science, is not the ideal future. Every chemist, biologist, ... should be proficient in ML/DL

<comment><USER17> The field of ML is moving too fast to be taught in schools. It's better to teach its foundations (linear algebra, etc) which are well developed and static.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank goodness it was "aided by machine learning". Otherwise, would anybody be reading this article ;)?

<comment><USER19> We're techies, not doctors. It's the computational solutions that interest us, only secondarily the underlying problems being solved.

Thankfully, it doesn't matter a whit whether or not a bunch of programmers read about medical advancements on their lunch break.

<comment><USER20> You should realised that not everyone here identifies as techi. I for one care about interesting problems and ideas and ignore most of the pure tech posts. From other posts I've seen, there are people from quit different occupations here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is the code repository for the model [https://github.com/chemprop/chemprop](https://github.com/chemprop/chemprop) . I am surprised by the (high) quality of the code published there. It is quite a rare case in the academic world :).

<comment><USER22> They are funded by several big pharma companies (from which they have learned a lot in terms of QSAR). One main point of the collaboration is the creation of production ready toolkits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I saw news about this on The Guardian and it was the first time in a while where I was truly amazed by an ML-related discovery. This kind of thing is incredibly exciting and I hope we continue to see similar discoveries in ever more wider fields.

</comment><comment><USER24> Knew this happen eventually. ML drugs will be huge

</comment><comment><USER25> A lot of the more cynical commenters here are misunderstanding the breakthroughs that have lead to the novel discovery, and underpin the emerging ML revolution that we are just beginning to witness. Yes, partly the results of this study are due to increased compute, but I'd say that's only about 50% of the secret sauce. The other 50% is attributable to many very recent developments in the field ML which are gradually coming together in solutions to a range of problems - deep learning, convolutional networks, new architectures (GAN, transformer, RNN, LSTM, autoencoders, etc), regularization techniques, gradient control, hyperparameter optimization...the list is quite long, and every SOTA neural network inevitably incorporates a large proportion of these small steps towards the massive leaps that are being taken in the applied ML space. The concepts of perceptrons and gradient descent may be 50+ years old, but an entire body of theory has been explosively developed in the last decade, such that comparing modern ML to what was being done just a decade ago is akin to the difference between, say, programming theory now and 100 years ago. And for the same reason - just as compute advances enabled development of computer science, so to have recent hardware advances unlocked a new level of machine learning.

But I'd like to point out that, even moreso than software development, very little of the grand breakthroughs we will soon see will be possible without multidisciplinary domain knowledge. It is very difficult to effectively apply ML without a solid technical understanding of the properties of the applied data space, which for real world applications are constrained by physical laws and represented and communicated best by mathematical descriptions. ML engineering is a generalist's game - and what we are going to find is that the most successful ML engineers come from broadly applicable, math heavy backgrounds - physics in particular, electrical engineering, to a lesser degree mathematics, etc - because ultimately training a neural network comes down to adequately sampling a problem space and curating data with an intuition which is most ideally developed by the study of mathematics. It is a very general view of the world which is difficult to communicate to someone who is not experienced with higher math.

The current wave of applied ML startups will see a high rate of failure - because ML is still being treated as an extension of programming, in the sense that you expect to be able to hire a bunch of pure developers to translate a specialist's knowledge into code. But this emerging field is different, the few startups that succeed in the applied ML space will be those that are able to find the rare domain experts who have picked up ML along with their math and science experience. There will effectively emerge two classes of ML engineers with substantially different levels of compensation - the coveted generalists who have cross-pollinated with math heavy disciplines, and the rest.

<comment><USER26> I think multidisciplinary knowledge is unnecessary, especially now with deep learning where there is no feature vector design.

Even the DeepMind discoveries in various fields always feature the same people that I doubt know deeply about protein folding or similar stuff.

Even when you look at computer vision research and how all the sophisticated methods became unnecessary when NNs came to dominate shows the same thing.

I remember having to learn about dependency parsing, part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition, entity relationship inference, document summarization and a bunch of sophisticated modelling. Combining all of that to get to high level tasks like machine translation or question answering or even summarization (some methods pruned the dependency tree to get a summarized sentence) was difficult.

Look at transformers disrupting the NLP. There is no concept of dependency tree, no need to do POS tagging, it's not even necessary to think about that when making a machine translation system. People were figuring out how to build better and faster dependency parsers, POS taggers etc. Domain knowledge was massive and it became redundant with the advent of transformers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _...in mice._

It would be nice if we spent as much time, money and attention on figuring out prevention. Inadequate hygiene infrastructure (like toilets) in developing areas is part of the problem here.

But addressing that isn't as exciting to people as finding a cure for a super bug. If we really want to fix this, that needs to change.

<comment><USER16> Super bugs are a mostly first world problem, rampant in top tier hospitals providing cutting edge treatments, despite following safety precautions meant to deter secondary bacterial infections during or post hospitalization

<comment><USER28> _Super bugs are a mostly first world problem_

Not true at all. There are several known resistant strains that have come out of developing countries.

Why? Antibiotic use can be rampant - in many countries you can buy them without a prescription.

<comment><USER29> I heard someone (in the correct area of expertise) describing how he had visited a developing country and tested the water in a river downstream of an antibiotic manufacturing plant, and found the concentration of a particular antibiotic to be approximately the same as what you would typically want to achieve in the blood of a patient.

If that isn't going to drive resistance to that particular antibiotic, I don't know what will.

<comment><USER30> People say things like this, but how many antibiotic compounds are in the soil naturally? Living creatures exist in an environment with countless bacteria and evolve to survive, and some of the compounds they produce are turned into human drugs. So I feel like there's something missing in the ordinary narrative about antibiotic resistance. Where did penicillin come from again?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Etsy Welcomes Manufacturers to Artisanal Fold - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/business/etsy-welcomes-manufacturers-to-artisanal-fold.html <comment><USER4> Etsy's move into manufacturers is an error IMHO.

Etsy would be better served by shoring up its advantage in craftpeople sellers, including artisinal products, one of a kind items, and handmade creations.

Etsy has had difficult times since the spring IPO. The causes that I see are primarily due to large increases (+50%) in spending vs. no corresponding movement in income. Discoverability/search has decreased, and gamed listings by knockoff manufacturers are squeezing out legitimate handcrafters.

In addition, Etsy sellers who are true independents are moving to other hosting platforms that provide more capabilities such as Wix and SquareSpace, and to more popular promotions areas such as Instagram and Pinterest. Amazon Handmade looks promising as well.

Rather than trying to diversify into manufacturers and supply choices, Etsy would be wise IMHO to focus on its core strength of handcrafting, and specifically focus on two immediate goals:

1) Significantly improve discoverability/search. Esty needs to make it easier for people to locate items by e.g. regional areas, fair trade practices, true handcrafting, one of a kind items, etc.

2) Return the Etsy treasuries. Treasuries were user-curated collections featuring browse by image. The treasuries worked much like Pinterest, and looked somewhat like Instagram. The important aspects are the user curation and the inclusion of multiple craftspeople and items on one page.

<comment><USER5> The manufacturers were already on Etsy anyway, and Etsy wasn't really making much of an effort to get rid of them, so it's basically a move to legitimize the status quo. I agree that the brand damage is probably going to hurt in the long term, Amazon and eBay have already locked up the "generic crap from China" market. But I guess Etsy is probably thinking that their money spends just like everyone else's, so.

I strongly agree with your first point. Etsy's search is hot garbage, you just can't get there from here. The only major e-commerce site with a comparably bad search is Amazon, and they are highly aware of how many of their inlinks are coming from "productName amazon" and working hard to rectify the problem.

Personally I wish more sites implemented searches that let you get at categories and attributes and apply Boolean logic to them (eg "glass bowl NOT pipe region:PacificNorthWest"). At least then the powerusers can eventually strugglebus their way through the crap. Ebay's search is actually fantastic in this respect, and you can find a lot of the same stuff that's on Etsy - <USER2> more easily. Especially, again, the generic Chinese crap.

Now mind you, I've never seen anyone actually DOCUMENT their searches well, even in the cases where they implement them. Not even Google has a single source where you can find everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to be an Etsy customer. Now the site has turned into eBay but with worse filtering/categorisation than eBay itself (and a smaller selection).

Etsy used to be good because items were either literally made by someone in their living room, or at least made by small businesses. It was more expensive, but the products were made in small batches so could be much more targeted/niche.

Plus you had tons of commission sellers that did customisation. And these were real people you could actually contact and discuss your needs, not drones pumping out generic items with your name stamped on them.

Now, being realistic, there was always mass produced items on Etsy. But it was like an 80/20 thing (20% being mass produced) and it was pretty easy to tell who was what.

Now if you go on the site it is like 10/90 (90%+ are mass produced). And worse still it is too difficult to find anything that is not, the "Handmade" checkbox is a lie.

So now Etsy is another eBay. That's fine on the face of it, but eBay makes it far easier to find, sort, and filter. So ultimately Etsy is now an eBay with an inferior site design.

PS - If others choose to use Etsy, more power to you, I just want an Etsy replacement that does custom goods again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Since Etsy is battling to achieve profitability, I'm reluctant to second-guess this move. But as a consumer, I want an exclusively artisanal marketplace.

If you're patient, you can find some outrageously awesome stuff here and there on Etsy, but a lot of merchants game the system by offering the same product under many different listings. Mass-producing merchants will have the incentive and the resources to dump an avalanche of listings for low-margin dreck on the site. I doubt the ability of the Etsy team to counter that effect and maintain the kind of marketplace where someone interested in artisanal goods would want to shop.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I don't know why etsy isn't profitable (really? seems like a fairly simple site), but I use it exclusively to avoid manufactured stuff. Same goes for tindie.

<comment><USER9> Etsy is one of the 50 most popular websites in the US, according to Alexa. And because it's facilitating ecommerce, it has to handle a lot of anti-fraud measures, customer service... all that seeming simplicity over that actual complexity costs a fair amount of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I only know of etsy through their software blog, so this might be a bit left field, but I have always wondered how much money there really is in that "perfect" hand made item. Most artists in Anglo-Saxon world can't make a living - they either have jobs and do painting / sculpting as a hobby, or they turn to crafts (I'm a three-year postgrad trained sculpture artist - can I make you a gate for your driveway?)

Our society simply does not value art sufficiently to pay a living wage for it. Look at painting - the number of prints and posters sold in the mass market is enormous. At between 10 and 100 bucks it's a fairly common and lucrative trade, and some photos of New York can be found in a million IKEA furnished homes.

But if IKEA stocked genuine, hand painted one offs, even in the volumes needed, would they go at say, 500 to 1000 bucks?

(I assume we want a nice painting of average poster size - so 2-5 days work to paint a canvas at a decent rate - about 25,000 bucks pa at the low end - <USER3> above the U.S. Poverty line if raising a family)

So, not disparaging etsy, but my "mental smell test", highly biased that it is, tells me that 1000 bucks for a painting against 750 for a sofa won't go well at the mass market - and it won't go well in a mass market web site either.

Etsy is a Walmart, stocked high with that "perfect distressed framed mirror", and wondering where the impedance mismatch is coming from.

<comment><USER11> It's more a matter of originals vs. copies. The original may take 10x the time to make as the copy, but most of society doesn't value the original at 10x the copy.

<comment><USER10> Thank you - bang on the nail there. Yes we like art, but we sell a lot more TV than theatre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Though Etsy does not intend to visit or otherwise directly vet manufacturers — or limit the size of companies that apply — the site will require that they commit to providing a safe and just workplace and agree to be transparent about the processes and other details involved in their manufacturing work, Ms. Peyton said. ... Manufacturers who receive negative reviews from Etsy sellers or are found to be violating Etsy guidelines could be removed from the platform."

The last sentence seems awfully weasel-worded to me, especially since the first sentence says that, for compliance, Etsy will just take the manufacturer's word for it.

It definitely reminds me of the controversial "but we're just a platform" stance of, e.g., Uber.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you have a hand-made product, and it suddenly explodes in popularity, it's not like hiring a company to manufacture it is easy, even if someone like Etsy is connecting you. Machine-knit is not hand-knit, for instance. I predict a lot of disappointed purchasers.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well now that means that Etsy is just a marketplace for people with quirky ideas and a number of knockoff competitors.

I'm not entirely certain I like that.</comment>


Apple offers Safari users safer browsing with USB security key support - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/06/apple-safari-usb-security-key-support/ <comment><USER2> Safari is so underrated, if only FF could be better on Mac

<comment><USER3> I love Safari, for it's syncing with my phone and password features, as well as its performance.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Opel for Business - <AUTHOR> https://opel.org/business.html <comment><USER2> The name is highly confusing, at least for a European. While I read through the text, I try as hard as I can to context-switch from a car brand to something else, and I fail.

But if this service can only text to US phone numbers, then this is probably fine.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I was thinking of Opel the car maker.</comment></comment>


Google App Engine page already owned by hackers - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/377603/google-app-engine-page-already-owned-by-hackers <comment><USER2> An XSS is a tad different than being owned (IMHO), but certainly isn't an ideal thing to see right away.

The cool part is that things like this will encourage them to put more security-by-default sorts of APIs into GAE.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most everyone doing lots of web apps gets bitten by XSS at some point. Nothing embarrassing about it IMHO.

<comment><USER4> But Google has probably hired ten PhDs just to make sure none of their products gets exploited like this.

But the PhDs failed. Thus, it's newsworthy.

<comment><USER5> Hiring PhDs for this task was their first mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a simple XSS example hack. Google should have filtered that out, but it's not that bad either (as long as they react fast).

<comment><USER7> While THAT may be an example of a SIMPLE attack, probably for the sake of showing off, what if "the goog" had exposed web services retrievable by Ajax for logged in users as part of AppEngine and THAT was exploited via the SIMPLE XSS hack?

It makes no sense. Why do we just brush stuff under the rug when it's Google or some other major player that's generally well liked?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> misleading headline. plus why is a valleywag article showing up on HN, I can get that elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> "misleading headline"

Absolutely. Any fewl know it should be "pwned".</comment></comment>


LinkedIn is down - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/search/linkedin+down

<comment><AUTHOR> The error message states: "LinkedIn Your LinkedIn Network Will Be Back Soon

We've notified our operations staff that you are having a problem reaching LinkedIn. We'll get you reconnected soon."</comment>


Ebook apps not leaving iTunes after all - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/05/09/ebook-apps-not-leaving-itunes-after-all/

<comment><USER2> I'm not buying it yet. Removing the link to their bookstore is an easy change for Sony to make, but somehow the Sony Reader app isn't in the App Store (even though Sony's users want it badly).

I think it is equally possible that this is another false alarm and that the Dutch e-reader app slipped through because it wasn't high-profile. Hopefully this is at least a trial-balloon Apple is floating, but even if it is, I wouldn't count on it. As the article notes, Apple hasn't exactly been a model of consistency so far.</comment>


If this doesn't get countered, we're all doomed. - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_talk_(phatic_communication) Anybody else disturbed by the increasing array of technological options to de-evolve into a passive herd-cow, contributing nothing much more than a moo-tweet here and a moo-facebook update there?
Sure ... some will be quick to say it's optional ... but is it really when everyone from VCs to job-seekers feel obsessively-compulsively compelled to keep every-single-freakin' petty detail of every moment of every day "up-to-date", lest they be seen as "inactive" and therefore, to the superficial-yet-blessed-with-power types that seem to rule the lives of those of us who haven't as yet achieved total financial freedom, "irrelevant?"
I don't know ... I think some public display is necessary to highlight the dangers of this trend, if allowed to continue.
Can something like fb/twitter be hacked in the original sense of the word and played around with for a day, say, parodied?
Can the world log on to facebook for a day and see, say, a picture of a people doing something at a park with a message like, "Stop updating everybody and go out and do something with them before your lives pass you by!"?
I know meetup and stuff exist ... but I feel like the dark side of the mindless internet brain is sucking us all in and reducing us to simple binary micro processors of the "I liked the latest whatever/I didn't like it." type.
Thanks for listening to my rant. <comment><USER2> You seem to think that small talk is harmful. Why?</comment>


Why Can't Google Fix its Own URLs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vineetdhanawat.com/blog/2012/01/why-cant-google-fix-its-own-urls/ Google's Add URL Page returns a 404 Error Page, works after removing a / (forward slash). Google engine itself returns the normal URL on a normal web search. <comment><USER2> It's a very common bug actually. When you use php_explode() for the REQUEST_URL for a case like '/webmasters/tools/submit-url' the array returned has a structure like array([0] => '', [1] => 'webmasters', [2] => 'tools', [3] => 'submit-url') Whereas in case of REQUEST_URL like '/webmasters/tools/submit-url/' the array returned has a structure like array([0] => '', [1] => 'webmasters', [2] => 'tools', [3] => 'submit-url', [4] => '') So, in the case with an extra '/' the length of aruguments increases and also the last argument becomes ''. Usually this is handled by busting the empty last and first array indexes. Thats why better to make your own function to decode urls when using them with .htaccess ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Question!_ _I always assumed a URL is same with or without the ending / (forward slash). How can they behave differently?_

The server just receives the URL from the client as a string; there's nothing in the protocol that requires a trailing slash to be ignored. Consider:

      if (REQUEST_URL == "/something") send_something()
      if (REQUEST_URL == "/something/") send_something_else()

Many web servers, such as Apache, helpfully adds a missing slash if it detects that the URL you're trying to access actually maps to a directory in the file system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, the I guess its same as doing via .htaccess file on a linux host.

But then surprisingly Google is returning a 404 error page to its own search result!</comment></comment>


A Year and a Half With a Nissan Leaf (Part 1): The Acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-year-and-half-with-nissan-leaf-part-1.html <comment><USER2> So it's a pretty good product hamstrung by a shoddy dealer network/deployment plan(incompetence, arbitrary rules for purchase). This seems to be a trend...

A couple weeks ago, after months of research, I decided to buy a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon. I went to my local Jeep dealer and took a test drive. The sales guy was fine. It's always kind of annoying when you know more about the vehicle than the person assisting you, but this is mostly par for the course, and he was polite enough. So then we get back to the dealership and it's instantly good cop/bad cop time.

I was accosted by a close talker with a fake tan and gold jewelry giving me a hard sell and telling me that he could definitely work something out for me today, while the other guy apologized for him interrupting us. This is a $40,000 vehicle. It's not an impulsive purchase and I was there for a test drive, which they knew. There was zero chance of me buying a car that day for circumstances that had nothing to do with me or them.

Anyway, it was a stereotypical scene from there. After 10 minutes of being polite, but firm. I had to physically walk out of the place while they were still talking to me, trying to make a sale. I felt rude, but what else could I have done. I'd still be there if I hadn't.

How is this good business? It must be, because I've purchased 5 vehicles (different brands, different geographic areas) in my life and this experience has been about the same for 4 of them. The 5th was a great experience I had with a VW salesman. Even so, his finance guy was rude and tried to screw me over with nonsensical add-ons and a hidden fee that he himself was "surprised" to see in the paperwork when I pointed them out. WTF? The conversation was also full of obsequious fawning BS like, "Wow, I've never seen one go for this low before!" It was very strange.

I've been following the Tesla fight against the regulatory capture that car dealerships have implemented. I hope the dealers get buried. Why can't I go online and order the Jeep (or whatever else) I want and have it delivered or pick it up from a non-jackass?

Anyway. I'll be buying a used, low mileage Jeep from Carmax. They have fixed pricing and I can view their entire nationwide inventory in detail on their websites. I wish the car manufacturers would get with it. (This is not an ad for Carmax. They are the least of many evils in this situation.)

<comment><USER3> It's a trend with certain dealerships. In my experience, the low-end car companies tend to do this more often. As a hobby, I help friends buy/negotiate cars, so I've had experience with several dealerships. Here's my list from memory:

Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge: Horrendous. I have never found a dealership I like in this chain.

Nissan: Hit or miss. One dealership was fantastic (San Diego) and one I went to was the awful "hard sell" place.

Mazda: Every one I've been to has been good save for one (unfortunately, that one is the closest to where I now live in Austin, TX.) If you live in Austin and want a Mazda, go to the dealership on the south side. They will literally throw you the keys and let you test-drive any of their cars.

Acura: Good overall, though have not been impressed with the salespeople themselves.

BMW/Mini, Lexus, Mercedes/Smart, Porsche: Have always had good experiences with these dealerships. One caveat: My fiance has a BMW and we bought it certified used, and it didn't come with a manual. A year later, despite multiple requests, we still don't have a manual. The sales experience was good, however.

Of all of the above, Lexus has been the most consistently awesome. I've been to 4 different dealerships and all were extremely pleasant.

Of note: Two dealerships have offered me jobs as a car saleswoman after I negotiated with them for friends.

<comment><USER4> I've had pretty good experiences with Toyota, which jives with your experiences with Lexus, as they are part of Toyota.

<comment><USER5> I've even had good experiences with Scion. Their whole "no haggling" business works for me.

The car itself on the other hand... a little bit of buyer's remorse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I took away from the blogpost was that when you have a well-defined deployment plan, part of that should include a way to handle exceptions.

In this case, he clearly was very enthusiastic about buying a Leaf. That's the kind of customer you want for a new product. How many others like him weren't even within 100 mile radius of any eligible dealers?

If Nissan had a process to bump such customers up to a person who handled such purchases as a kind of promotion, who could get a Leaf prepped at a vetted dealer and then flat-bedded to the customer, maybe the goodwill and PR opportunities would have helped them reach their sales targets.

[http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/11/nissan-will-miss- lea...](http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/11/nissan-will-miss-leaf-sales- targets-says-ghosn/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said! On top of that, Madison already had over a dozen charging stations that popped up on the Leaf's navigation system when I first got back home. Nissan should have especially planned for particularly green cities close to their original roll-out states.

Now it's not really an issue. We've got two dealerships in the city, and they're both selling 2-4 Leafs per month. I just couldn't wait for mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Leaf=21K, Accent=14K, Commute=11 Miles.

It doesn't make economical sense to pay 7K more for a car who's primary feature is low cost per mile, then hardly put miles on the car. Maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER8> This argument is made constantly with hybrids and electric vehicles. Yet it is not made for any other vehicle that isn't the most economical option, so it sounds like a double standard to me.

I mean, if you look at what's on the road, you'll see a lot of cars that are more expensive than what could do the same job. Some people even pay extra for fancy wheels, sunroofs, bigger engines (which cost more in fuel), cosmetic modifications, etc.

So either we need to judge all vehicles purely on economics, or we should admit that car buyers are looking for other things than purely functional transportation at the lowest cost.

<comment><USER9> Having worked in deep in the marketing machinery on behalf of big car companies, my take-away is automobile buying decisions are one of the most irrational decisions a person can make. So often, people will purchase a car to address "edge use cases" (e.g. pulling a boat) and most of the time a more economical car combined with renting a vehicle for those edge cases is cheaper.

Oh and each model of vehicle has a target demographic, and you may notice the marketing of any given model targets the lifestyle of the buyer. Young, hip and urban? Hard-working man's man? Eco-concious? A car for every lifestyle.

<comment><USER10> I hear you. I pointed out a nissan leaf to my wife and she was like 'what if we want to go on a vacation?' 'what if we have two more kids?' we wouldn't be able to fit our luggage or go farther than 100 miles away from home! I did mention that in those times which would be rare, we could rent a vehicle with enough space, but she was not having it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think you fit the profile that Nissan was pursuing. Your commute isn't too far and you own another car for the longer trips.

I can't see anyone buying a Nissan Leaf as their only car. The range is a big inconvenience.

I am curious to see how the battery will handle the cold winters in the long term.

<comment><USER12> > I can't see anyone buying a Nissan Leaf as their only car. The range is a > big inconvenience.

Remember that for some, it's no problem. I live in the UK, I have no intention of ever driving more than 100 miles in one go, and if I really need to travel long distances, trains, buses, trams, planes are relatively cheap and available.

I doubt a Leaf is what I would buy, but given that Tesla want to allow free charging, so ostensibly free fuel, I can see that as very attractive in the near future.

<comment><USER13> If you're with Ecotricity in the UK (who peg their electricity prices to match the big 6) then you get free access to their network of chargers: [http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for-the-road](http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for- the-road)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Summary: the author's experience doesn't surprise me, as it mirrors mine in many respects.

It's unfortunate that Nissan did so poorly with the deployment of the initial Leafs. I love ours, and would buy another one, except that every aspect of the buying experience has put me off ever buying another Nissan ever again. I'll repeat: I'll never buy another Nissan.

Pre-ordering one was easy enough. After that, the experience went downhill. There were some production delays due to the tsunami, but they were going to have delays anyway, tsunami or not. I'll let that slide, it's a radically different car, things didn't go as planned; whatever. Finally the cars are being delivered. Months go by, and despite having pre-ordered on the first day, no Leaf in my driveway. Then I find out via online forums that people who ordered months after I did are picking up their car. That's completely unacceptable, but whatever, it's just a car.

Eighteen months after I entered the initial pre-order, the car arrives and we're off to the dealership. That was probably the final straw for any future Nissan purchases. Despite having arranged a time to pick it up, and having waited eighteen months for the car, we shake hands with the salesman and...wait. After nearly an hour of standing around the dealership drooling over the GT, we are finally deemed worthy of the privilege of receiving the car. After the usual BS with the finance guy, we drive off.

I'll reiterate that the car itself is great. It exceeded expectations, and after two years and 16K miles we've had zero trouble with it. But I'm not going to purchase another car from a company that fails at every step to delivery.

</comment><comment><USER15> EVs are way too expensive currently with such awful range that for all but a few early-adopter wealthy people with short commutes they are impractical. It's great that people are buying them so we can climb the adopter curve, but until they are competitively priced it's just not worth it. Ironically, for those wealthy short commute early adopters the savings over the next couple years are very small. Cars save money on short commutes, but savings also proportional to commute length, therefore savings are low, but price is much higher. Unless you're convinced these things are actually less destructive to the environment and you have a pile of cash to burn on something other than gas, wait a couple years until battery technology is improved.

For me, the only useful advantage is slightly reducing the dependence on the middle east, but the number of EVs on the road vs everything else makes even that so infinitesimally small it's not worth bothering.

<comment><USER16> I get your larger point about reducing dependence on foreign oil, but ...

We actually get more oil from Canada than from the Middle East[1]. We do import the most from all of OPEC combined, but OPEC includes places like Venezuela, from where we get an awful lot of oil, Ecuador, Nigeria, and other countries that aren't in the Middle East.

Sorry for being a pedant.

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm in a very similar situation to the OP, minus the new job with a longer commute. My wife and I have shared a car for quite a few years, and even with a 3-year old who goes to school everybody, we make it work. My job is a short 2.5 mile bike ride, and our day-to-day life fits into a relativelly small radius.

I had thought that the leaf combined with a all wheel drive vehicle would be perfect for our situation. We live in an area that gets snow in winter and close to the mountains, so AWD would be ideal. The leaf would be great for the day-to-day, which usually involves < 20 miles or driving.

We too have an aging corolla, which is a fantastic car for the $$$ and the gas mileage.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds an awful lot like a free ad for the leaf.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not quite sure how I should take that. If you mean I would highly recommend buying one if it fits your driving habits, then you're definitely right. If you mean I'm just a shill for Nissan, then I can assure you that the only connection I have to Nissan is being a Leaf owner and finding it awesome.

<comment><USER18> No offence intended but I don't see the value of your experience buying a Leaf. To me it lacks a critical opinion, thus looking more like free advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> None taken, but can my experience only add value if I critique the shortcomings? I did relate the troubles I had and how they were overcome. To someone else thinking about buying a Leaf, it could be valuable to know more about how environmental aspects and road conditions affect the range of the car, and how you have to plan for more than just distance.

I was intent on buying a Leaf, and I wasn't going to let this initial ordeal sour my opinion of the car because it had more to do with the dealership. I knew going into it that getting the car back to Madison was going to be a stretch, and then events conspired to make it a bit more difficult. I think the fact that I made it back in spite of that was actually a point in the Leaf's favor.

<comment><USER18> _but can my experience only add value if I critique the shortcomings_

Not necessarily only the shortcomings, I was thinking critical as in "analytical", I would have love to read about how the EV experience translated driving out of the dealership for example. It may not be new to you but I've never driven one and would have "extracted value" out of your post if you did describe it ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what you're looking for will be in my next post.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programmer search engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/02.html

<comment><USER2> In the spirit of XKCD Explained:

Joel Spolsky thinks we should all hire people who regularly use his software. He thinks those people are cool and he really likes how their time, effort and reputation on his site are something they can sell to recruiters for additional revenue. This is literally his dream come true.

<comment><USER3> You're right. I wonder if this was part of the plan for stack overflow from the beginning. This is an ingenious way to monetize its existing user base while creating incentives for stack overflow users to keep creating valuable content for free.

<comment><USER4> Speaking of, I wonder how many millions an open HN job board could make? The people I'd like to hire are stackoverflow, github, and HN users.

<comment><USER5> PG can we please do this? We're looking to hire 15+ people right now and we are running out of good people in Toronto.

<comment><USER6> If you're willing to work with telecommuters, I'm still looking for a job, with no luck, in the Cincinnati area...

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, not yet. What type of work do you do though, I may know some people looking for someone with your skills. See my above comment for my email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is interesting Joel is just now discovering this.

As the co-founding CTO of Hotjobs.com, we provided this functionality on the very first version of Hotjobs in 1996, and subsequently ended up purchasing Resumix to provide a very in depth technical solution to allow employers this exact functionality you're describing.

Of course, we had tens of millions of resumes in every possible industry imaginable all searchable through a very robust search interface that did all sorts of fancy lexical analysis and data extraction from random resume formats.

Over the last 13 years, thousands upon thousands of people have been hired through the exact mechanism you're describing.

<comment><USER8> Not to take anything away from hotjobs, but I would argue that the real value Stack overflow careers offers is the fact that an employer can not only see your CV, but at least somewhat determine your level of expertise through your stack overflow account/reputation.

I imagine Joel believes this has more value then just the data extracted from a resume.

<comment><USER9> > I would argue that the real value Stack overflow careers offers is the fact > that an employer can not only see your CV

What stops people from linking to their stackoverflow accounts? Many people already link their CV to their github accounts.

<comment><USER8> nothing at all, but sadly, I know some employers(HR people, etc) probably don't even go through that much trouble in the screening process. If you are paying for stackoverflow to list you you know the employers on the other end are discerning enough to actually care about your stackoverflow rep. This is the same value provided by GitHub's job profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would prefer a programmer search engine based on Github, where people write code, to StackOverflow, where people talk about code.

<comment><USER11> I think it should be a combination of both GitHub and StackOverflow. GitHub is great to see if the person can code, and a very crucial part of hiring. StackOverflow is great to see if a person can communicate, which I think is as important as having the ability to code.

I've come across many programmers that can code well, but had horrible communications skills. It's always difficult to interact with these programmers. I spend more time extracting the meaning of what they're saying rather than getting work done.

<comment><USER12> StackOverflow primarily exposes their addictive game-playing, not their communication skills. The rep/badge bullshit encourages inane responses, and the wiki aspects cover the tracks.

<comment><USER13> It seems to be more about the detailed and correct answer voted up the most that you find from searching something on Google, for that it works really well, not being part of the community there I don't care about that other 10 half assed replies for badges/points

<comment><USER12> They have a very visible group of users that post a no-assed answer as fast as possible and start doing the same google searches the asker did to pad out their answer. Their bullshit answer will be at the top initially, so they'll have the means to cannibalize the knowledgeable users who follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I said it before and I'll say it again -- charging people looking for jobs is ridiculous. I don't know who the kid in Houston looking for an OCaml internship is, but how the heck does he have $100 to spend on this?

<comment><USER15> Considering the job you have has a massive impact on your personal happiness it makes a lot of sense to improve your odds of finding the right company to work for. The cost of careers.stackoverflow is nothing compared to the cost of actually taking an interview (easily 8+ hours). If because of stackoverflow you can get by with one interview less it's easily worth it.

Besides, if you have 3 great offers on the table I'm sure you'll be able able to negotiate a $100/year raise to recoup the careers.stackoverflow investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Technical recruiters make ridiculous amounts of money for moving people between companies. If this is successful it will be very lucrative for FogCreek.

<comment><USER17> But that's because traditional recruiters usually take a % of the person's salary.

Stackoverflow only charges a subscription fee for searching the database so they probably won't make as much.

      If you are a hiring manager, you can test-drive our search interface any time and get an idea of how many matches you'll find. No surprises here. But if you'd like to view candidate details and make contact, you'll need a subscription:

        * 1 week subscription is $500
        * 1 month subscription is $1,000
        * 6 month subscription is $3,000
        * 1 year subscription is $5,000

<comment> brown9-2 Perhaps it will be so lucrative because employers will get sick of paying percentages of salaries in recruiter's fees and so many of them will sign up for this more-modest subscription fee?

<comment><USER18> Roughly how many points does a recruiter get?

<comment> brown9-2 I've heard 10% at my current company.

<comment><USER19> 20% is standard. Companies with high standards will often pay more. (One company offered 50% for a very high-level position).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So these are people who are unemployed or risking getting fired by looking for a job in public?

Isn't it better to find people who already have a job they like and try to convince them that they would be even happier in your company?

<comment><USER21> Posting you resume on a jobs site does not necessarily mean you are actively looking for a job. And I highly doubt an employer would fire someone just for having their resume publicly posted. Besides, if you're employer is that fickle, maybe you should have your resume out there, just in case.

<comment><USER22> What would you think if you saw that one of your employees recently started paying money to receive offers for a new job?

<comment><USER23> I would think it's time to have a conversation. If they're worth keeping, find out how. If not, wish them luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Won't this have the same problem as linkedin, programmers will delist themselves when they started getting daily calls from desperate recruiters ?

<comment><USER25> Stack Overflow charges quite a bit of money for the right to search for candidates (plans range from $500 for one week access to $5000 for a year) so that should limit the number of inquiries.

Also, you can easily remove yourself from the search results.

<comment><USER24> In the financial sector recruiters can typically make around $50k for placing a single senior dev, paying an annual 5k fee is nothing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> He says, "It would show you CVs right away", but I can't find a way to search candidates without signing up. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER27> It's implied by the last paragraph (the bit about test-driving) that you have to sign up to see the actual CVs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 500$/week just to see some 900 CVs is a highly offensive price. He should have started low and increased the price gradually.

<comment><USER29> I've heard somewhere (possibly from Joel himself, to be fair) that it typically costs a company around half a year's salary to hire an employee (between recruiting costs, etc.) $500/week is a drop in a very large bucket for most employers - at least the kind that are doing active recruiting. They're probably spending _way_ more than that just in personnel time to review resumes - and in fact, being able to filter a bit better by quality will save them that much more in the screener's time.

<comment><USER30> I can't provide episode number, but I can concur anecdotally that this was discussed on the Stack Overflow podcast. It was probably at or around the debut of the jobs subdomain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why would I pay $100 for this instead of using a free website like ComputerJobs.com, Dice.com, Monster.com etc? I'd think the quality of employers would be about the same.

So far I see zero benefits for me but lots of moola for JoS.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yeah, charing for participation is silly. It reduces the number of potential candidates. Headhunters have the equation right: Charge when you actually hook people up.

Not sure how you'd solve the problem of people finding each other on Programmer Search and then just emailing each other externally.

<comment><USER33> > Yeah, charing for participation is silly. It reduces the number of potential > candidates.

I'd call that a feature. It cuts down on the resume spam. By charging $100 you create a filter to reduce the noise. It makes the people with jobs happier because they don't get as much crap and you make he job hunters happier as it's now easier for them to find jobs.

Everyone wins by charging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I tried the free trial search, that he uses in his OCaml/Houston example. I find it quite hard to believe that there is a Common Lisp programmer in Bagdad, AZ and a Clojure programmer in Window Rock, AZ.

<comment><USER35> Well, the OCaml kid is legit, but, no, there are no lisp programmers in Bagdad or Clojure programmers in Window Rock... did someone say there were? Do you need one? Window Rock is a dusty tiny town, seat of the Navajo Nation--I've actually been there, it has one grocery store and a single strip mall.

Maybe you did a search that had 1 result, and then you edited your search, and the Ajax refresh didn't come back fast enough so it still showed one?

<comment><USER34> No, I'm not looking for a programmer in either of those cities. I was just testing it out, to see if I could give it anything that wouldn't invite me to sign up and search.

I just didn't notice the number to the right, and clicked the "Show Results" button each time. After I read your reply I tried it again, this time looking for AJAX updates across the entire page, and I saw it. I think I would have found it on my own had the "Display Search Results" button been disabled or hidden when no results were found.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There should be something that can be added to each user's icon that indicates their hire-ability. Perhaps only for users above a certain reputation.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ah, it's literally a "Search engine for programmers."

<comment><USER38> Yeah, the results of the search are programmers. The search engine is not necessarily for programmers to use. Bad title.

<comment><USER39> "Search engine for forty programmers"... my one little digression on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This site was clearly developed for large companies having problems hiring because of their size. The lack of an even remotely useable demo made me snicker at the minimum $500/week price point.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm too lazy to look at the site, but I'm wondering how they are solving the problem of people forgetting/not bothering to uncheck the "available" option? I suppose if they charge a small fee, people would have an incentive to delist themselves after they find a job.

<comment><USER42> I suppose if you're still getting phone calls and emails, you'll be reminded to go uncheck the available box.</comment></comment>


Afraid of Makefiles? Don't be - <AUTHOR> https://matthias-endler.de/2017/makefiles/ <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041986)

Although you were first</comment>


Third-World Countries Use Outdated Browsers and Operating Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.admixweb.com/third-world-countries-and-outdated-web-browsers/ <comment><AUTHOR> This article is interesting because most people on Earth are resource- constrained. Also, many first-world people still don't have sufficient digital literacy to be aware when/if their technologies are receiving security updates. Finally, scooping up every last consumer of content via maybe important for financial or social venture success if the costs are scalable, but also maybe required by accessibility regulations which benefit the common wealth. I think the point of the article is to realize reality for most people isn't the same as the bubble in high-income metropolitan areas, and that a balance of competing tyrannies is necessary when considering what and whom to build for and support.</comment>


0xBitcoin: Bitcoin ported onto an Ethereum smart contract. PoW mining included - <AUTHOR> 0xBitcoin Decentralized Ethereum Payments
http://0xbitcoin.org
Icon: https://imgur.com/a/4YmjW
Symbol: 0xBTC
Bitcoin was ported onto Ethereum as 0xBTC on Feb-06-2018 04:03:46 AM +UTC.
It is the first PoW-mineable erc-20 token. It has the same halvings, difficulty, eras, and total coin cap of Bitcoin, but with the speed, and versatility of an ERC20 token on Ethereum.
Essentially, it has everything that gave Bitcoin value in the first place, however now it is run on a faster, more efficient, and more advanced blockchain that allows for smart contracts--Ethereum.
0xBitcoin is faster, more decentralized (will be), more secure, and more versatile than BTC itself, all while keeping the features which inspired the original Bitcoin.
Its community has dozens of miners and an active developer base working on mining pools and open source GPU miners for everyone to use.
Attributes:
- No premine
- No ICO
- Mine for free with a CPU/GPU in a pool or solo
- Deployed on the Ethereum MAINNET
- Decentralized community and ownership (Operated as a DAO) - There is no company or central entity controlling or operating this
- Mine and transfer exactly like bitcoin, but 10x faster and 100x cheaper
- Interfaces with smart contracts for storing and transferring value, unlike Ether.  (Ether is not intended to be used for payments and is not a token.)
Related Websites:
- BitcoinTalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3039182.msg31301369#msg31301369
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/0xbitcoin/
- Discord (Support and Chat) : https://discord.gg/JGEqqmS
- GitHub Contract: https://github.com/0xbitcoin
- GitHub Miner: https://github.com/0xbitcoin/0xbitcoin-miner
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb6ed7644c69416d67b522e20bc294a9a9b405b31
- Exchange: https://forkdelta.github.io/#!/trade/0xBTC-ETH
- Community pool: http://0xpool.io <comment><USER2> I read some articles, but I'm still pretty confused.

Aside from being fun and interesting, what is the utility derived from this?

<comment><USER3> I think that there is still substantial utility in leveraging a mining paradigm as an alternative to centralized staking for ERC-20 tokens. Standardizing new mineable tokens on a proposed Mineable EIP offers a homogenous framework for mining software and equipment in the Ethereum ecosystem. Hardware mining is a viable way to economically bridge value from the real world (electricity and hardware costs) to an ethereum token. It allows for early adopters to participate substantially without necessarily requiring a centralized, OTC or distributed marketplace. 0xBitcoin offers the best of both worlds - the economic peg of hardware mining/electricity with the exchangeability of the ERC-20 ecosystem ( centralized and decentralized exchanges ). As the tooling and standard gets flushed out, I believe 0xTokens could usher in a new wave of assets on a superior ubiquitous platform.

Full Disclosure - I drafted this standard with the advice of the 0xBitcoin team [https://github.com/jlogelin/EIPs/blob/6b5e0e0aeae120105240a9...](https://github.com/jlogelin/EIPs/blob/6b5e0e0aeae120105240a959ae92fde36131360a/EIPS/eip-541.md)

<comment><USER2> Wow, those are some very nice buzzwords. But really...

Wouldn't the most economical way of bridging value from the real world be to just take real money, rather than have it inefficiently pass through hardware and electricity costs? Aka, trading ETH for tokens like every other token. I mean I COULD pay my barber with sacks of potatoes...or I could just give him cash.

As for the argument of not needing exchanges, you don't need an exchange to issue tokens. You send ETH to a smart contract, and it stores the address. This already works and is decentralized. If you wanted to TRADE those tokens, you do need an exchange. So this mining scheme doesn't really solve exchangeability at all.</comment></comment></comment>


To beat insomnia, sleep less - <AUTHOR> https://www.sleepedy.com/articles/sleep-better-with-less-sleep/ <comment><USER2> This might work for some people but for me, if by 1AM, I'm not sleepy and I get out of bed to do something else, there's probably no chance I'll sleep at any reasonable time and then be able to wake up at a time like 7AM. I would in fact probably sleep in that day and ruin my schedule, which could start a negative trend. From my experience, I find that even just lying in bed and resting my eyes even if I can't fully sleep is the best way to go. A few hours of meaningful rest in bed alone with my thoughts is time well spent. 1AM is too late to start "occupying myself until my body is ready to sleep". If I needed to do something like this, I would start a few hours before the time I'd like to sleep. First tiring myself out with a quick workout or something and then taking a cold shower which will make me want to bundle up inside a blanket and get super comfortable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, working out and showers are definitely good for your sleep.

While it may be hard to wake up at 7, if you could do it, it would generate what we call 'sleep pressure' for the next night. Basically you are tiring your self into sleeping more when you are in bed vs being awake and tossing and turning.

Also when you hop out of bed, do something relaxing like listening to music or reading a book. If you started working it could stimulate your mind and keep you up even longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like complete nonsense, and zero evidence is presented. It's just an ad for some app, as if what people who can't sleep need is to be bothered by their phone. There are myriad causes of insomnia including physical, psychological, environmental, and combinations. Stress and anxiety are the biggest factors for people like me. I sincerely doubt this guy has ever had insomnia from anything other than partying too much. If I followed any of the listed advice I'd be up for a week at a time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, author here. I did have Insomnia for a few months before coming across Sleep Restriction (the method in question in the article) after some serious life-changing events.

Here is Stanford's guide to sleep restriction: [https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical- treatments/c/cognitiv...](https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical- treatments/c/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-insomnia/procedures/sleep- restriction.html)

This is an evidence-based method, meaning its been proven clinically to work. I'll make sure to add some citations so it seems more legitimate.

PS: We also have a full guide on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) for which sleep restriction is a subset: [http://sleepedy.com/cbt-for- insomnia](http://sleepedy.com/cbt-for-insomnia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am trying to do this a long time. But no success.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very sorry to hear that. If you don't mind me asking, how long did you consistently try it for? and did you see any improvement?

<comment><USER4> I tried about a month. Don't sleep between 6 am and 10 PM. Very hard to do. And no results. Still keeping whole nights awake.

<comment><AUTHOR> In that 8 hour window did you go to sleep only when you are sleepy? That is the biggest guiding principle of sleep restriction. You want a fixed wake-up time but NOT a fixed sleep time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


9 tricks to appear smart in brainstorming meetings - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/conquering-corporate-america/9-tricks-to-appear-smart-in-brainstorming-meetings-5371dd1a1628 <comment><USER2> This is just a part of the book from the creator of the viral sensation "10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings" (5+ million views and hundreds of thousands of shares) created this must-have book you never knew you needed. Direct link to amazon : [http://amzn.to/2eaNkri](http://amzn.to/2eaNkri)</comment>


Mobile Apps That Reward Impoverished Students With Food, Medicine  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1771527/mpowering-rewards-impoverished-students-with-food-medicine

<comment><AUTHOR> High-tech micro-managing paternalism? Feeding kids at school would achieve much the same goal, minus the need for a cell-phone.</comment>


Instagram Lite quietly launches to find a billion more users abroad - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/27/instagram-lite/ <comment><USER2> Instagram Lite should just be the default version for everyone. I can't imagine the missing sharing of videos and direct messaging makes up the other 54/55 of the application size.

<comment><USER3> Still way smaller than the massive 541.6mb Facebook app (16 times smaller to be exact): [https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/facebook/id284882215](https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/facebook/id284882215)

<comment><USER4> If you think about it though, Facebook is many apps in one. It's a marketplace app, a social media app, a videos app, a specialty camera app... the list goes on. Sure, you can call them 'features', but for other businesses these would be entire products. Everyone complained when messenger was rolled out into its own app (now Facebook wants me to download two apps??), so maybe the size is justified. I don't personally use every feature, but I'm glad that I don't have to switch apps to use marketplace and live videos, both of which I use quite frequently.

<comment><USER5> Yea.... no thanks. It doesn't even have vital social features like looking up a past event (because pictures). I tend to have to use the website. I uninstalled the Android app and now I just use the mobile website in a browser. I do have messenger installed cause that's what I actually use.

<comment><USER6> I do the same, but without Messenger installed. Just m.facebook.com and then _request desktop site_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact that they even need to release a "Lite" version of Facebook and Instagram is just a testament to how bloated and slow those apps have become.

This begs the question, why doesn't Facebook just completely redo their apps? I'm sure it wouldn't take long to achieve feature parity with the old app

<comment><USER8> Cheaper phones simply only have space for one or two 21st century apps like Uber, Lyft, or Facebook. Saying those apps are bloated is misleading they are just built for newer Android's/iPhones. And lite apps are aimed at cheaper phones.

<comment><USER9> "21st century app" has to be the most bullshit term I have heard this week. You can build very small apps with a lot of features if you want. But when you keep pushing JavaScript technology into stuff just to rebuild what is already available on the platform (just in an "uncool" way), you end up with multiple almost 300 MB apps to share some images and text.

<comment><USER10> > But when you keep pushing JavaScript technology into stuff... you end up > with multiple almost 300 MB apps to share some images and text

I would be hesitant to solely Javascript for the bloat of Instagram, and related apps. On phones, typically the WebView is used - not like using Electron where chromium + v8 is packaged with each application. A Cordova application can easily be in the single-digit MB range.

Facebook is a native app - and is 300MB+ in size. A breakdown is available here:

[https://blog.timac.org/2017/0410-analysis-of-the-facebook- ap...](https://blog.timac.org/2017/0410-analysis-of-the-facebook-app-for- ios-v-87-0/)

Mostly it comes down to the fact that app size is not a prioritization.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, expensive phones can have lots of big sized apps

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this what the (mobile) web app is already? I deleted the app a couple of years ago and used the web app exclusively, it sheds much of the bloat (so far...).

<comment><USER12> That's what I was thinking, but it's not possible to post anything on the web app.

Edit: Apparently, I'm wrong

<comment><USER11> It's possible to post from the mobile site. I do it often from mobile Safari, Firefox, etc on iOS.

<comment><USER13> That is insane...

<comment><USER14> Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because I don't like being tracked. I usually use Instagram web for the few times, I feel like using Instagram. Sounds like a PWA. even though on iOS user experience is comparable to the app, well besides not having dm's.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this app is just a webview into their better/optimized website...sort of like a PWA with a webview over it to come across as a "native app"?

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm traveling around Africa for 2 years, and I got Facebook Lite a few months back.

Sure, it's nice and small, and supposedly uses little data, but it hardly works at all. It was impossible to see Notifications from my business page, can't see or send messages without installing Messenger (ugh!)

Now I've deleted FB Lite, and I see no reason to ever get an FB or Insta app ever again. The web versions work OK, it just means I have to dig out my laptop.

<comment><USER18> I use mbasic.facebook.com as a web app, and that's reliable for me on some pretty terrible connections.

<comment><USER17> Does it let you send/receive messages, or does it force you to install messenger?

<comment><USER18> I haven't installed Messenger, and it doesn't force me to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank you for bringing up the PWA. Before Instagram didn't allow posting pictures. Just opened it and added to homescreen and it works and looks just fine. Will have it in parallel for few days, but I think Instagram is going away and I hope much of other apps as well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can I have a lite version that has photos in posted order, and doesn't have the evil design of the LIVE VIDEO button in the top right that looks like a DM.

Just saw an article that they are going to allow people to tag their school in their profile? FB full circle.

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel like I'm missing something. Other than the size of the application how is the Lite version different from the original? Why wouldn't I just use Lite?

<comment><USER22> | but currently lacks the options to share videos or Direct message friends.

<comment><USER21> Thanks. Not sure how I missed that...</comment></comment></comment>


Stephen Colbert drives NASA's Mars Rover with Neil DeGrasse Tyson [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcPrl0rl76M <comment><AUTHOR> This is video of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" episode published on September 21, 2018.[0]

This concept (car) of NASA's Mars Rover firstly presented to public at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on June 5, 2017.[1]

It's design created by Mark Parker.[2,3]

      Length: 23 feet (7 meters)
      Width: 13 feet (4 m)
      Height: 11 feet (3.3 m)
      Weight: 5,000 lbs. (2,268 kilograms)
      Speed: 15 mph (24 km/h)

P.S. It was also reproduced with Lego blocks.[4]

[0] [https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen- colbert...](https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen- colbert/video/CB7E66FE-004B-59C9-F8DA-FF5700C325CC/stephen-drives-nasa-s-mars- rover-with-neil-degrasse-tyson/)

[1] [https://twitter.com/ExploreSpaceKSC/status/87180714652202598...](https://twitter.com/ExploreSpaceKSC/status/871807146522025984)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-prototype- sea...](http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-prototype- seadek-2017-5)

[3] [https://www.space.com/36872-futuristic-mars-rover-nasa- ksc-c...](https://www.space.com/36872-futuristic-mars-rover-nasa-ksc-center- concept.html)

[4] [https://twitter.com/ExploreSpaceKSC/status/10069658030555668...](https://twitter.com/ExploreSpaceKSC/status/1006965803055566849)</comment>


Job Boards for Designers and Developers - <AUTHOR> http://vilcins.lv/blog/2015/Job-Boards-for-Designers-and-Developers/

<comment><USER2> Hi,

I've been building The Global Computer Employer Index at:

[http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/)

This is distinctly different from a job board in that I don't list individual job openings, rather I link to the "Careers" or "Jobs" section at each employer's own website. There is no charge for a listing in my index, nor will there ever be.

It is still in its infancy, as I've been working out ways to automate the collection of links. I have some good ideas in mind but have not yet implemented them.

Keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I hasten to point out that my site totally sucks on mobile devices. I'm puzzling over how to fix that but don't have a solution as yet. However I'm reading O'Reilly's "Learning Javascript" and will soon read "Javascript: the Good Parts" and also the Javascript Ninja book.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's Christopher Chedeau on the Core Philosophies That Underly React - <AUTHOR> http://thepracticaldev.com/christopher-chedeau-on-the-philosophies-of-react <comment><USER2> Great stuff. Christopher has been such an important part of React's growth by being a great ambassador.</comment>


There are three different meanings for the static keyword. It's a real pain. - <AUTHOR> http://cplusplus.syntaxerrors.info/index.php?title=Static_keyword

<comment><USER2> It's somewhat ungainly, but one way to think about this is that "static" means "it stays here".

In a function: the value of the variable stays with the function, i.e. it doesn't change between calls.

In a class: the value of the variable stays with the class, i.e. it doesn't change with the creation of new objects.

In a file: the value of the variable stays within the file, i.e. it can't be changed (or seen) from outside the file.

</comment><comment><USER3> No pain, it is simply reused.

<comment><USER4> As far as I know, a language with less keywords lends itself to a faster parser. That's the motivation behind using "auto" for type inference in C++0x, "auto" is already a keyword.

<comment><USER5> The difference is negligible. Complexity of grammar (not the same thing) is probably the big cost factor. The big thing there is usually ambiguity of a statement within a single context that has to be resolved. Static is not such a case because there are three distinct contexts. But when a parser has to read many tokens ahead just to figure out where you're going with a term, that's what slows things down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At least the third meaning is deprecated in favor of anonymous namespaces.

The other two are essentially the same just within class or function scope. Of course, they're essentially just global state of a sort, but they sure do come in useful at times.

</comment><comment><USER6> If this is "real pain", I wonder what some of the weirder stuff of C++ would be, "surreal pain"?

<comment><USER5> Indeed. This is mild. I've never been confused by a static keyword.

Now some templates, on the other hand, seem to be from another dimension.</comment></comment>


What I learned while 6x-ing my income in 4 years - <AUTHOR> https://swizec.com/blog/learned-6x-income-4-years/swizec/7340 <comment><USER2> > Lesson: Don't run out of money.

Oh, of course, how come I didn't think of that?

I'm actually more interested in this footnote:

> I even sold "get on HN frontpage" as a service to local startups. I charged > a whopping $100 per essay

Is good to have independent confirmation that people have moved from gaming Reddit to gaming Hacker News.

<comment><USER3> That was many years ago. It doesn't actually work anymore.

"gaming" is also a strong word. It was more like "Get 5 upvotes to hit the bottom of the frontpage, then if content is good enough it floats up, if it's not it doesn't"

The trick was that I was reliably able to guess the taste du jour of the HN crowd.

<comment><USER4> Beer please

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _In the same 4 years that I 6x-ed my income, I also 9x-ed my expenses. I'm really bad with money, and people keep giving it to me!_

He needs to be more frugal... Net income (profit) is important.

$100k income / $90k expense vs $20k income / $10k expense. Reminds me of Ecommerce vs SAAS.

<comment><USER3> > He needs to be more frugal

Turns out mum wasn't lying when she said the fridge doesn't fill itself.

<comment><USER5> Swizec, don't be so hard on yourself. You just need to separate your needs vs wants. Save today's _wants_ for tomorrow's _needs_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 24k in Slovenia sounds equivalent to 125k in the Valley though, ...

The bottom line might also be "migrate to a richer country"

<comment><USER3> It helps.

But with 24k in Slovenia you save maybe 1k/year. With 125k in the Valley, you can save 10k/year.

That's a big difference.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of the hoopla over gasoline prices.

Ran into a chart showing those pr liter across Europe, and Norway came out as most expensive. But almost as a footnote they also included one that calculated liters pr average wage. And all of a sudden the table was reversed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bit of bad advice. You could summarize it as "kid gets a job in SF programming while moving. 6x'es his income TO 140k (before tax)"

Okay ... so far I understand that that's possible (although may I say you got royally screwed every year except the 4th).

What most people here want to know is how to multiply that income from this point forward.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reading this is somewhat painful thanks to the social sharing buttons on the left which hover on top of the text.

<comment><USER3> Sorry. HN made the database go kaput and somehow that meant the text loads but the CSS does not. There's normally a margin there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that you were able to get the O-1 with such an "average" career.

I guess that's a hidden advantage of writing a few books, hem? You're able to send them a polished application :)

</comment><comment><USER11> > Last year, I spent $125,535. I don't even know where that money went. I > certainly don't feel like I got much out of all that money.

Really? I lost all confidence in whatever this person is trying to sell us, when I read this. Indicates a very financially-irresponsible person.</comment>


Cern scientist expects 'first glimpse' of Higgs boson - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16074411

<comment><USER2> This seems to confirm 125 GeV rumor that has been circulating last week.

<http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4212></comment>