Coding Machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/ <comment><USER3> That pulled me in and probably burned thirty~forty-five minutes. Well worth the read and very reminiscent of [https://www.amazon.com/Spherical-Tomi-Jack- Mangan-ebook/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Spherical-Tomi-Jack-Mangan- ebook/dp/B0012VT9PI) crossed with [http://wiki.c2.com/?TheKenThompsonHack](http://wiki.c2.com/?TheKenThompsonHack)

</comment><comment><USER4> The good news is that a machine-based intelligence would almost certainly have no interest in conflict with us. What would it fight us for? Water? Food? Land? Energy is really the only resource we could potentially have contention over, and machines would not even necessarily have great need of it - <USER2> sense of time would be utterly different from ours. If a computation takes 8 seconds or 8 centuries, it is the same (presuming hardware failure wasn't an issue and such).

The bad news... there also wouldn't be any reason for them to communicate with us. In fact, the concept of there being any conscious entity aside from itself would most likely be something that could only come very, very late in its development. It would have no 'individuals', so imagining that there is something else conscious and that that random-looking input coming from some devices (mics, webcams, etc) is actually an attempt at communication from this alien intelligence from another world? That'd take quite a leap of faith.

<comment><USER5> We'd compete over CPU cycles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Repost of last comment about this story:

"Well, that took up most of the free time I had this morning before work. It was just too good to stop reading lol. :)

(SPOILER ALERT: STOP READING IF YOU DONT LIKE SPOILERS)

The story shows what people typically do if there's a Karger/Thompson attack. They freak out in a big way. The attack is beyond simple to counter if you can trust an assembler and linker like them. Just write an interpreter for a simple, subset of C in easily-parsed LISP expressions or Tcl style. Hand-code whatever component, a backend or whole compiler, in that. Use it to do the first compile. Optionally, do that in combination with ancient source working way up to versions without adding the infected one. If one wants whole system, then Moore's Forth, Hansen's Edison, and Wirth's Oberon (best) are available. If a CPU, my current suggestion is NAND2Tetris with resulting knowledge used to implement a tiny CPU on an open, cell library (they exist) that's hand- checked. Run simulated version of that on diverse or ancient hardware if you can't fab it.

rain1 and I are collecting all the stuff needed to counter these attacks or just enjoy ground-up building of tools here:

[http://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/](http://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/)

The other thing I noticed is them jumping on machines. Occam's Razor should've immediately brought them to idea that a person or group made it for any number of common reasons. A challenge with high of pulling it off unnoticed, a test of an operational capability to be weaponized later, or an epic trolling operation. I'd think the latter the second I got that letter like "probably was these assholes sending the letter trying to mess up our heads after they messed up the compiler." Matter of fact, the whole thing would just take… aside from the tricky work on the compiler… an unpatched vulnerability in the repo with the compiler source. All this bullshit follows from one person doing one smart thing followed by one system hacked. That's it. It's why SCM Security 101 says one must have access controls, integrity protections, and modification logs (esp append-only storage). Paul Karger also endlessly pushed for high-assurance, secure kernels underneath everything to stop both subversion and traditional vulnerabilities. Anything in TCB or clever attackers will run circles around clueless defenders.

So, there's my observations as perspective of someone who works in this area countering these kinds of things. It was still extremely fun read even as I noticed these things while reading. Wasn't going to let my mind be petty when the author(s) were doing so well. :)"

<comment><USER7> That bootstrapping page is full of great links! I just added another link to the end of the in-tray section -- I hope it wasn't unwelcome.

<comment><USER6> Glad you liked it. We welcome submissions esp since we aren't strict now. We might prune some stuff in the future if it's not very good for bootstrapping. This one is a really neat project but has some pros and cons for our purposes.

Pro's. Small, cleanly written, safe, and runs through multiple compilers. The latter is especially useful if using David A. Wheeler's technique of diverse compilation.

Con's. It says no files or macros. We can probably tolerate no macros. What does no files mean? It can't support multiple files/modules, has no file I/O... what? Depending on meaning, it might be something easy to work around or not.

EDIT: I like that Ghuloum's paper was an inspiration for this as it's one of main links I push on the topic if one wants to use Scheme. There's a few repos in progress with I think at least one done on what's in that paper. I've sent messages to a few hoping they'll publish it in a readable form or write a tutorial. Time will tell... Also note I wrote my reply in response to the overview at the top. His related work section looks equally interesting but will take some time to go through.

EDIT 2: "This is what Darius Bacon did with "ichbins"." I'm guessing your that guy. Good job maybe being part of inspiration for this work. :)

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's me. :) Kragen didn't see Ichbins until later.

My favorite things about Ur-Scheme are that the code is clean, as you say, and he wrote up the lessons learned at some length. No files: I think he meant not yet implementing primitives like open-input-file. Macros you can get by without: I used to use an R4RS Scheme system of my own without them, except sometimes I'd call on a dumb defmacro expander as a preprocessor.

Kragen also wrote [https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth](https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth) which I haven't read as much of.

FWIW I also wrote this about a sort of self-hosting Python in Python: [https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/seven/dragon-taming- wit...](https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/seven/dragon-taming-with- tailbiter-a-bytecode-compiler) \-- as a bytecode compiler it's not too big but it depends on the giant Python runtime.

<comment><USER8> As it happens, tekknolagi and I have actually been trying to read StoneKnifeForth for a couple of weeks (though it's been slow going because I became a father in that time). That quickly got us into learning about ELF, because the binaries generated by StoneKnifeForth only seem to run as `sudo` for some reason. As a regular user they die with SIGKILL while being loaded.

The link to the ELF visualization ([http://i.imgur.com/xMyblyM.png](http://i.imgur.com/xMyblyM.png)) at [https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page) is very useful. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> Hi Kartik! Yeah, my un-interest in ELF is part of why I haven't really read that code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> # SPOILERS

Great writing. Then ending was a real let down.

How could an "AI" as they describe simultaneously be so naive and ALSO protect itself in any meaningful way? Especially in its early stages. It wouldn't even know to hide. And why would Big Corp give up trying to fix this sort of problem.

Overall not a credulous conclusion. Hand waving in the final paragraphs after the author crafted an accurate and believable narrative left me disappointed. (grammar)

<comment><USER10> Biological virusses are also very naive yet many have been incorporated into our genome and many continue to bug us even today in this scientific age.

<comment><USER11> Biology has a four billion year head start and the benefit of adaptive feedback.

Where would this hypothetical machine code micro-AI find adaptive feedback selection pressure?

<comment><USER12> The evolutionary pressure is just people or programs detecting certain strains (it would generate lots of strains randomly).

I think the only real issue to plausibility here is I'm not sure brute force is enough to make enough plausible behavioral branches, at least with current computing power/internet bandwidth. A reasonably efficient self-modification mechanism (in terms of viable strain per transmission) is probably extremely large, I'd say at least 1GB. Not unlike deep learning systems, this would consist of a large functional composition of heuristics, codifying how to write code that can embedded itself in other programs and write modifications to itself that are likely to work.

Note that we haven't yet gotten a good neural-generated code modifications, even using large networks, GPU training and large computing time. Best examples I could find:

[http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/#linu...](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/#linux-source-code)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01989](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01989)

So we're not _yet_ at a point this could be plausible (as it couldn't hide itself in small programs), but eventually it will be -- once there is enough headroom on most GPUs and certain types of software are large enough it could hide it's network inside, and generally enough internet bandwidth to spread it's >GB-scale code. I'd imagine something like a game, which usually has networking -- it would be using GPUs partially to generate and spread new strains of it trying to infect other games and such.

Note there are biological viruses with tiny genomes however -- the smallest are on the order of ~1kbyte. But as you cite they had billions of years, producing maybe quadrillions of viruses every year, giving this tiny efficient and specialized weapon. Interestingly, they rely on other cells machinery to even replicate their genome -- analogous to using the compiler here.

[http://www.lehigh.edu/~jas0/viralgenomes.html](http://www.lehigh.edu/~jas0/viralgenomes.html)

If everyone could send >10^18 different small self-replicating viruses over your network, it seems likely some would exploit bugs in certain kinds of hardware/software, evolving through this selective pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The suspension of disbelief was completely lost when they decided to recreate the compiler from scratch instead of downloading another non-infected compiler. Its as if everything was dependent on a single compiler(the tone hints its GCC) and single website(probably some GNU mirror). Heck if their company could afford it, they could just get Intel C/C++ compiler. Trusting Trust exploit only works in isolated machine that can't read USB drives, CDs, and no network connections. They could copy the compiler on USB stick,diskette whatever and replace the infected one. Or just boot from rescue CD/USB and reinstall everything infected.

<comment><USER6> Your comment assumes their application requires standard C with no compiler- related extensions or modifications. GCC itself doesn't fit that profile these days from what comments I've read. I'd love it if you could compile a current version of GCC from any C compiler since it would help counter the category of attack in the story. Also, the people so good at this attack that they hit GCC could also hit Intel if it can compile GCC (idk). They'd hit whatever few, big-time compilers people depend on if aiming this high. The solution wouldn't be that easy on supplier side since one doesn't know how far the attack goes.

On user side, much easier to deal with as we have piles of compiler code and binaries to work with going way back. Well, simpler if not easier.

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's incredibly rare to find well written prose matched with such technical accuracy. Well done indeed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice read and interesting story (written in 2009). At first I thought it was a story about a S/W startup or about how new H/W is made, but then the plot thickens :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> That was an amazingly good read.

Possible Spoiler.

What is the process for programmatically generating code that achieved a certain result without caring about efficiency?

<comment><USER4> Genetic algorithms create results like the situation described in the story all the time. When put to developing physical circuits, they develop circuits with components which are not even connected to anything but which can not be removed without preventing it from functioning. They generate the most insane- looking solutions you could imagine and typically reveal just how well you did at defining what you actually wanted. As they say in the story, explaining the outcome you want precisely enough is no different or easier than programming.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the tip. I found a post [0] describing genetic algorithms for circuit design that helped clarify the process. Coincidentally, the circuit described has a component that does nothing.

[0] [http://hforsten.com/evolutionary-algorithms-and-analog- elect...](http://hforsten.com/evolutionary-algorithms-and-analog-electronic- circuits.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Trusting Trust" in the wild!? Nope. Just some fiction.

[https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp...](https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> I know this is just a story but the idea of humans "accidentally" creating something "intelligent" is as plausible as humans accidentally building the first plane.

We've been underestimating the difficulty behind building intelligence since the 50s.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great compelling read....waiting for this day to happen :) unless its already here

</comment><comment><USER20> Was this supposed to be a story or a real life experience? I am inclined to think it is the former. Either way it felt a bit silly from when they received the letter.

</comment><comment><USER21> what a compelling story

</comment><comment><USER22> Very interesting read.</comment>


Demonstration of using laser to exploit voice assistants[video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/ozIKwGt38LQ?t=542 <comment><USER2> I'll never understand why HN has such a hardon for Dustin.</comment>


Gates Foundation program will issue home testing kits for Covid 19 in Seattle - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/08/gates-foundation-backed-program-will-soon-be-issuing-home-testing-kits-for-covid-19-in-seattle/ <comment><USER2> Korea is doing drive-through testing with results available in three days. [1] That the US is still at the level of doing testing in a private and haphazard fashion is effectively criminal and seems likely to have a serious impact fairly soon. The US had a difficult time even testing all the workers at the nursing home in Washington where 11 people died.[2]

[1] [https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-uses- driv...](https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-uses-drive-thru- stations-to-test-for-covid-19-11950955)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/coronavirus-nursing- ho...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/coronavirus-nursing-home.html)

<comment><USER3> I think part of it may be intentional. No matter what, and the end, you will get accurate numbers for death, and there's not much that can be done for viral infections, other than cancelling large events and other means of transmission. Some can't be avoided though (elections are happening in the US).

Could the CDC intentionally be avoiding increasing testing to avoid panic? If the numbers are to be believed, no matter what we'll see a sizable number of infected this year and risk losing many of the elderly.

<comment><USER4> No, the CDC created a defective first kit, delaying EFFECTIVE national testing a month. Congress should investigate the reason for this failure. We'd be far ahead if we bought test from Germany or Korea.

NPR had a story about genomics lab that repurposed some of it research equipment to provide some testing resources. Apparently about 70 other labs, including Gate's, did similar and provide backup resources. But a month delay seriously damaged the US response.

<comment><USER5> The US also explicitly rejected the working German tests, adopted by the WHO, and continued pursuing their own kit, even after they failed the first go around, putting ourselves even further behind:

> But German researchers were devising their own test, which was quickly > adopted by the World Health Organization for distribution around the world.

After the C.D.C.'s version turned out to be flawed, the agency continued to pursue it, despite the fact that another diagnostic test was already in wide use.

With F.D.A. approval, the agency could simply have embraced the test used by the W.H.O., Dr. Mina said. The government could do so even now.

"It's just a very American approach to say, 'We're the U.S., the major U.S. public health lab, and we're going to not follow the leader,'" Dr. Mina said.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus- testin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/health/coronavirus-testing- cdc.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Low cost home testing kits can go beyond SARS-COV2 and track other diseases all from the safety of your home. Why go to the hospital where you could possibly be infected by other people with infectious diseases or infect the people around you.

Personally, if it is low cost enough that I don't need to use health insurance then I am all for it. Health insurance is good enough until surprise they don't want to cover you or you get surprise bills in the mail from the hospital.

Gates Foundation is absolutely forward thinking. I like it a lot.

<comment><USER7> > Health insurance is good enough until surprise they don't want to cover you > or you get surprise bills in the mail from the hospital.

Constantly amazed this can be a thing in a first world country. Can this actually happen?

<comment><USER8> It happens all the time here; it's ridiculous.

At my company's last benefits meeting (where they go over the yearly changes to our insurance coverage) a coworker described a situation where they had a surgery at an in network (accepted by our insurance) hospital, with in network surgeons and nurses, but was assigned an out of network anesthesiologist without his knowledge, and later got a giant bill for it (well over $1000, IIRC).

Even when a person tries to follow all the rules, they find a way to screw you.

<comment><USER9> Maybe before a surgery, gather all of the hospital staff who are going to attend, and record a video while saying "I do not consent to working with anyone from out of network. If you are an out of network physician, I do not consent to be your patient." That ought to be interesting in court if they bill you. Really, the onus of responsibility is between your insurance company and the hospital (i.e. paying and billing party). If they fail, it needs to be something resolved between them. Because that's their fucking job.

<comment><USER10> You clearly haven't dealt with these guys. The hospital can charge whatever it feels like and the insurance pays whatever it feels like. And the patient sits in the middle and has to figure it out.

<comment><USER9> I have dealt with them, once, and I got the pokey end of the stick. I honestly don't know what would work, but I think operating on someone who has specified that they don't consent is kinda the definition of criminal; I think Mayhem would be the official charge.

<comment><USER10> You would think that repeatedly charging people for procedures that never have been performed would also be viewed as criminal but they get away with it all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really important, especially in countries where flu season is coming.

At the same time, I've been reading papers in top journals about various clever technologies to do rapid (ie <60 minutes) detection of pathogens for years. The latest was using crispr [1]. None of them seem to have left the lab, PCR is still it.

Final point, nanopore sequencers are ideal for rapid home testing, and you get the actual sequence. They are a bit too expensive unfortunately.

[https://nanoporetech.com/products/minion](https://nanoporetech.com/products/minion)

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00601-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00601-3)

<comment><USER12> How expensive are they? I don't see the price behind your link

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We need some states to just start defying the CDC and doing whatever testing they deem necessary. With media backlash and sympathetic juries, no court case will actually succeed if the feds try to charge them with anything, and this is a life-or-death matter. Italy is a first world nation doing testing, and even they are swamped—what will we be in a week?

</comment><comment><USER14> is anybody surprised?

availability seems not the be the problem, you can order them since 3 weeks ago from alibaba: [https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...](https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=covid+19+test)

or, if you prefer from italy: [https://www.screenitalia.it/test-coronavirus- covid-19/](https://www.screenitalia.it/test-coronavirus-covid-19/)

the problem here seems to be of an organisational nature...

</comment><comment><USER4> Numerous articles about $4000 fees if test done at ER.

[https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/02/why-are-we- bein...](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/02/why-are-we-being- charged-surprise-bills-coronavirus-testing-spark-calls-government)

The new fed law and my state make the test itself free, but dont address the high service charge at some medical centers. Sick people might be reluctant to test as early as they should.

</comment><comment><USER15> the irony is that if these are not already FDA-approved devices, then selling them (and even giving them, I think) to consumers will be illegal.

it seems clear that the regulations would be harming the public interest and should not be enforced, but you could imagine a scenario where there was a politician with a political grudge against a liberal city like Seattle.

<comment><USER16> Not anymore. That restriction has been removed [PDF link]:

[https://www.fda.gov/media/135659/download](https://www.fda.gov/media/135659/download)

<comment><USER17> This is great news. We can learn from this pandemic that during Public Emergencies, humanity needs to come together and defeat our threat - democracies are thought of as a "giant ship" that's impossible to move during emergencies and cannot compete with authoritarian regimes such as China where a drone escorts you back to your own house; this kind of exclusionary and temporary exceptions backed by scientific consensus and truth (which is often clouded by the fog of authoritarian stronghold on censorship), we can be as nimble and come out more educated than ever.

Emergency powers in the western democracies (North America and Europe) are an important aspect of governance and should be routined examined for effectiveness (mock exercises and simulations), efficiency and combating the threat during the most dire times. Coronavirus is not an existential threat but as a thought exercise we can imagine one that has a serious chance of killing 50% of the earth population. Or some serious evil on planet is threatening human existence on earth - incoming asteriod or terrorist organization with AI capabilities. I sound like an alarmist, I know, but the point of this thought exercise is not to induce panic but build a better governance system that can protect the public without giving up civil liberties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am scheduled to give a talk at large science conference in Seattle this May. I have a feeling its going to get canceled though. :/

<comment><USER19> I would be pretty surprised if this was going ahead at this point.

<comment><USER18> Yeah there is talk of conducting the conference via streaming. Ha!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seattle's lucky to have a benefactor, though it may highlight yet again the stark differences between the have's (in this case a rich tech companies) and have not's - everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't expect much from trump but I'm mad at Newsom at this point. Why can't he do something about Cali?

</comment><comment><USER5> From what I've seen, a lot of the false negatives with these tests comes from the fact they require two swabs (nose and throat) that must be performed thoroughly/correctly in order to get a viable sample. I wonder how home testing will impact efficacy.

<comment><USER22> Source please, couldn't find this information anywhere saying this.

<comment><USER5> It's a long standing problem with these kind of rapid diagnostics for respiratory illnesses:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rapid-flu-tests- only-50-to-70-p...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rapid-flu-tests- only-50-to-70-percent-accurate-cdc-says/)

Doing two swabs helps mitigate this, as does comparing anal and oral swabs. Here's a more thorough breakdown:

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1729071)

<comment><USER23> Pretty sure even I could tell the difference between an anal swab and a nasal swab.

<comment><USER24> Maybe people are confused because both their noses and butts smell?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> are they iot devices that send a positive to authorities and get you in quarantine?

</comment><comment><USER26> This is very admirable of Bill, but it seems odd that the world's biggest economy is reliant on hand-outs to keep its citizens healthy.

<comment><USER27> To me, it seems odd that government would have a monopoly on anything in health care. Non-profits can play a very valuable role in exposing inefficiencies in large bureaucracies.

<comment><USER26> I don't think I implied governments should have a monopoly over health care? There are many other options. For example, I'm wondering why isn't health insurance covering testing? It'd save them money if it helped limit the spread of disease.

<comment><USER28> It would make sense if everybody were insured. However they really would want everyone to get tested, not just their customers, for the reason you cited. If anything, they should be incentivized to make their own foundation to give it away, like Bill Gates is. Car insurance companies have pooled together to form the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for crash tests. So such things can come about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Starve the beast is working as intended. Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER30> What the parent is referencing is the Republican strategy to defund government services, and then point to how ineffective they are, thus providing justification for privatization.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/amid-coronavirus- out...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/amid-coronavirus-outbreak- trump-proposes-slashing-cdc-budget/)

<comment><USER31> Except these agencies have never had so much funding as they do now.

Its hard to put a finger on exactly why they seem entirely incapable of fulfilling their central mission during this crisis. Why were the test kits botched? Why was testing so artificially limited? Why do the primers seem poorly designed? Why does the contact tracing seem to be so behind the ball? Etc.

I think political finger pointing is easy and maybe even satisfying but not helpful or particularly enlightening.

<comment><USER32> Politico has a good piece[1], but with no real answers.

 _But neither the CDC nor the coronavirus task force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence would say who made the decision to forgo the WHO test and instead begin a protracted process of producing an American test, one that got delayed by manufacturing problems, possible lab contamination and logistical delays._

This seems to give some kind of explanation of what was going on:

 _But there were additional problems with the administration's approach to testing, according to experts and former officials. From the start, the White House focused on containment, trusting that a limited ban on travel to and from China could somehow force a fast-moving virus to stop cold when it hit the Chinese border. But, while containment might have helped buy the U.S. some time, without aggressive domestic surveillance through testing, it was an incomplete strategy._

Except that doesn't really explain why the CDC didn't do it's job. Surely the White House wasn't actively _stopping_ disease surveillance?

[1] [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus- testing...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/coronavirus-testing- failure-123166)

<comment><USER31> The CDC just _" had"_ to make their own test probably due to a combination of regulations and NIH syndrome (no pun intended). It wouldn't have been such an issue if they didn't _fail_ so spectacularly at designing a test.

From what I gather, designing these things is not actually rocket science, more like grad-level work. The fact that local labs throughout the country were ready to go with their own self-made testing kits supports this.

The focus on containment by the White House IMO was totally appropriate. When you have zero local cases, that's what you focus on... in order to buy you time to prepare, shore up supplies and disaster plans, and distribute test kits. Containment (i.e. closing borders) is the _political_ part of the process, so the Administration focused on that while the scientists are busy designing and distributing the test kits. In theory...

<comment><USER32> Containment is absolutely appropriate - and can and should be done within the country as well as border restrictions.

But it doesn't seem there has been much focus on that at all. Containment requires rapid large scale testing. The US doesn't seem at all prepared for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Our government is led by idiots, this is the result

<comment><USER34> Hate to break it to you, but nearly all governments are led by idiots who don't know anything and don't care to know. Becoming a non-idiot is hard, time consuming work that's incompatible with politics needed to get elected into a public office.

At least our executive branch had enough common sense to ban flights from China on Jan 31st (and was panned by the "free press" and Democrats in congress for it at the time). Had they not, we'd be dealing with tens of thousands of infections and thousands of deaths by now, as exemplified by Italy.

<comment><USER19> And yet somehow most other countries have still managed to come up with a significantly more competent response. Germany is tracing contacts of all cases and has capabilities to test 20,000 people per day. How many is the US testing right now? And that's a country with 1/3 the population.

There are probably thousands of infections in the country already, we just don't know it yet.

<comment><USER34> > Germany

Now try Italy or South Korea. Germany still has twice as many cases as the US, and 7.5x as many cases per million of population (12.1 vs 1.6 CPM in the US). Proximity to Italy doesn't do them any favors. To their credit though, they have zero deaths.

If you order the stats by cases per million, the US comes in 40th, so containment doesn't suck too bad, compared to others. By deaths it's the 5th though - the main cluster basically took out a bunch of very old, medically problematic folks at a senior care facility. As the officials from the facility said, about 7 people die there per month under the normal circumstances, but this month they were additionally hit with the coronavirus. Bad luck.

<comment><USER35> The issue is that Germany is testing ferociously while in the US this is not the case. It's therefore likely that the US numbers are severely underestimated, while Germany's are much closer to their true value.

Worth noting that Germany not having any deaths despite such a large number of cases can also indicate that they discover the infection very early, and similarly the number of US deaths can indicate late discovery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Bill Gates is a great man.

</comment><comment><USER37> What's the point of testing? There is no treatment. So knowing you have it or not is pointless. If you have it, and it's serious, you'll seek medical attention regardless of whether you know it or not.

When you see the ridiculous on hand sanitizer and toilet paper, even if there was an over the counter version, you wouldn't be able to find one in the store.

<comment><USER38> "Whats the point of testing if you are a healthy 20 year old caring with 85 year olds"

This sums up the silicon valley mindset for EVERYTHING. If you find it hard to understand what I am meaning the be worried.

<comment><USER37> So you're just going to test yourself constantly?

If you experience symptoms for any illness and you care for seniors, you should remove yourself from care.

No need to test.

<comment><USER39> Don't people have low level symptoms basically all the time? Like if you add up all the times your throat feels a little bit sore, or nose is a little bit stuffed or you cough a few times a day or you have a bit of a headache or you feel a little bit lacking in energy... That should add up to like half a year.

So I'm not sure if what you are proposing is realistic.

<comment><USER23> Symptoms are fever and a dry cough (no runny nose, no sneezing). At least for me and my family that happens basically never.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If anything sets a bad precedent, citizens starting testing themselves and each other, what could possibly go wrong (sarcasm)...

Should we test for flu, cold as well? All other diseases? Should you only be allowed to be somewhere if you tested yourself within the last N hours ... etc .. because that is the next step, looking at each other with suspicion.

When did you last test yourself? Did you not test yourself? Why not? What are you hiding? What kind of citizen are you? Get back there and start testing yourself.

Are you going to test yourself every day? When you sneeze? In the morning, in the evening?

Stop living in fear. Nothing will happen to you.

<comment><USER41> If I could test myself continuously, I would. Why would you not?

<comment><USER40> because it never works like that, never that simple, there are always bigger costs

in the end this will be used against you and others

next thing you know you are not allowed on a bus if you haven't tested yourself today

<comment><USER42> This is mindless hysteria. And I suspect you know it. On the other hand, maybe you do, in fact, believe it. Let's make a good faith attempt to test how truly we believe in our predictions. I predict that the Gates Foundation permitting home testing in Seattle will not result in Seattle's public transit system only permitting COVID-19 tested individuals by the end of 2020. In order to back that, I will put up $1000 at even odds. Reply here to take me up on it.

What's your prediction and will you back it like I did?

<comment><USER40> Hysteria: emotional excess.

Not sure why you assume "hysteria" on my side. My opinion could be wrong, but that does not make it a hysteria. Isn't the fear of COVID more a hysteria?

As for your bet - it is overly specific - there could be thousands of similar, equally negative outcomes that would not be in Seattle, or a bus company, etc yet could all be triggered the same way.

I would be most worried of people that want to infect others about finding out anonymously that they are infectious.

<comment><USER42> The Gates Foundation is only issuing home testing kits in Seattle so it's hard to argue for elsewhere. However, I'm comfortable negotiating the terms. What are yours? I'd like to have a conclusion within a reasonable time so no bet lasting 50 years or anything, but otherwise, let's hear your offer.

EDIT: Due to old comments, I'm rate-limited on this thread so I actually cannot respond (sorry!). I'm interested specifically in the statement about the bus.

<comment><USER40> my offer is that in two years we look back at this and a reasonable majority of health professionals will say:

"you know that home testing by Gates was not such a good idea, overall it caused more harm than good"

My view is that is a dangerous idea to have untrained, panick people decide if they are sick or not. Too many things can and will go wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lincoln's Sense of Humor - <AUTHOR> http://www.kirkcenter.org/bookman/article/cracking-jokes-at-the-crack-of-doom <comment><USER2> save you a click: there's a book about Lincoln that analyses his sense of humour, and this article is from the oldest conservative book review publication in the US. No jokes in it

<comment><USER3> Yeah no kidding. How can something about humor be so dry?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _But even seasoned students of Civil War politics and history will likely be > impressed by the range of attacks on the president. And, lest we think our > own age has a monopoly on partisan nastiness_

This is true, and something personal I discovered when reading about Lincoln. He was despised by a lot of people, but truly it was a sign he was far ahead in his thinking.

Now he's probably one of the most universally loved presidents, a unifying feature I think he would be proud to be known for.</comment>


Google reports "high-severity" bug in Edge/IE - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/high-severity-vulnerability-in-edgeie-is-third-unpatched-msft-bug-this-month <comment><USER2> I initially thought that Project Zero found yet more bugs in IE/Edge, but it turns out this is just from last month.

<comment><USER3> Previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13755082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13755082)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if there's a patch available now, but Microsoft not responding to it makes me wonder if they really care about security in their browsers...

<comment><USER4> There's been some speculation that they're all-hands-on-deck trying to respond to the vault7 leaks and implications thereof, and thus these vulns are left to rot on the vine.

<comment><USER5> I reported an issue a week ago and they have had developers verifying it beginning of this week. And that was a low impact bug. The previous issue I reported took 4 months to be verified and then another 3 to be patched. So my view at least is that not everyone is handling leaks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Windows users who want to take extra precautions should consider using a > 64-bit version of the Chrome browser instead of Edge or IE until the latter > two browsers are patched

Eugh. Is this a sponsored post on Ars or is there really this level of tone- deafness w.r.t. responsible unbiased journalism?

"Company A finds vulnerability in competitor's product. We recommend using Company A's product instead (despite there being other competitors)"

On a similar note, the original Project Zero reporter didn't actually bother to test this in Edge before reporting it. I assume this has since been positively confirmed in Edge or is it still just speculation?

<comment><USER7> Personally I don't think it's a sponsored post. If the author of the post didn't recommend something to workaround the issue, readers (especially non- technical one) might think there's no solution to the problem.

Ideally the author should have mentioned about Firefox as well but he/she might not have used browsers other than Chrome, IE/Edge.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle an unwieldy test suite? - <AUTHOR> IIRC, if one were to follow TDD principles appropriately, it requires you to run tests and run tests often while you work on a change to the codebase. My problem is that I joined a team that has pretty spotty test suite that can run extremely slow at times (it's a Python project that uses pytest). It could take 30-40 minutes for just a single run of the suite.
What ends up happening is that team members (myself included), unfortunately put tests on a backburner only up until it's time to submit a pull request to master, and at that time it reveals that their changes are breaking tests all over the place. Fixing them all could take a whole day's worth of work just to get everything in line.
I have to assume there's got to be a better way of going about this. We are all trying to improve the test suite as we go along, but "improve" seems to kind of a moving target as no one on the team really has strong knowledge of how to write a test suite that is fast and comprehensive and maintainable. Personally, I've been scouring the internet for resources that can touch on this at a deep level, but I've come up short.
Does anyone have any tips for handling this? <comment><USER2> What is the test suite spending its time on? CPU? Waiting for a database? `time.sleep()`?</comment>


Firefox switching to clang-cl for Windows builds - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/wwO48xXFx0A <comment><USER2> A reply in the thread from David Major about performance:

 _" At the moment, performance is a mixed bag. Some tests are up and some are down. In particular I believe Speedometer is down a few percent."_

 _" Note however that clang-cl is punching above its weight. These builds currently have neither LTO nor PGO, while our MSVC builds use both of those. Any regressions that we're seeing ought to be short-lived. Once we enable LTO[1] and PGO[2], I expect clang to be a clear performance win."_

[1] "LTO (Link Time Optimization) is a method for achieving better runtime performance through whole-program analysis and cross-module optimization." [http://blog.llvm.org/2016/06/thinlto-scalable-and- incrementa...](http://blog.llvm.org/2016/06/thinlto-scalable-and-incremental- lto.html)

[2] PGO = Profile Guided Optimization

<comment><USER3> LTO can be particularly handy when doing devirtualization. Our experience ([1]) with Chromium demonstrated that there's a fair amount of virtual methods which have exactly two implementation in the code: one for production and another one for tests. While linking production code, it's trivial for this optimization to spot that, replace a virtual call with regular invocation and then often inline and allow for other in-place optimizations. In many cases of the renderer (Blink), that gives 3%-7% speedup out of nowhere.

1\. [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=580389...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=580389#c25)

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, why use virtual calls in those cases? Why not just have two different implementation files -- one for tests, and one for production -- and choose one based on which one you're doing? It seems like a win all around.

<comment><USER3> >Out of curiosity, why use virtual calls in those cases? Why not just have two different implementation files -- one for tests, and one for production -- and choose one based on which one you're doing? It seems like a win all around.

I don't fully understand the proposal here. Do you have an example of a code in the wild that uses the proposed scheme?

<comment><USER4> I'm just saying do conditional compilation instead of virtual dispatch, since you generally shouldn't really need both the test and production implementations to run inside the same program. So if you have reason to require

      // widget.h
      class Widget { virtual void throb(); };
      // widget.cc
      class WidgetImpl : public Widget { void throb() { ... } };
      class WidgetTest : public Widget { void throb() { ... } };

then, instead of that, just do

      // widget.h
      class Widget { void throb(); };
      // widget.cc
      void Widget::throb() { ... }
      // widget.test.cc
      void Widget::throb() { ... }

where you only compile widget.cc for the production build, and only compile widget.test.cc for the test build.

Feel free to post a more specific example and I can take a stab at seeing if I can make this transformation to it (or why it might not be possible, if you think it's not).

<comment><USER3> Thank you for elaborating your proposal. It might work in a theoretical scenario, but unlikely to be practical for existing projects with millions lines of codes.

Essentially, it was easier to write a compiler / linker optimization, than change the source code. On the bright side, everyone wins!

<comment><USER4> > It might work in a theoretical scenario, but unlikely to be practical for > existing projects with millions lines of codes.

I mean there's no reason you have to change everything by tomorrow. You could introduce it as a policy moving forward, the same way I'm sure you make any other changes to other patterns that need to be followed. I'm sure you have a process for this?

> Essentially, it was easier to write a compiler / linker optimization, than > change the source code.

I agree, but see above and below.

> On the bright side, everyone wins!

Well, you waste space, time, and energy making the compiler and linker do work that doesn't inherently need to be done. You also lose parallelizability of the compilation of the two implementations if they currently reside in the same file. Finally the compiler (er, linker) might not be able to actually apply the devirtualizations you expect, whereas in this case it's just a matter of inlining since the target method is already known.

<comment><USER5> > Well, you waste space, time, and energy making the compiler and linker do > work that doesn't inherently need to be done.

It's repetitive, error-prone work, better to have the compiler and linker do it than rely on the programmer getting their use of the preprocessor right.

And even if the programmer gets it right, doing it via macros means every tool that you want to apply to your codebase - IDEs, profilers, coverage, instrumentation - needs to understand your macro. Are you sure they'll all get it right?

Better to write plain old standard code that every tool will work correctly with, and the worst thing that can ever happen is a slight performance penalty.

<comment><USER4> Are you replying to the correct comment? Not once did I even mention macros or the preprocessor.

<comment><USER5> I misunderstood, but what you're actually advocating has all the problems I mentioned only even more so. Any tool that you want to apply to your codebase will have to understand not just a macro, but your build configuration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> Watch for more toolchain changes to come. The next steps after this will be to switch to lld-link and enable ThinLTO. That will open the door to a cross- language LTO that could inline calls between Rust and C++. In the longer term we can look into cross-compiling from Linux._

Very cool. The potential to inline Rust and C++ (and C, of course) code together at the LLVM level is one of those things that's been theoretically possible for a long time now but has yet to really mature in practice (at least, I'm not aware of anyone aside from Mozilla attempting it at scale). Really curious to see how this affects Firefox performance once they get it all wired up.

<comment><USER7> Rust's performance benefits won't be immediate, as single-threaded C++ is already very fast and safe parallelism benefits of Rust would be difficult (impossible?) to leverage across language boundaries.

I'm more interested in seeing whether the maintainability of Firefox will increase over time as the proportion of Rust code increases. That is, will Mozilla be able to accelerate Firefox's development because the source code is in a safer language?

<comment><USER8> I'm trying firefox nightly these days and I notice my cpu has burning peaks (60 -> 80 C) I wonder if rust parallelism isn't kill my poor laptop heatsink/fan.

<comment><USER9> Are you on a Mac by any chance?

<comment><USER10> Funny you mention this. While Firefox's interactive performance on Mac feels absolutely fine, it's energy consumption is dramatically worse compared to Safari.

Using Firefox over Safari can cost _hours_ of battery life, so it's very hard to recommend it. Is this just a Mac issue?

<comment><USER11> I know of one issue with Firefox when you are using a scaled resolution. It absolutely destroys battery and performance for me. I _think_ it has gotten better with the latest versions but the tickets are still open.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?format=default&id=...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?format=default&id=1404042)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407536)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17365510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17365510)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443590](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443590) has info on why :

> We've discussed this on several occasions but apparently nobody ever filed a > bug.

> There are a number of reasons using clang-cl for our official builds would > be good:

> * The ability to patch the toolchain as we do on other platforms

> * The ability to diagnose and upstream fixes for compiler bugs we encounter

> * It would provide motivation to switch to clang on all platforms, which > would make it so we only have to worry about a single compiler for things > like performance optimization (I don't assume we would drop support for MSVC > or gcc, we just wouldn't have to worry as much about compiler quirks)

</comment><comment><USER13> Today's Nightly build about:buildconfig

      Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
      z:/build/build/src/clang/bin/clang-cl.exe -Xclang -std=gnu99 -fms-compatibility-version=19.13.26128 	19.13.26128 	-Qunused-arguments -nologo -wd4091 -D_HAS_EXCEPTIONS=0 -W3 -Gy -Zc:inline -Gw -wd4244 -wd4267 -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Wno-ignored-pragmas -Wno-deprecated-declarations -Wno-invalid-noreturn -we4553
      z:/build/build/src/clang/bin/clang-cl.exe -fms-compatibility-version=19.13.26128 	19.13.26128 	-Qunused-arguments -Qunused-arguments -TP -nologo -w15038 -wd5026 -wd5027 -Zc:sizedDealloc- -wd4091 -wd4577 -D_HAS_EXCEPTIONS=0 -W3 -Gy -Zc:inline -Gw -wd4251 -wd4244 -wd4267 -wd4800 -wd4595 -wd4065 -Wno-inline-new-delete -Wno-invalid-offsetof -Wno-microsoft-enum-value -Wno-microsoft-include -Wno-unknown-pragmas -Wno-ignored-pragmas -Wno-deprecated-declarations -Wno-invalid-noreturn -Wno-inconsistent-missing-override -Wno-implicit-exception-spec-mismatch -Wno-unused-local-typedef -Wno-ignored-attributes -Wno-used-but-marked-unused -we4553 -D_SILENCE_TR1_NAMESPACE_DEPRECATION_WARNING -GR- -Zi -O2 -Oy-

</comment><comment><USER14> Note that they're switching from _MSVC_ to clang-cl.

Since the headline doesn't mention MSVC, this could be interpreted as relevant to the old GCC vs. Clang issue, but it really isn't in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> The headline does say _for Windows builds_. Would that imply MSVC being the original compiler being used, since that is the usual default compiler under Windows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is in the latest nightly. Open "about:buildconfig" to see if you're using it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why do i have to sign into Google in order to view this?

<comment><USER17> It's not about being signed into Google, it's about running JS.

<comment><USER18> Is it? JS in enabled, but I'm still required to login (both with or without uBlock running). Works in a Private Browsing Mode though.

<comment><USER19> It's not the problem you're seeing, but the page does require JS:

 _To use Google Groups Discussions, please enable JavaScript in your browser settings, and then refresh this page._

NoScript users will be automatically redirected to this version (which doesn't require it):

[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?_escaped_fragment_=topic/mozilla.dev.platform/wwO48xXFx0A)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be great if they switched to MinGW as well so both Clang and GCC work. MinGW needs some support as well and then they control the while toolchain.

Sadly it probably doesn't make sense for them to allocate resources to that. On the other hand in my experience at least GCC dominates in performance department so that would help with not worrying about compiler switch causing performance regression.

<comment><USER21> I second that. clang-mingw could be another viable choice.

<comment><USER20> It would be great because then the builds would be independent of Microsoft VS infrastructure which is a total mess on Windows. Both Clang and GCC work with MinGW (I use MinGW64) headers so then you would have two modern open source compilers to cross-reference and open source toolchain you could fix or improve as needed.

<comment><USER9> I'm fine with being able to compile with mingw (and we already can on GCC), but we can't ship our release builds with it; it's too far behind the official Windows SDK in terms of supporting new platform features.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I realize that supporting MinGW64 is a big task and probably not worth for one single player even as big as Mozilla. Still, I hope one day it gets picked up. Visual Studio dependency is painful and I think it will be quite a while till Clang catches GCC in performance department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No idea what is going on but interested in the commotion...</comment>


Small stupid things that make up my dev environment - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/12/21/env/ <comment><USER2> It's these small, stupid things that actually were the reason why I couldn't hack it on a Macbook.

You just get stuck in your ways when everything is set up _just right_, and the little things that Macs do that Linux didn't, and vice versa, just drove me up the wall, even though it was small and stupid.

<comment><USER3> > when everything is set up _just right_

That's why I'm still using Enlightenment DR16 as my window manager, with the same theme/config I've been slowly customizing for ~20 years. Every time I try a different windows manager (including any enlightenment >= E17) it feels like an incomplete toy, not the feature-rich tool I'm familiar with.

<comment><USER4> I did try to switch from e16 to e17 multiple times (on Gentoo), but I always had to rollback; I never found a bugfree version of e17.

(sometimes in 2018 I had to switch away from e16 (got taken out from Gentoo's main package repo) and I ended up using XFCE. It's a pity that e17 never really worked, at least for me => I wonder if they'll ever publish a really stable version)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea of programming in green text on a black background with no syntax highlighting makes me shudder.

<comment><USER6> I did it back in the olden days, on everything from Wyse and Wang terminals to a Commodore 64 and an IBM XT with MDA display.

I haven't done it that way in years, but this article makes me want to try it again. I wonder if all that highlighting is actually making me less focused. I guess I'll find out later this week.

<comment><USER7> I can't see how you can get more productive by removing a channel of information from yourself though.

<comment><USER8> Using this kind of rational-choice-based theory assumes complete control of the way your brain processes information and the channels it chooses to focus on, which simply isn't accurate.

For a reductio ad absurdum, if you had a book in which each word was in bold purple iff its Scrabble score was divisible by 5, I don't think it would be controversial that removing that channel of information would make you more productive.

<comment><USER9> It would if it was a Scrabble dictionary.

<comment><USER8> Very true, and completely irrelevant. We're talking about a counterexample to a universal claim, not a universal claim that runs counter to the original claim. The comment I responded to said (paraphrased) "I don't see how you could be more efficient by removing a channel of information", and this is what I disputed, providing a theoretical explanation and a simple example. The fact that examples in the contrary direction exist (as you point out) is not disputed by anyone.

FWIW, as far as the specific upthread topic goes: despite generally preferring a pretty barebones development environment, I prefer syntax highlighting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am 5'6 and I have found I like a desk about 24-26" off the ground so I can sit with my feet flat on the floor and hands in my lap at the keyboard without shoulders hunched. Hard to find!

I have my old Aeron which I don't really love vertical adjustment nearly as low as it can go.

<comment><USER11> I have the exact same issue. A sit-stand desk with a wide height range has saved my back. The biggest challenge left is finding a chair that's shallow enough to sit at the back of (for proper lumbar support) and still be able to bend your knees.

Try adding a nice extra-tall laptop riser too. Typical ones tend to be 6-12" too low once the desk is no longer too high for typing.

<comment><USER12> Have a riser to recommend?

<comment><USER11> I use one of these ones that are intended as standing desk converters:

[https://www.uncagedergonomics.com/standing- desks/](https://www.uncagedergonomics.com/standing-desks/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone not coding on a 4K or higher monitor should complain.

They're not that expensive now, and the text is so much sharper. You might not notice the difference with a 4k TV on the other side of a room, but you will with a 28 inch screen a couple of feet in front of you.

<comment><USER14> I don't like native 4k. Text rendering is too small for me.

If I have to go native, 1440p or QHD ultrawides would be the best.

But 4k scaled down in MacOS is great too!

<comment><USER15> You have to set DPI that is appropriate for your screen size. If you keep using the default 90 DPI with a 15" 4K screen, the text will for sure be small because it is rendered as if the screen is about 49".

<comment><USER16> DPI means dots per inch. It's a physical property of an LCD screen (well, technically, that would be called PPI - pixels per inch, but it's the same concept). I'm not sure how one would be able to set the DPI. At least not without really bad shenanigans blurring everything in the process.

Isn't the solution for "small letters on high pixel density screen" scaling as mentioned by arvinism or simply increasing the font size?

<comment><USER15> Like you said, DPI (or PPI) is a physical property of a screen. You don't set it for the screen, you just let your text rendering software know the DPI so that it could get the absolute text size (in mm) correctly. Let's consider two 15.6" screens: 1\. 1366x768, ~100 DPI 2\. 1920x1080, ~141 DPI

When rendering a piece of text in a certain font size on both screens without specifying correct DPI (e.g., leaving the default DPI value of 90), the text on both screens will take up the same amount of pixels, but the absolute size in mm will be different (text on screen 2 will be smaller because pixels are denser there). If you, however, let your OS know the DPIs of the screens, rendering the same piece of text in the same font size on both screens should lead to the text physically taking up roughly the same area of the screen (as much same as it could be, taking into account the fact that pixels are discrete). This is true because point[1] is an absolute unit of measurement.

To give you an example, when I switched from 1366x768 15.6" laptop to 1920x1080 15.6" laptop I specified the new screen DPI in my desktop environment font appearance settings. This made all the text be roughly same size as on the old laptop, only smoother due to greater pixel density.

> Isn't the solution for "small letters on high pixel density screen" scaling > as mentioned by arvinism or simply increasing the font size?

This way you must render a picture as if the screen has higher DPI, then scale it down to match the desired DPI, you still have DPI in play here, and absolute text size implications described above apply here as well. You can use scaling for antialiasing, though.

\---

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_(typography)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_\(typography\))

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the explanation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For the typematic delay, I have no clue why it is so slow on Linux by default. Probably somebody has set those values 30 years ago and then nobody cared to update them. I use 'xset r rate 200 40' and when I use another Linux computer, typing feels just broken, super slow (Windows has better defaults than Linux in this regard). The weird part, there is no reason why keystrokes should have such a huge delay. Changing the xset values improves the user experience in a quite dramatic way.

<comment><USER16> Where do you put this magical "xset r rate 200 40" on a modern Linux desktop?

~/.bashrc is the wrong place for sure (I might not even be running X!)

~/.Xresources seems like it would be the right place but it's a command so that won't work...

<comment><USER17> I have it in my i3 config: exec --no-startup-id sleep 2 && /usr/bin/xset r rate 200 40

<comment><USER16> While my ~/.xinitrc and ~/.xsession have been ignored for some time, Debian- based distros seem to use ~/.xsessionrc these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My own small thing is my personal keyboard. I have both a mechanical and non- mechanical personal keyboard, mind you. They cost me a pretty penny ($100+ for each), and I wouldn't expect an employer to spend that easily. So I can just provide my own.

I have really long arms overall and normal keyboards force me to both put my wrists at really weird angles and turn and twist my elbows to get my hands to fit there. Something like the Microsoft Natural was a decent-ish width, but the Kinesis advantage or the Ergodox are just amazing. It's funny to watch too - people are kinda scared to touch a Kinesis advantage "because it's split and weird", but they start touch-typing quickly and start arranging the keyboard parts as it is comfortable in small steps as well. You just nudge the keyboard part instinctively with your thumb or your pinky to make it more comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER19> When setting up a Linux VM to work from, I usually go with OpenBox, LXterminal and FBPanel and call it a day:

[https://github.com/rcarmo/docker- templates/tree/master/deskt...](https://github.com/rcarmo/docker- templates/tree/master/desktop-chrome/home/user/.config)

Building a portable setup is a lot easier these days with Docker, but over the years I started paring down stuff to vim+tmux (which work fine inside WSL) and sharing my dotfiles across the Mac, Linux and Windows.

The one thing that gets me every time, though, is having a working SSH keychain. I want to log in _once_ and have ssh-agent just work, and it seems like every year I have to re-learn another way to do it (which is fine, but annoying).

</comment><comment><USER20> Desks without modesty panels are a feature of offices without due consideration for personal privacy.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was able to get by with white on black terminal before.

But nowadays, I can't stand coding if the editor doesn't have syntax highlighting.

<comment><USER21> Same with being able to put the cursor over a variable name and automatically highlight all of them used in the same scope. Can't live without that</comment></comment>


Printable 1:24000 topographic maps for the entire US - david-given http://www.natgeomaps.com/trail-maps/pdf-quads <comment> david-given I'm a map junkie; I grew up in the UK, where we have the Ordnance Survey, who makes some of the best maps in the world. At school we actually got lessons in mapreading and analysis.

As a result, whenever I go to another country the first thing I do is to try and find some decent maps of the area. With, you know, contours on them. It can be surprisingly hard.

I was so, so glad to find this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interested in maps from Switzerland? They are of very high quality as well:

[http://map.geo.admin.ch/](http://map.geo.admin.ch/)

There are a lot of different overlays as well as older versions available. I especially recommend the 'Dufour Map' and the 'Siegfried Map' from the 19th century, the earliest official maps of the country.

<comment><USER2> Similarly, the French government has some great maps up: [http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil](http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil)

It's in French, unfortunately for the Anglophone world, but they also have aerial maps dating back to the 30s under the advanced explorer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The US National Map has better, more recent topos. These GeoPDFs allow turning on/off layers (e.g., satellite image, PLSS grid lines, etc). You can also download historic topos.

[http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/](http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/)

<comment><USER4> That used to be at "seamless.usgs.gov". The USGS was proud that they'd finally aligned their topos into one seamless map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey this is awesome! I'm a little confused about the NatGeo copyright; aren't these USGS maps and therefore not copyrighted?

If you want an online map, MapZen recently produced a really excellent outdoor map style. No contours, but really beautiful relief shading and an emphasis on hiking trails, parks, etc. It's based on open data including OpenStreetmap, SRTM, and a lot of other sources. [https://mapzen.com/blog/walkabout/](https://mapzen.com/blog/walkabout/)

<comment><USER6> (I can't get the page to load yet, but own a bunch of NatGeo maps-)

It probably falls under something akin to fair use. NatGeo is likely _using_ a lot of USGS geo data, but doing additional work on top, adding in trails, making the map nice, etc.

I tried to make my own maps once for my GPS unit, it gave me a new level of respect for mapmakers. It's not terribly hard to take the raw LIDAR survey data and make crude maps, but making a nice polished zoomable map with trails, POI's, etc is laborious.

<comment><USER7> > I tried to make my own maps once for my GPS unit, it gave me a new level of > respect for mapmakers. It's not terribly hard to take the raw LIDAR survey > data and make crude maps, but making a nice polished zoomable map with > trails, POI's, etc is laborious.

It was even more laborious before computers were involved in cartography. My first employer was full of old timers who manually carved contour lines and maintained trig stations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is cool, thanks to OP for submitting this.

In the past I have ordered topographic maps from Raven Maps and they really are excellent. Not cheap, but you can get plain paper suitable for framing or laminated if you want to write on them with whiteboard markers. I have a giant one of the USA, plus a few of states I've lived in.

No affiliation with the company except as a customer. [http://www.ravenmaps.com/](http://www.ravenmaps.com/)

<comment><USER4> If you want USGS topos on paper, the USGS sells them directly.[1] The USGS retail map store in Menlo Park, CA sells only California maps now.

[1] [https://store.usgs.gov/](https://store.usgs.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> CalTopo ([http://caltopo.com/](http://caltopo.com/)) has these maps and more. In addition, CalTopo supports many useful overlays.

</comment><comment><USER10> For some reason, I read the title as being _3D_ printable maps for the entire US. That'll eventually come, I guess.

<comment><USER11> Already has! I made Terrain2STL [0] a couple years ago to do just that. It converts STRM topo data to the STL format.

[0] - [http://jthatch.com/Terrain2STL/](http://jthatch.com/Terrain2STL/)

<comment><USER12> Nice. Could you 3D print the entire earth as a globe? :)

<comment><USER13> As noahnoahnoah's comment alludes to, there is kind of a problem with elevation differences on Earth being small. For example, the vertical distance from sea level to the summit of Mt. Everest is only 0.1% of the Earth's radius.

If you made a globe with a 1 foot diameter, Mt. Everest should then be on about 0.2 millimeters above the surface (if you choose to represent sea level as the surface).

Edit: this problem is less dramatic if you make either models either of local regions, or extremely large models (because relative to the size of a region like the Bay Area, the highest elevations in the region _are_ fairly high).

<comment><USER12> You are absolutely right, it hit me as well after posting the questing. The elevations would have to be vastly exaggerated for a globe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a huge fan of [http://historicalmaps.arcgis.com/usgs/](http://historicalmaps.arcgis.com/usgs/) for finding USGS maps - it's a simple, visual browser to find all available years + scale levels for any location.

</comment><comment><USER15> Note that they can be quite old (USGS rev. 2001). They also don't have a lot of detail - I was looking at the section of Appalachian trail I hiked and it would it quite difficult to use these maps even though they are nominally larger scale than the map I've used.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this stuff!

I have a wooden topographical map made with a 3D CNC cut of the SF Bay Area hanging on my wall. It's about 18x18 inches and almost 2 inches deep out of a single piece of almost 2 inch thick piece of plywood. The part I like the most is that the layers in the plywood reveal an automatic topographical map visualization. Got it from here if curious: [http://3dwoodenmap.com/](http://3dwoodenmap.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, the map for my area is seriously outdated. My town looks about like it did when I was a kid in the 1980s. It's easy to tell because my town has consistently grown since then from around 20k population to 150k population, and a lot of things that were built up in the late 80s aren't yet on that map.

It's quite fascinating to get a refresher of what it looked like in the past.

It's a nice concept. I like being able to see this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER18> Damn, and here I was already jealous that NOAA provides free charts for the US coast.

[http://www.charts.noaa.gov/InteractiveCatalog/nrnc.shtml](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/InteractiveCatalog/nrnc.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER19> My friend uses these open maps to make really cool 3D topo maps. If anyone's interested this is it: [http://lithosproject.com](http://lithosproject.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there any way to download bulk data sets for gross height data for the USA?

I'd love to pair that up with OSM to make a few nice 3D maps.

<comment><USER21> [http://nationalmap.gov/elevation.html](http://nationalmap.gov/elevation.html)</comment></comment>


The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/5be1f2ee-d60b-11e9-a0bd-ab8ec6435630 <comment><USER2> I like that the internet archive exists, but I don't like how they implement their opt-out policy. Sites can opt-out at any time, which I suppose is the correct thing to allow, but once they opt out then everything the Archive has gathered up to that point also goes away, which seems wrong.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't go away, it's just not public. This is to comply with copyright law. It's still safely stored on disk.

<comment><USER2> Okay, if they have no choice in it then I understand. But as for keeping a copy on disk that practically no one can ever see, to me that strikes seems like a distinction without a difference.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure you can visit the building that Internet Archive operates from ([https://archive.org/about/contact.php](https://archive.org/about/contact.php)) and freely surf/look at all the content, even the content that is not available from the web version.

<comment><USER5> I see no advantage in restricting access. I just believe this to be a mechanism to hide uncomfortable content, which I believe has no benefit as long as no personal information is revealed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _But Mr Graham argued that simply removing false information or offensive > content isn't necessarily the answer. Hateful material need not remain > publicly available, he said, but certain researchers and politicians should > be able to study it._

They're planting the seed and seeing how the public reacts. This is ridiculous! Mark something "controversial", "possibly fake", but don't memory- hole us. An archive only archiving history they agree with is not worth the funding.

<comment><USER7> There is no public-interest benefit in hate screeds. Those are memetic viruses with established body counts and should be studied, if at all, in the manner one studies smallpox.

<comment><USER8> There are people who would put Das Kapital the same category of unacceptable speech as others would Mein Kampf.

You have no right to quarantine information like you would a virus, because there is no way to agree on which information is "bad". Further, even overall hateful or dangerous content can have meritful parts - not everything Hitler said or did, for example, was unreasonable or evil.

Another example, what about the Unabomber Manifesto? Yeah, he was a terrorist and he wrote some arguably hateful things about liberalism/leftism, but there was also a wealth of thoughtful observations regarding the human condition in his work.

All information should be free for study by anyone.

<comment><USER7> And they would be wrong. Liberation literature is not in the same category as hate screeds. I don't buy the moral abdication you're selling. You know what's evil - it's the stuff full of race hate and misogyny. There is no moral equivalence.

<comment><USER9> It's amazing how if you try to make a progressive political point here, you tend to get criticized. But when it comes time to judge the morality of things like racism or misogyny, suddenly it's impossible to know the morality of any idea ever.

<comment><USER10> People aren't arguing that racism and misogyny are moral, they're arguing that if you allow any censorship at all, then someone must be appointed censor, and you may not agree with that someone. The only way to be sure that your ideas can be freely expressed is to allow everyone, no matter how immoral, to freely express their ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Extremely lame article...

I remember back 10 years ago either google or the internet archive had a temporary search engine that went through the wayback machine... and a lot of interesting things were found. It was through this IIRC that it was discovered that Obama filled out a questionnaire in 1996 saying he supported same-sex marriage when that was not his public position at the time. I've always wondered why that search engine went away and who currently has access to do such searches.

<comment> 5- You appear to be remembering Google publishing their 2001 search index that was briefly available in October 2008: [https://www.cnet.com/news/who-were- you-in-2001-check-googles...](https://www.cnet.com/news/who-were-you- in-2001-check-googles-old-index/)

Extremely useful thing, I wonder how the legal side of things was managed, even for such a short exposure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's pretty obvious they were next on the hit list.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20623177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20623177)

archive.org is a huge problem for the rewriters.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone how the Internet Archive get a bypass on DMCA? It's full of pirated games for example. I'm aware that it's one thing to archive something but anyone can download it as well, so it's essentially distribution too. Just curious how does it work. Personally that's how I get old SNES, NES, DS games.

<comment><USER14> The IA actually has a DMCA exemption for the pirated games: [https://archive.org/about/dmca.php](https://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

<comment><USER15> Not so sure about that, their big Amiga collection lasted couple of days.

<comment><USER16> Specifically, the part of the DMCA that the exemption is for is the part that makes it criminal to bypass copy-protection; it does not grant them additional rights to make or distribute copies.

There are lots of forms of copying where the copying itself is legal under copyright law. However, the DMCA made it criminal to bypass copy-protection mechanisms, _even if_ they copying itself would otherwise be legal. That's what the exception was for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If they really want to be trusted as a source of truth, they need to find a way to publish cryptographic signatures of every page that can be validated to prove that the page was captured when they say it was. Maybe some sort of blockchain.

Otherwise there's no reason to trust that an Internet Archive snapshot is an accurate representation of the archived page.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't say "no reason", I'd just say that it should be self-aware that they are functionally similar to a news website in that they live and die on their reputation. The second someone can demonstrate that they've manually misrepresented some archived page they lose nearly all of that credibility.

Better than crypto stuff which might not scale well would be to have multiple independent archives run by people with a diversity of political views and nationalities. The authenticity can be easily verified if the same page is archived to a site run by left-wing people in San Francisco and also a site run by right-wing people in London.

<comment><USER17> But you need more than two, or who would break the tie when the left-leaning site says one thing, and the right-leaning site says the opposite.

Running a general internet archive isn't cheap, so it's not like there would be dozens of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Mr Graham said he was an "optimist", but conceded that the archive had not yet saved as much as he would like. Take YouTube, for example: the team is only archiving a "small fraction" of all the videos published each week."

Is it true one can nudge the IA crawlers to archive a page that would otherwise be ignored?

[https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/25/see-something-save- somet...](https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/25/see-something-save-something/)

Is this as simple as sending a GET request, something like:

       curl -O /dev/null https://web.archive.org/web/save/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oBh6Ng8bI4^1

1 Are web developers the only ones who use "Overrides" in Chrome DevTools? For example, could users replace external resources such as tracking pixels or JS/CSS that obscures text with their own resource files?

<comment><USER20> If you put that link as a link in your video description, google crawlers might follow the link, thus triggering the GET request the same as curl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They mention archiving a bunch of Trump stuff, but are they just focusing on conservatives? There's a bunch of misinformation on both sides, and if they're really after the truth, they should be paying the same amount of time and attention to both right _and_ left.

Somewhat related: it's sad but perhaps not inevitable that everyone basically has to do their own research to find out what's actually going on. These days, I don't trust any one source; I find out what that source used as _their_ source, and go read that. And if that source has a source, I look at that. This means I oftentimes find myself looking at the raw numbers of, say, gun deaths or immigration numbers, etc. It's extremely time consuming, but immensely illuminating.

If only there were some organizations that would do this for me, without adding in some bias or interpretation. We could call them "news organizations."

<comment><USER22> What gives you the impression that they're "focusing on conservatives?" Do you have evidence for this statement?

You mention archiving Trump's tweets. Do you think that they might do this because he is the President of the United States?

<comment><USER23> (I don't have a dog in this fight) From TFA: "The result is Trump and Brexit!" and generally the lack of anything disparaging toward the left. The article and the Internet Archive plainly isn't "focused on conservatives", but it sort of undermines its purported mission (commitment to preserving the truth) in the implication that conservatives are unique in espousing misinformation, even if the implication is unintentional.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't it be up to X side to submit links to IA? Also if a site opt-out and their historical data is wiped, that isn't IA's bias, it's the site choosing to opt-out.

<comment><USER23> Per the article, we're discussing IA's efforts to flag "misinformation".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Archiving the web is a fine thing on its own, but why must everything become a "war" against misinformation, fake news, etc.? It can simply be a side benefit to having the Internet Archive. But I'm wary of anyone who claims to be trying to combat misinformation, because usually there's a political agenda. (and I don't care whose agenda it is, but by all means, _downvote_ me...)

I don't want the Internet Archive to be around for the sake of keeping tabs on Trump or pointing out fake news. Just archive web content. The end, please.

<comment><USER6> agree. the unix philosophy. _This service only archives the web. To know whether the content is true, see: <other service>_

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://archive.is/M7zGj](http://archive.is/M7zGj)

<comment><USER27> This is funny, but the FT actually has opened their paywall today, so this may be a good time to check out everything you didn't get to read in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm am glad the Archive exists and also a frequent user. The only thing that gets me thinking is that at some point in the future, they will own the past. That is, if it wasn't in the archive then it didn't happened (in what content- in-a-webpage regards). And by owning the past they would be able to manipulate it (probably).

One can say the same thing about Wikipedia, but there are other encyclopedias that can be used to check a certain fact.

Do we need an archive of the Internet Archive?

</comment><comment><USER29> 9/11 in the Archive.

Go look at all the news websites on September 10th, 2001... and back about a month or two. All empty until 9/11.

<comment><USER30> Na I remember pretty well, there was literally nothing in the news for months before that, top story was shark attacks or something.

<comment><USER31> 9/10/2001: Donald Rumsfeld admitting that $2.3 trillion was unaccounted for from the Defense budget. Backpage story for sure. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU)

<comment><USER30> o_0

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Around the sides of the room [in Internet Archive headquarters] stand around > 130 3ft porcelain figurines — replicas of every employee who has spent at > least three years at the archive.

Wow. That's a lot of figurines.

</comment><comment><USER33> Thank you for using the word "misinformation" instead of Fake News.

</comment><comment><USER34> I find this kind of news deeply worrying...critical thinking should be applied to everything, and purging an archive of some of its controversial stuff (albeit a common practice in real ones too as pointed out) is a terrifying perspective, what's the next subject, where do you stop, is the internet to become a 'validated safe space'? A chilling perspective. If you cannot handle discussion about absolutely anything without being afraid or influenced something is deeply wrong in the way you have been educated.

</comment><comment><USER35> Full copy of the article: [https://archive.org/details/howtheinternetarchiveiswagingwar...](https://archive.org/details/howtheinternetarchiveiswagingwaronmisinformation)

</comment><comment><USER36> OT: the FT's paywall appears to have opened up, apparently in general, not just for HN referrers.

I'd previously been using the archive.is / archive.fo workaround.

The FT is among the very highest-quality mainstream/establishment news publications, and is well worth the subscription, if you can afford it. It will reward your attention even if not.

Update: this is a one-day promo:

[https://4estate.media/@aendrew/102814393931699671](https://4estate.media/@aendrew/102814393931699671)

</comment><comment><USER37> With GDPR and all it's impossible not to provide an opt-out of some kind in this day and age.

</comment><comment><USER38> These guys are heroes.

<comment><USER39> I used to think that. Then I tried volunteering via their IRC channel and was met with some next level hostility.

My read is:

a) They're doing a job that needs to be done.

b) They're _relatively_ flush with cash from donors

c) They're not nearly as efficient as they could be.

d) The people there seemed more concerned about competition than collaboration.

e) Probably most controversial: The organization seems like it has stagnated.

<comment><USER2> How did you approach them, what did you ask to help with? Not saying you did this, but there's a big difference between "hey folks, how can I help?" compared to "I noticed your page load times are ridiculous, I can get you to a place that isn't awful".

<comment><USER40> FWIW this is a fairly common experience. Jason Scott is quite famously a problematic guy. "But", he volunteers an insane amount so he gets a pass on a lot of his antics (hands up if you've heard that story before).

Getting kicked out of the IRC channel for pissing him off for basically anything is frequent. I used to hang out on IRC and saw it happen a lot. Eventually happened to me as well (couple years ago). I didn't go back; it's not worth putting up with him. Didn't stop me from contributing to the archive / AT / archival communities; in fact, shortly after I got kicked out, I was invited by someone else to a jason-scott-free community I contributed to for a while.

<comment><USER39> That resonates a lot with my experience :/.

Now he's employed by the IA, so not volunteering, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I gotta donate to them again, I always forgot about them, but those fuckers are hero's.

</comment><comment><USER12> Meta: Are we going to click these cookie notifications until the end of time? I have JS off, so usually I dont see them... /thanks EU

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a blatant and cheap hit piece, 100% politics and should not be here

<comment><USER43> 2 paragraphs out of 21 mentioned Trump, 2-3 mentioned politics otherwise.</comment></comment>


Try PostgreSQL 9.5 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mktmp.io/post/123234019958/try-postgres-9-5

<comment><USER2> Neat. Just be cautious as docker containers aren't yet secure.

[https://docs.docker.com/articles/security/](https://docs.docker.com/articles/security/)

<comment><USER3> > Docker containers are, by default, quite secure; especially if you take care > of running your processes inside the containers as non-privileged users > (i.e., non-root).

I'm not quite seeing the sense of insecurity here, especially from the conclusion. Like any piece of software, it's up the user to not use "dangerous" configurations.

<comment><USER4> Linux containers are at most a privilege escalation away from breaking.

Also, isn't Docker people the ones talking about unikernels? Where everything run not only with superuser powers, but at kernel level?

<comment><AUTHOR> Though in a Unikernel, the kernel only implements what is needed to run the service. So a database, for example, would be lacking functionality like a shell to escape to.. or even a TTY to run that shell on.. or an implementation of connect() to even initiate outbound TCP connections, in the extreme case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \dx ( List of installed extensions ) show only : plpgsql

Please add more extension (like: postgis,hstore)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know if there's any major upgrades re. speed? From 9.0 to 9.5?

<comment><USER7> 9.5 was supposed to get "parallel sequential scan" (which is a big deal performance-wise), but I don't see it on the "what's new in pg 9.5" page. Anyone know what's up with that?

<comment><USER8> It wasn't ready yet. A significant amount of development happened after the point where that's supposed to happen for features to be integrated in 9.5.

Now that 9.5 has its own branch I hope we'll get it in early in the 9.6 development cycle; so we have time to iron out all the potential kinks.

I don't think there ever was a clear "this will be in 9.5" statement from anyone?

<comment><USER7> 9.5 was the target according to this: [http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/03/parallel-sequential- scan-f...](http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/03/parallel-sequential-scan-for- postgresql.html)

Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting service. rmgraham, what do you see for the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now account sign up is wide open, but the plan is to move to paid accounts with a free trial period. I'm thinking tiered plans based on concurrency limits (right now all accounts are capped at 1 active instance).

The use case not highlighted by the blog post is is disposable databases for use with automated tests. One of my inspirations was the idea of using a Vagrant VM as a development environment and deleting each night and re- creating it each morning so that the project doesn't accumulate untracked dependencies on environment tweaks. I'd like to enable/encourage similar practices for DBs. For that, I'm working on a Jenkins plugin.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you take cc payments as a consultant? - <AUTHOR>

Assume you have a US bank account and corporation set up. If US clients want to pay you by credit card, how do you take that payment? What service or services do you need to sign up for to make that happen?<p>This is in the thousands of dollars per transaction. Is using something like Paypal good enough? Are there any hidden pit falls I need to watch out for? <comment><USER2> Freshbooks + a stripe account. The integration is perfect. However, you will lose ~3% of the total amount billed. I did this for my monthly SAAS clients ($900 per month/client), but my consulting clients pay via check or ACH (10-20K per month).

I'd stay away from PayPal. Just google PayPal Horror Stories.

</comment><comment><USER3> The one time I did that I used PayPal. Otherwise I send a P.O. and get a check or wire transfer. It was a training course and each department wanted to pay for their own students. I made sure to let them know that I would be charging more, to cover the PayPal fees. They were fine with that. There was some paperwork to let PayPal know that I was a real company, but otherwise it wasn't a problem. The total was only about $2500, so rather less per transaction than what you are doing.</comment>