From Computation to Consciousness [video] - <AUTHOR> http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6573_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412281130_-_from_computation_to_consciousness_-_joscha.html

<comment><USER2> Papers and talks about "consciousness" are usually very bad. This is better than most, but not great. The beginning is a rehash of Philosophy 101, but after a while he gets into neural models of visual processing in the brain which can be implemented in software. That part is quite good. That alone would have been a good talk.

Around 13 minutes in, after mentioning and dismissing linguistic representations, he starts talking about simulation-type representations of the external world. This is progress. Historically, there's been an obsession with linguistic (or worse, predicate-calculus) models. Simulation-type representations, ones which can answer "what happens next" or "what if" questions, But he doesn't develop that concept further.

Then, around 20 minutes in, he gets off on dreams and meditation, and "how is it possible to be conscious without a self", and "free will is a social notion", none of which is helpful. By minute 26, he's off on psychedelic experiences and love. Around minute 30, he's off on dualism, questions like "is the mind part of the universe", and "could we build a mind in Minecraft". Then there's solipsism, and "are we living in a simulation", and whether it matters.

"Preference criteria for suitable encoding", at minute 34, starts to explore computational metaphysics, the nature of reality, and other deep subjects. Shallowly.

There's some good stuff in here, but it's not sorted out between what's actually known, what's conjectured, and what's speculated. If you stop watching at minute 20, you'll have seen all the good stuff. The philosophical excess baggage can be skipped.

I would have liked to see more on simulation-type representations of the real world. That's where "common sense" is probably implemented. (A useful definition of common sense, from a robotics or animal perspective, is that it is about getting through the next ten seconds or so of life without screwing up big-time. As a practical matter, we really need to get a good handle on that to build useful robots for unstructured environments. Google is trying to do this for automatic driving, apparently as a big-data problem.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a way to easily get rid of the German translations? I am German but unfortunately the translators are not very good and it is - at least for me - harder to listen to this language mix than to the English talk.

</comment><comment><USER4> What an insightful and refreshing lecture. Thanks for sharing this. The theory about why the mind creates a sense of self, in order to facilitate higher learning, is something I can relate to and helps me understand.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wait he just claimed the universe is computable because it produces regular data we can encode. Is that necessarily the case? Can't you claim that our senses just produce regular data that we can encode?</comment>


A First Look at America's Supergun - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-first-look-at-americas-supergun-1464359194 <comment> matt-attack > In conventional guns, a bullet loses velocity from the moment the gunpowder > ignites and sends it flying. The railgun projectile instead gains speed as > it travels the length of a 32-foot barrel..

This is incorrect. Most cartridges are design so that the projectile accelerates for the entire length of the barrel.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps the author meant the bullet loses acceleration over the length of the barrel?

<comment><USER3> Based on the fact that they state the railgun is different in that it gains speed over during the time in the barrel, it seems like the author just doesn't gun physics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some equivalence values here.

A typical US navy marine propulsion reactor puts out 250 MW. This railgun would require about 10% the energy output of such a reactor. A large aircraft carrier might have several cores.

From the 9/11 attack scenario below, impact speed matters (kinetic energy scales with the _square_ of velocity), but chemical reactions pack a great deal of energy. The _fuel_ of the airliners crashed into the World Trade Center towers released some 370x more energy than the impacts themselves, though as thermal energy delivered over roughly an hour, rather than the instantaneous impact.

As an alternative to missiles, the railguns would likely allow for increased firing -- a typical vessel carries fewer than 100 missiles, but could probably carry far more shells (and be capable of firing them).

I'm wondering at what point increased speed means you're simply punching holes through things without actually inflicting damage -- it's the _transfer_ of energy from shell to structure that matters. If you're targeting a deeply buried concrete bunker, this is appropriate. Residential or commercial buildings, cars, etc., will to a large extent simply get very well ventilated (though you might not want to be in the immediate enting area when this happens). Matching shell structure to target likely matters.

<comment><USER5> Never, more speed is good because they can program the projectiles to break apart before impact with soft targets. The limiting factor is air resistance, greater initial speeds result in more energy wasted.

Also, I believe they are (were?) looking at the Zumwalt destroyer for this weapon, which actually only has 78 MW of power output.

<comment><USER6> Does power really matter? 25MW instantaneous power vs continuous/average power are different things. With modern clever power electronics you could get pretty high instantaneous power from a lower powered source. The exact energy vs time curve and desired fire rate has to be utilized to make any effective prediction I think.

<comment><USER7> The article does mention advances in supercapaciter design as one of the enabling technologies, but I suspect just charging the things requires a ton of power. Let's do some back of the envelope physics with what we know (and reasonable ball park guesses when we don't)!

It's traveling 4K mph or about 1800m/s, let's assume since its 24in long and largely tungsten it has a mass of around 60kg. 1/2 * mass * velocity ^2 means it needs 97.2 megajoules of power. That's about 4 seconds for a 25MW reactor, so I guess you're right something smaller could fire it less rapidly, though the one every 6 seconds they cite as desired would require that much power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a bit fascinating and scary how casually they talk about the weapons of China and Russia, and what we need to counter them. Do they believe there is a realistic chance of war with these countries? Or is just about using military might as a political & diplomatic tool?

<comment><USER9> Let's look at this another way: Do you think that there will never be another major war? Like never, ever, ever again?

Can you genuinely state with certainty that humanity is over fighting major wars -- that we've evolved past that?

The answer is simply no, we haven't gotten past that point and likely never will. So in that context we should be developing weapons to fight and win wars against the most likely of threats.

The most likely threats happen to be China and Russia.

<comment><USER10> No, we haven't evolved past major wars, but nuclear weapons have made them impossible to win. That is something new under the sun.

That's why I don't believe in "a world without nuclear weapons" \- a world without nuclear weapons is a world in which the next world war is imminent.

That said, _something_ is going to happen in the south China sea. But no rational actor would ever start a nuclear war. That leaves cold-war style local dominance battles. Not nice, but not a major war either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _In conventional guns, a bullet loses velocity from the moment the gunpowder ignites and sends it flying. The railgun projectile instead gains speed as it travels the length of a 32-foot barrel_

Even the Wall Street Journal has science/engineering illiterate idiots writing for it? If engineered properly, a conventional naval gun will also continue to accelerate its projectile all the way down the barrel. Why does this idiot think there are various guns that have long barrels? It's to give expanding gasses a longer time to accelerate the projectile.

<comment><USER12> You make good points, but I wish you'd express yourself more nicely. You really don't need to call the authors idiots (twice!) To make your case.

<comment><USER11> This is how I genuinely feel about the level of scientific illiteracy our society has fallen to. We literally have people at an executive level who are functionally illiterate in science, making decisions on the basis of their ignorance. (The editors of the WSJ could be seen as examples of this.) "Solar Freakin Roadways" got almost $2 million from the public. Are we functioning with a viable educational system for a complex technological democratic society? Heck no. Even the people in charge are riddled with ignorance on basic levels.

Not knowing what you don't know can literally cost untold treasure and many millions of lives. There are tons of examples of this in history. I'm pretty sure we're not doing so great a job teaching that either.

And yes, it even goes to examples of basic Computer Science knowledge on HN!

<comment><USER13> The sincerity of your feelings is not the point. The point is that calling people names reduces the quality of the comments.

<comment><USER14> I think that calling people names here was making the comment much closer to what 'stcredzero _actually thinks_. I.e. it boosted accuracy and clarity of the comment.

Also, personally I don't have any other idea how to fix journalism than calling them out every time, and calling them out _hard_.

<comment><USER13> You literally used "accuracy" and "clarity" as synonyms for intensity of emotion. Under that logic, everything becomes a screaming match, and the comments devolve into a competition to see who's feelings are the most virulent.

<comment><USER14> I meant something else. When you write a comment, you transcribe your thoughts and feelings into text. That text may or may not be close to what you actually think - e.g. to the words you use in your internal monologue. In this case I think the word choice serves to portray the actual thoughts and emotions of the author more clearly/accurately.

<comment><USER8> High quality comments are written to convey an idea or present an argument (low quality comments are often written to make the writer feel good about themselves without conveying any meaningful idea).

Removing words with high emotional charge but low signal (such as "idiot") will increase the quality and effectiveness of the comment. Others will view the comment more favorably, and any additional discussion is likely to be more productive this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The Navy now believes it has a design that soon will be able to fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds."

So the barrel lasts just over an hour and a half?

<comment> m-i-l Might a bigger challenge be the power source? If each firing requires 25MW, then 1000 shells would require 25GW, which is equivalent to the output of several large nuclear power stations.

Edit: Apologies, basic mistake, mixed up power with energy. Thanks for correcting.

<comment><USER16> > If each firing requires 25Mw, then 1000 shells would require 25Gw

That's not how power works. Power is energy/second, so if one each firing requires 25Mw, firing every round requires 25Mw.

Edit: Although after doing some calculations, firing 1000 shells would require 22 billion joules of energy, which is about the same as the energy released during nuclear fission of three grams of uranium.

<comment><USER17> How plentiful is Uranium? I'm not a nuclear engineer, so the 3 grams metric isn't meaningful to me -- is that a considerable amount?

<comment><USER18> 3 grams is between about 1/6 and 1/8 once.

Of course, only a small portion of uranium in a reactor core is converted to something else. After that, they replace the fuel as its output drops a bit.

Disclaimer: I don't know enough to check the "grandparent" post's math. I'm assuming the calc is right in that it's the fission energy, and not total destruction of matter E=mc^2 / matter-antimatter style.

<comment> m-i-l Thanks. That helps with my original question - how portable will this be? If it just needs a very small nuclear reactor with a tiny amount of fuel, then they should be able to have a power source "that generates 25 megawatts" and can "fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds" on a ship. But what about a truck? Having a weapon with a 125 mile range isn't necessarily all that great if it is too big and heavy to get within 125 miles of most of the things you want to shoot at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Missile defense by the railgun is at least a decade away, but Pentagon officials believe the weapon's projectiles can be used much sooner. They are filled with tungsten pellets harder than many kinds of steel, officials said, and will likely cost between $25,000 and $50,000, a bargain compared with a $10-million interceptor missile._

Learning about how expensive high-tech weapons are never ceases to blow my mind. 50k for a single bullet -- equivalent to 1 yearly median US salary. 10m for a missile -- the price of a luxury mansion or the value of a decently successful startup.

<comment><USER20> I'm sure it could be a lot cheaper, usually government contracts are inflated. Seems like everyone increases the actual costs to extract more money from the government. Not to mention the govt changes requirements constantly (F-35).

But then again I feel like to do deals with the govt it requires jumping through hoops.

<comment><USER21> > I'm sure it could be a lot cheaper, usually government contracts are > inflated.

That's a reasonable rule of thumb, but it's kind of funny to apply it to the weaponry of large scale modern militaries, since those almost certainly couldn't exist without the very governments that makes their costs inflated.

<comment><USER14> I think the GP is not saying the problem is with government - it's with the people who take government contracts and inflate the costs to take more money for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I look forward to the day that the great weapons race is for more weapons like this that aren't radioactive, biological, or otherwise impact the environment beyond the war itself.

<comment><USER23> Tiny automated robot flies that seek out enemy leaders and inject poison?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cool, but also something that makes war even more scary. You'd use to have all sorts of things to protect you; there isn't anything that can protect you from this once aimed at you (except a pre-emptive EMP; providing they have no shielding for it). Feels weird knowing there is nothing that can protect you from it.

<comment><USER25> Not exactly. It can be protected from by a multi-layered whipple shield, kind of like what was proposed to protect spaceships from meteors.

On the other hand, it won't be something you can line a ship or a plane with, so yeah... Always shoot first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How "America's Supergun" is this if it is made by BAE? [https://i1.wp.com/news.usni.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/01/1...](https://i1.wp.com/news.usni.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/01/140708-N-ZK869-010.jpg?ssl=1)

</comment><comment><USER27> Defense Industry porn.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd love to know how they solved the barrel erosion problem.

A rail gun is as satanically simple in theory as it is satanically hard to engineer.

A coil gun won't have this problem, but unfortunately the magnetic fields are harder to get than the electric ones.

</comment><comment><USER28> Gauss rifle : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun)

<comment><USER29> No, railguns and coilguns are different. The second paragraph at your link explains the distinction.

<comment><USER28> Indeed, thanks for the hint. I actually wanted to note, that electromagnetic guns is an old idea. (Even I came to it once, but of different design; and was surprised when discovered it to be already studied - in that article though they said this idea turned out to be impractical).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> to put that speed in perspective, thats about 1/6 earth's escape velocity.

</comment><comment><USER31> A 25-pound projectile traveling at 4500 miles per hour carries as much momentum as a jumbo jet at cruising speed: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25+pounds+*+4500+miles+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25+pounds+*+4500+miles+per+second)

We know the impact a hijacked jumbo jet can have on buildings...now imagine being able to sustain that level of destruction at a rate of 10 times/minute with hardly any power or material consumption.

<comment><USER32> That impact wasn't as large as your remark make it appear to be. The twin towers didn't collapse on impact, they collapsed from the energy released by burning the fuel in the planes and the burnable stuff present in the planes and the towers themselves (in what proportions, I don't dare take a stab at)

On the other hand, as another poster already said, you should compute energy. That goes with velocity squared, so it will be way higher these projectile, compared with a jumbo jet.

Edit: as another poster said, you also should have said miles/hour. That gives you [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25+pounds%2F2+*+((4500+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25+pounds%2F2+*+\(\(4500+miles+per+hour\)+squared)), apparently about what a Samsung S3 uses in a year (what am I doing wrong? [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25+pounds%2F2+*+((4500+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=25+pounds%2F2+*+\(\(4500+miles+per+hour\)+squared\)+in+kWh) gives me 6.374 kWh. Seems a tiny amount)

<comment> matt-attack To reiterate, it's worth reviewing the collisions. You'll see the buildings don't make the slightest movement upon impact. No discernible affect.</comment></comment></comment>


How I Made One Client An Extra $500k a Year In 5 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/07/using-wrong-tracking-code-can-cost-you.html

<comment><USER2> Of course this could be read another way: How Google's poorly thought out Analytics code cost a company $500k/year.

Whenever you plug somebody else's code into your site, you're taking a risk. Try browsing the web with your browser set to pop up warnings on every javascript error, and you'll see how bad most of the scripts people plug into their site really are.

<comment><USER3> You can also spin it as the customer not keeping updated with the latest code that fixes known issues. How much can you really blame Google on customers using years-old code?

<comment><USER2> Indeed. That's the point I was trying to make. It's not an issue of whether it's Google's fault that the company didn't update their tracking code. It's the fact that when you start integrating 3rd party stuff into your codebase, it suddenly becomes your job to keep on top of every one of those plugins to make sure they stay working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Pretty amazing that sites with such high daily revenue (close to UK 7000/day, just for IE) either weren't testing their checkout process in IE or didn't ever wonder "gee why am I getting this 'insecure content' popup and how can it be fixed?".

<comment><USER4> Not to mention that there were almost certainly people who did see that pop-up and entered their credit card details anyway.

<comment><USER5> As mentioned at the bottom of the article -- if you click "yes" on the popup -- then you only got the secure data -- and didn't get the analytics code. And that quite possible 70% of the users did just that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Summary:

Ensuring that Google analytics downloads the js script using https on websites that are themselves https served in order to prevent IE8 visitors from getting a security warning.

Discusses segmentation in GA and some other issues too along with the general concept of checking conversion rates for different classes of visitor.

</comment><comment><USER7> how could you miss this with initial cross browser testing? If I were the company i'd be furious.

<comment><USER8> Probably their QA got fired after this event. Who knows? Seriously though I am amazed how can such companies remain to exist. I am amazed at how trivial this error is.

On another note. The payment processor we use (2checkout) have an error in their checkout page where they ask PIN code but explicitly point out _Only required for US customers_ but in reality it is needed for ALL customers. Raised this bug two months ago, they acknowledged it and it is still not fixed. I'm furious at this but based outside US I have little or no option to switch.

<comment><USER9> "I am amazed at how trivial this error is."

Agreed. However...

"Probably their QA got fired after this event."

I doubt it. I have seen many QA staff at a variety of companies get so used to IE's various oddities that over time they will simply stop opening some kinds of bugs against the site on IE, even perfectly legitimate bugs like that in the article. All it takes is for product management to punt mixed content warning bugs during a few releases before QA also stops reporting them. If someone does later bring one up, over time it evolves into "Oh, that's an IE thing we can't fix." These are smart people doing generally diligent work, but they do tend to get worn down around IE.

I can't say for sure why this happens but I've seen it most with IE mixed content warnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why aren't the other browsers warning about this? It IS a security problem if people mix non-SSL content into a SSL page.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't it just as likely that people were still ordering but clicking "Yes" to the remove insecure content option? This would mean the orders still came through but Google Analytics wasn't getting called and recording them.

</comment><comment><USER12> A more genuine title would've been: "How I made one client with a tremendous amount of traffic an extra $500k a year".

It's not like someone implemented a new feature that brought in an extra $500k.

<comment><USER13> I mean, that's pretty much what I inferred given the nature of the title. Since you usually only tell part of a story with a title, I felt that this one was sufficiently genuine. They could have deflated it a bit by saying "How I increased a client's revenue by X% with one change."</comment></comment>


Show HN: Asserted.io – Test in Prod. Continuous Uptime Testing with Mocha - <AUTHOR> https://asserted.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I built this. Let me know if you have questions.</comment>


Craig Venter: Joining 3.5 Billion Years of Microbial Invention [mp3] - <AUTHOR> http://s3.amazonaws.com/salt-recordings/salt-020080225-venter/salt-020080225-venter.mp3

<comment><USER2> Save time and read a text summary: [http://blog.longnow.org/2008/02/26/craig- venter-joining-35-b...](http://blog.longnow.org/2008/02/26/craig-venter- joining-35-billion-years-of-microbial-invention/)

> Venter proposed that our current energy and climate situation requires truly > disruptive technology. One project he's working on would use altered > microbes to metabolize coal in the ground and generate methane, for a > tenfold increase in carbon efficiency. Another project proposes a "4th > generation biofuel," where engineered algae directly convert CO2 into > hydrogen in bioreactors.</comment>


Show HN: Genses; Learn about the obstacles faced by successful founders - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegenses.com <comment><USER2> Please keep this site up. Very encouraging, as someone who has 2 months runway left

<comment><AUTHOR> I will! Keep visiting :)</comment></comment>


HTC 10 review: HTC builds the best Android flagship of 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/htc-10-review-htc-builds-the-best-android-flagship-of-2016/ <comment><USER2> why did they got rid of the front facing speakers? I think that was nice. On the other hand Nexus 6 has it now. HTC M7 had some camera issues earlier too. In night mode it will show gradient purplish background on the images. I reported to HTC and they admitted that was a bug and got fixed.</comment>


Apple Said to Have Team Developing Wristwatch Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/apple-said-to-have-team-developing-wristwatch-computer.html <comment><USER2> The next shuffle?</comment>


Show HN: Day and Night (WebVR) - <AUTHOR> https://dayandnight.moar.io <comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on a series of tiny WebVR experiences for kids that run on the HTC Vive. (Personal project.) It's a work in progress, but thought I'd share this first one now that it's functional; to prompt other WebVR enthusiast to share what they're playing with, compare notes and so on.

I wrote a little more about Day & Night here, including links to downloads and instructions for getting WebVR for the Vive up and running: [https://medium.com/@stew_rtsmith/day-and- night-f5f2a56112ea#...](https://medium.com/@stew_rtsmith/day-and- night-f5f2a56112ea#.r45vbkrun)

Some of the ingredients in the kitchen: WebVR, THREE.js, WebGL, binary data in JS, CSS animation, SVG sprites ... And just beginning to sprinkle in some ES6 goodies.</comment>


Ubuntu (and eOS et al) login screen privacy issue still unfixed, X11 blamed - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-screensaver/+bug/1280300/comments/19 <comment><USER2> This is why I never liked the idea of X11-based "secure snaps", and preferred flatpaks over it. And now snaps won't even use Mir anymore, and I don't know if they plan to use Wayland either. Flatpaks is Wayland-only.</comment>


Some highlights of Na'vi - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1977

<comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome, that they got a real linguist to put together the language for the movie.

One thing I noticed, both when listening and while reading this description: While the syntax and morphology is nothing at all like English (so it sounds alien), basically all of the vowel sounds are very American ("ay" and "aw" instead of the "e" and "a" sounds of French or Spanish). Seems like a nod to the fact that the people who'd actually need to speak it would be American.

<comment><USER3> "Seems like a nod to the fact that the people who'd actually need to speak it would be American."

Yeah, because multi-million marketing campaigns for Avatar didn't roll over any other nation but the US, right? :)

<comment><USER4> I think he was referencing the actors and not the viewers

<comment><USER3> Is this hyperinflation? Such a voting storm for a honest misunderstanding?

<comment><USER5> It was a highly-voted article (almost hit the top), so lots of people came in here to see what people had already said. Then some bikeshedding happened: since the discussion was on linguistics, no one felt qualified to _add_ anything—but they _did_ feel qualified to notice that you hadn't picked up on something. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Re-Ask HN: Tech Scene in North Carolina, US? - <AUTHOR> How's the tech scene in NC in general? I see there are some BigCo's. What about smaller companies and startups? And what's the situation with salaries? (full-time as well as contractor rates). <comment><USER2> Lots of tech companies in/around the Research Triangle Park area. The Federal Reserve Bank (which is way more "techy" than I would have guessed) and at least a few other large companies are in/near Richmond.

I think we're getting to a point (in the U.S.) where there's a decent, growing "tech scene" in any city of sufficient size -- even where I live (Indiana).</comment>


Show HN: Create Goal Boards with your Remote Team, without registering - <AUTHOR> https://teamsuccess.io/boards/new <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I created this, please let me know if you have any ideas or questions!</comment>


I can't believe I'm praising Tcl - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html <comment><USER2> Okay, okay, I'll bite. Hear me, before the rotten tomatoes hit: I. like. TCL.

In fact, I'm going to go out on a dangerous limb and say that complaining about the [expr] syntax - which seems to be his only concrete complaint in the whole article - reminds me of nothing so much as saying, "But Lisp is horrible - look at all those parentheses!"

You've heard the trope that languages, as they get more advanced, begin to resemble Lisp? PG reckons we've seen every other feature but macros, but I beg to differ. TCL is the only other language I've ever used where I could be coding, spot a common pattern, and just define a first-class construct that lets me go:

with-db-transaction conn { select_1_or_error $conn "SELECT ..." ... }

Sure, TCL lacks a heap, and garbage collection, which make it untenable for big programs. But if there's one thing Lisp should have taught you, it's that an initially ugly syntax is often hiding something truly golden.

<comment><USER3> Have you worked with the ACS (ArsDigita Community System), and/or with AOLserver? Or have you and the ACS simply converged on the obvious idiom?

ACS code looked a lot like what you just typed. In the hands of a bunch of Lisp programmers from MIT, Tcl could really be made to sing. It had, at best, the same relationship to Lisp that PHP has to Perl... but IMHO it was a much better Web programming language than PHP, if only because the designers were a bit more careful to avoid inane inconsistencies.

<comment><USER4> The reason why ACS was any good was because AOLServer was an awesome multithreaded webserver with a great API. Tcl was only there because it was the easiest language to embed into a multithreaded app at the time (now that distinction goes to lua). I'm not sure the Tcl code in the ACS was a good example of anything... in places it was as bad as the worst Perl script you have seen. (I know, I probably wrote 20% of the codebase.)

<comment><USER3> _I'm not sure the Tcl code in the ACS was a good example of anything..._

Pragmatism?

And, yes, I understand that nobody really _chose_ Tcl at the time... nor would anyone choose Tcl again. It was more a matter of lemons and lemonade. And not always very tasty lemonade. ;)

<comment><USER4> I guess pragmatism is valid, but there were quite a few half-baked modules tossed in there just to make it look like the toolkit was more comprehensive than it really was. Also, I think openACS expunged them, but in the initial releases at least 25% of the code was dedicated to Philip's rambling comments about how a particular function would be much more elegant in common lisp.

<comment><USER3> _there were quite a few half-baked modules tossed in there just to make it look like the toolkit was more comprehensive than it really was._

Has there ever been an open source toolkit that _didn't_ look like this? I assure you that Drupal is just the same, only the half-baked modules are numbered in the thousands...

Your statement about Philip's rambling comments is both ROTFL-funny and 100% believeable. ;) Hey, just because you're being a pragmatist doesn't mean you can't complain about it at great length...

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I've worked with Drupal, it is far worse. However, new things like Rails, Merb, even Django suffer from this far less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tcl have uniform syntax

Tcl have a small number of basic concept that you can learn in a very small amount of time

Tcl allow you to easily create new commands that look just like built-in commands

Tcl have uniform syntax, yes again. I love this about Tcl.

<comment><USER6> This excellent article helped changed my thinking about Tcl: <http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html>

I had to use Tcl for a large scientific software system and grew to like its strengths. There's something to be said about an overly simple syntax and nice coupling to C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I learned Lisp long before either Tcl or a "pop infix" language. Common Lisp has it all, and then some.

I learned Python and Tcl at roughly the same time. It looks to me like Python and Tcl got in a big tug-o'-war fight over Lisp's features, and the rope broke and each got half.

Python ended up with the data structures, but not the syntax. Tcl ended up with the syntax, but not the data structures. And advocates on both sides scream "how can you do anything without #{feature_x}?".

And I say "ah, Lisp has both!", and everybody gets together and says "oh, shut up, you".

</comment><comment><USER8> Tcl isn't _that_ bad. We've got a few web apps running quite happily on AOLServer. In the late 90s/2000 AOLServer was a country mile ahead of everything else.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only human being alive that reads articles like these and has next to no experience programming? I read the whole thing and got the gist of it, but I'm not a programmer. Still, I find rants, tips, and other things of this nature enthralling reads.

<comment><USER10> Be careful!

That might lead you down the path of <gasp> learning to program, or worse liking programming, or even worse yet changing jobs so that you program full- time.

Pretty much the path I took. Though, seems to be working out, particularly with some startup plans slowly taking shape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tcl had a bunch of things going for it that made it an excellent embedding language: a lightweight runtime, simple, consistent semantics, and (for the time) an excellent C API.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you'd like Lisp without parens, how about Logo?

Logo seems like Forth backwards: prefix instead of postfix; neither language needs parens for function calls because they both know how many arguments each function call uses.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think I judge languages by slightly different criteria from the rest of the people here. Tcl got me 2 jobs. So I can't help but praise it.</comment>


Cisco phone eats 1G bandwidth per day - <AUTHOR> http://www.sinefa.com/blog/cisco-phone-eats-1gb-of-data-per-day <comment><USER2> Kind of light on the details? For pinging a dead service, I think requests/day is a better measure than GBs/day. Also page is an obvious marketing pitch, making this post essentially an ad.</comment>


Facebook says it will act against 'information operations' using false accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-propaganda-response-idUSKBN17T2G6 <comment><USER3> I wish someone would create a branch of mathematics related to the study of relationships between a bunch of "nodes" and "edges".

Jokes aside - and I'm aware that the FB folks have plenty of good graph theorists - how hard can it be to spot these kind of non-organic actors in the social graph? If I'm paranoid, I would guess that there's probably little distinction between FB's valued corporate customers and advertisers and these 'information operations' in terms of their presence in the social graph.

In any case, it seems like you could do a lot of worthy stuff to distinguish between content that spreads relatively slowly among people who appear to post things judiciously (and might even comment about it in ways that add content) vs various types of bullshit or low-quality content. Again, paranoia suggests that weeding out reflexively transmitted garbage and 'fake news' (for whatever value of 'fake' you're holding today) cuts a bit too close to the business model...

<comment><USER4> > how hard can it be to spot these kind of non-organic actors in the social > graph?

Very hard. Graph theory contains some of the hardest problems in computer science. For example, maybe you want to find the largest group of nodes that are all connected to each other. We don't know how to do this. If the largest clique has n nodes, our best approximation methods can find log(n) of them, which is pretty useless.[1]

Spam detection at FB scale is difficult because with so many users many actual accounts will appear unusual in some way, and of course all data can be faked. Google and Yahoo have worked on this for years, yet spammers can still evade their systems: [2]

> there's probably little distinction between FB's valued corporate customers > and advertisers and these 'information operations'

The distinction is pretty clear. FB knows exactly who its advertisers are since they pay FB money to promote their posts. It's true that fake news increases engagement, but FB is tackling an easier problem--identifying active operations making millions of fake accounts.

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

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13802227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13802227)

<comment><USER5> I agree with you in principle, but I think the problem is more one of scale than of complexity theory.

Sure the clique problem is hard to approximate in arbitrary graphs, but the graphs that appear in social networks are far from arbitrary. And indeed, in such scale free networks the clique problem becomes quasi polynomial or polynomial ([http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-35261-4_6...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-35261-4_68)). Approximate solutions are also much easier to find.

On the other hand, the sheer size of Facebook's social graph means that anything other than streaming algorithms or local search is pretty much intractable. That makes solving these kinds of problems into interesting engineering challenges.

<comment><USER4> Good points. Pedantic aside: scale-free is a dangerous assumption for two reasons. First, there may be fairly large deviations from power law in real data, and any such deviation renders the problem intractable. Second, botnets can modify local and possibly global properties in adversarial ways, so as to hide in or make large areas that are not scale-free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some scammers on Facebook have seized on to my aunt's name and image as the front for their operations. As family, they friend us from fake accounts on at least a weekly basis. Despite reporting these fake accounts more than 100 times, I got a new one today. They ask me for feedback every time I report an account. They are not getting positive reviews. Based on this experience, I'm not optimistic in their abilities.

<comment><USER7> I've got a similar problem with my own face. Scammers take public information from bar associations (I'm a lawyer) and build fake profiles using photos from firm websites. As I don't have any facebook account myself, finding and reporting these is a real difficulty. Most large law firms have someone dedicated to protecting the firm's name on social media but small firms just don't have the time.

FYI, don't believe anything said by a "lawyer" on facebook. We don't ever start communications that way. Visit the local bar association's website and check the lawyer's real contact info before saying anything.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like they're using your name, not just your face. Or are they just creating plausible fake lawyers? And what's the game? I can imagine that they're soliciting "customers", who they'll go on to dupe and rip off.

I do like your profile, by the way. It sounds like the lawyer-expert dynamic to me.

<comment><USER7> They send threatening messages to people that include links and data from firm/bar websites to make it seem as if it comes from a real lawyer. In extreme cases they setup entirely fake websites with data harvested from legit law firms.

No lawyer will send a threat via facebook. And no lawyer will ever demand a payment via bitcoin or gift cards.

<comment><USER8> I am still too naive :(

So they scam people into "settling" fake litigation. Over Facebook. And many people, who of course don't have much of a clue, fall for it. Amazing. But some of them, frightened and angry, contact your firm.

In some other world, where GnuPG had become widely used, legal communications would be signed, and people could just check signatures. That wouldn't help for fake websites, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like more and more the threat of fake news is being treated as security theater. The solutions that google and Facebook are setting up don't seem like they would be effective in the real world. Instead they are justifying more control over their social ecosystems.

<comment><USER10> Counter-proposal?

<comment><USER11> If it is 'security theater', or alternatively just a tempest in a teacup, doing nothing would be a perfectly fine alternative, at least for the time being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Though the goals may often be to promote one cause or candidate or to > denigrate another, another objective appears to be sowing distrust and > confusion in general, the authors wrote.

> In some cases, they said, the same fake accounts engaged with both sides of > an issue "with the apparent intent of increasing tensions between > supporters."

Where I come from, we call that trolling :) Sounds just like Usenet.

<comment><USER12> also a tried and true method of political fuckery, used lately to depressing perfection. trolling is not without its consequences.

<comment><USER8> True that. I see it as the endgame of Eternal September.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "Facebook Inc acknowledged on Thursday that it has become a battleground for > governments seeking to manipulate public opinion in other countries"

Why should we take them seriously since they don't acknowledge the fact that the biggest manipulator of social media is the US government itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here comes the most over used method in the playbook 'selective enforcement'

Even google is falling in line, [https://streamable.com/uq0d6](https://streamable.com/uq0d6)

Troubling times.

<comment><USER15> > "We're not arguing for censorship, we're just arguing for - take it off the > page"

I actually facepalmed at this.

These people _know_ that impression drives reality. They're basically saying "so hey, we found this great slippery slope that looks like a lot of fun!" What the hell?

The grail for algorithms should be to HELP display/persist the disproof of misinformation, objectively and efficiently. Not just to HIDE it and hope it goes away!

<comment><USER16> > The grail for algorithms should be to HELP display/persist the disproof of > misinformation, objectively and efficiently. Not just to HIDE it and hope it > goes away!

Or like, give people control over their own data..

I have ~/.procmailrc - where is my ~/.facebookrc :b

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I believe that this takes us to a dark place. I fear that social currency is going to be the end of humanity. The price of verifying that every member is an actual human comes as a great cost to society. Social media should be fun and goofy, but if this continues, it is going to double as a passport soon (it almost already does)

Then you will be no one if you do not have a Facebook account.

</comment><comment><USER18> The actual Facebook white paper was submitted a few hours ago:

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-security/making- face...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-security/making-facebook- safe-and-secure-for-authentic-communication/10154362152760766/)

<comment><USER19> This is probably a better link: [https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/facebook- an...](https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/facebook-and- information-operations-v1.pdf)

<comment><USER20> thanks, this is actually a link that I can use as all facebook IP and domains are blocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The core problem is that many political activists, from both the left and right wing, need "fake accounts" because Facebook is quite ban-happy and we don't want to risk our personal accounts being banned for political speech.

Given that Facebook now is more or less neccessary to stay in contact with friends and family, it should be regulated like a public communications utility - which means that banning people from communicating with friends and family must not happen, unless that is abused for spamming. Your DSL or phone provider is not allowed to cut your service for anything than abuse, too - <USER2> why should Facebook (and also, Twitter and Snapchat!) be excepted?!

<comment><USER22> Did you read the article? It's not about banning fake accounts. It's about information operations. The government wouldn't let Russia use our phone lines to spread a disinformation campaign.

<comment><USER23> s/would/should/g

s/phone/communication/g

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Half of the ones that I report which are obviously fake, are allowed to stay up. Pretty sure Facebook employees have a working agreement with certain scam operations.

<comment><USER25> I don't think there's any need for conspiracy theories. The human cost and PR impact of closing an incorrectly fake account are massive compared to the cost of closing one spammer.

Facebook is right to be incredibly cautious. Imagine getting your gmail or Facebook account shut down because of suspected fraud, and what a huge personal impact that would have on you. Facebook realizes this, and also realizes it is a PR nightmare every time one of those stories makes it onto HN / reddit.

<comment><USER26> Would it really be a "huge" impact if you were locked out of your account for a bit? They could have an appeals process. What negative things could actually occur in your life if you were denied access to Facebook for a week while they reviewed your appeal?

<comment><USER20> Have you considered that means you would be denied login on all the websites you used facebook login to register ?

<comment><USER15> Man, that just makes my average-to-good decision to not use that out-of-my- control login route brilliant!

100% for it, I'm always happy to see people freely sacrificing their control in the name of 'convenience' get fucked by that decision :)

The only way for them to integrate with a better society is to learn, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What if all comments had information about the poster's IP address. Maybe a unique hash based on IP, country of origin, registered organization?

Maybe that way people could at least identify suspicious patterns themselves.

But even without any new data, a third-party could identify troll rings on reddit, youtube, and twitter by scraping the data.

Some pro-democracy group should probably be funding this kind of technical approach. It's likely to be a lot more effective than waiting for all these companies to do it themselves.

<comment><USER20> IP is not personally identifiable data, there's a European ruling on this. Then there's a trove of techniques to mask IPs that bad guys know and regular people don't, so this would negatively affect regular persons and have no effect on the targets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> FB, Twitter and other social sites are under market pressures to maintain/increase user base. At the same time they must justify to skeptical customers/investors that the numbers they publish are legitimate somehow. So, they must adopt a token effort to to combat this, but really it is in their best interest to allow masquerading so long as it is sophisticated enough to not be to obvious.

</comment><comment><USER28> It seems "Information Operation" has an official page on facebook. Just ban them. Easy fight. [https://m.facebook.com/USAIOP](https://m.facebook.com/USAIOP)

</comment><comment><USER29> How?

</comment><comment><USER30> FB cannot insulate itself from Constitutional rights of Users

<comment><USER31> Which constitutional rights would Facebook be violating if it decided to shut down your account?

(hint: the US Constitution does not guarantee you a right to use Facebook, or any other private-sector service)

<comment><USER21> > (hint: the US Constitution does not guarantee you a right to use Facebook, > or any other private-sector service)

Oh yes, it does - your phone/DSL provider, for example, is not allowed to terminate your service for anything but missed payments and abuse (spamming/hacking). Facebook and other social networks must not be excepted from this!

<comment><USER22> But you know there are also laws against fraud, right?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Android Pebble App Has Been Pulled from the Play Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/b8l6i2/the_android_pebble_app_has_been_pulled_from_the/ <comment><AUTHOR> We still have a few Pebbles which we run using the great Rebble initiative - and there's the option of sideloading APKs, however it's going to be interesting to see if this Play store issue can be resolved. Thread says the dead @pebble.com email was the trigger for the take down.

Presently dead: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getpebble....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getpebble.android.basalt&hl=en_AU)</comment>


Instagram, Chuck Close, Digital Photography, and Social Software - <AUTHOR> http://christmasgorilla.com/post/1306165457/ive-been-trying-to-play-with-instagram-rough

<comment><AUTHOR> Some notes on Instagram, aspirational self representation, and homogeneity.</comment>


Google Is Coming for Your Face - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/immigrant-dna-data/ <comment><USER2> I will never give face to google!

</comment><comment><USER3> They dont have it already?</comment>


Show HN: Staffjoy Flex – Marketplace Scheduling for Contractors - <AUTHOR> https://www.staffjoy.com/flex/ <comment><AUTHOR> Today we are launching Staffjoy Flex, which is our product for scheduling independent contractors. Last month, we launched Staffjoy Boss, which is our employee product.

The key difference is that, with Flex, we implement a marketplace for scheduling. So, contractors pick the shifts they want - rather than being assigned them. This helps with IC compliance for businesses, while at the same time giving workers long shifts and flexibility.

Staffjoy Flex is the result of our research into how contractor-based startups schedule hourly workers. We found that engagement by contractors falls off with each additional step necessary. Collecting availability doesn't scale, and we found that contractor availability changes quickly. With Staffjoy Flex, contractors pick from available shifts, then immediately know whether they are working.

This approach scales to thousands of workers without significantly changing the time it takes to schedule. Staffjoy Flex is used to schedule the agents behind a popular chat bot, to manage food delivery logistics, and to manage on-call rotations.

The core is Staffjoy's proprietary algorithms. We match the contractor levels to business demand. This means that a courier company can scale labor to match peak demand for lunch hour, then drop off staffing levels right afterward. We do this while offering configurable shift lengths.

We also opened our API this week (docs.staffjoy.com). If you have any questions, we are here to answer them!

<comment><USER2> Looks great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be really nice to be able to play with a demo account before signing up. I know people who could benefit from something like this bu can't tell them to check it out without me seeing the UI first and making sure its simple to use. :)

<comment><USER4> Even a quick screen recording of the high notes would help hugely for that, the only screen shots I could find where in the docs and tended to be parts of the UI not the whole thing.

I used to be a retail manager before I was a programmer full time, their IT skills on average are terrible so knowing something is easy to use would make it a lot easier to recommend.

<comment><USER3> Yes, double this. These are people used to using ugly GUIs with either overly big or overly small buttons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is an example use case? When I think independent contractor, I think freelance work which doesn't necessarily have shifts.

<comment><AUTHOR> For Flex, here are some uses:

* Managing the agents behind "AI Bots". They routinely have to staff contractors (e.g. Amazon Turk / Upwork) to do basic tasks.

* Managing couriers. We have app-based food services internationally that use Staffjoy to schedule bike, scooter, car, etc drivers based on order volume. They like that our algorithms vary staffing levels to match order volume.

* Managing on-call rotations, e.g. for support. We had one user "stress test" a video game by scheduling contractors 24/7 to play it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typo in headline: Contactors

Edit: oops, already reported by someone else

</comment><comment><USER7> Big typo on home page: "Contactors"

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa. Thanks for the heads up. New build going out now.</comment></comment>


Mass Effect Trilogy Coming in November - <AUTHOR> http://www.joystiq.com/2012/09/26/mass-effect-trilogy/ <comment><AUTHOR> If they include even a bit of exclusive content, I'll have to buy it, even though I bought all the games individually upon their release. Even with the controversial (and to me, disappointing) ending in 3, this was still the best game series I've ever played (from a storyline and overall perspective point of view). Now as an adult, I think about Mass Effect the same way I thought about LOTR as a kid.</comment>


Ask YC: is building a startup around an aggregator ever worth it? - <AUTHOR>

You know, "X shows the most Y content on Twitter", "Y lets you see all videos in one place" etc... Is that ever worth spending serious time on? <comment><USER2> There is a battle going on regarding being the "One aggregator to rule them all" and I am personally looking for an aggregator that do not only span over most networks but also allow for a much better prioritization of the content that I get in.

What I want is

1\. Trends within my social network. 2\. Automatic up-voting based on my interests 3\. Anomalies algorithm that will show me stuff I didn't know I didn't know but would want to know. 4\. Contextual search based on what I am currently doing

But what I really want is that aggregators convert data into "information matter" and present a visual landscape to me that represents what's important for me, rather than having to go through a list where 99% is not of any interest to me but accumulated could be.

<comment><USER3> I've invested in to a company that tries to do just that, and from looking over their shoulders the task is definitely non-trivial.

<comment><USER2> I can only imagine but it seems like that is what is needed. It simply can't be the future that I have to go through streams and streams of data as some slave of the machine.

Human brains have 100 million MIPS worth of processing power and with that we simulate a reality around us.

If Real Time Web has to be of any value it will need to merge with our normal perception of reality and not require our active involvement unless we request it (i.e. require more information of a current context)</comment></comment></comment>


Lisp Badge: A single-board computer that you can program in uLisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.ulisp.com/show?2L0C <comment><USER2> 2816 Lisp cells (11264 bytes). A bit on the small side, but you get 5ms garbage collections because the memory is so tiny.

We need more little systems that are somewhere between underpowered Arduinos and entire Linux systems.

If only Blackberry hadn't killed off open-source QNX. A board with a few megabytes of RAM and QNX in ROM would be a nice system for many embedded applications. You get processes, threads, message passing, and real-time scheduling. But disks, users accounts, networking, etc. are optional add-ons. Nice for embedded applications where you need to control hardware but have other things to do as well.

<comment><USER3> These days an ESP-8266 is scarcely more expensive than the ATmega128 and has a lot more memory, in fact the ESP32 is only a few cents/pennies/kroner more, even an ATmega328 would give twice as much memory.

I wonder if uLisp is portable to the ESP.

<comment><USER4> It looks like this is using the ATmega 1284 which has 4 times the flash (128 kB vs 32 kB) and 8 times the RAM (16 kB vs 2 kB) as the 328.

<comment><USER3> Oops, sorry, missed the significance of the trailing 4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently built three of these. There's no kit, so to build one you have acquire all the parts and learn TQFP soldering. The result is a really neat little computer. I did a write-up on my blog:

[https://www.fitzsim.org/blog/?p=365](https://www.fitzsim.org/blog/?p=365)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone provide ideas of what this can be used for?

(Just to clarify: I am not trying to dismiss this as "useless". I am genuinely interested about knowing about use cases: in part because embedded systems or low resource self-contained systems are not my area of expertise).

<comment><USER7> This is a genuine question but in the following sense.

I see it asked today more like "What of the programs that we've already think of by today can we run on this? With an implicit answer that it seems so underpowered for anything non trivial and we already have more powerful systems so why bother with its limitations?"

When I was starting to learn about computers everything about them was cool and awesome (later but soon enough I've learned later that they do games as well). But if I would have been asked by my father what good were they then I would have not have an answer that would be acceptable in the 'business' sense. Computers were cool in themselves. The process of hacking them was its own reward but my father would see me typing or playing games. The most important realization for me was that I could make them do "anything" that I could think of. The realization that I was not limited in the space of programming was empowering.

So yes. Running most of today's programs doesn't make sense on it. But if you can see it as a playing (safe exploration) ground then the question is irrelevant. The most important issue is that playing may be the only thing that would allow you to imagine applications that you would not be able to imagine otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to build out something similar with a mechanical keyboard, where I could write/program on the go, then connect up to a full size computer and upload my work over usb, bluetooth or ps2. You could manage keyboard layout/chording along with password key management, and rudimentary calculations. I imagine an esp32 would be more in line once wifi/bluetooth were required. Esp-lisp already has a rudimentary Emacs...so perhaps most of the heavy lifting has already been done.

</comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't find BOM but processor is Atmega1284p, so between Arduino Uno and Mega. 1284p is also used in some low-end 3D printers.

Is it hard to do a touch keyboard on devices like this? Full tactile switch arrays adds so many solder points and I feel it drives up costs somewhat.

<comment><USER10> _Is it hard to do a touch keyboard on devices like this?_

At this size, yeah. It's tough to make touch keys large enough that you don't tap multiple buttons at once.

It also takes a lot of processor IO, and generally a dedicated cap sense peripheral as well. Plus, many of those peripherals have a scan interval that's laggy when you get to large IO counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool. You can also flash Arduino with the uLisp firmware and program it in uLisp over serial.

<comment><USER12> You can but I found my available memory afterwards was very small, when running on an Arduino Uno. I think I had ~14kb available afterwards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this come assembled or is it a DIY? I did not find details on the order page other than "2 Layers PCB 61 x 106.7 mm FR-4, 1.6 mm, 1, HASL with lead, Black Solder Mask, White silkscreen"

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a DIY

Here are the details about how to build one: [http://www.technoblogy.com/show?2AEE](http://www.technoblogy.com/show?2AEE)</comment></comment>


Tunnels and Trolls - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_%26_Trolls <comment><USER2> I really enjoyed Tunnels and Trolls, reading the rulebook, playing solo adventures and copying the Josh Kirby drawings. I never did multiplayer until Warhammer Roleplaying came out and I had other friends that were interested.

As an only child I played many solo adventure books:

Fighting Fantasy

Lonewolf

Way of the Tiger

Car Wars

Choose Your Own Adventure

GrailQuest

Cretan Chronicals

Sorcery

I must have had at least 50 and got quite a lot from the library too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gamebooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gamebooks)

<comment><USER3> The Sorcery! ones were great - mechanics, story and illustrations all gelled really well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I loved the Tunnel and Trolls solo adventures when I was a kid.

Alot of the old fantasy role playing stuff is pretty badly written but the Tunnel and Trolls had a real sense of adventure and immersion.

For me anyway as a 13 year old kid.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to add that the rule engine was also converted to provide (decent, for the time) support for modern-day adventures - I own basically everything publised for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenaries,_Spies_and_Private...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenaries,_Spies_and_Private_Eyes) and it was quite decent.

</comment><comment><USER6> Think I've still got the books someplace. All those d6 became a real pain you needed dozens.

</comment><comment><USER7> take that you fiend!</comment>


Using Ruby in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://jasoncharnes.com/using-ruby-in-2019/ <comment><USER2> Ruby was one of many languages to spike in popularity due to being a novel way to approach programming, and everyone I know has moved on from it. But I find it very valuable for one-off scripts that are too complex to write in Bash. I actually used Ruby to compile my app's documentation from sources into a JSON file, and it was easy to update the Ruby code every time I added more features or needed to change how the documentation was generated. It let me write it in a mostly functional way without being too confusing, and it was already installed on my system. But for web apps, no way am I choosing Ruby. I've moved on to Node.js from Ruby years ago, and haven't looked back. Modern JavaScript is much more "clean" than Ruby to me.

<comment><USER3> Modern JavaScript is much more "clean" than Ruby to me. Can you gimme some example. I found the exactly oposite :))

<comment><USER4> I'd second that statement. I'm writing both, and modern JS is much better than what it was before but nowhere close to dev productivity compared to Ruby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> my concern with ruby. is difficult to see the next feature or what the core devs are planning. You have to allways follow: [https://bugs.ruby- lang.org](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org), there is no clear process.

Also, I would like to see the new language changes use more in ruby.

Is a shame that ruby has features that other languages use as super crazy amazing, magical way of doing stuff.

Also, I would like to see it faster, I would like fibers to become more visible to ruby community.

Is a shame that ruby is not in the ML/AI/NLP as other languages. I see people complain about ruby, and how python is the golden boy of languages, but I totally dont like stuff like `__wow__`, `method(self, stuff):`, `@amazing_annotation`, `:= stuff` here, `[for x in y if]`, no so much functional stuff, class with uppercase and other with lowercase. sorry for my rant :)</comment>


Africa: off the tech map? - <AUTHOR> http://appfrica.net/blog/2010/06/04/great-african-singularities/

<comment><USER3> One problem may also be this - the links between African countries is weak. For example, if I have an office in Singapore, I am basically covering all of South East Asian very effectively. I can move people and resources across SE Asia from this office.

If you have an office in Lagos, your reach is limited to Nigeria, Ghana and a few other West African countries. The link between Nigeria and Cameroun is weak, and Nigeria to Congo is a difficult journey. To make a trip from Cameroun to Angola, it is probably cheaper to first fly to Portugal and then back.

Africa is a huge place and there are regional circles. So if you bother to make an office in a particular country, you are not covering the whole of Africa (which, combined, probably comprise a good chunk of customers), you are covering just the regional zone that has relationships with that country, and these are probably a much smaller group of people, making it not worth it to have such an office.

<comment><USER4> Great point. For historical reasons, many African countries established better links between themselves and their former Colonial rulers than they did between themselves, with inter-country links being neglected.

Immediately after independence this made sense, as those links back to Europe were already well-established and they were to countries with far higher trading capacities than neighbouring African countries, but in the long-run it retarded the growth of African trading regions and the diversification of industry in many parts of the continent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some cities are pretty much first world, but 100km out of town you're in the 3rd world. Cellphone coverage over my whole country, I'm typing this on a notebook attached to a 23" LED screen and a docked iPhone. I'm writing C# for the day job while telecommuting from home. My guide up Kilimanjaro friended me on Facebook the other day. But I'll be donating blankets to some very cold people this winter - people who have never typed on a keyboard. Huge differences.

<comment><USER6> Tell us more! What country are you in? Were you raised there, or did you move there by choice for some reason?

<comment><USER5> Pretty boring by African standards - born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Lived in various parts of the country, visited Zimbabwe, Tanzania (climbing Kilimanjaro), Mozambique (scuba diving), Lesotho (cycling trip). Taste of the kili trip: <http://picasaweb.google.com/richard.watson/Kilimanjaro>

South Africa has really transformed, but still a long way to go. I think the really interesting places are those that are emerging now. I've heard Ghana is fantastic - great people, very friendly.

<comment><USER6> How's the tech scene in South Africa? I would imagine it has its share of startups and investors, etc.

<comment><USER7> There is some info at <http://www.siliconcape.com/> (Cape Town focused).

<comment><USER5> I've known about it for ages, but assumed it was very CT-focused so only now really dug into the site and registered. It does look like the go-to place for local startupy types, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Africa's an awfully big place to make generalisations about. Some cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town for instance, are near first world in their sophistication and living standards and have well-established tech industries, quite different from the stereotypical villages without running water, electricity or any tech whatsoever.

Making blanket statements and offering one-size-fits-all solutions for the entire continent are as silly as pretending that the US and Western Europe share the same problems and need the same solutions as the poorest corner of Madagascar. The problems Johannesburg faces and the solutions it needs are closer to that of any major Western city and are light years removed from the problems and solutions of your average rural village.

South Africa more than 2 million Facebook users, its own Google search, YouTube, Maps, Street View (launching Tuesday) domains and services, its own Apple AppStore, its start-up industry is growing and has produced at various points the 3rd largest payment processing software supplier and 2nd largest Certificate Authority and Amazon's EC2 was developed mostly at its Development Centre in Cape Town. I recently did some work for a local team that wrote and maintains pretty much the entire software infrastructure for a large British retailer, a product they're now expanding to other international retailers. Not hugely impressive by most standards, I'll admit, but surely its evidence that Africans are definitely on the tech map. And that's not even taking into account the thriving tech communities in places like Kampala and Nairobi or other tech-related industries in Africa.

Point being, I think some of the people commenting missed the point of the article because of their misconception about what Africa is about.

</comment><comment><USER8> So yes - the western consumer machine has not penetrated so well.

But that does not mean they are not on the map at all - if you saw any of the recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk it was clear that mobile phone usage is high, there are big cities (like Lagos) with loads going on, film industry, music industry.

It all seems a bit chaotic to my western eyes but its clearly vibrant and resourceful and there is a huge amount of drive. In the Lagos programs a lot of the people featured had the endless inventiveness and ability to rise to challenges we would all think was fantastic in an entrepreneur.

I suspect that Africa will emerge with its own technology ecosystem - <USER2> dissimilar to ours but with an African slant. I also suspect it has probably had enough of the west coming and telling it how and what to do.

<comment><USER9> > if you saw any of the recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk

could you pass a long a link for that program? I tried to do a search but nothing relevant came up.

<comment><USER8> iplayer irritatingly only has stuff on for 6 days after transmission. BBC 4 does repeat their material pretty regularly. It will say on this pages when it does:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3vdm>

(in fact it looks like it was already repeated on BBC 2 from that page but it will come up again).

Would also highly recommend:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/african- rock.sht...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/african-rock.shtml)

Fascinating stuff on people like Youssou N'Dour (to pick one of many examples) who have gone back to Africa after western success and are now building Africa labels for African artists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to Max Seybold (cherrypal), over the years, there have been lots of "bring technology to Africa" efforts which resulted lots of unused equipment. However, it's starting to get used, especially as locals figure out how to make money from it.

He tells of one guy who makes a living sending e-mail for his village. During the week, said e-mail is entered into his laptop. He then walks to a bigger town, uploads and delivers the new mail, downloads e-mail to folks in his down, and walks back to his town. He then delivers what he downloaded.

<comment><USER11> It's like sending a telegram in the old days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article bugs me a bit, since it seems to be a "Big Tech Hates Africa" article, whereas I think the reality is more "all large companies are spending minimal resources on poorer areas of the world". It certainly does make Africa look a left out on a map, but large areas of Asia are equally not targeted by large companies, but the geo-political layout is different.

While it is odd that so many large tech companies haven't highlighted their presence in Africa, there are some notable omissions from that list. Microsoft, for example, have clearly listed contact points and targeted support pages all over Africa, including Kenya[1], and SAP has a number of operations across Africa[2].

The reason for Google not listing their Kenya office seems to be to do with the type of office it is[3]. They do have quite a few jobs listed in both Kenya, and the author's own city: Kampala in Uganda[4].

Perhaps when the tech industry matures, we'll see the kind of coverage a large manufacturing company has[5].

[1] [http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/phone/contact.aspx?countr...](http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/phone/contact.aspx?country=Kenya) [2] <http://www.sap.com/contactsap/countries/index.epx> [3] [http://whiteafrican.com/2008/07/04/google-kenya-and-the- goog...](http://whiteafrican.com/2008/07/04/google-kenya-and-the-google- global-cache/) [4] <http://www.google.com/jobs/africa/> [5] <http://toyota- africa.com/cars/new_cars/index.asp>

<comment><USER13> I hate to be blunt, but why would a company open branch offices in countries that are both poor AND not growth countries when there are so many easier opportunities in e.g. asia, eastern europe or south america? Just a matter of priorities ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Note that there is a Google data center in Uganda. When I was there a few years ago, uplinks back to the US were incredibly slow; however, any time I wanted to hit Google, it was pretty damn fast (considering it was a 64k shared DSL line that served an entire business park).

</comment><comment><USER15> Africa has bigger problems than not being able to influence the future of the internet.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps if it was able to influence the future of the internet, some of it's other problems would be solved?

I would argue that Africa actually _will_ influence the future of the internet. Considering there's about 15% of the worlds population there, that's over 1 billion potential customers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think there is a boatload of opportunity in Africa.

<comment><USER17> Though I expect the solutions aren't the same as in the west. I think at least one of the reasons that Google is in several countries is to cover support in many timezones (from talking to them) but the timezones in that area are already well covered by Europe.

One of the problems in Africa as a market is that there is less than 1% broadband penetration and reliable electricity still only reaches 5%: [http://appfrica.net/blog/2008/08/16/the-current-state-of- int...](http://appfrica.net/blog/2008/08/16/the-current-state-of-internet- penetration-in-africa/)

Apple's products are surely too expensive for the vast majority in Africa, the products can be sold there but it doesn't mean they need offices there.

Google, Yahoo and Facebook need more computers there or to expand more into to mobile there.

<comment><USER9> I think you are proving parents point. Room for a tremendous amount of growth.

<comment><USER17> I agree but it's going to take a lot longer and require different solutions to the ones they have already developed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Case-Insensitive Ext4 - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/ <comment><USER3> Keep that stuff away from my filesystem is my first thought on the matter!

Having had a fair amount of experience dealing with case sensitive, case insensitive and HFS+ (argh!) file systems in rclone, all I can say is that it is really hard and much better left to user space. Rclone does syncing between diverse systems with different ideas about case sensitivity and normalization when matching up the the source file with the destination file.

I'm not even sure that I agree with normalizing the UTF-8 strings - some users really care that they have two files which look identical but have different encoding, for example files with é and é which evaluate to 0x65+0x301 and 0xE9 respectively but look identical.

I might possibly go for filenames having to be valid UTF-8 - that would at least be consistent with Windows and macOS.

PS I haven't found a way of discovering whether a file system is case insensitive or case sensitive without creating a file - is it possible?

<comment><USER4> > I haven't found a way of discovering whether a file system is case > insensitive or case sensitive without creating a file - is it possible?

You should be able to do ioctl(EXT4_IOC_GETFLAGS) on the directory and check if EXT4_CASEFOLD_FL is set. I'm not sure if this flag is applied recursively to child dentries (though I would assume it is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't imagine why anyone would want a case insensitive file system, the logic makes sense from some abstract humanitarian viewpoint, but it makes no sense whatsoever that different identities should be mapped/translated to mean the same..

a.txt != A.txt != a.TXT and so on. They're different names of different files.

Next generation *insensitive behavior should then be that cat.txt and neko.txt are the same (therefore only one of them allowed).

<comment><USER6> Allowing multiple files with the same file name - differing just by case - <USER2> rather silly from a human point of view.

There are bigger problems, though - currently Linux allows having multiple files with the exact same file name, differing only by UTF-8 normalisation.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I would quite like to see Linux filesystems require that file names be in valid UTF-8, with no new lines, at the very least. Normalisation would be a bonus but I'd want to do it a way that is helpful for compatibility with macOS and Windows.

<comment><USER6> There are two ZFS options, "normalization" and "utf8only", which are documented to do precisely this ([https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?zfs](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?zfs)). Never used it myself, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few times I have checked out a git repo on my Mac that had two identically named files, only differing by case.

Talk about a confusing experience. As soon as you checkout the file, it tells you that a file has been deleted. All normal git ways of fixing the issue don't work, because it comes down to the git repo thinking there are two files but the file system not letting that happen.

<comment><USER9> I had a couple confusing situations happen in a Git repo, where a capitalized file name was changed to lowercase, or vice versa.

It caused an issue that only one of us in the team experienced, since they had a case-insensitive file system, I think Windows. The reverse also happened, where everyone but that person saw an issue, due to their case-sensitive file system.

In the end, "git mv" solved those cases, but I never fully understood how to avoid them occurring in the first place. I think we all just agreed on a convention of all lowercase folder/file names.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of my NAS units ended up with a case-insensitive filesystem on it at some point, and I'm too lazy to go through the trouble of changing it. It's pretty annoying to do `mv filename.that.should.be.in.something.like.proper.case.mkv Filename.That.Should.Be.In.Something.Like.Proper.Case.mkv` and then realize that nothing actually changed.[0]

But my mother, case-sensitive filenames on her MacBook would make her life much worse. She can barely manage the high volume of files she creates as a teacher as it is, and the potential for accidentally doubling that number, or worse, is terrifying.

[0] So of course I have an alias `mvd filename.that.should.be.in.something.like.proper.case.mkv Filename.That.Should.Be.In.Something.Like.Proper.Case.mkv` that actually does `mv filename.that.should.be.in.something.like.proper.case.mkv Filename.That.Should.Be.In.Something.Like.Proper.Case.mkvzzz && mv Filename.That.Should.Be.In.Something.Like.Proper.Case.mkvzzz Filename.That.Should.Be.In.Something.Like.Proper.Case.mkv` and all is well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't it be nice to have a space-insensitive filesystem too? People tend to insert more than one space between words?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, and really, all inputs to open() and co should be piped through a spellchecker first too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Prior discussion from 3 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24315471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24315471)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was assigned an Apple rMBP in 2012 and ended up installing Linux on it precisely because you couldn't trust the file system. In my case, I had a directory with a specific name in lower-case, and without realizing it, created a file with the same name in Pascal case which then wiped out my directory full of content. Back-ups are important but they shouldn't be required simply to rectify stupid OS decisions.

<comment><USER15> You can and could set up HFS+ case sensitive and case insensitive. Obviously, I recommend the former, and I also believe that is the default.

<comment><USER16> Case insensitive is the default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Case-insensitivity is language-dependent, people know about this, right?

Whether the lowercase version of "I" is "i", that depends on your language. Often it is, but for example in Turkish, lowercase "I" is "ı", and lowercase "İ" is "i".

How will the language be specified on the case-sensitive filesystem? Per file, per directory, per device?

Can I have English "I.txt" and Turkish "i.txt" in the same directory? Are they compared using the English rules or the Turkish rules?

What happens if I copy a file to a directory or device using a different language? To a device using a different filesystem that doesn't support languages? If I copy 10 files from a Turkish computer to a memory stick, then copy them to an English computer, will I get only 9 files at the end, because "I.txt" and "i.txt" got overwritten?

<comment><USER18> This one fact is (in my mind) the death-knell of this whole misguided idea.

Also note that once you set up the case sensitivity status on a directory/device, it could be hard to change it. For instance, if I have two files named "I.txt" and "i.txt" in a directory that is case-sensitive, I can't _change_ that directory to case-insensitive using English rules. But I could using Turkish rules. You would have to do a full scan of the area you are planning to change in order to check whether anything would clash.

Also, you have the problem of filename searches. At the moment, it is possible to open a file by name in a directory that has lots of files, and the filesystem can do an indexed search for that file. If you change it to case- sensitive, then either you need to do a linear search instead (which could absolutely cripple some use-cases), or store an indexed case-insensitive lookup table, with the additional proviso that the index must be able to give you back the canonical filename. If the case-sensitivity changes, then this index must be recreated from scratch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How come Windows, with quirks and all, don't have any problem with this for like what, 25 years?

(Reading this discussion thread feels like some strange alternative reality where "take ... from my cold dead hands" is transported to FS world.)

<comment><USER20> If I understand correctly NTFS is actually case sensitive. I believe windows provided a higher level api that is case insensitive from way back.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/n...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/nf-fileapi-createfilea?redirectedfrom=MSDN)

Because everything on windows used the win32 api applications are friendly to case insensitivity but you can still run into problems interacting with other systems that are not.

[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/GitIsCasesensitiveAndYourFile...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/GitIsCasesensitiveAndYourFilesystemMayNotBeWeirdFolderMergingOnWindows.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> softer approach: add ``` set completion-ignore-case on ``` in ~/.inputrc

</comment><comment><USER22> (2019)</comment>


De-anonymizing LinkedIn profile views - <AUTHOR> http://lite.floodmagazine.com/post/1303462297/now-how-are-we-supposed-to-stalk-each-other-on <comment><USER4> Slightly OT, but can someone explain to me what I'm getting from LinkedIn? I've codified a historical record of my coworkers. Occasionally a recruiter contacts me – 90% of the time, they're bozos carpet bombing by buzzwords.

I've given it something like five years to click and I'm still missing something. It's just not a fun web application to use. Twitter, Facebook, Stack Overflow, Quora and many others do a better job at the tasks LinkedIn half-heartedly attempts. If I want to connect with someone I don't know, I send them an email. The Rube Goldberg business where a chain of connections passes you around always felt weird and imposing to me.

At this point I feel like a cow at the feedlot, and LinkedIn sells me to staffing professionals.

Entirely willing to be put onto the right path, I'm just not seeing it right now.

edit: The score for jobs I've gotten through social sites:

LinkedIn: 0

Facebook: 0

Twitter: 2

<comment><USER5> The bizarre thing about LI is you have all your current colleagues on it - <USER2> would you want _them_ to know you were looking for another job?

<comment><USER6> Collectively, you don't. You'd be surprised however how much this can help individually, especially with former colleagues.

<comment><USER5> Well yes quite - so where's the mechanism to exclude "my boss" or "managers in my company" from such updates?

<comment><USER6> The Inbox?

<comment><USER5> Uh what?

If you edit your profile or set your status to "is looking for a new job" everyone gets notified. Have you used LI?

<comment><USER6> Linked in isn't facebook. If you are using your "status" as a glorified twitter account, you're doing it wrong.

If you are looking for a new job, contact the people you think may be able to help directly via message.

Status messages customized to an audience type in a world of public information being available on google is a bad idea in general, regardless of linked in's behaviors.

<comment><USER5> Erm yes I know how to send a message thanks. Nevertheless if I update the skills/experience section of my profile, everyone will be notified. There's no way around your cow-orkers knowing that you've updated your CV.

<comment><USER4> You can turn that off.

<comment><USER5> Yes but I _want_ people outside the company to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is also an opt-in feature of OKCupid.

I personally opted out, because people's whose profile I viewed but didn't contact are exactly the people I _don't_ want contacting me- which they could do if they saw my profile name/info.

Namely, these are all the people whose profile I looked through and said "meh." If they knew who I was they might contact me when I already determined I wasn't interested.

I imagine it might be the same for LinkedIn; say you were looking to headhunt someone but found their resume lacking. Would you really like them to have the option to then contact you and ask for a job?

<comment><USER8> Browse the new profiles using an incognito window first.

<comment><USER7> If I were going to go through all that effort, I would just contact the person who I was actually interested in. Instead of passively looking at their profile and hoping they would notice and contact me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When Linkedin released this modal feature - i.e. if you don't agree to release more information to everyone, then we will restrict your usage rights - <USER3> placed Linkedin alongside Facebook into the basket of sites where I will actively try to reduce my usage until I can phase them out completely.

I know Linkedin is free, but I have invested a lot of time plowing their fields and cultivating business contacts (from which you make revenue) and now this?

<comment><USER10> I'm really annoyed because there is no middle ground: I have to be completely de-anonymised to get the analytics. Even partial anonymity of the profile gets you absolutely no analytics.

Will I quit LinkedIn? No way at this point; I have way too much invested in it. But as LinkedIn provides no incentive for me to be even partially anonymous as opposed to total anonymity now, I'm conciously making my profile completely anonymous.

<comment><USER11> You mean it's ok that you can see others but they can't see you?

<comment><USER10> Not quite. Why not show analytics of others at the same level of anonymity you set? The three levels of anonymity are completely open, the "vague" headline, and completely anonymous. The analytics can be of a similar level. The more open you are the more you learn about viewers of your profile.

The old way was to show (by default) the vague headline of your profile's viewers. The system I describe above is not a big jump from that.

What I find annoying is that for me to get any form of analytics, I have to be completely open. In buzzword compliant words: it is the incongruence between the 3 levels of anonymity and the binary availability of analytics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Friendster (at least for a while, perhaps still) had a similar feature. If I recall correctly, to see who'd browsed your profile, you had to let others see when you browsed theirs.

<comment><USER13> I think Orkut as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mixi (the most popular social networking site in Japan) has had this feature since the beginning and it certainly changes how people use the site.

Actually a year or two ago they finally added the ability to delete your tracks after viewing someone else's profile. I think you can only delete 5 per day though, so you still can't stalk on Mixi all day without any trace.

</comment><comment><USER15> Orkut, Google's old attempt at Social Networking had this feature.

I doubt anybody really cared. This was not really a game changer and was just another feature.

It's a nice feature for your ego to know who is secretly stalking your profile but beyond that (and after the initial novelty) its usage fades.

<comment><USER16> > Orkut, Google's old attempt at Social Networking

Orkut's still leading in Brazil - [http://finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/72662_Orkut_Continues_t...](http://finchannel.com/Main_News/Tech/72662_Orkut_Continues_to_Lead_Brazil%E2%80%99s_Social_Networking_Market,_Facebook_Audience_Grows_Fivefold_/)

Something about Orkut sounding like yogurt in Brazilian Portuguese - [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-brazil-loves- orkut/30...](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-brazil-loves-orkut/3082/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Feels like they are holding aspects of the site hostage - only released if you give up more privacy. I am simply not comfortable being forced to give up my privacy in order to use aspects of the site. Would rather pay - to maintain privacy. Lack of concern over 'user privacy' was the primary reason I quit Facebook. If the average person really knew what was going on in the back room connecting all their data - without their knowledge or approval - they would be astonished.

</comment><comment><USER18> Re: the "what if" Facebook scenario:

And so a thousand jilted exes had their egos soothed.

(" _OMG_ , he forgot to opt out, and he's been stalking me _every day_ for _two months_ even though I unfriended him. He's like, totally still into me.")

<comment><USER19> In practice this would just force stalkers to create fake accounts.

<comment><USER20> Highly dubious use of the word "stalker" to describe someone who views their ex's Facebook profile compulsively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is standard feature, called footprints, on Japanese Social Networks.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. Are there cultural differences wrt leaving visible footprints? do you need to _feel_ private? is it ok to stare at other people, until they notice you? it can be very different between cultures.

I recently watched Ozu's "Good Morning" (1959) and was struck by the way people would come to a house, open the door, step in, and _then_ call / announce themselves. Kids, relatives, neighbours, even a traveling salesman. I always assumed a closed house door invited people to knock and wait outside...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> LinkedIn have always had the feature if you had a premium account you could always see the names of your visitors. I guess they're changing it now to make it available to all of their users.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm sure if fb had a feature to allow checking who has seen your profile, a lot of people would be happy to pay for it. Maybe it could be a new way for facebook to make money? I'm not pretty sure facebook users have more value than they cost to facebook (based on money from ads (to my knowledge, the only way fb gets money from users 'directly) vs bandwidth/server/development expenses)

</comment><comment><USER25> studiVZ (German Facebook clone, something like six million members, 17 million if you add the other two VZ social networks) has always (or at least as far as I remember) allowed you to see who viewed your profile. You can opt-out so others won't see you but you will still be able to see who viewed your profile.

</comment><comment><USER26> I looked for this on LinkedIn briefly and couldn't find it. Apparently you have to opt in to letting users whose profile you've viewed learn about you.

The default setting is for the text to read "someone at _SOME TYPE OF COMPANY_ has viewed your profile".

</comment><comment><USER27> Just checked LI - I can manage how somebody will see me if I visited his or her page. I can remain fully anonymous if I want to. So FB or LI do not de- anonymize profile views but users themselvs when they want to. No reason for panic.

</comment><comment><USER28> (Btw, it might be just me, but the byline (Posted by...) hides the word 'stalk' in the title. It becomes semi-transparent if I mouseover article text, but it looks amateur.)

</comment><comment><USER29> You can opt out of this feature. AFAIK, the feature that you don't get is the month-by-month tabulation of search hits for your profile.

</comment><comment><USER30> xing a networking site like linkedin, already has this feature since a long time. But you can only use it if you are pro member and pay for that feature. You have to pay to see who stalked you, normal user don't see any details who visited their profile.

Punchline: you have to pay money on xing to see who's stalking you ;0

<comment><USER31> I thought LinkedIn was like this before? I always saw "John Doe and 6 others have viewed your profile. Sign up to a premium account to see who they were". In fact I know some people who had the premium account exactly so they could see this information.

<comment><USER30> Thought the same, but could not find details on the comparison page...</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Vocus.io for Gmail: Mail Merge - <AUTHOR> https://vocus.io/mailmerge-for-gmail <comment><USER2> I don't personally have a use case for this but it looks great. Bookmarked

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks great! You could definitely Chargé more though ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Slick and minimal UX! I'd definitely pay more.</comment>


Show HN: Clojure library that generates JavaScript from Clojure pseudocode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sdegutis/disrupjure <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: This is a lightweight alternative to ClojureScript, for the many web apps who only need a little JS sprinkled here and there, and aren't built as SPAs. It doesn't need a file structure or to be compiled ahead of time; it's a function that takes a quoted Clojure expression, and returns a string, which can be used at runtime if needed.</comment>