BuzzFeed Gets $200M From Comcast's NBCUniversal - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/08/18/comcasts-nbcuniversal-to-invest-200-million-in-buzzfeed/

<comment><USER2> Within one year Buzzfeed doubles their valuation to over $1.5B! By capturing the majority of the Gen Y, X, and millennial population, Buzzfeed becomes an attractive buy for any large cap media enterprise. The question I have is who will be the ones to capture Gen Z?</comment>


Show HN: BitBalloon, insta-deployment of static sites with forms that just work - <AUTHOR> https://www.bitballoon.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder here. Some background:

We've been working on [http://www.webpop.com](http://www.webpop.com), a powerful cloud-hosted CMS aimed at designers and agencies, for some years now.

One thing we noticed was that people would sometimes use it to get quick landing pages or microsites online, even if they weren't actually using the CMS features - just because it was so convenient to get a site live, get the forms to work and set up asset bundling, minification, CDN support, etc.

So we decided to take a bunch of the tech behind Webpop, and create a dead- easy way to get a static site with some forms online, working and optimized.

Let me know what you think.

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty cool! One feature I think would be useful is the ability to set where a form should redirect to after submission, that way I can set where users go to after submitting a form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion. We'll definitively do something to give more control over the "Thank You" page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work! I was telling someone about it today.

</comment><comment><USER4> kudos for using Mozilla Persona for log in :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great idea, site looks great

</comment><comment><USER6> Great Job!!!</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell got us wrong: here's what got oversimplified - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wrong_our_research_was_key_to_the_10000_hour_rule_but_heres_what_got_oversimplified/ <comment><USER4> I don't care if it's oversimplified. The 10,000 hour rule is brilliant for getting people past the difficult stages of learning a new skill. Can't play guitar? It's not because you were born without musical talent...it's because you haven't put in your time yet. Get to work. People aren't born playing guitar. They learn to play guitar...through practice...lots and lots and lots of practice...10,000 hours of practice!

For me, this realization was life-changing. And yes, I learned to play the guitar at the age of 40 after reading Outliers because I then had faith that with enough hours of hard work that I could do it. And I did. And now playing music is one of my greatest pleasures in life.

<comment><USER5> The question is if Malcolm Gladwell wants to be a Tony Robbins type author or a Steven Pinker type author.

Both are fine. One is meant to be motivational, and one is meant to inform the public about science.

Gladwell's reputation is one of a science-based author which brings with it extra scrutiny.

<comment><USER6> To some extent you're right and I see your point, but this is also a false dichotomy. Gladwell can be whatever he wants to be. He may be rooted in science, but let's be honest, 10,000 is a fairly arbitrary number. If the world couldn't figure out that 10,000 hours wasn't scientific, we may have a larger problem.

I'm more mentally exhausted by the endlessness of pure contrarianism on the Internet. It gets worse and worse with each year and I'm losing my enjoyment of social communities.

<comment><USER7> I think that perspective of exhaustion with contrarianism is part of the problem. There an excellent quote, which is "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

It is really really easy for someone to write some BS (online or in print). Books and newspapers do it routinely. Blogs do it every day. And of course people on online forums do it every second. Unless you just write "You're wrong," it usually takes a lot more effort, volume, and words to refute the BS.

So yes, it is often intellectually easier for people to be contrarian, but only because there is so much BS out there to refute. And it still takes more effort and volume to do so.

<comment><USER8> Sadly, I've found myself doing this [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/) more often than I would like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is the crux of this article:

 _This puts the ten-thousand-hour rule in a completely different light: The reason that you must put in ten thousand or more hours of practice to become one of the world's best violinists or chess players or golfers is that the people you are being compared to or competing with have themselves put in ten thousand or more hours of practice. There is no point at which performance maxes out and additional practice does not lead to further improvement. So, yes, if you wish to become one of the best in the world in one of these highly competitive fields, you will need to put in thousands and thousands of hours of hard, focused work just to have a chance of equaling all of those others who have chosen to put in the same sort of work._

<comment><USER10> It didn't read that way in Outliers, where he implied there was a linear relationship between practice and ability, without preconditions. When confronted, he had to offer a clarification clause that the rule only applied to those who already did 10,000 hours, but that thousands of more hours are needed. Suuure whatever you say, Gadwell.

<comment><USER11> So, is there not a linear relationship between practice and ability? Or at least a positive correlation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The other thing which is often implied is that once you're a master of a particular field, that financial success will necessarily follow.

This is not the case. Being a master in your field does improve your odds to a certain point and it can certainly get you a high income. But to actually become wealthy, you need more than skill/talent.

Once you get in the top 0.1% of your field, the level of talent/competition is so extremely high that it becomes literally impossible to differentiate skill levels between individuals (even experts in that field can't do it) - <USER2> this point, to progress further, you have to rely on either luck or social connections. The hard part is that you have to keep practising/learning like crazy just to maintain your approximate 'ranking'.

Thankfully, at that skill level, influential/wealthy people might recognize your talent and may actually bother to answer your emails if you craft them correctly. But yeah, you'd better have damn good emotional intelligence/soft skills because beyond that, it's all about social scheming and manipulation.

The #1 most famous person in a given field is rarely the #1 in terms of skill level - They probably rank somewhere in the top 1% or maybe in the top 0.1% (if the field is particularly meritocratic) but it is unlikely that they even make the top 1000 list.

The meritocracy factor is probably relatively strong in fields like maths and science (research) but extremely weak in fields like acting, painting or music. It's related to the degree of subjectivity in each field. But I think even in science and engineering, there is a lot more subjectivity involved than most people would admit.

<comment><USER13> _The other thing which is often implied is that once you 're a master of a particular field, that financial success will necessarily follow._

How and where is this implied?

<comment><USER12> 'Success' is the core topic behind Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers: The Story of Success". If you read the book, you will see that the word "success" is used in a capitalist context which in most cases should be interpreted as 'financial success' \- That is the most common interpretation.

<comment><USER13> So when he invokes Asian successes in math just on the front flap, he's talking about money? When he talks about Major Junior A league of Canadian Hockey, that's about money, too, even when he says you can't buy your way in? Bill Joy talking about his own proficiency in his sophomore year of college?

The book exists in a capitalist context, sure, but the stories are not dependent on it by my reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if we're missing the point of Gladwell. Gladwell doesn't, as far as I know, pretend to be a world-class psychologist at the cutting edge of popular research. I'm not sure many university departments would take him all that seriously.

What he's an expert at doing is wrapping quite esoteric concepts up in a language that people can understand, relate to and discuss. For instance, he offers the Cliffnotes version of an answer to the question 'So how much work did I have to put in to become an expert at something' or 'How did containerization change world trade?.' He does this better than almost anyone, and his theories are tied to actual research (which sets him apart from the 'this sounds about right' of the likes of Seth Godin.)

If he doesn't offer enough precision and clarity for you, consider that his audiences are themselves well below the 10,000 hours threshold in the subjects he tends to opine on.

<comment><USER15> Optimization journalism for the uber-productive airline passenger - <USER3> mostly supported but typically impertinent factoids.

<comment><USER14> I quite like Rory Sutherland's quote on McDonalds (which he applies to other things) for this kind of effect: 'The great thing about McDonalds is that you have a cast iron guarantee that it's not going to be completely shit.'

Sometimes the art is knowing how much is good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As far as I can tell Gladwell has "oversimplified" nearly every subject he touches, because he is more interested in pumping up his image than in doing meaningful work.

He just did a show on how going to Bowdoin instead of Vassar is eeevil because Bowdoin feeds students really well and only has 13% of students on the highest level of financial aid, whereas Vassar food (according to the show) gives students diarrhea but has a 23% number. The argument was just supremely stupid but if you don't listen too closely he sounds smart. Or I should say, he sounds smart to the naive and bad-at-math variety of socialists (a category in which I _don 't_ lump every socialist btw).

<comment><USER17> Yes, Gladwell simplifies things. That doesn't make him wrong.

I listened to the financial aid episode on Revisionist History. Why do you think it is supremely stupid?

Money spent on facilities absolutely limits the financial aid budget at institutions. This has a real effect. The average debt of Vassar students is $8k lower than Bowdoin for a reason. [0] [1]

[0] [http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/vassar-college-2895/paying)

[1] [http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/bowdoin-college-2038/paying)

<comment><USER16> Well for one, the numbers don't work. The idea that if Bowdoin just served students the same crap food as Vassar their financial aid programs would be equalized doesn't hold water.

Also, the notion that cutting student services back to the point that many of Vassarh interviewees spoke of a laxative effect is somehow humanitarian doesn't hold water.

The idea that if Bowdoin, which has one of the more generous financial aid systems of the elite schools, has to hit a certain percentage of aid or is somehow immoral, also doesn't hold water.

They pretended to the Bowdoin interviewees -- which did not include anyone who could have rebutted -- that this was only about food, while Vassar's highest officials were interviewed about their humanitarian goals.

You can see a response from Bowdoin officials here. [https://www.boston.com/news/education/2016/07/15/bowdoin- col...](https://www.boston.com/news/education/2016/07/15/bowdoin-college- malcolm-gladwell) [FIXED LINK]

Bowdoin's financial aid approach is certainly different. For instance, they tend to give 100% of the gap for any student who qualifies, and this has been going on for some time. Vassar doesn't do it this way, but increasing financial aid _somewhat_ for students who were only partially qualifying was touted by Gladwell as some kind of revolution.

By the way, the State school based in Portland, ME _also_ gives surf and turf dinners...

<comment><USER17> > Well for one, the numbers don't work.

How not? If you're claiming that the numbers don't work, please explain how reducing expenditures on luxury services couldn't free up additional money for financial aid.

You're nitpicking. Obviously, by itself serving better food is not by itself exclusive evidence of "evil." Princeton serves better food than either Vassar or Bowdoin, but _also_ does an even better job with financial aid.

I don't think Bowdoin is "immoral" any more than I think someone who only donates 20% of their income (vs. 30) is "immoral." The point is that, at the margin, spending a dollar on financial aid is more moral than spending a dollar on fantastic food.

The specifics of Bowdoin food vs. Vassar food really don't matter to me. The general point is totally valid though: spending on luxury services absolutely takes dollars away from financial aid.

In fact, the podcast actually got me thinking about whether the _most_ moral thing would be for super-rich universities (ex. Princeton) to switch to need- aware admissions in reverse, with a goal of 100% of students qualifying for financial aid.

<comment><USER16> I didn't say that cutting the quality of the food wouldn't "free up resources" that could go do financial aid. Did you go to Vassar or something? Are you going to ignore the various other point I made regarding the poor level of journalism here?

e.g. is it "nitpicking" to point out that Gladwell gave the two college vastly different levels of research and opportunity to address his concerns?

Direct quote from Gladwell. "The food at Bowdoin is actually a problem. A moral problem." I'm sorry I don't see the caveat he made about how this really wansn't his point.

<comment><USER17> It's a moral problem to spend marginal dollars on food rather than financial aid. Do you disagree?

I do agree that it was sloppy of him to not include an interview with financial aid people from Bowdoin. I actually would be interested to hear them explain why they have higher indebtedness than Vassar.

> I didn't say that cutting the quality of the food wouldn't "free up > resources" that could go do financial aid. Did you go to Vassar or > something?

No, I actually went to the horrible NYU (on a full ride, though). I just feel strongly that aggressively offering outreach and financial aid to low-income students is one of the primary moral responsibilities for elite universities.

<comment><USER16> "It's a moral problem to spend marginal dollars on food rather than financial aid. Do you disagree?"

Of course I don't agree. At what point do you determine that you've gone far enough, with the above stated principle? It's a bankrupt line of reasoning, based on the reduction of a budget with thousands of line items to dumbed-down sound bytes. Does it even bother you that you have mentioned no rational basis for drawing the line anywhere?

<comment><USER17> Why does there have to be a clear line to make the marginal argument valid?

For individuals, I will state: spending a marginal dollar on charity is more moral than spending a marginal dollar on luxuries.

I don't have a clear answer to where the line lies, even for myself. I try to keep giving until the marginal luxuries which I give up have greater utility than the utility I gain from donations. Admittedly, this is not exact or imprecise. My giving is strongly affected by my mental health (one of the best ways I've found to get out of a depressive spiral is to go on a donation spree).

However, I don't think this lack of precision undermines the notion that charitable giving is more moral than luxury spending.

<comment><USER18> According to the article, Bowdoin was spending marginal dollars on making their food non-toxic. Not luxury spending.

Does morally upstanding Vassar lack fancy architecture and highly-paid administrators?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Malcom Gladwell is a great story teller, but a terrible researcher. I had sworn to never buy another book by him even before seeing this news. He's BSing too much.

<comment><USER20> What bothers me so much is that his father is both an excellent teacher and researcher so he should have a good role model. I took a course from his father during my undergrad.

<comment><USER10> maybe it skips a generation of it's recessive

<comment><USER18> Gladwell could write a great book about that. _Skipped: How Genetics Shape Generations_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Freakonomics podcast recently had 2 interesting episodes about exactly this. Both Ericsson and Gladwell explain their theories.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/)

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/malcolm- gladwell/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/malcolm-gladwell/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Anders Ericsson's deliberate practice theory, from which the 10,000 hours idea came, has also been critiqued in other ways. See this special issue of Intelligence for some articles, and below is a sort of summary: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/45](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/45)

His work tends to focus on narrow areas of performance: chess, music, etc., where rote learning, memorization, drill, and repetition are the main keys, unlike 'messier' areas like research, engineering, teaching, and the like. But even within those narrow domains, his theory isn't sufficient to explain performance, individual differences, and expertise ([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000421)). There are so many exceptions to the rule (like child prodigies [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613001207) ), so many domain differences (like he is acknowledging now in the target article). He ignores the last 30 years of research in cognitive psychology. For example, persistent misconceptions and bad habits that prevent us from learning and making significant progress in both conceptual and physical domains. His theory ignores genetic factors that influence performance and expertise (see [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000810) or just watch a game of basketball), and ignores the role of IQ ([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000974)). The data does not support Ericsson's theory, and his arguments have errors and contradictions ([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000087)).

</comment><comment><USER23> Malcolm Gladwell gets a lot wrong. Malcolm Gladwell is the Dan Brown of pop sociology.

<comment><USER24> That's a little unfair. Dan Brown gets _everything_ wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> People take the 10,000 hours "rule" entirely too seriously.

Gladwell himself admits 10,000 hours is rather arbitrary. The point is still important though, as far too many people start a new skill and are disheartened by their lack of ability before putting in serious practice.

It might seem obvious that practice is necessary for most skills, but people forget it _all the time_. For example, when I'm teaching people programming they're quick to think themselves failures when they see the giant gap between their abilities and my own. What they don't realize is that I've been doing it for over a decade and, in fact, was much _worse_ than them at first. [0]

[0] In fact, I probably only did HTML for my first whole month of "programming." One major advantage of learning things as a kid is that there's no pressure to be good.

<comment><USER4> Exactly! I grew up thinking school is "my thing" and when I saw people with other skills (music, drawing, acting, cooking, etc.), that must just be "their thing". Yes, people have natural strengths and aptitudes, and there are some things that I know I'm just not inclined for, but it is a very empowering feeling to believe that I can choose to dedicate my time to learning a new skill and become proficient at it. At the same time, the "rule" also should tell you that each new skill you pursue has a serious opportunity cost, so choose carefully!

<comment><USER25> Well sort of. What's the opportunity cost of doing nothing? That's what most of us end up doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "an hour of playing in front of a crowd, where the focus is on delivering the best possible performance at the time, is not the same as an hour of focused, goal-driven practice"

A different study tested students on their ability to make clay pots. Some students were scored on the quality of each pot. Others were only scored based on quantity.

The students that emphasized quantity were able to make better pots by the end of the study. By aiming for quantity over quality, they were able to deliver both.

Performing puts a lot of pressure on you and a more direct focus on the mistakes and triumphs that count. I wouldn't be too quick to disregard how valuable it could be, because it forces you to follow through and work on all the important things.

<comment><USER27> I tried to find the original source of the quality-vs-quantity pottery class story a while back. I think it originates in the book "Art and Fear" but in that book it reads like a parable rather than a factual event. (And it's definitely not a study in that book.)

<comment><USER27> Well, I checked with one of the authors of "Art and Fear", and it turns out that the quality-vs-quantity pottery class is a true story, except it wasn't a ceramics class as written, but a university level photography class! They changed it to pottery in the book because they had too many photography examples already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> All you have to do is read Gladwell to know he's basically a hack...this comes as no shock.

</comment><comment><USER29> Of course there's no hard-coded number of required 10.000 hours of practice, but Gladwell just simplifies the process of excelling on anything: Lots of practice with some other things depending on the field. That's enough for me.

I always mention this guy [1] whenever this topic comes into the discussion. It has tangible aspects, you can see the improvement in his paintings along with the number of years passed, it's a journal.

[1] [http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/870-Journey-...](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/870-Journey- of-an-Absolute-Rookie-Paintings-and-Sketches)

</comment><comment><USER30> Gladwell is a well-known hack and has a terrible reputation in journalist circles for the shilling he did for tobacco companies while being paid handsomely for it.

<comment> barry-cotter Reputation among journalist circles is worthless if Jonah Lehrer can get a job at any newspaper after being outed as a faker and a plagiarist. He can and it is.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps journalists aren't managing editors at newspapers,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Gladwell himself readily admits he stretches facts and makes up other concepts out of whole cloth in the name of entertainment, making his books essentially fiction.

<comment><USER32> This is not true, Gladwell readily admits that the literal value of 10,000 was not meant to be taken literally.

<comment><USER33> But people take it at face value.

And if 10,000 is just a made-up number, then is he even saying anything of value? It takes thousands of hours to become an expert at something. Wow! Really? Who knew!?

<comment><USER34> Its like with Bill Gates-you mean someone interested in computing in the 1970s started a famous tech company? What are the odds!

<comment><USER35> Have you read Outliers? It makes exactly that point.

<comment><USER34> Yes, that was _my_ point-Gladwell takes the utterly obvious (in this case) and makes it out to be profound. Its like saying its amazing that so many junior officers in World War 1 were senior officers in World War 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After all, a message that gives hope to the dullards who buy his books that they too can covet the skills of geniuses with just enough practice, is an appealing one.

[http://greyenlightenment.com/the-iq-wars/](http://greyenlightenment.com/the- iq-wars/)

</comment><comment><USER36> It's easy to take the 10,000 rule too literally and never end up excelling. Take for example, my Grandpa who's been learning English for over 20 years, whose proficiency level has been at a sad plateau for greater than a decade, despite subscribing to a "How to Learn English" program daily. What he isn't doing is going out and failing, speaking, and deliberately focusing on areas that he's terrible at. He's become too comfortable at learning English and not practicing with intent.

I think we can all conjure up examples like these in our everyday lives. The casual Dad who plays tennis every weekend but hasn't won a Round Robin tournament ever. Or the entrepreneur that jumps from idea to idea, never really following through and taking a risk.

</comment><comment><USER37> Gladwell had a chance to reiterate his view on the 10,000 hour rule in (I believe) an episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast. The point he said he was trying to make wasn't that it took some arbitrary number of hours to become good at something, it was that you need a lot of outside support to get good at things. If you're trying to rack up your 10k hours, you're not going to be able to also have a full time job, keep up with kids, or a house or any of the other responsibilities of adult life.

</comment><comment><USER15> O for the day when the _10,000 hours rule_ is replaced by the _10,000 unique mistakes_ rule - because if you had the swarm knowledge of the mistakes others have made before you (if you weren't the first making mistakes towards some goal), you would learn from negative examples probably at least as fast as by independent effort. You could even control it: p = tau * mistakes + (1 - tau) * independent effort

<comment><USER38> Distinct mistakes. If there were only one mistake you could make, it would then be unique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What do you expect, Gladwell is a professional shill.

</comment><comment><USER40> Malcolm Gladwell is an idiot posing as a "scientist" (because of his hair I guess?) Every book he writes is just anecdotes with a vague thesis. Practicing stuff makes you good? Thanks for the insight.

It's feel-good science-iness like those crap games that "exercise your brain". It's just marketing.

</comment><comment><USER41> 10,000 hours is nice whole cozy number. But it's not about 9,000 hrs or 11,000 hrs. You have to keep at it for an extended period of time. That's where passion and innovation helps you sail thru.

</comment><comment><USER42> News flash, Gladwell got hand-wavy. That's... kind of his business model.

</comment><comment><USER43> Ewe, A Salon article</comment>


Apple Silicon implements tricky x86 behaviors in hardware for faster emulation - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/never_released/status/1288660944885821442 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/saagarjha/TSOEnabler](https://github.com/saagarjha/TSOEnabler)

</comment><comment><USER2> Shouldn't ARMv8 LDAR (Load Acquire) and STL (Store Release) instructions be enough to emulate x86 memory model? What did I miss?

Or would that entail more overhead compared to just having TSO memory model?

<comment><USER3> Too slow, probably. Either they'd need to do advanced dataflow analysis to not have them everywhere (slow/complicated) or just insert them everywhere (slow).

<comment><USER2> I don't see how any kind of dataflow analysis could capture for example accessing thread stack from another thread. Just too many ways to get the pointer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And with Apple it doesn't even have to be additional CPU instructions since Apple controls whole SoC. If your upcoming code uses any Apple specific stuff (e.g. DSP, security chip, NN) with Apple only API then it basically becomes "very hard" to port. So goodbye for Hackintosh.

</comment><comment><USER5> I knew it, "apple silicon" branding allows them to de-normalize ARM at will.

<comment><USER6> How so?

TSO is a valid implementation of the ARM memory consistency model.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Plopdown Video (Demo) - <AUTHOR> https://plopdown.video <comment><USER2> When will it be available?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to get a basic editor working, but my hope is that i'll have something within in next 30 days. The video scanning and track injection seems to be working alright, now it's just making the process of creating tracks less laborious</comment></comment>


SSH Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://software.rajivprab.com/2019/07/14/ssh-considered-harmful/ <comment><USER2> Let us clarify/summarize: ssh didn't go away, it simply became less visible, and remains the secure channel component of gaining access to remote screen/tmux sessions.</comment>


Pure Bash Bible - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mihirk/pure-bash-bible <comment><USER2> This appears to be a copy of the Christian Bible as an invocation of echo.</comment>


Ditching HubSpot – why we built our CRM from scratch - <AUTHOR> https://volument.com/blog/ditching-hubspot <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. Here's how we replaced most of our SAAS services with a minimalistic alternative. A prime example of NIH syndrome taking over :) Thanks!</comment>


Making Macros in CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lab49.com/archives/5111

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool. We've been using macros in the Cappuccino source code for years, but we were too lazy to write our own macro processor so we just use the GCC preprocessor. Relying on GCC being available turns out to work pretty well.

<comment><USER3> Didn't know the GCC preprocessor was language agnostic. Never thought about it really.

<comment><USER4> You actually can/will run into problems if the language you are pre-processing with CPP tokenizes differently than C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Swap was not the best choice to be used as example, imho. CoffeScript has deconstructing assignments so to swap two variables you just do [x, y] = [y, x].

</comment><comment><USER6> I saw parsec-coffee-script a while back and really wanted to help, but I was quite busy. I'd love to see hygenic macros in coffee-script... Unfortunately, it looks like parsec hasn't been committed to since February. Anyone know what the status of that project is?

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this just lexical macros?

I expected a HN headline to refer at least to a novel Lisp style AST macro implementation; there's m4 and cpp for basic textual macro expansion and those are _very_ old news.

<comment><USER8> It's actually working on the CoffeeScript AST. Admittedly the example I used doesn't demonstrate this particularly well.</comment></comment>


Ideas for FUSE implementation - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I recently saw the following article here at HN: http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/07/building-filesystems-the-way-you-build-web-apps/ and I thought that hacking on this (FUSE) is probably a good way for me to learn more python (using the python-fuse binding).
What I can't come up though is an idea of a good implementation for this. Does anyone have good ideas on an implementation? <comment><USER2> As a toy project? You could always do a weather filesystem, something like location/date/time, using some online weather api. Would probably be laggy, but should have just enough to learn something. Calendars, hacker news posts, rss feeds, are some of the other things that might make good quick but instructional projects.</comment>


Robinhood experiencing a 'system-wide outage' as markets rebound - <AUTHOR> https://cnbc.com/2020/03/02/robinhood-says-its-experiencing-a-system-wide-outage-as-markets-rebound-in-heavy-volume-monday.html <comment><USER2> Definitely the worst timing possible. As stocks receded last week and now are bouncing back today, many investors will want to get back and take out positions to either reclaim some losses or just catch the upside.

But if you weren't in at the opening bell or there about those profits are gone.

Of course with any platform like this they do not hold liability for the inability to perform orders as that will be stipulated in their TOS but it will certainly lead to a considerable amount of churn.

There are industries where you can have an outage and it won't ruin your business. Certainly Twitter had it's fair share and was able to get past them over time, but having an entertainment or news source go down isn't the same as a service which is dealing with your money.

A single outage at the wrong moment is enough to create enough of a reason for customers to lose all trust and immediately leave. And the timing of the issue couldn't have been worse.

Whether it was an update to the app from last week, or simply a surge in trading activity that led to the issue is unknown but certainly the impact of this will likely be felt for the next couple of weeks as customers decide whether or not to stick with the platform. But breaking trust in the fintech sector happens quickly and it's hard to retrace.

<comment><USER3> > A single outage at the wrong moment is enough to create enough of a reason > for customers to lose all trust and immediately leave

I really wonder how bad the impact will actually be, since I would think the set of people losing trust and leaving because of this to be very close to that of people who would lose trust and leave because of RH making hundreds of millions from selling their trade data to HFT companies (hmm, why would the data be that valuable? What do the buyers of the data have to gain?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Robinhood's infrastructure is on AWS [0]. Would be interesting to see who shoulders the liability in the postmortem.

[0] [https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case- studies/robinhood/](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/robinhood/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The issue was identified hours ago and not yet resolved.

"Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented."

[https://status.robinhood.com/](https://status.robinhood.com/)

<comment><USER2> Full email that just went out to perhaps all accounts. I have never done a trade, but I do have one stock in my portfolio. The free share I received at sign up.

"This morning, starting at 9:33 AM ET, we started experiencing downtime across our platform. These issues are affecting functionality on Robinhood, including your ability to trade.

All of us at Robinhood are working as hard as we can to resume service, and we'll update you as soon as the issue is resolved. We understand the impact this is having and we apologize for any trouble this has caused.

Please check our status page at status.robinhood.com. Thank you for being a Robinhood customer."

Just for a time reference, the issue started at 9:33AM ET - and I received that email around 2:45PM ET - so basically the entire trading day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They also basically spoiled the app last week with the new "custom lists" feature. Instead of a quick glance at watched stocks you now see a bunch of pluses with list names, that you have to expand and then scroll.

</comment><comment><USER7> Their email is even down so you can't even contact them anymore except via twitter. Emails to email@example.com are being rejected.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess you can't complain if you just use their free product. You should even expect this.

<comment><USER9> Almost all brokers have free stock trades now. Why not use a more established platform?

<comment><USER10> Isn't that the '10bps per share of trading volume' question?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> App loads, quotes are working. I am speculating, but wound guess it's a database issue. Anybody have more info?

</comment><comment><USER12> RIP tendies.</comment>


The promise of a $150,000 jet-powered light aircraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/who-says-a-jet-cant-be-cheap-24547164/

<comment><USER2> _" But for more than 40 years, his abiding passion has been the idea of a small jet engine for light aircraft."_

Williams[1] had that vision too. He'd produced the jet engines for the first cruise missiles, and many other successful jet engines. But he was never able to break the cost barrier.

Below 6 passenger bizjet size, jet engines don't seem to get much cheaper. Smaller engines can be made, but the price doesn't go down by much. NASA had a big push for smaller, cheaper jet engines in the 1990s. Failed.

Maybe with better manufacturing techniques, like making all the plumbing in one big 3D printed piece...

[1] [http://www.williams-int.com/](http://www.williams-int.com/)</comment>


Is node.js best for Comet? - <AUTHOR> http://amix.dk/blog/post/19577

<comment><USER2> "best" is a very subjective word.

If we're talking about performance, I'd venture to guess it goes something like this:

C > Java > Scala/Clojure> node.js > Python > Ruby

But then there's all of the other tradeoffs, like how error-prone each environment is or how long it will take to code and debug in each language.

Note that Urban Airship recently did some research and found that Java with direct NIO code worked the best for them, not Netty: [http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/2010/08/24/c500k-in- action...](http://blog.urbanairship.com/blog/2010/08/24/c500k-in-action-at- urban-airship/)

<comment><USER3> Why is Ruby last? EventMachine should work pretty well for most purposes I think.

<comment><USER4> Eventmachine can juggle connections fairly well, but the common MRI problems kick in once you start actually _doing_ something with these connections. Namely heap fragmentation followed by unbounded heap growth which results in stop&go operation during gc runs - until the host eventually swaps to death.

Other ruby impls (REE, JRuby or rubinius) might be better in those regards. But I wouldn't trust MRI with a long running process that might get under anything but the lightest pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Erlang deserves a mention too, although ultimately I'm a bit pessimistic about their chances to break out of the small niche language space.

<comment><USER6> Me too. Awesome language/platform, but probably a bit too weird for where the industry at large is at these days, unfortunately.

Anybody else coming to ErlangCamp in Chicago this weekend, BTW?

<comment><USER5> I think it's beyond just being 'weird' - it's genuinely quirky for many things, and doesn't have good library support. IMO, this makes it sort of 'uneven' - really good at some things, and bad for others. The popular languages all seem to be those that are 'pretty good' for a lot of things, so once you learn the language, you can get many things done with it. Even if the language is perhaps not the _best_ for any given task, it's good enough to at least crank out something that works ok.

<comment><USER6> The "doesn't have good library support" factor is mitigated by its "ports" - Erlang is happy to run arbitrary processes in C, Python, Lua, whatever in a bubble and just be the fault-tolerant network glue tying them together.

I seem to be fond of languages that make polarizing trade-offs but encourage multi-language programming: Lua, Prolog, Erlang, awk, etc. Use them when they're the best tool for the job, and when they aren't, they'll happily co- operate. Win win. (Requiring people to know multiple languages seems like it'd be a burden, but said languages can also be a lot _smaller_ because they can avoid being responsible for what they're bad at. And, isn't that ultimately the point of DSLs?)

<comment><USER5> I thought you just liked languages that start arrays at 1...

If you have to glue stuff together in C or with pipes, it's going to be just as easy to do it in Tcl, Python, Ruby or whatever though, which also have more libraries to start with, and are fairly "promiscuous" in their own right.

I'm not sure I buy the 'glue language' thing: that's what both Tcl and PHP (and Perl to some degree) started out as, but it seems that people end up wanting to do everything in the higher level language that they can, because it's a lot less effort.

Something that might be really cool is if one of the efforts like Reia took off and made something a little bit nicer looking that sits on top of the Erlang run time.

<comment><USER6> > I thought you just liked languages that start arrays at 1...

Ha. If anything, I'm big on languages based around pattern matching. :)

Oh, and Erlang's ports are better than Unix pipes - it's more like a process run in isolation with asynchronous IO, and which the local Erlang runtime can restart as necessary. I changed the wording a bit to make that clearer.

I prefer working 100% in higher level languages and then moving hotspots down to C, etc., but it seems like languages designed to be glue languages make the transition easiest (because they have a kind of inherent modesty).

I never got into Tcl, but feel a common mindset in Ousterhout's essays (such as <http://home.pacbell.net/ouster/scripting.html>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been working on my own framework called Manos de Mono. It runs on top of Mono and is styled after node.js. I am hoping that it will be really good for these scenarios and the Mono runtime will address some of these concerns.

All that being said: node.js is impressively good. Its a beautiful piece of software.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://github.com/sustainablecode/ringo-evented> might be worth a look to get the best of both worlds

</comment><comment><USER8> Socket.io + node.js makes it super easy. It abstracts away all of the transport protocols so you can just focus on writing your application.

<comment><USER9> Same goes for TornadoSocketIO though, so this isn't unique to node.js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This would really be best handled as two separate questions -- "is a fully asynchronous approach best for Comet" and "is the node.js _implementation_ best for Comet" are probably very different discussions. And again, "best" could mean either performance/scalability, usability, or some combination thereof.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like he was already using Python - why didn't he try Tornado, which is built for purpose?

<comment><USER11> We tried to use Twisted and it did not perform that well (too much CPU usage, too much memory usage). I think a similar limitation will be hit with Tornado, but I haven't tried it out. Most of Plurk is implemented in Python tho' and I would love a great Python solution.

<comment><USER10> I work with Tornado daily, and while I don't have the traffic you guys do, I can say that Tornado's a lot more pleasant to program in than Twisted. asyncronous, for the end user, is implemented as a decorator you add to the URL handler's get() method. You then have an 'on_new_messges' method on the URL that's the callback to run when you've got something to push.

Best of all, there's about eight sample projects that are _included in the source code_. Ie, they're maintained, always work, and you always have a 'certified' example of how to do something. It's neat, and the community are friendly to boot.

<comment><USER9> Beyond websockets, I've found that SocketTornado.IO works great out of the box and supports multiple transports with ease.

<http://github.com/SocketTornadIO/SocketTornad.IO>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about Scala and Lift?

</comment><comment><USER13> socket.io with node.js is working out very well for me. If you want to throw redis and rails in the mix, check out github.com/maccman/juggernaut

</comment><comment><USER14> +1

<comment><USER6> Hello. It looks like you haven't participated much here. The HN community usually shuns these sorts of comments, because they don't really add to the conversation -- an upvote is _already_ a "+1".</comment></comment>


The math that shows autonomous vehicles powered by solar power are inevitable - <AUTHOR> http://electrek.co/2016/05/19/the-math-and-evidence-all-around-you-that-shows-shared-autonomous-vehicles-powered-by-solar-power-and-batteries-are-inevitable/ <comment><USER2> so the interesting question is could I buy a car and rent it out to the network when I'm not using it.

<comment><USER3> First time I ever talked to someone about autonomous cars that's the first thing they said. They also have about three companies and lots of money. So I bet a whole bunch of people are going to do what you do - Uber style maybe.</comment></comment>


"Reclaim Windows 10" Powershell Script - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1 <comment><USER2> I had been a long time Windows user, at home (W10) and work(7/Server/Datacenter). Windows had been getting just more and more intrusive like a malware since the last couple years. I hope they do something to stop that. I have recently moved to Fedora and it is just awesome. Pretty much everything works like amazing. Its not a complete replacement if you are gaming, nvidia drivers are a bit painful to install but everything else just works. Its been stable even after an update to Fedora 24->25\. I am so amazed at how far linux has come. I am so satisfied with it that i am not moving back to Windows for home usage.

I hope Microsoft stops with auto-update, otherwise the alternatives are also catching up fast if you are not a gamer.

<comment><USER3> "Everything just works" so long as your expectations around "everything" are essentially set by a desktop computer experience designed in 2005.

Linux on desktops is fine (except from a physical security standpoint), but primitive in terms of UX. And it's still dependent on Mozilla or Google for its browsing experience.

And if you want a portable computer (which by the way are demonstrably more secure in the face of physical tampering) you basically relegate yourself to terrible battery life, poor display support, dicey sleep support, and the fixes for these often compromise performance.

I really wish Linux users would stop softballing their desktop vendors and kernel maintainers so much. It's just not competitive!

<comment><USER4> It's not primitive in terms of UX. You just need to spend more time configuring it. Some will argue that that means it's primitive, but I don't think so.

The point about portable computers is also false. You just need to pick a machine with hardware manufactured by friendly vendors who help write drivers. Why would you want to support anyone else?

Battery life? My x230 with tpm installed gets 6 hours of battery life on the stock battery.

Display support? I'm using a 2560x1440 monitor with the mini displayport on my x230 right now and have had no issues with it whatsoever. Plays Quake 3 great too, no tearing. Debian Jessie.

Sleep support?

/etc/systemd/logind.conf

HandleLidSwitch=suspend

Performance issues? My system idles at 200mb. Good luck getting macOS or Windows to do that. And to preempt the bias card, I use a Mac for work and love it to death. I think most of your points were applicable in 2005. The terrain has changed and the mainstream Linux distributions are now very stable and usable daily driver systems.

Linux is more than competitive, it's just not targeted at inexperienced users. Which is fine. Not everyone has the need or want to configure their computer to suit them. Some people just need a computer that works. That's why macOS and Windows exist.

<comment><USER3> > It's not primitive in terms of UX. You just need to spend more time > configuring it. Some will argue that that means it's primitive, but I don't > think so.

Okay, so... let's just think about what you said for a second. Windows 10 and Mac OS X deliver extremely high end configuration with a lot of extensibility in their Window managers via first and third parties _without extensive modifications_. I have some unique XMonad configurations too! But if I have to be a direct contributor to my experience, I remove a lot of the credit from the people who shipped the software, because they basically sent me an SDK for making a good UI environment.

> The point about portable computers is also false. You just need to pick a > machine with hardware manufactured by friendly vendors who help write > drivers. Why would you want to support anyone else?

Yeah. "Lenovo is friendly" is not a very compelling argument. Their support and sales are miserable. Their machines are unimpressive. Their supported versions of Linux are years out of date.

> Battery life? My x230 with tpm installed gets 6 hours of battery life on the > stock battery.

My surface book gets 6 hours of battery life even if I'm compiling android binaries regularly. Without changing anything.

> HandleLidSwitch=suspend

Are you actually going to pretend that sleep support isn't a major issue for many portable hardware setups? Or is this restricted to "only specific token gesture devices from specific vendors?"

> Performance issues? My system idles at 200mb. Good luck getting macOS or > Windows to do that.

What does this have to do with performance?

> The terrain has changed and the mainstream Linux distributions are now very > stable and usable daily driver systems.

So.. tell me... does Canonical's kernel update purge old kernel images yet, or are regular users still SOL after about 8 months of use unless they invoke a shell script they barely understand provided by stack overflow? Asking for a friend who I had to do this form.

> Linux is more than competitive,

If Linux is only for experienced users but both OSX and Windows can deliver to the full spectrum, then that's a superset, doge.

This kind of double standard is why linux ends up getting overhyped.

<comment><USER4> at least I don't have to run 300 lines of powershell to remove telemetry and candy crush soda saga from my brand new computer

checkmate

<comment><USER3> I don't either, and I never did. My brand new computer shipped without spamware, because I chose a reputable vendor like Microsoft and not famously abusive vendors like, say, Lenovo.

I'm not terribly concerned about app or browser telemetry. If you're using Chrome, you're spitting back a ton. Firefox? Still sending some! Your mobile device? Spitting back a ton. Everyone other machine? Also doing so. Canonical? Also doing some, although to their credit it's less.

You have basically equated all telemetry with intrusive spyware, when in fact it's usually banal data designed to make it easy to identify problems after a bad software push. While maybe we _could_ have a discusion about where to draw the line of "too much" for Windows 10, you've set such a profound double standard you won't even allow a dialogue about it.

<comment><USER5> OP's comment around Candy Crush has nothing to do with Lenovo and everything to do with Microsoft. It happens - by default - on clean installs of Windows 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being heavily involved in setting up standard developer workstations, I consider this to be the only practical approach. It's way beyond any specific config item (including telemetry). This is a sure way to get to a stable and consistent configuration.

A few comments:

\- It is better to split such a mega-script into a set of named scripts, so admins can mix-and-match their own configuration set. \- The configuration set scripts should be re-entrant, that is, one can run it few times in a row, achieving the same stable result. This is an important principle because those scripts evolve over time until they are are stable, so the re-entrancy enabled the re-configuration game.

\- Some configuration items are system-based while other are user-account- based. This means that the latter should be invoked automatically once a new user account is created.

\- VM is your friend. Wash, rinse, repeat.

\- It is not always wise to replace automation (PowerShell) invocations with direct registry modifications. Tradeoffs should be obvious.

\- MDT setups should avoid direct system configuration wherever possible, and rely on configuration scripts instead.

\- One of the features still not possible to script is setting the policy startup/shutdown/login/logout scripts. One can provide this manually in a base workstation image.

\- Esp. on Windows systems prior to Windows 10: make sure PowerShell is stable - version and module-wise.

<comment><USER7> I believe the word you're looking for in your very first list item is "idempotent", not "re-entrant".

<comment><USER6> Right. One should ensure that simply re-invoking the script will not break anything by itself. The end result between invocations may be different if scripts are modified between invocations, as getting configuration right is a tricky business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I seriously doubt that Windows 10 is doing anything so grave as to require you to run some arbitrary PowerShell script you found on the Internet with elevated privileges. If you do not understand every single command in this thing, you should avoid it, and if you understand every single command in this, you don't need it.

<comment><USER9> Up voted for this:

"If you do not understand every single command in this thing, you should avoid it, and if you understand every single command in this, you don't need it."

It's so universally applicable!

<comment><USER10> Not true - automation is great! I understand the script and would use it.

<comment><USER11> Agree -- people are missing the point that this stuff would easily take over an hour to do manually in the GUI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't consider win10 telemetry that bad. You can dial it down a lot until it's just sending crash data when thing go bad. Pretty much all OSes have this.

What I _really_ don't like however is Microsoft pushing garbage like candy crush to my machine without my consent.

<comment><USER13> What's the problem with telemetry in general? For almost all of the important products I use I like to send usage info -- my expectation is that they're more likely to improve features that I use as a result.

And if you use a web app, e.g., Google Apps, they get all this data plus more (and completely not anonymized).

<comment><USER14> Don't want any extra network usage when i'm connected to my cell phone hotspot and using up my monthly data cap.

<comment><USER15> windows has a 'metered' mode for network connections. I don't know if this will stop said usage, but you could check

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We shouldn't have to fight the OS, this is ridiculous.

Before moving definitively to Linux I'm considering installing a proxy on my router, bloc all ports except one and just redirect Firefox and a few apps that need connectivity to this port.

I'm not a network guy though, might be complicated.

<comment><USER17> >We shouldn't have to fight the OS, this is ridiculous.

I know what you mean, but as a Linux user, I feel like I'm spending a fair amount of time fighting the OS, too..

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stuff like this is fundamentally unworkable when the people pushing software updates are your adversaries. They already do stuff like ignore DNS settings and firewall rules to send harvested data back to microsoft. They will almost certainly break anything this does in the future too...

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Windows 10 has a hard coded whitelist of IPs and donain names in the kernel mode part of the OS (it's 64bit, it's signed, you can't modify it) - those IPs and domains will be ignored from your hosts file or firewall rules. Good luck with an hardware firewall attached to your Win10 notebook. ...unrealistic, so it's wise to stay with Win7 (minus some telemetry updates). I hope Android/Fuchsia, and other desktop OS come along until 2020, or MSFT CEO gets fired and they make a 180 degree u-turn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Rather than continuing to struggle against these features which will continue to be added, why not use an operating system that respects your freedom?

<comment><USER21> As someone who uses the big three desktops daily, freedom is just one facet. I also want an operating system that respects my time. None of the free operating systems out there do that.

Considering the state of Ubuntu, probably the "easiest" to use desktop out there at the moment, my freedom is second to my ability to get a working desktop.

<comment><USER22> We must be doing very different things. Outside of gaming, everything I do is as fast or faster to get done on Linux.

<comment><USER23> No to condescend, but that just means that what you do most likely only has to do with programming. If you attempt to branch out into other fields of activities, Linux software is just not capable enough. Try to edit a photo beyond the basic capabilities of Gimp. Try to author a video project. Try to master audio. Try to design and edit documents beyond the most basic capabilities of LibreOffice. Attempt spreadsheet workflows.

It's just not there. But yes, if you want to run Python, GCC or Ruby from the commandline, Linux is very capable of giving you a faster experience.

<comment><USER24> I mentioned this is another comment, but it's worth saying again. For video/audio editing Blender can be used. Plus a bunch of other stuff, from their website:

"Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation."

Now its not the most intuitive pieces of software and you'll be spending a lot of time on youtube following tutorials, but its freely available and opensource.

<comment><USER23> Please let me know how editing goes for you on Blender on a semi advanced video project. These types of comments are the worst. It's on the same level as "Yes, GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop because it has brush and layers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I recommend using Spybot Anti-Beacon [1], which is a safe way of disabling (or enabling) Windows 10 features.

[1] [https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/](https://www.safer- networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice haven't tried that. I use Shutup10 [https://www.oo- software.com/en/shutup10](https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10)

<comment><USER26> I also use Shutup10, which is essentially the same as the script only with a friendly GUI that lets you choose exactly what you want to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If telemetry really bothers you, I think you'd be better off with a different OS

<comment><USER3> Which one? An essentially unsupported Linux distribution? Canonical does telemetry as well. Apple has been doing this for years an yet we still don't sweat wrathful spate of headlines over it.

Oh and by the way, the logfiles from most package servers provide an accurate description of what you're doing with your machine and a weak concept of identity. So you'll need to avoid those.

Browsers keep updating and the vast majority of websites collect telemetry as well. So no more internet.

But yeah, the OS app level telemetry seems like a pretty big deal and we should stress out about it.

<comment><USER28> Why is Canonical the only option here? There's plenty of other Linux choices that don't use telemetry.

Also, if you use a browser that respects your privacy, and treats you like an adult, then you can turn that telemetry off.

<comment><USER29> If only they bothered to support modern laptops as well as Ubuntu does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Careful, by default this disables the lock screen.

<comment><USER31> I've had a number of friends who have had to do reinstalls after running these kinds of scripts. Easy to break lots of subtle things.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, my first Windows 10 install I did a lot of the things in this script (disable Cortana, Bing search, P2P updates, etc.) and my machine worked fine... for a time. Things slowly started to go REALLY downhill, to the point where I couldn't search the start menu and had to find the .exe for any application I wanted to open, I couldn't view any images with the default image viewer, the file explorer barely worked, and a whole bunch of other weird things.

Eventually I gave up, reformatted the drive it was installed on, and re- installed. Everything's been pretty much fine since then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you prefer a Batch script there's also Make Windows 10 Great Again: [https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6...](https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6e9a442e0121b1d)

<comment><USER33> Has a nice list of IP addrs and hostnames... thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what MS employees think when every week a new tool pops up disabling data mining in their OS.

<comment><USER30> I'm an enigneer on Windows. We actually use the crash dumps and the more the better so we can prioritize reliability bugs. Usage telemetry helps us prioritize work, like which settings to migrate from Control Panel to Settings first, or to see if design changes actually made things better for people.

<comment><USER35> Unfortunately, the admirable removal of reliability bugs is in the same breath as migrating settings away from Control Panel, when the latter is another one of the things reducing the quality of the Microsoft/Windows experience.

<comment><USER36> He didn't say "away".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of the Tron project

[https://reddit.com/r/TronScript](https://reddit.com/r/TronScript)

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't recommend anyone to use all the script. Dial telemetry down to Basic and then disable Cortana.

</comment><comment><USER38> A vast majority is Registry config values, could have avoided the powershell "version" here.

</comment><comment><USER39> Warning: i tried turning Cortana off by following some powershell scripts (not this one though). ended up she's still on, but now my search functionality is broken. Nothing I did could fix it. Guess I need to reinstall windows if I ever want to get that back.

</comment><comment><USER40> I seem to remember a few other apps and scripts that do the same thing, but I also heard that they get out of date pretty quickly. Don't know if this is going to keep up with the updates, but it shows that this is an ongoing problem with Windows10.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have something like this for macOS turning off iCloud and killing .DS_store files, among other annoyances. I wouldn't recommend running this as is (neither does the author) but it's a nice list to pick and choose options from.

</comment><comment><USER42> the script changes some registry settings - did you check that it really stops snooping if you just set the registry settings and reboot? What if another update just enables the snooping back regardless of the registry setting?

<comment><USER42> anybody knows why Microsoft joined in with the data gathering? this move might alienate their corporate customers and that's the real cash cow, don't they make enough money out of licensing? They say that Mr. Nadella is such a smart guy, but this really looks like a way to loose existing business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Pity he missed the related shell scripts for the Apple and Google operating systems.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it possible to disable the screen magnifier? I press it several times a day by accident and it's really tricky to switch off...

<comment><USER44> \- Launch "Ease of Access Center", either from control panel or search in start menu.

\- Click Make the computer easier to see.

\- Uncheck the option Turn on Magnifier and click on Save

<comment><USER43> Oh I thought that turned it on (not enabled the shortcut). Will try that. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Restrict Windows Update P2P only to local network

I find this interesting as a security choice rather than completely disabling P2P updates, as I'd guess that a substantial number of users aren't in control of all machines on their network, and if the other computers on the network got their updates from peers outside the network, then you'll still end up getting the updates from those peers. Is completely disabling P2P updates not an option?

<comment><USER46> It's a real question of how well it detects your /local/ network versus being on that over a third party VPN.

For desktops local network is fine.

For laptops it should be a no-go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Useless unless it also includes a way to prevent your privacy from being invaded my Google, Amazon, et al. Just more fear mongering from the ye old anti-Microsoft camp, (founded 1995).

</comment><comment><USER48> Hello, can anybody explain in simple words what this script does? How will it affect the behavior of my windows installation? Should I run it?

Thanks !

<comment><USER49> It will disable a lot of the Windows 10 telemetry features. Those are the features that send a bunch of data about your usage back to Microsoft. This includes Cortana and the Bing search tool in the normal windows search for example.

If you want to run it you should read through it first, it says above every function what it is going to disable. I would go with a simple rule: If you don't understand it, don't disable it. Otherwise it contains code for enabling all features again in case you start to miss something.

Edit: especially UI part seems to disable a lot of things by default that you might not want to disable!

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'd like PowerShell more if it wasn't MixedCase.

<comment><USER51> It's not, you can do everything in lowercase. Still sucks.</comment></comment>


A Floating Mass of Fire Ants in Texas - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/fire-ants-flooding-hurricane-harvey/538365/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The programming of nature has always fascinated me... Animals and insects always seem to have some mysterious ways of handling environmental calamities and surviving.

I recall an incident a few years ago here where I live in Australia. We live close to a series of cliffs overlooking a beach, and I walk along those cliffs every morning. There was one day when I noticed strange lumps on the grass and walking track. Upon closer observation, I saw that these were hundreds, nay, _thousands_ of hermit crabs, and they were crawling across the ground and heading for every tree and bush in the vicinity, then _climbing_ up them as high as they could.

I had NEVER seen hermit crabs do this before.

Then, two days later, we had a huge storm hit, and combined with unusually high tides, it ended up with most of the cliff top areas being flooded or overrun with water.

How on earth did all these hermit crabs _know_ that this was about to happen 48 hours in advance of the event?? How did they know that they had to climb the cliffs and seek out higher ground within the trees and bushes there?

There must be an amazing environmental consciousness just thrumming along outside of 'civilised' human perception that I wish we could tap back into...

<comment><USER3> So many birds and insects seem to be sensitive to the magnetic forces deep within the planet. I've never met a human being who was consciously aware of these forces, but I've met plenty of spiritualists who called them something else. Ask any old person whose body reacts to pressure changes in the weather, and they'll point out which bones ache when a storm is approaching. They're usually right.

As humans, we brush it off. It's just a feeling, or we're having a bad headache, and need to take some medicine. To a small insect whose entire world can change in a flash though, these signals are a monumentally important part of how they sense the world. Especially I think in absence of more complex visual perception that we humans use to bridge the gap.

Nature is amazing! The more we study it, the less we realize we actually know.

<comment><USER2> I do recall reading about an experiment many years ago where a group of university students were blindfolded and taken to a remote hill outside of their town. They were then (still blindfolded) asked to point to their homes, and it turns out that most of them managed to point fairly accurately in the direction where they lived.

No idea of the validity or scientific basis for that 'experiment', but as you mentioned - that mysterious ability for older people to 'feel' weather changes in parts of their bodies, or that 'gut feeling' that a lot of people get when they are being watched by hostile eyes... There is a lot more going on to our unconscious perception of the world that we realise.

There are some facets however, that are easily explainable, such as people "smelling the rain coming" when it is in fact the higher moisture content in the air making our smell receptors work better at smelling the everyday environment around us... But there are some phenomena which aren't as easily explained.

I hope that we can begin to be more adept at recognising the unconscious prompts, which I think will make us much better are relating to the world around us.

<comment><USER4> > They were asked to point to their homes and most of them managed to point > fairly accurately in the direction where they lived.

Blind people can still hear, smell and perceive the wind direction and use it to make a mental map of their (well known) surrondings. Zero mystery here and no scooby snack for those scientists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of interest in the article is this:

> flooded fire ants deliver higher doses of venom because they have 165 > percent as much venom inside them as normal fire ants

Growing up in rural Texas I can assure you that fire ants were never to be messed with (unless you had fire/gasoline).

I got stung once 3 or 4 times on my ankle, which was swollen for about 3 days. The bites were hug. The oozed a milky liquid. We doused them in calamine lotion, but it still didn't stop something like arthritis from hurting.

Having been stung by wasps and bees, I find those preferable to fire ant stings. I couldn't imagine getting stung by something over 50% worse.

<comment><USER6> Pity the grad student responsible for generating this number.

<comment><USER7> Read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_sting_pain_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_sting_pain_index) and walk away in disbelief.

<comment><USER8> And the infographic: [http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-colorful-pain- index...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-colorful-pain-index-of-the- stinging-ants-bees-and-wasps-around-the-world)

<comment><USER9> > Baldfaced Hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your > hand mashed in a revolving door.

> Sweat Bees: Light and ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a > single hair on your arm.

Haha, the pain descriptions remind me of a wine menu

<comment><USER10> I love the yellowjacket description:

> hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar > on your tongue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Texans are often regarded as having an affinity for gun ownership. I think that's silly. They clearly should all be packing flame-throwers.

<comment><USER12> Houstonian here. Apparently all you need is some Dawn soap to break their surface tension!

I've always been fascinated by ants since childhood and love watching them, but these floating islands are the worst ambush I can imagine. Good to know they have a kryptonite.

<comment><USER13> Before readers run out and try this, there is a technique and protocol that should be followed, or you won't like the consequences. I'll let a post on /r/natureismetal do the typing for me [1], and here's a copy-pasta for those who don't want to click through (more scientific explanation [2] of why this works within seconds...to make sure around these bastards from hell, I gave 'em two minutes to display proof of death---put a stick in the drowned mass and lift it up---before I moved on to hunting down the next raft):

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>-- clip here </comment><comment>--

You're all going to love this. It's environmentally friendly, it's inexpensive, it's 100% lethal, and makes them die in the most horrible manner possible.

Dish soap.

Put a tablespoon or two into a spray bottle, then add about 2-3 cups of water. Swish the water to mix. Do not shake! You don't want foam in the bottle.

MOVE. UP. STREAM. Seriously, you don't want to be downstream of this when it happens.

Now, starting in the middle of the mass, start spritzing with the soapy water, and work your way out to the edges.

The soap will break the surface tension, and act as a wetting agent on the ants. As a result, the water will now start wicking up their bodies, enveloping them like living quicksand. And with the surface tension broken, the mass of ants will start to sink.

Remember, start in the middle! This will cause the center to sink first, and drag the edges down last. The ants will all hold on to each other and drag every last one below the surface. With a soft bloop, the entire mass will drop.

Remember how I said to move upstream? If you're downstream, the entire submerged mass could end up wrapped around your legs. Where they will immediately begin clawing their way to the surface, using you as a ladder.

Best of all, you can scale up your operation, and load a backpack sprayer with a bottle of Dawn and a few gallons of water. Then just wade through your neighborhood, wiping them out for the benefit of everyone!

\</comment><comment>-- clip here </comment><comment>--

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/6wkd4j/firea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/6wkd4j/fireants_create_a_floating_island_of_themselves/dm90hkg/)

[2] [https://www.livescience.com/13867-raft-fire-ants-buoyancy- fl...](https://www.livescience.com/13867-raft-fire-ants-buoyancy-flood-water- repellant-floatation.html)

<comment><USER14> For someone out of the area, why would you do such a thing?

<comment><USER15> Fire ants are a foreign invasive species in the United states that kill animals, push out native ant species, cause incredibly painful stings, and trigger sometimes-fatal reactions in some people. They are nasty little balls of hate.

<comment><USER12> Just combine the ruthlessness of Terminators and Aliens, shrink to insect size and multiply by billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks

So what we need is a bio-engineered species of fire ant that requires some harmless environmental additive to survive. Then we breed them, release them over a tick-infested area, and let them breed long enough to kill off the ticks. Then quit spraying or watever the additive they need and let them die off.

What Could Go Wrong.

But seriously, screw ticks _and_ fire ants.

<comment><USER17> _screw ticks and fire ants_

Diatomaceous earth will do the job. It can be purchased at any farm supply store for pretty cheap. Works on fleas, bedbugs, millipedes, roaches, centipedes ... pretty much any little bug with an exoskeleton. Farm supply store because it's traditionally been used to mix into agricultural feed (food grade DE) as an anti-caking agent.

But works to kill bugs, too. Diatoms in this form are fossilized like microscopic weapons of destruction that get under the exoskeletons of ants and other creepy crawlies and dehydrate them. Best of all: no chemicals involved so they cannot develop resistance. Medieval torture devices on bugs; will desiccate them.

<comment><USER18> does the fact that it's mechanical really mean that they can't develop resistance? why couldn't they just develop a thicker exoskeleton (for example)?

<comment><USER19> The thicker exoskeleton would require more energy and protein to produce, increasing the nutritional requirements for survival. Anything that requires substantially more energy better come with a big payoff. I'm not sure that the ability to wander around a house includes such a payoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope someone from _The Atlantic_ sees this: I will whitelist you for ads but not for trackers. Ads are ok, trackers are the tools of Satan.

<comment><USER21> I just ude Firefox with javascript turned off (about:config search javascript, toggle javascript.enabled to false). No apparent anything.

<comment><USER20> Thanks- that's what I do also (but with noscript). I'm just calling their attention to the issue that turning on trackers != turning on ads. And, they shouldn't be using trackers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I stepped about knee deep into a fire ant mound when I was 8 in Florida. I thought I was going to die. I've never seen something swarm quite that fast.

<comment><USER23> the mound just collapsed around your foot and you sank in?

<comment><USER24> Accidentally stepping in or standing on a fire ant mound is a terrible rite of passage for kids in Florida. Even if you just step on one, which when inactive can look like just another a patch of sand, those little bastards swarm out crazy fast. They'll easily be halfway up your leg before you realize what's happening. One moment, you're tossing a ball or frisbee with friends and waiting for the next throw, the next: horrible child screaming.

<comment><USER25> They actually swarm first without biting and then once they get a critical mass covered they chemically send a command to all bite at once.

I'm not kidding.

<comment><USER22> So they are evil incarnate.

I had them in an extremely large mound by another house I lived in as an adult. I tossed a handle of 151 into it and lit it on fire. Payback.

<comment><USER26> > So they are evil incarnate.

No, they are just insects defending their hive.

Evil incarnate would cause torment for no reason?

<comment><USER27> You could be sitting on the ground minding your own business, not hear a hive and one will climb on you and start bitting.

Does that count for causing torment for no reason?

That is one of the many reasons why it is unusual to sit directly on the ground in Florida without something like a picnic blanket.

<comment><USER28> It's instincts, it does not have brain capacity to think "ha ha ha a human! Let's be evil and ruin their picnic".

Probably instead what happens is while crawling around it detects the surface it crawled on is actually the body of a large living entity, so going into defense mode is one possible response. Not sure if in this case it's because it may make you move to get free if stuck under you, or chase away possible threats to nest, or because possible food source?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks. The area > where the fire ants landed may be crawling with stinging ants for a while. > "But it'll have absolutely no ticks. So it'll be lovely from that > perspective," says Wild.

Sounds like on balance they might do more good than harm, then? Fire ant stings are painful, but they're nothing compared to Lyme disease.

<comment><USER30> I'm pretty scared of the Lone Star Tick bite causing me to become allergic to beef.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha- gal_allergy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Somehow I keep expecting Texans to roast the ants from their boats with flamethrowers pieced together from converted gas grills as they go about rescuing the stranded.

 _edit: lol, apparently I 'm not the only one._

<comment><USER32> Spray bottle with soapy water would probably do the trick just as easily.

<comment><USER33> Per another comment, that's a terrible possibly-fatal idea if you're careless enough to do it downstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I live just north of Houston and while checking out the flood waters, I saw just such masses, several of them in fact. If you do bump into them, or they bump into you, they will swarm you.

</comment><comment><USER35> A little bit of watered down dawn in a hand sprayer would fix that...

Coincidentally this reminds me of a really strange MacGyver episode from the 80s

</comment><comment><USER36> Could humans realistically do something similar by grabbing on to one another with arms extended out (imagine three people, A onto B and C, B onto A and C, and so forth). People have been able to do some crazy things, like these ants, under the right circumstances.

It's always so sad to see people drown. It would be neat if we could create an emergency human raft in such desperate times in a pinch.

<comment><USER37> Sadly no, the area/volume/power relationships are wrong, a bit like people flying by flapping hard enough. We also lack exoskeletal structures, so we'd be crushed.

<comment><USER36> I was thinking something more of the lines of length/width than height (in the case of the ants). Though, I feel your point applies there as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I find it interesting that during this period this invasive species is vulnerable to attack. It also makes me wonder about all of the other nominally 'land' based insects. Beetles? Other species of ants? spiders? What is the insect ecosystem impact of a huge die off like this? Does it make native species more vulnerable? give them breathing room (presumably they would have evolutionary advantages to surviving these events if they evolved in the area).

</comment><comment><USER39> I am back to ... one million ants

</comment><comment><USER40> Wasn't there some sort of classical math problem that this illustrates somehow? surface tension, math theory, etc? (my memory for this sort of thing isn't great)

</comment><comment><USER41> Perhaps I missed it, but are all the ants alive in this raft? Seems tricky to manage without some of them being submerged underwater for an extended period of time..

<comment><USER42> Some of the ants will drown. But they use the arrangement of bodies to trap air bubbles, keeping the colony as a whole afloat and alive. Its an amazing trick to have figured out.

<comment><USER43> > _to have figured out._

?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Anyone else notice how circular that mass was? Nature loves economy.

</comment><comment><USER45> So what happens to the ants on the bottom of the pile?

<comment><USER46> They couldn't survive forever, of course, but they're small enough that they actually bring down little bubbles of air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> it would be terrifying wading though the water and seeing a huge mound of fire ants ants floating nearby

<comment><USER48> There are far more terrifying things in flood waters than fire ants, starting with sewage and bacteria, moving on up to animals driven mad from drinking the water, and then on to stepping into a bloated dead corpse.

I remember the cows that went mad from drinking salt water post-Rita and thinking that I'd take a zombie attack over insane dying cows screaming while wading through the bloated corpses of the herd's dead.

At least the ants are quiet, don't stink, and are frankly more motivated to stay alive by retaining their ball than to pursue you. They're way more of a threat to floating bodies (and the people recovering or disposing of those bodies) than to living evacuees.

<comment><USER49> To be fair, as someone who walked into one of these masses during the Baytown flood of the 90's (back when the San Jacinto caught on fire, that one), I'll take screaming cows, snakes, and rabid raccoons over floating masses of fire ants. All the former can be shot or kept away with a stick, not to mention seen from a distance. Those ant rafts can sneak around between other floating detritus and catch you by surprise, and there is no defense once they catch you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Unreal

</comment><comment><USER51> That would suck for you, but would be good from a ecological perspective - eating red meat isn't our most sustainable practice.

<comment><USER52> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132666) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> colony remain 1 million ants!

<comment><USER54> you can't keep the drones!

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm sorry but how is this got to be on the first page of HN? I seen similar article on.. DailyMail. How is this related to hacking and technology? Just curious...

<comment><USER56> It doesn't, much like the Rob Vagg/Node.js internal politics story we had the other day.</comment></comment>


Technical debt - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt <comment><USER2> Technical Debt is a great metaphor, but it is just a metaphor. I've seen people try to quantify it and it just seems ridiculous. They try to take some measure of badness and then multiply it by the number of person hours it takes to correct it.

Much of what counts as badness in code never gets in the way until you have to understand or touch a particular area of code. The impact depends upon change cases.

<comment><USER3> Hi, Michael! I agree it is hard to quantify, but many things are.

A good analogy is deferred maintenance [1]. That's where you fail to maintain something like a building or a piece of machinery. There's a new and complicated federal standard for measuring it. [2]

Measuring technical debt for software is especially hard, because we don't measure much else about it. Programmers sit around coding, presumably creating a valuable asset. But it's hard to say what the value is, so we mostly don't. That makes it even harder to estimate how bad code reduces the value of that asset.

One easy proof that it's more than a fuzzy metaphor, though, is how often people declare technical bankruptcy. There's the total rewrite, our equivalent of Chapter 7. [3] And we have the partial rewrite and the cleanup around a major new version, both akin to Chapter 11. [4]

I agree that some of those rewrites are driven by new use cases just being so wildly different than the old ones that it's on longer the same system. But a lot of what I'd call technical debt would have to be cleaned up for most likely changes.

One could look at it from an "if we don't change it, the debt never counts" perspective, which makes the debt look as if it isn't real. But I have yet to see a software project that keeps running for an extended period without anybody wanting to change it, so I think that perspective is a false hypothetical.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_maintenance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_maintenance)

[2] [http://www.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_42.pdf](http://www.fasab.gov/pdffiles/handbook_sffas_42.pdf)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_7,_Title_11,_United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_7,_Title_11,_United_States_Code)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_11,_Title_11,_United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_11,_Title_11,_United_States_Code)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Technical debt isn't drastic enough to get people's attention - in particular management. I prefer to talk about the technical credit card - I find that it gets across the point that the debt needs to be addressed.

<comment><USER5> I think a better metaphor is sub-prime loans...as long as you can hand the codebase off to the next schmuck while turning a profit, everything's fine, and they do the same, and so on and so forth.

One day you lose your home.</comment></comment>


United States to Ban TikTok as Soon as Saturday - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/07/31/business/ap-us-trump-tiktok.html <comment><USER2> CNBC also says Microsoft is trying to buy them out so if that happens, then this might change?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/trump-says-he-will-ban- tikto...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/trump-says-he-will-ban-tiktok- through-executive-action-as-soon-as-saturday.html)

<comment><USER3> He said he didn't care if MS bought them or not.

Which kind of undercuts the BS national security angle but... these things aren't meant to make actual sense.

<comment><USER4> > Which kind of undercuts the BS national security angle

Disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Under what statue or authority?

</comment><comment><USER5> way to go!

China loses a 350 million market. The US loses a 1400 million market. I wonder who ends up better off.

</comment><comment><USER6> is that even legal?

<comment><USER7> Yes, to a degree, although the laws in the books have never been used against a single company like this before.

We have laws preventing all American companies from cooperating with Iranian ones, such that I as an independent Mac app developer cannot sell my app in Iran (no one can). We have similar laws regarding even the transport of encryption algorithms.

The real legal question is whether Trump can do this via an EO, or whether he'll need Congress to do another China bill.</comment></comment>


How to properly use Git branches to improve code quality - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@BuddyWorks/how-to-properly-use-git-branches-to-improve-code-quality-1a53c239d250#.ju50q89vi <comment><USER2> Also nice: PC3

[http://hintjens.com/blog:23](http://hintjens.com/blog:23)</comment>


Show HN: Reddit Watch – Web App to Download&Mux Reddit Videos (Vue.js+ffmpeg.js) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.watch/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I built an web app to download videos posted/hosted on Reddit.

It gets the direct links to the video & audio files and allows the users to mux/merge them directly in the browser.

Tech Stack: Vue.js, ffmpeg.js, Netlify

Reddit's API serves videos as a pair of Audio+Video files (also HLS or MPEG- DASH but we are going to ignore that). Making the user drag the downloaded audio and video into the browser[1] to mux them allows the app to get around the same origin policy and access the files without a server component[2].

[1] In Chrome, you can drag directly from the download bar that appears on the bottom.

[2] Making the app "serverless" was a self imposed restriction, muxing the video on the backend would probabbly make better UX.</comment>


iFixit Essential Phone Teardown - <AUTHOR> https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Essential+Phone+Teardown/96764 <comment><USER2> I'm so blind to sidebars that it took me 5 minutes to find out "why the text didn't load". I'd see the text in the view-source, switch back to the website, and scratch my head.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a phone that was the to use a modular design making access so difficult is going to put off a lot of users.

<comment><USER4> Are you confusing the Essential Phone with the Fairphone ([https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523)), which scores a neat 10/10?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What if most miners ditch Bitcoin and mine other currencies instead? - <AUTHOR> With more cryptocurrencies growing up everyday, and miners use their CPU for those currencies instead of Bitcoin. Does that make Bitcoin vulnerable to 50/50 attack, and disappear? <comment><USER2> Then the difficulty will go down to keep it at around a block per 10 minutes.</comment>


23 Resources to Learn Growth Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/4-skills-needed-work-growth/

<comment><AUTHOR> Growth.

Day in and day out.

It's what we think about.

Asking ourselves, do we have the right people? Do they have the skills? How do we show them the ropes?

Well, if you're like most teams you don't necessarily have the exact mix of people to work on Growth. Fair enough, It's not like these people are easy to come by. They have a rare mix of marketing and product know-how that isn't taught in the classroom.

Read more: [http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/4-skills-needed-work- growt...](http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/4-skills-needed-work-growth/)</comment>