Study Finds People Eat More After Mental Workouts - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/health/research/16beha.html?ref=health <comment><USER2> That working on tough problems burns calories has already been known.

<comment><USER3> I'd be curious to see a percentage-wise summary of how much of your caloric intake goes directly into fueling your brain.

<comment><USER4> I could've sworn I saw the 20% figure bandied about before.

What is more interesting is the % increase in that figure based on mental exertion. I'm being hopeless now with unreferenced hearsay, but I'm sure I read (perhaps in New Scientist?) that the actual caloric increase is minimal, but measurable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related item from a couple of weeks back: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=292607>

</comment><comment><USER6> I can agree with this article... the harder I work, the more often I visit the fridge for snacks. :)</comment>


Wanted: A Few Good Women and Men to Serve as Presidential Innovation Fellows - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/05/23/wanted-few-good-women-and-men-serve-presidential-innovation-fellows <comment><USER2> Start-up America?! I love the concept!</comment>


Ask HN: You have $1-5k – how would you bootstrap your retirement? - <AUTHOR> Good day all,
This is a hypothetical question, but I imagine a potentially useful one.
Let's say you're mid-thirties, working, with a family, house...all the usual trappings.  However, you're not managing to save much (in this case, defined as something meaningful like 30% of your salary), and even though you put money into a retirement fund (say 10-15%), you know it won't be enough to see you through retirement.
You have skills (technical or otherwise), some financial savvy (have made some investments in the past, have a budget, etc), some free time (but not much) and, for the sake of argument, somewhere between $1000 and $5000 kicking around in a bank account.
How would you take this money, and make it into a meaningful nest-egg (20-30 years from now), while (initially) maintaining the status quo on the rest of your life?
Do you invest?  Do you start a side project/business?  Do you save some more, and buy a franchise (and let someone else run it)?  Do you do something much more outlandish?
Has anybody done this?  Success stories?  Epic fails?
Very interested in reading your stories :) <comment> T-A I would ponder [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10350016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10350016) , especially Takeaway 1.

A quick calculation of the annual rate of return you would need to achieve in order to grow $5000 to say $1M in 30 years should be enough to rule out a plain vanilla investment strategy.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm going to get accused of talking my book here, but since it's the right answer: you should achieve a salary bump for yourself and invest substantially all of it net of taxes. Switching jobs is likely to be the most straightforward way to achieve this salary bump.

We're mutually financially savvy with regards to investment returns, right? $5k invested today increases your safe withdraw rate in retirement by approximately $5k per year. You need _a lot_ more. There is no investment available for purchase on the open market such that $5k transformatively changes your retirement scenario, even 30+ years out.

You need about ~$200k++ to contemplate buying most franchises, and hiring a manager for them eats most of the revenue if you're only doing it for one. (Someone who owns one Subway pays a lot of money for the privilege of cutting a lot of bread. Someone who owns ten Subways does pretty decently for themselves.)

Side projects are an option, and a few thousand bucks is (more than) enough to launch many of them. (Say, writing an e-book on a technical subject.) Getting the salary upgrade strikes me as an easier bet to make, though. If you want to go the side-project route, there exists a wealth of information on previous HN threads/etc about the mechanics of selling e-books.

Short version: start collecting emails immediately, write about the eventual topic of the book for public consumption, continue collecting email addresses, begin writing book, continue writing public content and updates to mailing list, finish writing book, launch with three price tiers at $50/$99/$249, promote to email list, make $X0k with fairly high degree of certainty, invest in retirement, rest a bit, continue growing list and watering it with regular emails, write another book on related subject, repeat.

There's a related SaaS-y method, the mechanics of which are quite similar to ebooks but the execution cycle is much, much longer in the typical case when doing it as a side project.

Modest success story: I'd be behind the curve on retirement savings but for bingo and burritos. I made an app which made bingo cards, made a very modest amount of money with it, and put a few thousand dollars into a little company which makes burritos: [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:CMG](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:CMG) (Scroll back to 2006~2008, when I was still at the day job and hence able to sock away most of my bingo earnings.)

That's very not reproducible, but was a happy accident. (I got approximately market returns from the 75% of my investments which I made in index ETFs and have generally been shellacked on every one of my for-fun investments other than Chipotle, but the Chipotle one dominates my investment performance.)

</comment><comment><USER3> If all you have is $5k sitting in a checking account, keep it in there because you're going to need it for a rainy day.</comment>


Facebook User Loses Lawsuit Over Account Termination - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/05/facebook_user_l.htm

<comment><USER2> Amended complaint: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/49805523/Young-v-Facebook-Inc- Amen...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/49805523/Young-v-Facebook-Inc-Amended- Complaint)

 _aaaagh my eyes_

The actual issue seems to be in paragraphs 69-70 - as she hit 5000 friends Facebook advised her she had to set up a 'public figure' account that would give her less access to others' personal information than a personal account would. This was apparently such an injustice that she had to jump in her car and drive to California, a journey which proved fruitless when she failed to make any personal contact with Facebook about her problem. There's also the thing about a petition to have some anti-Obama page removed, but as far as I can tell this is incidental to her complaints about the lack of ADA accommodation.

At first I thought it was a shakedown but the more I read the more confused she sounds. Poor woman, she needs a psychiatrist more than a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER3> That link is not helpful in that it does not remind people the shocking reason WHY they terminated her account. One might think she actually did something bad. What happened is that other people ganged up on her apparently when she disagreed with the audacity and hypocrisy of them praying for someone's death.

Much better summary: <http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20101116.html>

Not sure why bipolar comes into the question, what they did to her was wrong and I am not sure why the secret service did not investigate the original posts she was disagreeing with.

In the end though, people are always better off WITHOUT a facebook account.

<comment><USER2> I think there's a bit of _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ (after this, therefore because of this) going on here. When you read the complaint, the narrative description of what went on is less than coherent. the amended complaint I linked to in my other post doesn't include the emails, but the original one (below, pp 24-27) does, and her correspondence with Facebook doesn't seem to include any mention of Obama, hate pages, or indeed her personal disability problems (as opposed to the fact of her _account_ being disabled).

Unless there's something missing on the blank pages, I find it hard to blame Facebook for thinking she was anything more than a spammer or completely indifferent to the ToS.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/36038284/Young-v-Facebook- Complain...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/36038284/Young-v-Facebook-Complaint)

<comment><USER4> You missed an opportunity there, for:

"her personal disability problems (as opposed to her account's)"</comment></comment></comment>


It Is Not Flat Design. It's Just Proper Design - <AUTHOR> http://slid.es/andyrutledge/its-not-flat-design <comment><USER2> Every 2 years, a new design trend emerges and a bunch of hipster know-it-alls pop up from the woodwork espousing how the new trend was right all along, and what were all you incorrect designers thinking for the last 50,000 years.

This deck is interesting and mostly a good way to look at many information presentation situations, but it is another instance of the recurring theme of annoying absolute statements from self-important designers.

There is bad design, there is good design, there is no "proper" design, and any designer who claims so needs to check their ego at the door before you hire them. Design and style evolve, and much of it involves fashion, fad, style, and preference. These elements evolve over time, vary between situations, companies, and products, and are part of the character of the statement design makes.

This presentation would be considered boring in some situations, depressing at others, ultrachic in others.

Not everyone wants to sit on purple glowing cubes with a fernet milkshake under mood lighting in tight pants. Some people enjoy sitting on saddles, twirling their mustaches, and line-dancing the cowshit off their boots.

<comment><USER3> Well said. GeoCities design was "proper" a few years back, maybe it will resurrect again!

<comment><USER4> GeoCities pages were never proper design. We made fun of it then just as we do now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Really?_ This hipster crap again?

Flat design is just design. It's a type of design like anything else; there's nothing "proper" about it. It's not "proper" when people screw it up because they don't include sufficient visual interface cues which result in a drastic drop in usability (I'm looking at you, Microsoft). It's just design. People can execute it horribly, and other people, like, say, Google, can execute it remarkably well.

What I find is that design is far too polarizing. There's no middle ground between skeuomorphic, three-dimensional, and flat interfaces. Why can't we have something like OS X 10.6, where there were elements of _all_ design trends, and the result was a clean and very usable interface? Why did they have to fuck it up with 10.7 and the awful skeuomorphism? Why can't we have drop shadows? What is so "unproper" about them? Why can't we have gradients? Is it "unproper" to have those too?

This conversation has gone on long enough, and I'm tired of it. Flat design is just _design_.

End of story.

<comment><USER6> there don't have to be a middle ground.

remember some posts few days ago about complaining that we are going back to 1999?

well, that's because good designers try to accomplish a goal, they find a way to make a crack in their way and everybody follows. now it's a trend, people with little analytic thought say "yes, this is the correct way of doing things" and exploit the new ideas but without thinking too much about it. this results in flood of poor designs of the current trend that don't serve any goal. later, some new technology emerges, some clever designer find even better way to accomplish a goal and now we have another trend emergeing and all the zombies follow until erode it, miss use the techniques and ideas.

the cycle continues all the time. sometimes a new technology or platform makes possible to take an old idea even further in solving a problem. some clever designer exploits it and now we have a retro. of course, the mass degrades it again:)

no middle ground exist, it's just cycles of progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bullshit. Flat design is a subjective fad just like skeumorphic design.

More amusingly, _this very presentation_ has a (subtle) background gradient, text shadow, a gratuitous fading animation between different background colors for different sections, and a 3D flip animation when you hover over a link, none of which are exactly hallmarks of "flat design".

<comment><USER8> That's what slid.es gives you out of the box.

<comment><USER9> Maybe the author shouldn't use slid.es then, since it doesn't agree with his presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a feeling a few years from now people are going to be writing stuff like: "Stop designing with a color palette that is appropriate for Fisher- Price. I am not a toddler, and I am sick of your preschool themed apps."

<comment><USER11> This is already happening, I'd say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was just thinking to myself how annoying the typography in this presentation is. Line height changes all over the place and is generally vertically cramped and annoying. The colors he chooses are chosen as if to be actively unpleasant (dark gray on blue?).

I'm not unsympathetic to everything in his presentation, but the broadside of self-importance coupled with the bad design decisions in the document is pretty lame.

<comment><USER13> Right. The very opening content slide title?

      "Good content requires little embell-
      ishment."

Line break his. Ew. And he's going to chastise other people design aesthetic?

<comment><USER14> > _Line break his. Ew. And he's going to chastise other people design > aesthetic?_

I wish people thought more before making comments like this.

First, there's a slideshow service being used. Most aspects of the slideshow come from the service's engine, not from the guy who did the presentation.

Second, there's no "line-break", much less it is "his". Get a larger monitor/device or enlarge the browser window. If you're seeing one, it's a hyphenation added by the slideshow service's CSS for widths under some size. Definitely not there for everybody, and definitely not "his".

<comment><USER15> I try to stay out of Design-related posts on HN, especially ones that mention 'Flat' or 'Skeuomorphic'. Everyone suddenly turns into Dieter Rams mixed with Jonny Ive.

Although I don't love/hate this post either way, the comments in here for the most part are just awful, classic HN middlebrow dismissal at its best mixed with a spattering of ad hominem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry -- while content in this slide deck is mostly correct, the title and conclusion are _all wrong_.

What the content is describing is _good_ design, particularly:

\- _The more variations in embellishment contrast you employ, the weaker the content becomes and more complex the document becomes._

\- _Embellishing content... to enhance context, to enhance contrast, to enhance clarity_

However, the criticisms of "flat design" generally run along the lines of not providing enough affordance (is that a label or a button?) and not providing enough contrast/clarity (making all the elements on the page look the same, leading to confusion and lack of hierarchy, instead of sufficiently differentiating them through the use of color, depth, shadows, etc.).

The author then says that "visual interest" is an appropriate thing, but then says to use flat iPhone/iPad outlines, instead of photorealistic ones. Well, generally the photorealistic outline is going to look nicer, as long as your page isn't already too busy. It's a poorly chosen example.

The author is trying to define away "flat design" as "good design", but that simply isn't the case. Flat design is a very specific design trend that is _not_ the same as good design -- it can be used well, or used badly. Good design is good design period, and flat design can sometimes be very bad design.

<comment><USER17> Good point. The flatness of the design is irrelevant. The clarity of the communication is paramount. I agree that the OP may be favouring that particular design trend in his examples a little too specifically which is distracting from his (I think, good) message. Funny that he's championing "good content" but confuses his argument that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Graphic embellishment should be as simple as possible without damage to its own clarity, contrast or textural purpose. Always try simplest first.

On the left, I see two luggage tags. On the right, an iPhone and an iPad.

Making your audience guess what your "deconstructed" visuals are actually supposed to be is not good -- it's mystery meat design.

Speaking of meat, don't get me started on the hamburger icon.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can cope with the amount of cliches and common places this presentation has, but my god, how can you suck at typography so much and speak about "good" and "bad" design.

<comment><USER20> The leading stood out so bad. More line-height needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _If the content cannot do its job free from embellishment then it is bad content and/or employs bad hierarchy or contrast._

That is like saying if a product can't sell itself without marketing, then it is a bad product. Such a claim assumes there is some universal definition of 'bad' and that if embellishment is needed to bring attention to an element, that its content must be bad.

If you are going to make the above claim, you might as well make a case for living in a black and white world where the colors and design are mostly used to embellish otherwise bad things.

<comment><USER22> The quote is the axiom of minimalism (one could say "dogma" by the way it is pushed on others): decoration is WRONG.

Which seems to me awkward at the very least. Just read Feynman's lectures. He does not simply share content. He embellishes it. Or Knuth's books.

Content is not enough for human beings.

I prefer the Renaissance to modern architecture. It just feels more human.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Checkout his homepage it's full of embellishment, so he doesn't believe in what he is saying, it's just currently the trendy thing to say and hasn't had time to redesign his homepage to fit in what he's is preaching.

<comment><USER17> You're right. I checked out his homepage and it seemed like the opposite of what he was saying in his post (irony). But I think he made some good points nonetheless. Not necessarily that "flat design" is good design, but that Design's goal should be to enhance the communication of the content and not distract from it.

<comment><USER23> Agreed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would Rutledge be less interesting a person if he shaved off his facial embellishments?

Does his substantial beard take away, or add to his persona?

I wonder how he would fare if he were given the chance to design the website for the next Halo game.

<comment><USER24> > I wonder how he would fare if he were given the chance to design the website > for the next Halo game.

Very well put. The very idea that there could be a "proper" design is just patently false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> And yet, this is the most wordy Slide deck about visual design I've ever seen.

Seems the simplest way to convey the information would've been graphically.

<comment><USER26> ...or maybe a blog post?

Putting too much text in a slide presentation is a sure-fire way to confuse your audience. Are you paying attention to the speaker, or reading the slides?

This should have just been an article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Worst part of that: "content design."

I guess so we don't mistake it for, say, fashion design?

Anyway, it'd be interesting to find out just how far back illustrations for text goes. Who was the first guy to propose adding "illumination" to manuscripts? And then how did that begin a pile-on to the point where the "illumination" was crass ornamentation to impress the higher-ups instead of being actually functional?

</comment><comment><USER28> If you are talking about magazine pages then I totally agree, flat is preferred. But magazine pages are not interactive. Apps are interactive. Users need visual clues as to what they can manipulate and what they can't. This is where flat design fails. Flat design does not provide adequate perceived affordances.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can't we all just get along? There has to be a time and a place for skeumorphism (perhaps A/V controls) and flat design (an interface to an ATM).

</comment><comment><USER30> Most "content" sucks. Most designs are a kind of content in themselves... and suck. That's why we have these awesome design fads.

</comment><comment><USER31> Terminal. Vim.

I doubt that we need to intellectualize this much. Otto Neurath and the Logical Positivists pretty much planned this. Design is now in the age of Visual Statistics: <http://www.gerdarntz.org/content/gerd-arntz> \-- or from another perspective, "Content is King."

Flickr and Kippt are now the Same Thing: <http://imgur.com/iar7Bgn,t8cnZA3,2lXFz4a>

Even that URL has their design suggested in its syntax. Imgur too. Kippt arguably has better engineering talent.

<comment><USER30> The split between content and design is false. It just is. Typographers sometimes need to rewrite copy (or request one) to fit. Photos need to be cropped or scaled, or new ones chosen. Some kinds of writing or art really demand a specific color scheme, or even a specific layout, to have a desired effect.

<comment><USER31> I'm inclined to agree that most, if not all, binaries are false, and like so I thought I was saying that "Content is King" is another way of saying, but from a different general perspective, "Design is Visual Statistics"; or at least this is my assertion. As unclear as it may be, I'm not sure it says that content and design have a split between them. At the same time, it's not exactly clear to me that you are not attacking a strawman.

\- Content can be derivable, re-formatted, re-producible, summarized, re- usable.

\- Design can be derivable, re-formattable, re-producible, summarizable, re- usable. (Skeumorphs are obviously noise and prevent us from seeing the inherent content-properties of design itself: like the concept of the "module" as a form of content developers find uniquely interesting. And such aesthetic gestures distract us from the content. Grid design, as one approach, entails less noise; however, incurs the problematic of suffocating content in terms of priority. Flat design designates that the design adapt to the content as a first principle, in some fashion. Whatever the case we are in the age where design is visual statistics. Over time, our designs are more indicative of the way our cognitive systems structure the world rather than the way we project our aesthetic values.)

In fact, I am saying that design and content are the same thing, and not that they are different things...

Only that which is king is worthy of summarization (the sign).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The terminal window seems to abide by the principles quite well. I know Im looking forward to it.

<comment><USER33> Interesting point. Windows 3.1 had a fairly flat design too.

<http://toastytech.com/guis/win31default.png>

Simplicity is more important than flat design. Can your interface be used by a five year old child or an eighty year old grandparent without instruction? Terminal does not pass that test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Stopped reading after:

*That's an important asterisk! More on this in a moment.

Quality content. Or "good content" like the author calls it.

</comment><comment><USER35> flat design === big fad that everybody hate already.

<comment><USER36> i think people are just tired of talking about it because it's boring and people are really angry and upset for some incomprehensible reason</comment></comment>


Cow Dung, Garlic and a Prayer: The Fight Against Phony Cures for Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/cow-dung-garlic-and-a-prayer-the-fight-against-phony-cures-for-coronavirus-11586257200 <comment><USER2> Antivaxer infection is spreading...</comment>


Show HN: Forget all your passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/31fo75/passparyou_forget_all_your_passwords/

<comment><USER2> So, there's nothing except a subscription page? I'd love to comment on the concept, but I couldn't find anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> We added a disqus section. Just click on "Leave a comment" on the top!

<comment><USER2> Commenting itself wasn't the issue. I need a whitepaper or implementation that I can review to write anything useful.</comment></comment></comment>


The Nigerian Teenagers Who Built Crocodile Browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.woodencomputer.net/posts/2015/6/25/the-nigerian-teenagers-who-built-crocodile-browser <comment><USER2> To Osine and Anesi, if you read this:

1) Awesome job, keep going!

2) You'll find some naysayers, nitpickers and other critics here: Your heroes, including Gates, Zuckerberg, and Musk, all had to deal with them too, before they were legends (and still do to some extent). You can't avoid them; they are drawn to risk-taking and [EDIT: innovation] like ants to a picnic. Just ignore them, their criticisms are just wind in your face as you move forward. They wish their projects made the front page of Hacker News!

3) We'd love to hear from you; feel free to leave a comment!

<comment><USER3> Thanks

<comment><USER2> Welcome! Out of curiousity, why did you choose to make a web browser (and not something else)? It's a great project, just curious what motivated your choice.

<comment><USER3> You have made a few games in the past, and creating a browser has always seemed cool to me. So when the Anesi needed a browser to work on his phone, I took it as an opportunity to do something that seemed cool to me.

<comment><USER4> Did you write the rendering engine and the Javascript engine yourselves?

<comment><USER3> No, we worked on an already existing one. We are currently in the process of building one

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this might be a violation of the GPL

More discussion here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...](https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_old_nigerian_brothers_built_mobile_web/)

<comment><USER3> It is not a violation of GPL because we referenced tint browser in the about section of the app.

<comment><USER6> He is right. If you modify and distribute GPL code, whatever changes you made have to be distributed with it in source code form. The BSD licensed code doesn't have this restriction, which is why it's used in place of GPL for those not wanting to redistribute their source. Maybe use that in the future for such things.

For now, if you're app forks GPL code, you have to release the source, pull it, or hope nobody cares. Good to start noticing these little, but important, things early to develop good habits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> clark-kent The interview is cool, and even inspirational. They needed a faster browser for slower networks, so they did the research, found an appropriate rendering engine and built it. They solved their own unique problem and built a better browser for Nigerian networks.

Osine and Anesi, you guys can ping me, if there's anyway I can help.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did they write their own rendering engine and everything? If so, that would be _very_ impressive indeed. The Web really needs more diversity in browsers, for a wide variety of reasons.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any detailed information about it; Google the name and almost all the pages are about how amazingly awesome its creators are, and not the product itself... potential users really want to know about what makes this better than existing browsers.

<comment><USER8> In the link there is interview where they explained.

No they did not build a Browser from Scratch. They wrote a UI for Default webkit engine that comes with Android.

Is it a technical accomplishment? Not by any means for a professional. But it is awesome that these kids figured how to do this and mostly appear to be self learners.

Edit: Reddit Thread here talks about using a GPL Browser (built over Webkit engine that comes with Android). [https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_ol...](https://www.reddit.com/r/coding/comments/38vbme/13_15_yrs_old_nigerian_brothers_built_mobile_web/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> THIS is awesome! Great to see some positive news of talent coming from NIgeria. <as somebody who moved from SF to Nigeria>

</comment><comment><USER10> So did they build the Rendering Engine, JavaScript Engine, Network Interface etc. stuff from scratch? If so I'm impressed. I also wonder how it's supposed work better on bad connections.

</comment><comment><USER6> Keep at it! You're off to a great start. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is impressive. As a player in the Nigerian tech market, it is good to see budding local talents

</comment><comment><USER12> Seriously? Have you seen their website? [http://www.bludoors.com/](http://www.bludoors.com/)

<comment><USER13> IMO it's no worse than yours.

<comment><USER7> At least his site is viewable without JavaScript.

<comment><USER6> That much I'll go with. I have NoScript. I click on a Nigerian site and see nothing but a whole list of scripts? I'll pass...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Personal todo list solution to replace Google Tasks? - <AUTHOR> I've been using Google Tasks for a number of years now and I'm a bit tired of it's simplicity and slow speed. I've been using Asana at work and now I'm inspired to find something similar but just for me.<p>I'm looking for a task list with:<p>* Fast mobile app and web interface. Speed is of the essence. I want to be out and about and realize I need something, whip out my phone, and add it in a matter of seconds.<p>* Ability to organize tasks by priority (via drag and drop, etc), if drag and drop works on the phone, that's a plus<p>*Ability to mark/organize tasks for "get done today" "tomorrow" "sometime this week", etc. <comment><USER2> Have you tried Google Keep? It solves all purposes you mentioned.</comment>


Components (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/27984551477/components

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, all. I've taken the "submit" function of HN to get to the discussion about a URL.

Surely this has been on HN before?</comment>


Ask HN: Now that Joel and Yegge have quit blogging, who are you reading? - <AUTHOR>

Ask HN: Now that Joel and Yegge have quit blogging, who is your favorite active blogger? <comment><USER2> some stuff i always did as i never really read either one of them. i'm not interested in the opinions of celebrities in the non-tech world and i'm not interested in the tech world.

from time to time i've read a joel or yegge or pg post but i don't religiously seek them out.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159352></comment>


CDC, Army, Governors Disagree on Ebola Policies - <AUTHOR> http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2014/10/cdc-army-governors-disagree-ebola-policies

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm quite surprised that there has been so little discussion of quarantine policy on HN, when there are so many discussions of security policy in regards to terrorism and air travel. Security expert Bruce Schneier has literally only had two words to say about the subject: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/the_ineffecti...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/the_ineffective_2.html)</comment>


Jimmy Wales Wants Me Dead (The Neutrality Of This Article Is Disputed) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/21/marked-for-deletion/

<comment><USER2> Except that the best political opinion blogging could never possibly be published on newspaper-replacing websites — to an anything but the narrowest audience they'd be completely indigestible.

Take my favorite Jacobite Neo-Cameralist: <http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/> — not only is his writing TL;DR by a few orders of magnitude, his ideas are so legitimately politically-incorrect (not in the 90s movement-conservative sense (he's anti-democracy!)) that he'd be literally pilloried as a public figure.

<comment><USER3> Someone should tell Moldbug that the first thing the fascists do when they get into power is lop off the heads of the intellectuals. He prides himself on his historical analysis so he should research that. Maybe he is delusional enough to think that _he_ is the "great man" (Thomas Carlyle) that will run the world, so he is safe. MM _should_ be pilloried. Read his blog... don't be taken in by the rhetoric, long winded as it is.

<comment><USER4> [This is really way off topic, I'll keep it short]

His writings have plenty of holes and inconsistencies, but "non-democrat = fascist" is not one. I'd suggest one writer he doesn't go back far enough to reach: Polybius, in book 6 of his Histories, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis> .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Maureen Dowd's opinion pieces are so powerful because they are packed with insight and fact, much of which stems from the access she enjoys as an internationally recognised columnist."

In what parallel universe does this occur?

</comment><comment><USER6> Starting off with paragraphs like this...

 _Some weeks though, it's even easier than that. Someone will say something so breathtakingly wrong – so tracheotomy-cravingly moronic – that I don't need to explain anything. Simply quoting their words back at them is sufficient to make the point._

...does not bode well for the rest of the article.

On the plus side I suppose he showed us that there's at least one blogger out there who's outclassed by the New York Times.

</comment><comment><USER7>
      The best of the political bloggers are easily the equal of
      the opinion columnists at the New York Times.

As the article rightly argues, this is probably false. Good writing is an art that requires lots of practice. Newspaper columnists have often set out to be journalists/writers/columnists and have practiced writing. Bloggers, even the best opinion bloggers, are usually people that have different skills and who happen to be writing about those skills. Their writing is usually inferior, although practice makes perfect and the blogging itself may contribute to their ability to write over time.</comment>


Why I Hate Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://jlongster.com/blog/2010/03/15/why-i-hate-scheme/

<comment><USER2> Here's a cool thing you can do in Scheme if you feel depressed that nothing is written in Scheme:

<http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/>

(P.S. I love Scheme and did everyday things in Scheme when I had the opportunity to for a while. But right now I'm really enjoying Clojure and I think that Clojure might replace Scheme for me, because of Java libraries, and because of the really concise, consistent, and pleasant syntax, especially for maps and functions.)

</comment><comment><USER3> So: PLT Scheme is a great system with great FFI and a lot of really good libraries. It's flexible and has a very fast interpreter—approaching webkit's interpreter, even!

But: _"Objective-C is a great example of what is going on. Obj-C is a cool language that implements fancy message passing, but it has ugly syntax and doesn't really offer anything new to the average programmer (Python works just fine without message passing, doesn't it?)."_

What I can't stand is people who don't really understand their underlying languages start to talk about them. I mean, are you kidding me jlongster? Objective-C's system is bad but Python's system is okay? Why not say you love the taste of chocolate but hate the taste of cocoa? They're performing the same function for the runtime!

I want to like Python, but its community of people who just refuse to understand how other languages relate to their favorite language really frustrates me. I'm not sure I can even count how many times a pythonista has challenged me, "What do you mean Python doesn't have real lambdas? _You don't even know Python!_" Given how important a community is to a language (see also: common lisp), it's difficult to overlook stuff like this.

<comment><USER4> I'm not really sure what you're talking about; his whole point referring to Objective-C was that the reason it's popular isn't because of any of its particular language features (i.e. "other languages are equally powerful"), it's popular because Apple took it and built a whole bunch of great libraries with it for its computers so that, if you want to program applications on a Mac, and you want to use things like Core animation and all of that, you're probably going to end up using Objective-C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've worked with Scheme quite a bit and I've concluded that it's an academic language, not a business language. It definitely lacks a large, vibrant community with mature libraries. There is also too much variation among the various flavors of Scheme which fragments the community. It also lacks good language constructs for managing large software projects (namespaces and such). You have to have a Scheme-enlightened text editor in order to be productive. Despite what people say, it's not as pure and minimal as you'd think (I think there may be five different variations of let).

Instead of pouring a lot of effort into Scheme, let it stay an academic language. It's fine for learning about functional programming.

I moved from Scheme to Ruby and haven't missed Scheme. Sure, Scheme macros are very powerful, but I found that the DSLs that you can create in Ruby are adequate. Ruby also has the advantage of being a multiparadigm programming language.

<comment><USER6> I know people tend to say this as a response to everything around here, but I think it's genuinely a good response to this:

You should try Clojure. It's cleaner than Scheme except for the pains that come along with the JVM, but those redeem themselves by giving you access to zillions of libraries (which was your other complaint). And it has a good community and an awesome benevolent dictator.

<comment><USER5> > You should try Clojure.

Too late; I'm in the Ruby community and things are just fine here. :) But thanks for mentioning Clojure; I didn't realize its syntax was so Scheme-like. That's news to me. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not that it invalidates the article's points, but there's a certain degree of irony in writing a blog article about how no one uses Scheme and then posting it on a Scheme-powered website. :)

<comment><USER8> I'm a self-taught programmer and artist working mostly in Java. I started to learn Scheme recently and it's just perfect - i'm so happy with it and it bring so much of joy. But the question of this post really rings in my head all the time - i will learn Scheme, i will learn functional programming, i will improve my skills and what then? It's obvious joy and programming in Java is easier now, but still... I spent days googling, asking and clusting the Internet looking for some real-world mature software written in Scheme. Not much in fact. And the discussion below shows that it is a problem, as there are no examples of real-world impementations. PLT is great and Clojure looks brilliant, but show me some software written in Scheme or Clojure, so i know. In the discussion you all just say that Clojure is great, but tell me what company, what business use it?! And tell me, where LISP is used nowadays as i'm concerning moving to LISP, if there is a real-world use of it somewhere (Emacs, Gimp and Audacity is all i know!).

<comment><USER7> There are a few typical examples that are given whenever this question comes up:

\- ITA Software does airline scheduling in Lisp.

\- Naughty Dog Software created a Lisp-derived scripting language for several of its games, including Crash Bandicoot. After they were acquired by Sony, their underlying technology was rewritten in more mainstream languages.

\- Paul Graham built ViaWeb in Lisp. (also rewritten after acquisition)

\- AutoCAD uses Lisp as its scripting language, and several other CAD providers have followed suit.

But you are right: it isn't particularly popular. To use it commercially, you either need to be working alone, or you need to stumble into one of the few pockets of industry where it is used -- usually established by someone working alone. :)

Here's an old-ish discussion on the subject:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75126>

Clojure is probably too new to find many companies using it. They do have a jobs page, though: <http://clojure.org/Jobs>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know how you feel James. I've been bashing away with Gambit for the last 18 months and whilst it's a great Scheme there's just too much missing. I wanted to build web apps, first there was no CGI library - luckily Black Hole came along, then there was no database library so I ended up writing a pure Scheme MySQL library because you couldn't call out to C without stopping all of your Gambit threads.

As a bare minimum, it needs proper modules, it needs to be properly multithreaded and it needs more than about 6 people on the planet writing libraries for it.

I've since switched to Haskell which has proper modules, proper multithreading and lots of libraries and may even be a better language than Scheme - if I could only understand what a monad is :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been hacking Arc for a while now and we've been using calls to 'language servers' to deal with the poor library support. Basically, we wrap calls to Perl or Python up and send it via http to a local server that does nothing but eval the code and respond. That's gone a long way toward fixing the library problems (although it makes me, at least, less likely to develop actual Arc libraries since I can just wrap a call to Perl much more quickly). It's a relatively unique solution to the problem, I think.

Unfortunately, the language is really fucking slow. I wish I had an interpreter written in C.

<comment><USER6> If you're doing method calls over HTTP+eval, then I'm very surprised _Arc's_ speed is the choke point in your application.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, if it's on the local box and not actually going over a network, like the poster implied, I don't think it would be so bad; assuming it's just a call to do some oddball library thing here and there, and not in the computationally intensive portions.

<comment><USER6> Still. You're likely to incur at least a few milliseconds of latency on the HTTP call, and most "eval" implementations I've worked with are prohibitively slow. I haven't benchmarked other languages, but I was using it in a Groovy app until I realized _each_ call to eval was taking over 100ms. Even granting that Groovy is a dog, parsing from a string is non-trivial.

At that point I'd ask myself whether it was worth the trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've actually used scheme quite heavily in the past. (professionally). Simplicity + power = win!

Could you give me some examples of what you mean? Are you talking about something like perl's cpan?

<comment><USER12> > Are you talking about something like perl's cpan?

 _Everyone_ wishes their language could have something analogous to the CPAN. But before you can have that you need some standardization and community agreement in place regarding how modules are to work and be packaged up.

<comment><USER11> Well... hopefully R6 will pull things together a bit. Personally I'm not a real fan of cpan. The qualilty is sort of hit and miss.

I like python's approach better. The standard library is robust and broad enough to handle most things.

<comment><USER12> > Well... hopefully R6 will pull things together a bit.

Do you mean "R7"? Because R6 seems to have actually done the opposite.

> Personally I'm not a real fan of cpan. The qualilty is sort of hit and miss.

The hit-or-miss quality is a necessary "evil" for having something as good as the CPAN. Yes, it's got a lot of crap, but there are a _lot_ of gems that save many people a lot of work.

> I like python's approach better. The standard library is robust and broad > enough to handle most things.

It has been said that the Python standard lib is where modules go to die. Guido himself has implied [^1] that modules in the std lib already have one foot in the grave.

[^1]: [http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/the-fate-of- distu...](http://tarekziade.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/the-fate-of-distutils- pycon-summit-packaging-sprint-detailed-report/)

The future of successful general purpose languages is to have a small core with a vibrant external "CPAN". There just aren't enough core developers to maintain a large high-quality batteries-included standard library of modules. Much better is a dedicated loosely-coupled mostly active community of maintainers -- maintaining the bits that they are personally interested in (which is exactly what the CPAN has).

<comment><USER11> ok, I've got to give you that one. So maybe something like boost?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Be more specific. What exactly would you have had in, say, Python, that you didn't get in Scheme? What wheels did you reinvent?</comment>


Squink Lets You Print a Circuit Board for the Price of a Cup of Coffee - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/14/squink-lets-you-print-a-circuit-board-for-the-price-of-a-cup-of-coffee/

<comment><USER2> I really don't want to be negative, but I also really don't see the point.

Cheaply and quickly producing basic single-sided PCBs really isn't hard. Photochemical etching can be done with $100 worth of equipment, a couple of feet of bench space and a little practice. Using a $3500 machine to produce poorer quality boards doesn't make much sense to me. Likewise, the pick & place functionality just isn't very useful in producing prototypes - the setup time will be equal to or greater than placing the components by hand with tweezers.

There are a swathe of recent projects based on conductive ink, but I don't think that they are solving a real problem. I use PCB fabrication services because I need soldermask and through-hole plating, not because photoetch is particularly inconvenient. Someone downthread discusses the problem of printing resolution and fine-pitch parts, but that's really a secondary issue. Without soldermask, it is very difficult to get good joints without bridging on fine-pitch ICs; Without plated vias, it is extremely difficult to route traces for even a relatively simple SMD IC, let alone a BGA.

The boards shown in their publicity materials are trivial and would be easily prototyped using veroboard. I believe that represents the limit of their technology. I can just about see a niche for their product in education, but even that is quite tenuous; The throughput of this machine is likely to be a major bottleneck in a classroom setting versus etching 30 boards on the same panel. I learned to etch PCBs in secondary school, and the process is now much cleaner and safer thanks to modern etchants. Three bubble tanks and a UV box cost considerably less than $3500 and are far more reliable than any CNC machine.

If photochemical etching isn't an option for some reason, you can buy a basic CNC router for far less than $3500, which can produce good basic PCBs while also taking on a vast range of other tasks.

Frankly, the whole effort smacks of "3D printing" hype. There seems to be a generation of designers who have a nozzle-shaped hammer and see everything as an additively-manufactured nail. There are some compelling applications for additive manufacturing, but it is by no means a silver bullet.

<comment><USER3> I can't speak for this specific solution, but veroboard drives me (personally) bonkers and it's not enough of a hobby for me to justify investing in photochemical etchers. Being able to design a project on a computer, and get a PCB for a few dollars, would be great. I'd definitely play around with electronics projects a lot more if I could do more prototyping on a computer.

The other thing that would be great is something like a Shapeways for PCBs. People could upload their own projects, then they print the PCB for you (and even ship you a bag of components), for you to build yourself.

<comment><USER2> >The other thing that would be great is something like a Shapeways for PCBs.

The service already exists. Numerous companies will produce small quantities (>5) of a PCB design from a Gerber file at a reasonable price and many will also do assembly. Prices vary depending on quantity and lead time; Amongst the cheapest are Itead, who offer ten 5x5cm PCBs (two-layer, with soldermask and silkscreen) for $14 shipped.

The main reason to etch your own boards is lead time, as it can take a week or two (plus shipping from China). European and American PCB houses can turn around boards in as little as 24 hours, but at much greater cost.

[http://imall.iteadstudio.com/open-pcb/pcb- prototyping.html](http://imall.iteadstudio.com/open-pcb/pcb-prototyping.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" The circuit board is designed through a web-based portal usable only with Squink plugged in."_

Whoa there, cowboy. Its a kickstarter that not only may or may not produce a working machine, but even if it does, I have to depend on their perpetual existence just to use said machine? I... have trust issues.

<comment><USER5> Can anyone confirm whether this is a portal 'in the cloud' or if it's simply a web server hosted on the Squink itself?

Very cool project, I wonder if future iterations by competitors will drive the cost down.

<comment><USER6> Squink has a built-in web server. The goal is to ultimately also connect it to a portal in the cloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Home-printed (not etched) PCBs? This is awesome. Sure, the traces look thick as hell and you're obviously limited to 1-2 layers, but it's what progress looks like.

Just as the barrier for entry has come down for software -- in the form of better tools, frameworks, and languages -- so too is it coming down for hardware in the form of easier, more accessible and better-quality prototyping. The specialist in me worries (occasionally), but what a wonderful moment of innovation we live in..

</comment><comment><USER8> This is way more interesting than the title makes it sound. From the title, I expected something that just made a PCB, and then you would have to place the components on it and attach them.

What they are proposing will make the PCB, then put conductive glue at the places where the component leads are supposed to attach, and then pick the components from a tray, rotate and aline them, and place them on the glue.

</comment><comment><USER9> There was a Kickstarter that did exactly this a while back:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597902824/agic- print-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597902824/agic-print- printing-circuit-boards-with-home-print)

I guess they're supposed to start shipping in a couple weeks (Aug 1).

<comment><USER10> Nice, I like that it uses commodity printer hardware - inkjets have a really high resolution nowadays, and they claim that 0.4 mm BGAs still work, which is usually out of reach for the typical DYer and prototype services like OSH Park. Also, they specify the resistance that can be achieved, something I sorely missed from this Kickstarter.

Only downside is that the ink price seems quite high - 100$ for a bottle that can print 50-100 sheets.

Also, manual pick & place is probably messy.

Still, at $2,499 early birg price, Squink is only affordable for hacker spaces and the like, while the AgIC Print DIY kit sells for $299. Exciting times!

<comment><USER9> > Exciting times!

Agreed!

Yeah, the Squink Kickstarter is sorely lacking in information. They don't give trace width and spacing specs, etc.

I also like that AgIC uses off the shelf printer hardware and can manage high resolution. However, I'm skeptical you can do much more than OSHPark with 0.4mm BGAs. The challenge with OSHPark design rules is the breakout, and here you have one (maybe two?) layers, so again, you can't manage much of a ball grid.

Although these projects are exciting, I can't seem them replacing cheap PCB fabs + reflow oven for my own prototyping projects. So then question becomes, how do you take the next step? Maybe you can print on FR-4 or pre-preg, use optical alignment to handle registration and glue multiple layers together with conductive glue to achieve multi-layer boards. For ground planes, maybe you choose some layers pre-clad with copper. I'm not sure what to do about vias. You could think about using layers with a selection of various pre-made vias, but again, it is hard to see how that would work with large BGAs. So you have to include a drill and find some way to plug/fill the vias.

<comment><USER10> I agree, multi-layer gluing and pre-made ground planes would probably work. The big issue is how to connect the layers, I don't see how to do vias either.

Maybe there will be a symbiosis of this and 3d printer, where the single pcb layers will be printed, using conductive material and non-conductive filler.

But however this is going to turn out, we are witnessing the birth of home electronics manufacturing. This will be significant, at least as much as the availability of high-quality consumer paper printers in the 80s/90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This isn't just a PCB printer it also does pick and place and solders component with conductive glue! It's essentially an entire SMT assembly line on your desktop. Wow, this is cool.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lots of issues will need to be worked out for this to be viable. 4 layers minimum (ground, power, 2 routing planes). High pitch TSOP and BGA need tight pitches and traces. The width of traces and spacing and dielectric material need tight tolerances for impedance control for signal integrity.

But they are not asking for much of an investment so it may be worthwhile to try it out.

<comment><USER13> That's assuming a level of complexity this doesn't appear to be shooting for. Sure, you probably couldn't build an RPi or BBB with this guy, but it seems that they're targeting a lower end shop trying to spin a few iterations of a low-cost IoT device before sending it out to a fab house. The level of complexity needed for that hardware isn't huge.

<comment><USER14> I could also see e.g. the guys handbuilding guitar effects going nuts over something like this.

<comment><USER13> Yes! That would be great. So much more consistent than handsolder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> o0-0o Squink is on Kickstarter:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/botfactory/squink- the-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/botfactory/squink-the-personal- electronic-circuit-factory)

</comment><comment><USER15> Something to think about is a miniboard (a possibly trademarked cheap small board supplier of great reliability, fast speed, and excellent reputation) sells boards for $17 each shipped the next business day, so printing 250 boards yourself costs 3500 + 250*2= $4000 vs $4250 for professionally made boards. Hmm I donno.

250 boards is a lot of work. I don't think "most" hobbyists are into the hobby that long. For the sake of argument, we'll assume I've ordered that many PCBs as a hobbyist since 1980. How many computers from 1980 are still supported with software updates etc? I could eventually make 250 PCBs in a couple decades, but whats the realistic "clock time" lifespan of this thing?

Note that if you're going into serious production rather than the prototype market, you can get a hundred small boards much cheaper than $17 a piece.

Another interesting thing to think about is this is a printer... you need a substrate. First thing I thought of it using polished flat marble tiles from home depot. So there are other costs.

Also its an ink emitter. Much like ink jet printers which could theoretically print at 5 cents per page IF you use the ink up within 3 months of opening, reality is you try to print a report, realize your cartridge is dead / dried out, install a new $50 cartridge, print your report, and repeat six months later. So ink jets actually cost like $10 per page as a real world on the ground cost.

Given the above, its quite possible you could pay $50 for a cartridge and a board every six months in a couple hours, plus $3500 capital cost, or pay maybe $40 for a pro shop to overnight airmail a prototype PCB to you every six months.

The TLDR is the financials only work over an extremely narrow range of production rates under very peculiar requirements.

Its interesting in the marketplace there are no serious efforts at a full kit for traditional hands on mfgr. There are numerous partial kits that don't quite contain everything.

You need a B/W laser printer that is stably calibrated to precise dimensions thats really good at transparencies, a box of transparencies, whatever gear you use to verify calibration (A machinists $5 class 1-2-3 block and some software?). A UV box (basically a giant eprom eraser). Some photo trays and etchants and other chemicals.

Some "maker" cultural groups have an intense aversion to hands on, however weird that sounds, and will pay anything or put up with anything, to avoid using their hands, and that's probably the ideal customer for this product given that you can get better results cheaper and faster if you use a traditional PCB process.

There is probably a market for someone to sell a complete, vetted, verified photosensitive PCB etching kit.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why don't I just grab a conductive pen and draw my circuit??

<comment><USER17> You can't just draw a _printed_ circuit board, it's like in the name and stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure the price of a cup of coffee is a good indication of something being inexpensive nowadays: Sexagintuple Vanilla Bean Mocha Frappuccino, $55 [1].

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2641608/Is-worlds- ex...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2641608/Is-worlds-expensive- Starbucks-coffee-Sexagintuple-Vanilla-Bean-Mocha-Frappuccino-set-55.html)

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure picking the world's most expensive cup of coffee is a representative sample of what a cup of coffee costs.

<comment><USER19> How much does a representative sample of a cup of coffee cost?

The coffee I drink costs about $0.10 a cup.

<comment><USER20> In Seattle, a ~350ml cafe-latte (~310ml milk, 40ml coffee) is around $3.50 (can be $4.50 downtown, $5.50 at airport) - this commonly called the 'Double Tall Latte' \- our local news media uses it as a cost comparison for dang near everything.

<comment><USER19> I never understood why people spend so much when you can make at home for so much less. (Apparently 1/10 to 1/50th of the cost?!?)

Do people really consider a cup of coffee cheap? It seems expensive enough to be considered an occasional treat, not a daily purchase.

<comment><USER21> It's definitively a small luxury item, but can't really argue with anyone's spending habits.

More relevant, "cups of coffee" is not a good unit of measurement and can be misleading. Just say the number and trust that people can cope.

Other offenders: Measuring distance in "cars lined up from here to the moon", expressing data in "Libraries of Congress", or expressing cost in $/day instead of $/month or $/year.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/asia/27china.html?_r=1&ref=asia <comment><USER2> I was one of the victims of this system. Lucky me i got the hell out of the system a few years ago. I am a software engineer in Vancouver ,Canada browsing this news now.

My files has been sitting in a cabinet of a government official build over 8 years and no one just care.

The interesting part was I had to pay the government for keeping my files. I just left 8 years ago and i thought i would not need my files anymore (not looking for a job anymore in china , at least a government job ) so i just stopped paying them.

<comment><USER3> Would they just throw them away if you stopped paying a 'storage fee'(?)?

<comment><USER4> After reading this article... Apparently they'd "recycle" them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First that article on North Korea and now this. It's so sad that people live like this in the 21st century. And there's no way for us to do anything about it since their governments so actively block any real information.

"People's Republic" my ass. China's government is no government by the people for the people. It's just an evil empire. And we're supporting them with every Chinese product we buy and every attempt Obama makes to improve our relations.

After reading stuff like this, I'm not so sure we should be. I'm not advocating sanctions or anything of that sort, I just feel like we should take a harder line against such human rights violations.

<comment><USER6> PRC's government is known to be relatively insensitive to external pressure, but is scared shitless of its own people. China doesn't rely on foreign aids, and contrary to popular beliefs, value from export accounts for a very small percentage of its GDP. This is part of the reason China is relatively unaffected by the current downturn.

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1052429...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105242965)

If there's to be any changes, it has to be from within. That's why the government is so paranoid about protests and is spending loads on censorship. Recently it has been going after public interest lawyers, but these guys are much tougher to crack than angry peasants.

[http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_i...](http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14098751&source=hptextfeature)

<comment><USER7> You've got to be living under a bridge if you don't think the current crisis is affecting the chinese. It hasn't hit Beijing or Shanghai in a major way but all the manufacturing cities across the southern and east coasts are taking it pretty hard. There has been a sizable exodus of laid off workers leaving the cities.

I don't know what counts as a small percentage to you but exports make up 35-40% of their GDP since 2008. There has been a precipitous drop and changing from an export economy to self-sufficiency doesn't happen in a day. Luckily, the gov't has loads of reserves to weather that storm. But it's still a storm.

<comment><USER8> One of the reasons unemployment is not higher in the United States is because we have effectively outsourced much of our manufacturing needs to China. When manufacturing needs dropped dramatically, Chinese factories were impacted directly.

At one point, China considered a 9 percent annual growth rate the bare minimum it needed to maintain to accomodate the migrants going from country to city and/or to prevent social unrest (if those migrants could not find jobs). I don't know what their revised minimum growth rate is now - but it is clear China was dependent on its biggest customer, the American consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every system like that should have checks and balances built in to the system. The fact that there is no backup of this crucial documentation is quite amazing, that there is no way to reconstruct it even more (because after all, you did live that life and there are countless people that could testify to that).

</comment><comment><USER10> His files had vanished. But with his story in the NYT, how long do you think it will take for him to vanish? :(

<comment><USER9> Why do you think that will happen ?

<comment><USER11> Because China is a Communist dictatorship which routinely kills people whose continued life is an embarrassment to the regime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The education system is an attempt at creating equality for over a billion people. It's implemented by people for people so there will always be corruption. It's sad that there are no checks for when these things do happen. The media would be a good check but alas, not in China where the state controls it.

</comment><comment><USER13> A good lesson for those who think governments should be trusted with managing dossiers of any kind about their citizens (e.g. health care records).

<comment><USER14> Yes, because thoroughly corrupt officials in remote parts of China are exactly like Government officials in the US.

My God! Your post is a good lesson for those who think Internet commenters have anything valuable to say.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find the whole idea of the scenario this article describes horrifying, is this portrayal of highly centralized sans backup documentation true? Is there a technological solution to this that can become culturally accepted or is deeper reform needed before even this problem can be fixed?

<comment><USER15> The problem itself is not technological but political. The system that has evolved is pretty bad and the only reason it has evolved is because of the government. Unless there is some third party (free press, independent justice system) that oversees the government, there is no easy solution.

<comment><USER16> I wonder - has there ever been a case of an organization that big voluntarily giving up power? I can't think of any, & in fact the opposite situation (eg regulatory capture) is quite common.

<comment><USER17> Depends on what you mean by "voluntary", but maybe half of the British Empire was ceded without bloodshed.

<comment><USER15> Can you clarify which half was ceded without bloodshed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember what my father told me when he was in england. He was a friend of a Girl from east europe. She never talked about her live there. One day she said: I can't talk to you about it, because if I talk, there are going to go against my family, who is still living there.

Ten years later when he was working with URSS scientists, they behave very strange, very serious, never smiled, never talked about life. One of them told him: If we talk bad about the country we can't work because the state is the only employer.

So I don't want communism(too much power in too few hands), and I don't want the macro-capitalism we are living today in witch a few companies control everything(and when they fail they are too big to fail).

</comment><comment><USER19> economically support chinese companies that treat their workers well and thus put pressure on the rest of the country to improve.

reform won't come from protests, it will come from the economy.</comment>


America's First Meat-Free Fast-Food Restaurant Is Getting Ready to Expand - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40460920/americas-first-meat-free-fast-food-restaurant-is-getting-ready-to-expand <comment><USER2> Good for Amy's, just figured I would plug another vegetarian fast food chain worth eating at: [https://www.cloverfoodlab.com/](https://www.cloverfoodlab.com/)

Thirteen locations in the Boston area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Recently been struggling with not the guilt that I'm killing and eating animals but rather the fact that in factory farms, we are encouraging the rapid raping of animals, forcing them to have children and then rapidly killing off their children, and repeating this process. All while restricting the space that they get to live in. We always want a humane way to end an animal or pest's life but I'm not too sure a factory farm is a humane way to live.

That said, I understand that humans need meat to survive but its why I'm experimenting with vegatarianism.

<comment><USER4> _…n factory farms, we are encouraging the rapid raping of animals, forcing them to have children and then rapidly killing off their children, and repeating this process. All while restricting the space that they get to live in._

Have you considered that it might be feasible to eat better meat that doesn't have these attributes? High-quality, free-range, organic meat is quite widely available - if it's from a local farm, even better!

<comment><USER5> if you are interested in the vegan perspective of why we think that even "humane meat" is wrong, I'd strongly encourage you to read this paper

[http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman- files...](http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman- files/Eating_Animals_the_Nice_Way.pdf)

It really opened my eyes when I read it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like going vegetarian was a wake up/"ah-ha" moment for myself. I don't think of myself as making healthy food choices. I think of myself as realizing what I should have been eating all along.

</comment><comment><USER5> good to see, especially since killing animals for food is prima facie morally wrong (according to most of the philosophers in the field)

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's reasonable to make such a bold claim without some citations…

<comment><USER5> sure! I've got access to a resource bank that has a ton of philosophical papers on the topic of veganism etc. The vast majority are pro, but there are some anti. because hn doesn't do markdown, I'm just gonna paste the names, if you want to read the papers have a search and you should find them.

"A Moral Argument for Veganism" Dan Hooley, Nathan Nobis (General animal ethics, pro vegan, deductive argument)

"The Ethical Basis for Veganism" Tristram McPherson (General animal ethics, pro vegan)

"How to Argue for (and against) Ethical Veganism" Tristram McPherson

"Why I am a vegan (and you should be one too)" Tristram McPherson (General animal Ethics, pro vegan)

"A Case for Ethical Veganism: Intuitive and methodological consideration" Tristram McPherson (pro, general, methodology in ethics, debunking arguments)

NOTE to access McPherson's papers, click the arrow icon in the upper-right hand of the screen and then download.

"SCHOPENHAUER ON THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS" Stephen Puryear (Animal ethics, animal rights view based on sentience, pro veg _n)

"Sentience, Rationality, and Moral Status: A Further Reply to Hsiao" Stephen Puryear (Animal ethics, sentience view, deductive argument, reply to rationality needed for moral status)

NOTE Professor Puryear will be doing an AMA on r/philosophy November 14th

"In Defense of Eating Meat" Timothy Hsiao (Animal ethics, anti-vegan, animals have no moral status)

"PUPPIES, PIGS, AND PEOPLE: EATING MEAT AND MARGINAL CASES" Alastair Norcross (General animal ethics, pro-vegan)

"The Comparative Badness for Animals of Suffering and Death" Jeff McMahan (Animal ethics, humane omnivorism, badness of death discussion, pretty pro vegan)

"Eating animals the nice way" Jeff McMahan (Animal ethics, arguments for and against humane omnivorism, pro-vegan)

"Animals" Jeff McMahan (animal ethics, pro vegan)

"Moral Vegetarianism from a Very Broad Basis" David DeGrazia (animal ethics, pro vegan)

"Animal Pain and Welfare: can pain sometimes be worse for them than for us" Sahar Akhtar (animal ethics, animal pain)

"The Case Against Meat" Ben Bramble (animal ethics, deductive argument, pro vegan)

"A Kantian Case for Animal Rights" Christine M. Korsgaard" (animal ethics, pro vegan, deontological argument)

"Kantian Ethics, Animals, and the Law" Christine M Korsgaard (animal ethics, animal rights discussion, animals and the law discussion)

"Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals" CHRISTINE M. KORSGAARD (animal ethics, deontological, pro vegan)

"INTERACTING WITH ANIMALS: A KANTIAN ACCOUNT" christine m. korsgaard (animal ethics, deontological, pro vegan)

"Is it Wrong to Eat Meat from Factory Farms? If So, Why?" Mark Bryant Budolfson (animal ethics, kinda pro-vegan, kinda anti-vegan)

"Consumer Ethics, Harm Footprints, and the Empirical Dimensions of Food Choices" Mark Budolfson (animal ethics, ethical consumerism, harm footprints, environmental footprints, kinda anti-vegan, kinda pro-vegan, helpful chart

"The Inefficacy Objection to Consequentialism and the Problem with the Expected Consequences Response" Mark Budolfson (animal ethics, inefficacy objection, rather anti-vegan, anti-utilitarian)

NOTE if links to Budolfson don't work, here's his website: [http://www.budolfson.com/papers](http://www.budolfson.com/papers)

"Strict Vegetarianism is Immoral" Donald Bruckner (animal ethics, anti vegan):

"The Moral Status of Animals" SEP entry

"Animal Consciousness" SEP entry

"Animal Cognition" SEP entry

"The Grounds of Moral Status" SEP entry

"The Moral Argument for Vegetarianism" James Rachels (Animal ethics, pro veg_n, text is sideways sorry mercifully short, well written)

"Constraints and Animals" Excerpted from Anarchy, State, and Utopia Robert Nozick (animal ethics, pro, brief)

"Don't Know, Don't Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution" Alexander A. Guerrero (Moral ignorance and Culpability, proVeg)

"THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ANIMAL PAIN AND ANIMAL DEATH" Elizabeth Harman (animal ethics, causing animal pain/ causing death asymmetry)

"Applying Virtue Ethics to Our Treatment of the Other Animals" Rosalind Hursthouse (animal ethics, pro, virtue ethics defense)

"ANIMAL MINDS AND THEIR MORAL SIGNIFICANCE" Peter Carruthers (animal ethics, pain, consciousness/cognition, kinda pro, kinda anti)

"A direct Kantian duty to animals" Michael Cholbi (animal ethics, pro, revised Kantian to accommodate duties to animals)

"The Benefit of Regan's Doubt: Moral Caution and the Ethics of Eating" Robert Bass (pro, moral caution, response to Regan)

"Is Death Bad for a Cow?" Ben Bradley (pro, badness of death, desire-based value).

"Singer on Killing Animals" SHELLY KAGAN (pro, wrongness of killing/badness of death, objectionable painless killing, replacability, Peter Singer, preference utilitarianism).

"Do I Make a Difference" Shelly Kagan (pro, strong consequentialist reply to causal impotence/inefficacy objection)

"The Case for Animal Rights" by Tom Regan (pro, deontological/rights view/abolitionist argument, distillation of larger work in article form)

"Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism" Peter Singer (General animal ethics, pro vegan, individual efficacy on welfare argument)

"Equality for Animals?" Peter Singer (pro, utilitarian, excerpt from "Practical Ethics")

"The Animal Liberation Movement" Peter Singer (pro, utilitarian, discussion of animal lib movement, animal equality, equal consideration of interests, and more!)

"Do Animals Feel Pain?" by Peter Singer (pro, brief but useful account of animal pain)

"ARE ANIMALS PERSONS?" Mark Rowlands (pro, personhood, self-awareness, animal rights

"Animal Rights" Mark Rowlands (pro, animals rights overview)

"Contractarianism and Animal Rights" Mark Rowlands (pro, modified Rawlsian Contractarianism justifying direct moral status to animals)

"Contractualism and Our Duties to Nonhuman Animals" Matthew Talbert (pro, Scanlon Contractualism argument for animals)

"Expanding the Social Contract" Paola Cavalieri and Will Kymlicka (pro, Contractarianism including animals, ANNOYING SIDEWAYS TEXT!)

"Vegetarianism" Stuart Rachels (pro, animal ethics overview, factory farm practices detailed, utilitarian argument)

"ANIMALS & ETHICS 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights" NATHAN NOBIS -- pro, book (2016) "providing an overview of the current debates about the nature and extent of our moral obligations to animals."

"Animals and Ethics" IEP entry

Michael Huemer arguing against factory farm practices in a pretty interesting online debate with Bryan Caplan about bugs:

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/bugs.html](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/bugs.html)

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/huemer_on_ethic....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/huemer_on_ethic.html)

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/reply_to_huemer....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/reply_to_huemer.html)

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/huemer_replies.h...](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/huemer_replies.html)

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/the_huemer_grap....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/the_huemer_grap.html)

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/yet_another_rep....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/10/yet_another_rep.html)

"The Claims of Animals and the Needs of Strangers: Two Cases of Imperfect Right" Christine M. Korsgaard, pro, animal rights, legal rights.

"Animal Selves and the Good" Christine M. Korsgaard, pro, axiology, "why saying humans are more valuable than non-human animals makes no sense."

"Just Like All the Other Animals of the Earth: Our ethical attitudes toward fellow creatures are curiously unstable" Christine Korsgaard, pro, general, philosophical traditional views on animals (Hume, Kant)

"Moral Animals: Human Beings and the Other Animals" Christine M. Korsgaard: "Animals have moral claims, we seem to think, but unlike the claims of our fellow humans, they are easily overridden. I call this the moral asymmetry and ask whether anything in the nature of the good or the right could justify it[...] I conclude that although both of these arguments do reflect important moral truths, neither justifies the asymmetry."</comment></comment></comment>


Open Whisper Systems partners with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption - <AUTHOR> http://whispersystems.me/blog/whatsapp/

<comment><USER2> This is really huge, WhatsApp has incredible market penetration in lots of countries. Almost every smartphone user in Brazil uses WhatsApp, and businesses of all kinds (eg. radio stations, pizza deliveries and drug stores) have a WhatsApp number for connecting with their customers.

I also have TextSecure and Telegram installed but almost none of my friends do, and telling non-techie people to install another IM app because it's more secure then WhatsApp is futile.

I'm curious to why WhatsApp is not advertising this collaboration.

Also, I wonder if there's some visual indication that end-to-end encryption is enabled for a given contact/conversation like the padlock icon in TextSecure (which can fallback to SMS).</comment>


Controversial Dark Web Bitcoin Bot Released from Custody - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/controversial-dark-web-bitcoin-bot-released-from-custody/

<comment><USER2> Why do you need a bot to buy these things?</comment>


Ask HN: Bayesian network vs. Markov network/model vs. Monte-Carlo method - <AUTHOR> difference and relationship between them? when/where to use them? <comment><USER2> Curious about the circumstance in which the choice is being made.</comment>


Mars could have at least two ancient reservoirs of water underground - <AUTHOR> https://www.physics-astronomy.org/2020/03/mars-could-have-at-least-two-ancient.html <comment><USER2> Original paper is here ([https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0552-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0552-y)) - I didn't see a link in the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Couldn't help but think of Dune & Fremen references when I saw the headline.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jeez could this site have anymore adware?

<comment><AUTHOR> use Unicorn Blocker - I dont see any at all with it

<comment><USER4> Mobile web :/

<comment><USER5> Firefox for android and ublock origin. If you got amoled, add dark reader perhaps too if you like.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Completes Its Final Tests - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-completes-its-final-tests <comment><AUTHOR> >Engineers worked 24 hours a day for 15 days straight, executing over a thousand scripts and instructions — a 1,370 step process, according to NASA.

I have nothing but massive respect for the everyone involved to get to this point!</comment>


My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work  - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/social-network-advertising <comment><USER2> Doesn't work? This feels like revealing Santa Claus to a kid... Sex still sells. Really, really sells. Just how are you measuring advertising effectiveness from which you can say that these ads aren't working?

I guess you do have an interesting point about giving the users more control over the ads they see. This seems to be a semi-hot startup area right now, in case you haven't seen this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always wondered that. Facebook not to talk about Yahoo know a lot about their users and yet their ads are really lagging behind. Maybe they are being held back by privacy concerns.

<comment><USER4> I agree entirely. First of, I am just seeing a very limited number of ads on the left hand side of the screen and they are all dating related - kind of disheartening - but this may come from being a young single guy.

Is anyone from different age groups seeing any different ads?

<comment><USER5> i sent a message to a friend about moving to boston, and got a boston real estate ad a couple pageviews later. I also get programming job ads (i'm graduating this year). But yeah, there's usually a girl with a come-hither gaze.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, so there is something more advanced that my dormant self isn't getting - definitely interesting!

Unfortunately, there is no way to write a facebook app to capture the displayed ads - but I think it would be possible with a firefox plug in...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post shows that social network advertising doesn't work (for the author), but doesn't say anything about _why_ except to guess that Facebook's sales team sucks.

<comment><USER7> The sales team probably sell very few of the ads on their outside of the huge corporate branding ones. The ones you see on the side of your profile are mostly paid for and targeted by individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"... Since day 1 with Facebook, I've been shocked at how poor the ad quality is. For a company that has a $15B valuation, their ad sales teams plain suck. ..."_

How many good advertising/marketing team members are technical & can code? That is a big hiring hurdle that Fb puts in front of new hires.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why do you even look at ads?

<http://adblockplus.org/>

<comment><USER10> By default, I block ads. If I find the site to be useful (the litmus test is "will I return?") then I unblock the ads. Why do I do this? There are far too many digg/reddit link whores that for all intents and purposes add no value to the Internet, but have tricked me into clicking on their links. The sites that are linked usually repackage somebody else's work into their template, and have manipulated the system into getting people to click on their links. In some cases, it is flat out copyright infringement. And if you load the ads on their page, they have won. In fact, they'd probably use the ad revenue to help legally defend themselves if the original authors of the content they copied were to sue them. It's quite despicable and that's why I can reconcile blocking ads. Like I said, I unblock ads on websites that I find useful.

If you find a website useful, I think it is much better to act in good faith and put up with the ads. If the ads bother you, then try to find an alternative website for that purpose, or contact the authors and present your dilemma. Perhaps they will offer a subscription service sans advertisements, or tone the existing ads down a notch.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Office skills testing that isn't method-specific? - <AUTHOR> I work for a mid-sized law firm.  I'm wondering if people have any suggestion for Office skills testing applications -- most of them seem to have a fatal flaw: they're method-specific.  In other words, it'll test you how to open a document, and it will only have one "right" thing in mind, despite there being multiple ways to open a document (Ctrl-O, 'open' toolbar button, etc.).  We're looking for testing apps/websites that will accept any method that would actually work in Office.  I have no idea how to even Google for this; I'd appreciate any recommendations you might have. <comment><USER2> I recoment you to check out this article [https://geteasyqa.com/blog/best- test-management-tools/](https://geteasyqa.com/blog/best-test-management- tools/). It can help you, there are 10 testing tools

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like over-the-top testing to me. I know that there are sometimes things which must be tested (I've delivered and created many tests), but is there really anyone who can't figure out how to run Office? I've literally taught computer skills to thousands and I've never met such a person. Just another example of "self-selection" for personalities that memorize such things. Not the people I want to work with.</comment>


History tells us what will happen next with Brexit and Trump - angry-hacker https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714 <comment><AUTHOR> If history is so certain, there is something called the NYSE and there are many people happy to take the opposite side that bet.

Here is how I would play it: if there is global upheaval, the US will still come out ahead, and yields on all duration treasury bonds will plunge to zero, so one can make money regardless of the outcome by going long America (S&P 500) and shorting Europe and emerging markets, while also going 'long' treasuries. Even if there is peace (which I think is still the mostly likely outcome) the S&P 500 should still outperform Europe (which is weakened by Brexit), and treasuries should do well too.</comment>


Anonymous: Hacker releases 17.8GB of data from a Turkish national police server - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-hacker-unleashes-17-8gb-trove-data-turkish-national-police-server-1544131? <comment><USER2> Flagging because the data leak dates back to at least 2010 and in circulation everywhere for years. Nothing new here.

<comment><USER3> I have not studied the content yet but after your comment I checked and also found this reddit thread[1] claiming it is old. But not sure if anyone has actually validated the content and confirmed that it is indeed old.

Also not sure if @CthulhuSec is actually Anonymous. It was @YourAnonNews who picked up the news and made it look like it was Anonymous responsible as far as I can tell. Thomas White (CthulhuSec) also has pointed out that it has nothing to do with Anonymous.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/462lce/hacker_un...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/462lce/hacker_unleashes_178gb_trove_of_data_from_a/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I double checked that they actually used the word "unleashes". Rather dramatic (but did make me click)

<comment><USER5> We s/unleash/releas/'d it, since HN's rules ask submitters to take clickbait out of titles.</comment></comment>


Handling Errors - <AUTHOR> http://www.entertainingcode.com/archives/handling-errors/

<comment><USER2> Quoth the article: _Say for instance that you're reading user settings from a file, but the file may not exist since the user may not have started the application before. The wrong thing to do here is to try to open the file, catch any exceptions and move on. The right thing to do is to check whether the file exists before trying to open it._

No. The right thing to do is to try to open the file, and if you fail, check if errno == ENOENT and handle it appropriately. If you check to see if the file exists before (or after!) trying to open it, you have a race condition which is at best liable to produce screwy results and at worst a serious security flaw.

And if you're using a language which doesn't allow you to look at errno to figure out why open(2) failed... start using a real programming language.</comment>


Phuby : All your PHP belongs to me - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/tenderlove/phuby/tree/master

<comment><USER2> This looks like just a stub; I don't see a sign of a compiler, interpreter, runtime, or any embedded or dynamic linking.

What exactly does it do besides evaluating PHP booleans from Ruby?

<comment><USER3> Please see the ext directory:

[http://github.com/tenderlove/phuby/tree/4f198354c537586aa167...](http://github.com/tenderlove/phuby/tree/4f198354c537586aa1677137cf07fc17765e6adb/ext/phuby)

and extconf.rb:

[http://github.com/tenderlove/phuby/blob/4f198354c537586aa167...](http://github.com/tenderlove/phuby/blob/4f198354c537586aa1677137cf07fc17765e6adb/ext/phuby/extconf.rb)

It is quite embedded and dynamically linked.</comment></comment>


What's it like to see a Solar Eclipse? - <AUTHOR> http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/whats-it-like-to-see-a-total-solar-eclipse <comment><AUTHOR> A total Solar eclipse of the sun is coming to the U.S on August 21st! If you haven't already, it's time to ask yourself - is this near-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity worth the trip!?</comment>


Show HN: InstaRoom SF – Automated Shared-Room Finding - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instamotor.com/instaroom

<comment><USER2> IFTTT ([https://ifttt.com/wtf](https://ifttt.com/wtf)) is great for that kind of grunt tasks.

Create a recipes with a trigger (new Craigslist listings between $800 and $1000 has been posted), link an action (send an email, add the listing to a google doc, etc...) to the trigger, and in a matter of minutes you'll get a google doc filled with rooms to visit!

<comment><USER3> Hmm ive got to try this id guess that CL would block their ip but if not then this is a great idea

<comment><USER4> I'll venture to guess they're running off of AWS. CL blocks ec2 us-east ip's. So it probably wouldn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't looked at the script yet but the post fails to mention what service does it uses for looking available rooms? Is this for airbnb or craigslist or what?

<comment><USER2> It seems to be craigslist in the source code.

<comment><USER6> Correct, the readme [1] states that it was built for CL posts. The OP was tired of having to email all of the rooms on CL that met his criteria so he tried to make it a little easier.

[1] [https://github.com/sybohy/san_francisco_shared_room_finder](https://github.com/sybohy/san_francisco_shared_room_finder)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised that sending the same message didn't get picked up by CL email- proxy spam filters. Maybe they found a room fast enough.

<comment><USER4> I ran it for about 2 weeks. No issues. The frequency is low too.</comment></comment>