Exo Research CTO still does not understand how OS file caching works in Windows - <AUTHOR> http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/rebutting-ars-technica.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I made the comment in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138840>, that "it's surprising that the CTO of a company specialized on system performance doesn't know how OS cache memory works." It turns out that he really has no clue.

To the people who said the Windows source code is needed to understand how it works, hogwash. The file caching in Linux has been doing it this way for years. Windows does it for years as well. It's fairly standard OS caching technique.

<comment><USER2> The file system cache doesn't contribute to committed bytes, the metric that the Exo CTO is appealing to - in this respect the Ars Technica article is mistaken. (Actually, the fact that the Ars Technica article used Task Manager made me inclined to dismiss it as clueless.)

Estimating real memory pressure is tough. There's the working set; but the working set may expand when you have sufficient physical memory, even though the marginal performance gains may be small. Similarly, the file system cache may expand when you have sufficient physical memory, but the marginal gains become small there too.

Probably the best unified metric would be the amount of time applications spend blocked on I/O, where that I/O is either paging committed bytes in from disk, or data that would be cacheable - and would have been cached - on a system with more memory. But that's extremely hard to predict.

<comment><USER3> If you've spent any amount of time at the Ars forums, you wouldn't refer to Peter as "clueless".

Committed bytes is completely the wrong metric to appeal to, since it includes pages that have been committed but have never been touched. Windows reserves space for such pages in the page file (it never overcommits), but saying that it leads to "memory pressure" is ridiculous.

<comment><USER2> I wrote off the article, rather than the author. If I indeed read more of the author, perhaps my opinion would be updated, but the article on its own doesn't add much weight of authority. The trouble with Task Manager is that it doesn't have sufficient per-process memory data to be useful. Process Explorer is better, because you can view Working Set (Private|Shareable|Shared) and Private Bytes. I'd view both private working set and private bytes as the most important metrics for a Windows app, but depending on the circumstances (such as how likely multiple instances are) other things may be considered.

Committed Bytes would be a measure of potential maximum physical memory usage if every process were touching every page that it had available to it. Yes, no process ever does that, but statistically there will be an average fraction of that memory which is touched, so it can be interpreted as a proxy for physical memory pressure. A poor one though, as different processes have different patterns.

As to the Ars forums, with a brief perusal it seems similar to the programming Reddit - i.e. a lot of opinionated and frequently misinformed noise, interleaved with a small amount of signal. It looks like a time sink, to be frank.

But to give Peter his due, I registered with the forums and scanned through his past posts (DrPizza), and I can't find much that I disagree with; I particularly agree with him on the consolification of PC games, and the lack of MW2's appeal to a mature gamer, etc.

<comment><USER3> Peter did admit his mistake about superfetch (he thought the xpnet thing was counting that too as used memory), but he's still right about the overall metric being wrong -- see the comments to [http://exo- blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/editorial-what-took-you...](http://exo- blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/editorial-what-took-you-so-long.html) .

edit: and do you think he doesn't know about procexp/perfmon? :)

<comment><USER2> Why do you insist on making this personal? I discounted an _article_ , not a _person_.

By bringing the _person_ into this, you turn it into an irrational, emotional thing, where _facts don't matter_. That's not where you want to be.

And at the risk of extending this thing far beyond its worthy lifetime, that comment you link to proves very little. As I already said:

> _Committed Bytes would be a measure of potential maximum physical memory > usage if every process were touching every page that it had available to it. > Yes, no process ever does that, but statistically there will be an average > fraction of that memory which is touched, so it can be interpreted as a > proxy for physical memory pressure. A poor one though, as different > processes have different patterns._

Allocating a huge bunch of memory and not touching it is one statistical pattern, _but it's not particularly common_ , which is key. It's an outlier, so it isn't strong evidence. On _average_ , committed bytes can be interpreted as a proxy for memory pressure, but like I said, there's likely to be a fair amount of variance there, so it's a poor proxy. There certainly wouldn't be a 1:1 relationship between committed memory and physical memory pressure; if I had to guess, I would guess somewhere like 60% of committed memory should ideally be in physical ram.

For example, my machine has 12GB of RAM, 3.5GB committed bytes total and 2.5GB working set total. But that working set includes both private and shared working set pages - calculating the active working set properly would require dividing shared page sizes by the number of copies in different processes.

But just for fun, I plotted the log of working set values in MB along the X axis, and the log of private bytes in MB along the Y axis, for each process, and this is what I got:

<http://imgurl.filetac.com/img/68343980.png>

Looks like a pretty close correlation to me - yes, there are some spikes in private bytes, but _on average_ , private bytes is a proxy for committed bytes (I excluded shared pages for confounding reasons, as they are usually things like EXEs and DLLs - not counted against commit charge), committed bytes is a proxy for physical memory usage, which in turn is a proxy for physical memory pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually, there was one nugget of truth in the article, and that was the _best_ way to determine if your operating system is low on memory, is to watch it's swapping activity. This is probably true across all operating systems, Linux, Solaris, etc..

An operating system will typically not swap out (or in) cache memory to disk, so, as long as you are exhibiting no swapping behavior, (And you have swap enabled) then you have enough memory. I think it was Adrian Cockroft, in fact, in "Sun Performance and Tuning: Sparc & Solaris" who in fact said that was _the_ way to determine if you have memory pressure on your operating system - run vmstat and watch the si and so column for activity.

<comment><USER2> An OS can game that kind of statistic, though, by spending more memory on what Windows would call working set (the "hot" set of pages for a process which are preferentially kept in physical memory) at the expense of the file system cache.

Also, predictive prefetching may increase paging in, but in an async fashion, so the application is never actually blocked. This may cause spurious increases in the stats. You need to examine the amount of time threads are actually blocked by the paging behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Heh. I've been reading the various discussions about all of this, and having considerable experience digging into internals to find performance problems, it still seems to come down to one thing.

Does it _feel_ fast?

</comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of whether the CTO is correct or not, the tone and poor attitude of his posts have convinced me that he is not someone I would want to do business with.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not even sure the facts in this case matter if the CTO is willing to make such a fool of himself in public. Even if I agreed with his point of view, it's impossible for me to take him seriously when he writes such needlessly incendiary rants on his company's official blog. It reminds me of conspiracy theorists.</comment>


Obvious Corp. backed Branch comes out of private beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.branch.com/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty great: [https://img.skitch.com/20120813-1iq1gk3ymwrguhy8qe3qi4192s.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20120813-1iq1gk3ymwrguhy8qe3qi4192s.jpg)

<comment><USER3> All branches are public, you can link directly to them:

[http://branch.com/b/choosing-the-best-technology-for-my- webs...](http://branch.com/b/choosing-the-best-technology-for-my-website)

<comment><USER2> Nice! I assumed login was required since it seemed like it forced me to. But great that direct links are public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this looks interesting, as long as you don't apply the same "X of Y" comparisons.

Someone likened it to a forum, and I think it's a nice take on it. Not necessarily something with SOCIAL all over it.

The promo video was pretty horrible, though. I'm also getting a little tired of Valley videos that make it sound like we're curing cancer or something.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the whole "curing cancer" meme always sounded murky and a bit lame TBH. It's unlikely it's a binary thing or state that get's magically achieved by one person or a team, and much more likely the result of small, incremental advances.

Cancer itself is not even "one thing" phenomologically speaking (IAMNA oncologist) it's a broad class of diseases, that may or may not have a single 'solution'.

Solution, in this context, being a state where the population does not need to worry about cancer as a statistically significant cause of death. It could equally likely linger in a status that is managed but not 'cured' in the traditional sense of the word, aka HIV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Featured branches: <http://www.branch.com/featured> (sign in required)

Examples (no sign in required):

<http://branch.com/b/barack-obama-the-second-time-around>

<http://branch.com/b/alternatives-to-the-boyscouts>

[http://branch.com/b/buying-equity-in-people-what-do-you- thin...](http://branch.com/b/buying-equity-in-people-what-do-you-think)

<comment><USER7> Also, there seems to be some sort of bug with the email collection modal. It refuses to go away, even though I've signed in with Twitter _and_ provided my email. Makes it impossible to click the features stories.

<comment><USER3> We just pushed out a fix for this - it was happening to people who were already on our email waitlist.

If you enter your email now it should go away :)

Sorry about that!

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the quick fix!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is this different from a forum post? It doesn't do anything for debates. <http://branch.com/b/are-we-currently-in-a-tech-bubble>

<comment><USER9> Seems like a regular Quora thread sans voting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure how any of the highlighted features really promote intimacy or quality in conversation.

<comment><USER11> Let's ignore how they're pitching the service. I've participated in a Branch[1], and as a replacement for Twitter conversations, it is extraordinary. That's enough for me to keep the bookmarklet handy.

[1] [http://branch.com/b/for-years-news-developers-have- debated-t...](http://branch.com/b/for-years-news-developers-have-debated-the- merits-of-django-vs-rails-is-one-framework-winning)

<comment><USER12> That seems like a low bar, considering that Twitter conversations were never a good idea.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, but people are having conversations on Twitter. This seems like a low- friction way to get them to use a better tool for the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hate to be that guy. (And really, I almost never say this). But, coming from the guys who made Twitter, can we talk about how and why this could possibly be monetized?

Neat idea. Gorgeous design. But how is Branch Inc sustainable?

<comment><USER14> You presume that it has to be sustainable to generate a profit.

<comment><USER15> He's making a good point -- how can it be sustainable without profit? Of course it needn't be sustainable to generate profit, but that's not what he meant, or said.

<comment><USER16> And @confluence is implying that the real goal may not be sustainability, but profit. See Sparrow, Instagram, and all the other sellouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's neat. It's basically a different take on forums or twitter. Where your twitter page is a jumble of comments about N different conversations, Branch separates them into threads.

It's a new way and it'll get a lot of attention, but it's really just a way to communicate and there are lots of them. If Branch succeeds, it'll do so in the adoption of its style into other communications media, including existing forums or twitter.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool concept! I'm glad to see something like that working. I wrote down almost a year ago a very similar idea (I called it Flow) in a "incubator" project of mine: <https://github.com/imdario/lyd/wiki/Analysis>

Maybe it is time to code what I thought ;) It was meant to be a liquid democracy citizen participatory system.

</comment><comment><USER19> Branch seems to want write access to my Twitter account, even just to "request an invite." Does anyone know why? It looks intriguing, but I'm not ready to trust it to that degree.

<comment><USER20> Sorry for the confusion! We should be more clear about our intentions. We need write access so when you do get an invite, you can invite your friends to branches (via DM or @mention). But we'll never send anything without your explicit permission.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the explanation! I would suggest telling users this during signup (right before they auth).

Word of warning to everyone: when you request an invite, there's a pre-checked checkbox labeled "Follow @branch to find out about the best new branches." I like that it's easy to see, but I don't like that it's opt-out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the idea and what I've seen so far, but how is this not still a private site? I can't contribute or be a part of branch until my time comes on the invite list.

</comment><comment><USER15> Let me see if I've got this right.

Branch : Invite-Only Online Conversations. Email : Invite-Only Online Conversations.

Can someone help me bridge the gap?

<comment><USER13> Better interface for one.

Email has notoriously not been updated for a while. I remember when Gmail putting threads as conversations being revolutionary.

<comment><USER15> Threading in Gmail was definitely huge. They beat a lot of desktop mail clients to the punch, too, which always surprised me.

Seems like Branch would become One More Thing To Check, as opposed to a replacement for e-mail. I don't think they're going for an replacement, either. I think I get their point, but I also can't see it as much more than Twitter repackaged with unique slang and a squeaky clean UI.

<comment><USER20> I like to think of branches as public email threads, but I get in trouble when I say that publicly. Obviously has poor connotations :)

<comment><USER15> Haha, I'm sure. As far as product design goes, I think you've done a bang-up job. Individual branches are easy on the eyes and comfortable to consume for extended periods, and the primary actions are easy to identify. congrats on the launch.

Out of curiosity, where does it fit into your workflow specifically? Do you find yourself using either/any of Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc. less in particular?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> looks kinda like Convore

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry, I'm not seeing how this differs from the G+ conversation scheme.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hi Josh!</comment>


The Matrix 4 Is Officially Happening with Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/whoa-keanu-reeves-carrie-anne-moss-sign-on-to-star-in-the-matrix-4/ <comment><USER2> I am thrilled Keanu Reeves is back with Matrix. It was such a thought- provoking movie with a great actor.</comment>


Weev and the cult of the angry young man - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness-weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man

<comment><USER2> This article is two months old. Just noting for anyone that feels like they might have read it already.</comment>


The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ <comment><USER2> You can't found Lubeck without Henry the Lion clearing away the raiders. The solution has to be at least partially military, and that raises a big problem with legitimacy. States are seen as the only legitimate owners of armies, and then only inasmuch as they don't attack each other unprovoked. I like the idea of a sponsor state--that's a good compromise on the legitimacy front. But the reaction he got in Madagascar underscores that it might not be good enough.

The problem is partly the lack of space in which to experiment. On the internet, you can simply create a new site--draft your own rules, draw up whatever security measures you like to enforce them--and ask the world to come if they find that appealing. You don't need anyone else's territory, you can just make something new and experimental. People naturally vote with their feet, and the result is pretty good.

In the real world, that's much harder to do. You cannot simply draft a constitution, enlist a private army and police force, break ground, and invite the world. The ground is already claimed. Nobody likes private armies.

That's too bad. As the article notes, reform and revolution are a lot harder than simply building something new. If nations could simply experiment the way web sites do, if people could easily vote with their feet, we might have gotten government better figured out by now.

<comment><USER3> Sea-steading might be the solution to the problem.

Of course, it might be a pipe dream, but it's the only concrete effort that I am seeing around here.

<comment><USER4> its coming. I suspect nanotechnology will create new materials and technologies that will make whole new countries possible in oceans everywhere.

It is a dream that will happen. And, yes, there will be pipes, but not sure what kind of concrete will be used :-)

<comment><USER5> I suspect that the advent of nanotechnology is going to cause civilisation upheaval the likes of which we haven't seen since the industrial revolution, if ever. All this shit will happen, and much, much more.

Hell, why limit ourselves to the surface of the sea? The materials nanotech promises to deliver will make it possible to live far above or below sea level with equal ease. Sky-steading, anyone?

<comment><USER4> and don't forget what modifying the human genome will do. It could give us the means to winnow out the very imperfection that has enabled us to survive. I refer to the inherent variability that creates so many different personalities and immunities that we've been able to survive in spite of everything else that has evolved on the planet.

We must take care not to lose this quality. The minute we do, we become as vulnerable as the plants and animals we raise, most of which would quickly fail in the wild.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've read essays about Paul Romer's views before. Of course regions are poor for reasons. Poverty is the outcome of the prevailing conditions, and changing those conditions is the obvious recipe for changing the result.

But the people who are ruling the poor nations have a vested interest in the status quo, which is why the region is poor, and those organizations that pour "aid" resources in without changing the cause of the poverty also have a vested interest in not solving the problems.

Unless this changes, theorizing about changes is fruitless. Until Paul Romer or someone else has the wherewithal to MAKE changes, it's all air.

<comment><USER7> _But the people who are ruling the poor nations have a vested interest in the status quo, which is why the region is poor, and those organizations that pour "aid" resources in without changing the cause of the poverty also have a vested interest in not solving the problems._

Likewise, wealthy nations also have vested interests in certain poor nations staying that way, since that arrangement yields very cheap labor, coltan, electronics recycling, diamonds, etc. Globalization has seen to it that poverty often doesn't exist in a vacuum any more.

Indeed, since the article already drops the term 'neo-colonial,' I don't see how the economic approach described should be considered anything but that. At least, it's a bit disingenuous to label this approach 'revolutionary.'

<comment><USER8> "Likewise, wealthy nations also have vested interests in certain poor nations staying that way."

No, they don't. Heard of China? Growth in China? That shit makes capitalists giddy. And when the guys at Goldman Sachs are happy, your political elite smiles too. Would they like 800 million africans to become another china? Yes, they would. Industrialization of a nation does not make it's raw materials more expensive. Africa's cheap labour is of little use to the west (or china) (extraction of raw materials is not labour intensive, africas commercial agriculture is underdeveloped). Growth in africa would not hurt the evil imperialists.

Considering the catastrophe* de-colonization in africa has been the smugness of those who dismiss all ideas carrying the faintest whiff of colonialism is nauseating.

*Africa is the only continent on earth were falling levels of gdp per capita has been the norm in several countries. THis picture becomes bleaker if you consider the fact that the increase in gdp per capita is from resource extraction that brings little benefits to the people. De-colonization was a disaster on the scale of maos great leap forward.

<comment><USER9> The US has been proven time and time again to only want countries to grow on the US' terms (China is the example of a country that was too big to control or stop).

You can look at Cambodia and Vietnam prior to the Vietnam war, and you can analyze the history of Central America to discover why all these places are basically third world still when they have had thriving economies at one time or another. The problem was they weren't thriving on the ideals of Capitalism, rather some of them adopted a socialist workers structure.

The issue is the structure of success and how it feeds into the powerful states and their corporations and not success itself. Success that is not wrapped by Capitalist values is very dangerous to the US, EU.

The reason everyone turned on Hugo Chavez after being a man named in Time's influential people list is that his socialist policies (especially the distribution of oil wealth away from large corporations) started being successful and other Southern American states were taking notice (combined with trade deals with China). Of course, since then he has been shown to be misguided in a number of things so I fear even mentioning him.

<comment><USER10> Have you ever considered the possibility that socialism just doesn't work? That always seems more plausible to me, in an Occam's Razor sort of way, than the conspiracy theory that the US prevents socialist states from succeeding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Russia is trying this with Skolkovo [1]. They're even equipping it with an (supposedly, though I wonder where they'll be drawing their manpower from) independent police system to try to isolate it from the institutional corruption that's usually considered the main barrier to foreign investment.

[1] This was partially subject to HN discussion a few days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1409194>

</comment><comment><USER12> There's one giant flaw in this argument.

Lübeck was subsidized by the tax money from King Henry's other lands. How else do you support a private mint and an army to protect merchants from pirates and bandits? Is it any wonder why the merchants moved there when they were essentially being offered free money?

Now fast forward to Africa today. The warlords are happy receiving millions in aid and not creating a powerful merchant class that could usurp their position.

<comment><USER13> Right, which is why he proposes spending money on developing legitimate business in the country directly rather than giving aid to corrupt local officials.

<comment><USER12> African warlords letting a business on their turf get rich without their permission? I think not.

<comment><USER14> Which is why he neefs the sponsorship of a rich country, so there would be a legitimate army to force the warlord to stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Peter Dorman had a sharp post about it here: [http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2010/06/romers-charter- cities...](http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2010/06/romers-charter-cities- really-witless.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Forget foreign countries and cities : as I've posted in the past, how about experimenting with somewhere like Detroit? No Federal or state taxes, no federal or state rules, no Federal or state help. A mini Hong Kong stuck between USA and Canada. Go there, set up shop, pay whatever taxes the city decides to levy, off you go.

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the biggest reasons poverty stricken countries stay poverty stricken is because the money is never reinvested. Dubai is a modern example of the Lubeck model. There was great potential to improve the land and a supply of outside cash and free-trade/immigration laws provided everything that was needed.

Lubeck was subsidized by Henry, Dubai was subsidized by foreign oil investors. If we want to help African countries, we shouldn't be sending aid in the form of food but in the form of business.

Find an area where a suitable trade port could be established and where rail can easily be constructed to neighboring regions, add money, free-trade and liberal immigration laws and you'll have a major change in very little time.

</comment><comment><USER18> His TED talk about charter cities: <http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html>

<comment><USER19> My favorite response to that: [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cr...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to-romer-and-back-again.html)

<comment><USER20> 60% sophistry. Governments are coercion? _Rules_ are coercion!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Why do these kids have access to a cutting-edge technology like the cell phone, but not to a 100-year-old technology for generating electric light in the home? The answer, in a word, is rules."

So the reason Albania has no regular electric power, but children have iPhones it's because it hasn't rules. Come on, it's not it has not rules, it's just that the current administration wants more money.

[Edit2: Part of the problem is that in a way we are a charter country.]

We actually have rules, the financial capability, IP laws that conform to WIPO, enforcing agencies, and all you need to "kick ass". Our problem is that by kicking ass as a country (richer overall population), the administration in power cannot make the same money they make today, at least not that easy (I mean very very easy, like we already know what cut they'll require for the next financial aid).

Edit: "Starting in 2001, he began to channel his energy into a start-up software company that he named Aplia."

Looks like the power of monetization has striked again.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is the answer "less people"? Because that's basically the solution. Unfortunately, people like to fuck.

<comment><USER23> It's pretty disingenuous to say it's that simple. Some poverty-ridden heavily populated areas have been poor since they were lightly populated. It is in the nature of humans to make babies everywhere, rich and poor areas alike. Being snarky doesn't advance anyone's understanding.

<comment><USER24> "Rich" countries have tiny birth rates compared to others, you can't ignore that fact by saying "people love making babies everywhere" (I live in Peru btw).

<comment><USER25> So maybe the way to reduce population growth is to make poor areas rich(er)?

<comment><USER23> Bingo, birth rate is a consequence, not a cause. He's trying to put the cart before the horse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As long as we're talking radical sovereignty hacking, perhaps the Lakota Nation could host a charter city:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Lakotah>

</comment><comment><USER27> _In the aughts, [Romer] became rich as a software entrepreneur._

What was his software business?

Edit: oh, I see this is discussed in TFA. It was Aplia.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's politically incorrect about his solution?

<comment><USER28> Probably just because the politically-correct answer to poverty is "rich people should give their money to poor people, then they won't be poor any more". (This is, coincidentally, the same solution that most seven-year-olds come up with. It doesn't work in practice.)

<comment><USER29> Yes, way to buck the system and advocate neoliberal ideas from political outsiders like Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, Clinton, Blair, W & Obama.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's just like A/B bucket tests on websites.</comment>


Trump Has Asked His Lawyer to Look into Buying Greenland - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/donald-trump-greenland <comment><USER2> The U.S. government has considered and attempted this before:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Home_rule_and_self-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Home_rule_and_self- rule)</comment>


Why Antivirus Companies Like Mine Failed to Catch Flame and Stuxnet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/internet-security-fail/ <comment><USER2> I also work for an AV company, but unlike Mikko - I do not think Flame or Stuxnet should be focused on. They do not cause malicious behavior to our users, therefore our time will be better spent addressing real threats that steal credit card numbers and ruin OS's.

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, which AV company do you work for? I want to make sure I never recommend that anybody purchase your products. _Any_ software that exploits security flaws in OS or other system-level software needs to ring every alarm bell you've got. Sure Stuxnet, et al, target specific systems and hardware that are unlikely to belong to your customers, but Stuxnet's escape into the wild shows that mistakes or false assumptions were made by the designers and implementers. The software may not be intentionally malicious, but it's already behaving in ways not predicted by its authors. Yet you claim that I should just trust them and not worry that their software might be running on my system against my wishes? That's not what I, as a hypothetical customer of yours, pay you for.

<comment><USER2> There is limited amount of time and resources to deal with an enormous number of new samples daily, would you prefer we focus on samples that a) cause real harm to live users? b) could theoretically be dangerous down the line?

I am sorry if you disagree, but with over 50,000 new samples of malware out daily I personally think that all of our time would be better spent on zero days that actually are hurting out users today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And this is why antivirus is, by and large, an utter waste of CPU cycles and IO wait time.

The ones it catches you could have avoided by not being an idiot. The ones you WANT it to catch go sailing by. Meanwhile your life is a misery because every single little file access goes through the antivirus - much like any other root kit, in fact. Ask me what that does to performance when you develop in Java, and every single JAR file gets unpacked and scanned every time...

<comment><USER5> My grandmother got a virus, and I don't appreciate you calling her an idiot.

Really, just stop and think before making claims like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to see a bit of humility in a market where posturing is so prevalent. It's true that commercial AV can't be expected to pick up these well-funded, targeted attacks. But mom and pop can't be expected to know this from the advertising the AV companies put out.

<comment><USER7> Until a targeted attack turns every computer into a zombie DDoS farm inside an air-gapped network (thus, by definition not really a targeted attack anymore), AV companies and Mom and Pop shouldn't need to worry about these kinds of things. Stuxnet can be installed on your mom's PC and it'll provide just as much system instability and maliciousness as Winamp or uTorrent.

The real threats to moms and pops buying off the shelf AV products from their local BestBuy are the threats that are targeted at your mom and dad to steal their passwords, bank accounts, and include a trickle of Spam into the torrent of daily inbox junk that gets sent out every minute. If a nationstate decides to buy Norton 360 (et. al) to protect their nuclear reactor PLCs from being fucked with by another nationstate, well, they're screwed. There is no solution at that level (yet).

<comment><USER8> Well, unless Mom and Pop are running a secret nuclear facility in their basement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can understand why behavioral techniques might not detect this stuff in the wild, but what about honeypots? _Anything_ that shows up on a honeypot should be detectable as malware.

</comment><comment><USER10> This would have been a good opportunity to educate the public about APT. Mikko's argument is essentially that this was an APT attack, which is by definition unstoppable.

A more productive way to take this essay is how to detect and close breaches once they've happened. But AV companies aren't interested in pursuing this part of the market, because it's not as simple as selling a piece of automated software.

<comment><USER11> Definition for the lazy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Simple solutions. Designate random computers as secure. Have them in normal places, for instance in workplaces, but with agreements to have special monitoring, and serious penalties for putting software on them without properly logging that you're doing so.

Every so often scan those computers. Any software that is there which was not installed, is presumed to be malware. (And if not, trigger those penalties for having installed stuff without saying.)

Humans being humans, you'll get a lot of false positives. But you'll notice things like Flame and Stuxnet.

<comment><USER13> > Simple solutions. Designate random computers as secure.

Well, I laughed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "In the case of Stuxnet and DuQu, they used digitally signed components to make their malware appear to be trustworthy applications."

How did they do this? This seems to imply that either

(1) the certification authorities or the (2) vendors of these "trustworthy" software applications were "part of the team".

</comment><comment><USER15> It's the same with spammers. If you are a public email provider, the spammers create accounts and spam them before unleashing their spam. Since they have access to both sides of the wall, they can keep trying till they are successful. Rinse, lather, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to hear more about how they had samples already submitted but some process caused them to ignore them, and what they're doing to prevent that omission in the future.

</comment><comment><USER17> @jgmmo sounds like trolling. These things escaped into the wild, which means the code is now available to a whole lot of malwre develoeprs who just upped their game.

</comment><comment> excuse-me "consumer-grade antivirus products can't protect against targeted malware created by well-resourced nation-states with bulging budgets"

Sorry - NO. These aren't some super secret stealth aircraft needing special materials and billions of $ to develop. They are programming the same Windows targets using the same compilers, generating the same instructions using the same system calls. Yes they were clever to target the particular facility and to hide the code. But they didn't build anything that some other malicous hacker couldn't build.

"And the zero-day exploits used in these attacks are unknown to antivirus companies by definition."

I must try that excuse. The bugs in my software are by definition unknown so I can't be expected to have fixed them.

So exactly what is the point of virus scanners? If all they are doing is checking for the obvious signatures in email attachments called "naked pictures of whoever readme.exe" to look for well known threats isn't the solution simply for the user to not be a moron?

<comment><USER18> "'consumer-grade antivirus products can't protect against targeted malware created by well-resourced nation-states with bulging budgets'"

That's not the relevant bit. This is the relevant bit (emphasis mine):

"As far as we can tell, before releasing their malicious codes to attack victims, the attackers _tested them against all of the relevant antivirus products on the market_ to make sure that the malware wouldn't be detected."

This means that they can be certain they've bypassed the signatures, and whatever imperfect heuristics are being used have been bypassed, with the attackers essentially having all the time in the world to play with and understand the heuristics, up to and including a complete disassembly of the heuristics if necessary. And you can't have perfect heuristics (hi, halting problem!).

Yes, when the enemy has full access to all these things and sufficient resources to use them, the antivirus loses. Other malicious hackers don't have this scale of resources, and that's the sole reason they can't do it.

<comment><USER19> So what they're saying is: "We can't possibly defend against any attack if the attacker bothers to take the time to test their attack against our software."

That's a startling admission, not just because they're saying "our software ain't _that_ good" but because they've also gone and told you exactly how to defeat it.

[insert conspiracy theory here]

<comment><USER20> > they've also gone and told you exactly how to defeat it.

No, what they said is that since they [hackers] can test their code with antivirus before deploying, they can be sure of the fact that it wont be detected.

So it's obvious that to "defeat" the antivirus, they have to test against it. It's in no way a solution. Anyone with a little common sense will tell you that to defeat an antivirus, the best way is to test against it before you release your malware.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jinora – Public channels for Slack teams - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sdslabs/jinora

<comment><AUTHOR> Jinora was made when we wanted to establish a quick chat-as-feedback so that our users could communicate our problems much more easily.

We adore slack, and this helped us reduce support emails, as we can solve issues more quickly and easily. Have a chat with our entire team at [https://chat.sdslabs.co](https://chat.sdslabs.co) to test it out.</comment>


With Musical Cryptography, Composers Can Hide Messages in Their Melodies - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/musical-cryptography-codes.html <comment><USER2> This might be a widely known secret by now, but here's an example of musician Aphex Twin hiding his face in a spectrogram of one of his songs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xMuPWAZW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xMuPWAZW8)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think "steganography" is a more precise term for this than "cryptography"

<comment><USER4> Here's a story about some real life steganography using guitar riffs to hide morse code in a pop song to message hostages:

[https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/7/7483235/the-code- colombian...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/7/7483235/the-code-colombian- army-morsecode-hostages)

(It has been on HN before but not recently I think.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been saying it for years, audio files on minidisc are the safest way to travel.

<comment><USER6> How many years, exactly?

<comment><USER7> Expected the answer communicated through song.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPuff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPuff)</comment>


HP Destroys a Dream Computer to Save It - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/hp-destroys-a-dream-computer-to-save-it/ <comment><USER2> >some people are working on the Machine with an eye to putting the technology into printers. That way, even a simple business printer could contain and analyze all of a corporation's documents.

Are businesses really asking for a printer that can analyze their documents, or is this an application that's being shoehorned into a product that HP just happens to have?

<comment><USER3> It does seem like a rather odd line. A scanner that could do this _might_ be useful -- a printer doing it would be kind of nutty.

<comment><USER4> For larger business, probably. For smaller businesses, the printer and scanner is very often an all in one unit these days, and a NAS is one more device we have to maintain, and one of the most frequent activities is to scan documents and save them in a document store, or pick documents and print them. If you can stuff enough capacity in the printer/scanner to make it the NAS too, cheaply enough, and add capabilities to e.g. have it print files directly, then that could be quite useful. A lot of printers already can print directly from memory cards etc., so why not straight from the file server?

<comment><USER5> In my experience, in larger companies, the printer, the scanner, and the photocopier are a single unit.

I think that, nowadays, you only need custom printers if you have fairly extreme printing needs (large or heavy paper, high-quality color, or large quantities)

And the typical large copier already stores lots of things on disk ([http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.98.html#subj13](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.98.html#subj13))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, it's all going to happen just like they said it would if for "breakthrough new computer technology" you read "existing computer technology" and for "new operating system" you read "Linux port".

</comment><comment><USER6> this is an unmitigated disaster for HP. What this signals to me is that they have given up on commercializing memristors any time soon. That's a $500M write-down (not as bad as autonomy I guess) and the end of their most promising R&D project.

<comment> norea-armozel I think they underestimated the time table to bring it to market. It would've been better to focus on introducing memristors into specialized processing chips where they could be leveraged immediately.

On the other hand, it's good they've tried for a Moon shot than nothing. Maybe someone could buy the project from them since I think non-von-Neumann architectures are the future. It's just they don't have the budget or the share holders with the patience for it.

<comment><USER7> HP has had a strong recent history of strongly preferring to launch products made by other companies originally resulting in lagging pretty far behind and failing to become a market leader in any higher margin business with actually realized growth. Internally developed products from R&D got far, far less backing compared to a salesforce of hundreds to thousands pushing acquisition products like Fortify and Autonomy or 3PAR and webOS based tablets on the hardware side.

I'm not sure if you meant to make a pun, but HP literally had a project called Project Moonshot for a while that was a bet on the rise of microservers. It was also highly coupled with HP's bet on OpenStack taking mass control over internal datacenters of the Fortune 500. I, myself, kind of bet fairly hard on Openstack but after seeing the rather slow progress of adoption for it after the better part of a decade of its existence in some form, I'm thinking that people will start pulling out just from lack of progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People bitch about Apple being driven by marketing but I really just read an entire article where the author credulously used the phrase "the Machine" throughout.

<comment><USER9> When I read the headline I immediately thought of _When HARLIE Was One_ [1] and of the _Great Machine_ [2] from Babylon 5.

Apparently some people at HP are also Sci-Fi fans.

Edit: BTW I think it was Henry Spencer who, long ago, quipped something like "it's not a supercomputer unless it costs a billion dollars". Looks like they're actually budgeting for half of that so with inevitable cost overruns they might get there.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Harlie_Was_One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Harlie_Was_One) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Machine)

<comment><USER10> Is it actually named after the machine on Epsilon 3, or is it just a coincidence? There's a B-Film called _The Machine_ as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember the first time I read a hype article about the memristor. They really made it sound like it was coming out in a year or two. Guess I should've known better.

<comment><USER12> You can buy devices with memristors today:

[http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Panasonic/MN101LR05DXW/?...](http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Panasonic/MN101LR05DXW/?qs=OeBdveGBEcQzg65tbPujiw%3D%3D)

They've been delivered as promised. I read this as HP not getting the performance they need to surpass SRAM at its own game and also be nonvolatile. Which, to me, is kind of duh. You have to bring new tech in from the edges - niche, but important, products that are very ill-served by existing tech. Once you've got your production ramped up and the kinks worked out, then you take on at the really central stuff like CPUs.

Of course, it's very easy to say all this from my armchair :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I believe the goal of the new OS was to try and take full advantage of RAM only computing and its implications that memristors required. Seems like they have realized that memristors are further away and more costly to R&D than they can stomach right now so they are hoping to usher in a new RAM only paradigm via a linux distro to further justify their continued R&D costs.

The whole printer thing is pure politics. To try and tack some justification for this project onto their profit center.

</comment><comment><USER14> A bit a disappointment, I thought memristor would be big in near future.

Oh, and I somehow missed that HP will split itself in two companies: Hewlett- Packard Enterprise (computer servers and data storage equipment), HP Inc (personal computers and printers). So they split out the former Compaq devision and their printer devision, or the other way around.

<comment><USER15> Totally agreed. I know that I shouldn't believe announcements about future technology... But the early announcements from HP were so confident and "no, it's really going to be here in 18 months" that I bought in... I was rooting for a big disruptive result... Still am, but with less enthusiasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Devices that now rely on cloud computing for much of their functionality, like smartphones, could become self-contained objects, capable of memory- intensive things like voice recognition and language translation without calling on external computers.

As far as I understand it those things do not at all need large amounts of RAM.

Not to mention how shoving a million DRAM chips into a server has absolutely no impact on how you would cram more memory into a phone.

</comment><comment><USER17> And I hoped for a breakthrough in OS research... The Machine is dehyped.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Devices that now rely on cloud computing for much of their functionality, > like smartphones, could become self-contained objects, capable of memory- > intensive things like voice recognition and language translation without > calling on external computers

That could have a lot of impact on privacy and end-user control, and on businesses that sell cloud services.

<comment><USER19> I expect Google to be a laggard (at best) in that area because it _wants_ you to have to connect to its servers, so hopefully others will pick up the slack.

<comment><USER20> Google wants you to be able to search. Being able to have lower latency for things like text to speech means that you're more apt to do voice searches and the like. You've got to keep in mind that the high end google phones already tend to have more RAM than their apple counterparts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 320 terabytes of memory - impressive.

<comment> bra-ket I hope they don't put it on a single IO-constrained box

<comment><USER22> Why not? If you've got reasonably static 100TB datasets you want to be able to fire queries at, then -- if the price is right -- a single huge-memory box could be a great solution.

Need to run more queries than the box can handle? Buy another one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure an organization would want the ability of a smartphone to pull all of the corporate data... Maybe it's a little safer operating behind cloud services.

<comment><USER24> Lol right! Can you imagine...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Just as important, the company seems to have realized that even great new > computing technologies have to attract lots of software developers. Since > these people already have lots of work, they tend to dislike learning new > systems, even if they are more efficient.

Um... I don't think that description is accurate at all.</comment>


Grammarly Review: The Best Weapon to Kill the Grammar Nazis - <AUTHOR> http://hellboundbloggers.com/2016/02/grammarly-review-best-weapon-kill-grammar-nazis-63373/ <comment><USER2> People who correct your writing may hurt your feelings, but they really shouldn't be equated with Nazis unless they're also slaughtering millions of people.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm considering insubordination at work, looking for some input.  - <AUTHOR>

I work at an enterprise web software company. We're only compatible with IE 9 -- no Firefox, no Chrome, no Safari. We were, at one time, compatible with these, but Javascript functionality has moved on in some ways that crippled functionality. Because of this, we invested a lot of work developing some browser tracking and logging software that sits on all of our sites to keep out these newer browsers. Our product engineers assured us this was less effort than making our sites compatible.
I am an implementation engineer at this company. I know the product's inner workings better than almost everyone at the company -- maybe better than anyone else at the company. I have found the major causes of what made the site incompatible and know how to fix it. For the first one, it took around four hours of time, but now that I know how, it takes about thirty minutes per site. We have a few dozen sites. I'm being told to sit on this.
We are getting dozens of calls a day to our support center about this. We're a small company, less than twenty full-time non-management employees. I am considering just sending this to QA and deploying it after it passes.
Our sales team has told us the browser issue is a big deal for them. I think our engineers are lazy in the wrong way and are taking advantage of management.
What's the right way to handle this? The burden it is putting on our users, and our lethargic response to that burden, is, IMO, indicative of a rotting culture I would like to reverse. I am aware this risks getting me fired, but I'm still favoring that risk presently. <comment><USER2> It may be a very good idea, but if you specifically disobey your management and do it against their wishes, don't be surprised if you get fired. As the other comments suggested, you can try to look for a way to convince them that it's the right thing to do. But if you fail, forget about it.

However, you might consider starting to look for a job in a company whose way of doing things aligns more closely with your own. And it will be easier to get your next job if you haven't been fired from your previous job for insubordination. It's much better to make the choice of leaving on your own, when the time is right for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> It appears that your current position is one where you may not have all the relevant facts, e.g. there maybe contractual issues or the possibility the company is in a due diligence phase or that the company is in negotiations for a contract that would pay for making the changes.

To put it another way, the closest to a business case you have presented is that sales has voiced complaints to you. They're the ones in a position to make a business case to management and it's management's prerogative to act upon it or not. This isn't worth falling on your sword. Move on or find a side project to channel your energy.

Good luck.

<comment><USER4> Yea it sounds like the mgmt is trying to squeeze money from customers to "pay" for the upgrades. Best solution is just find a new employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would run through "Driving Technical Change" by Terrence Ryan for a few ideas. It's short and to the point:

[http://pragprog.com/book/trevan/driving-technical- change](http://pragprog.com/book/trevan/driving-technical-change)

[http://www.amazon.com/Driving-Technical-Change-Terrence- Ryan...](http://www.amazon.com/Driving-Technical-Change-Terrence- Ryan/dp/1934356603)

</comment><comment><USER6> Gather evidence that will show how easily the system can be updated to support other browsers. This will allow you to gain buy in from management.

If the product engineers are refusing to make the site compatible when the customers obviously want it, they're failing to provide the product they're hired to create.

</comment><comment><USER7> _I 'm being told to sit on this_

This question is more problematic than you think. You should consider resigning and getting a new job.

Insubordination will not only put you at risk for losing your job on an involuntary basis, but in a precarious legal position should you be fired. (Your company will have the ability to deny you unemployment, and/or provide a reasonable professional reference.)

That being said, the way to handle your situation is to "skip-level" your boss. Most established companies provide for this (potentially via the HR function). The purpose of a skip-level is to raise issues internally that are important to the business but may be bottlenecked by a conflict of interest in middle-management.

This is a situation that needs to be handled with discretion. You don't want to trigger an emotional reaction from anyone about this--stay away from ad- libbing stuff like "I think our engineers are lazy in the wrong way"\--you simply want to resolve a remediable inefficiency.

The key considerations for you are (1) establishing credibility, if its not already evident to your 1-over-1 manager; (2) being forthright with the risks (and fairly treat your immediate manager's stated position/s); and (3) finding a way to implement a decision without making your boss look "lazy in the wrong way" {etc}.

The question to you is really about the upsides to taking a pro-active approach?

The standard for that upside should be reasonably high. Can you deliver results to both your immediate boss and your 1-over-1 boss by doing this? If so, and if this will decrease any disfunction/toxicity (rather than trigger it), that is more persuasive.

If this is just going to inflame a bad situation, then again you may want to just look elsewhere before sinking more energy into a dead-end rabbit hole.

The downsides to doing a skip-level are mitigated by the discretion of your HR and 1-over-1 manager if this is simply declined. The messier edge case is where they decide to implement your fix, but something goes wrong technically or in the political implementation that damages your own reputation (for showing good judgement).

The bigger picture question: if the culture is "rotten", what are the odds that your skip-level is an equally un-satisfactory decisionmaker?

A "cowboy" implementation (with no approval) is unlikely to trigger a cultural renaissance you have multiple layers of bad management. It is possible, but remember someone up above you thinks those guys above you are "decent-enough". So you're initiative would have to overcome essentially 3 bad layers of managemnet--that is alot of inertia.</comment>


Appeals court keeps alive the never-ending Linux case, SCO v. IBM - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/appeals-court-keeps-alive-the-never-ending-linux-case-sco-v-ibm/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hard to believe it's been 15 years of watching this play out.</comment>


Show HN: Flash – Speed Reading Web App Made with React/Next.js - <AUTHOR> http://producthunt.com/posts/flash-3 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Flash is a minimalistic web app that allows you to read large texts fast by flashing words one by one. You can read up to 1000 words/min using this technique. The app is written in React/Next.js, is fully Open Source and available on [https://github.com/fivepointseven/flash](https://github.com/fivepointseven/flash)

<comment><USER2> What license is the code released under?

<comment><AUTHOR> MIT, do whatever you want :)</comment></comment></comment>


IPad as hip flask - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/03/10/ipad-as-hip-flask/

<comment><USER2> I ain't gonna lie. I was imagining an iPad's guts being removed and it's husk being filled with whiskey or home made absinthe or something when I first saw this.

<comment><USER3> Me too. And filled with: <http://www.leopoldbros.com/New_York_Apple_Whiskey.html> (no connection)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me, a high end smartphone seems more like a hip flask in terms of inconspicuousness and mobility. When I'm in public and someone whips out an ipad, I definitely notice. A cell phone, not so much.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. In fact, in my experience, an iPad is _more_ conspicuous than a laptop because laptops are pretty commonplace now and no one gives them a second look, whereas the iPad is still something of a novelty and still attracts some attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So true. I would never get away with taking a laptop to bed, but my wife doesn't seem to take issue with my tablet. It's a guilty pleasure. As much as I enjoy it, it feels a little wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> All I can say is that when I bought my first-ever laptop in 2006, it completely revolutionized my trips to the bathroom.

<comment><USER8> I expect 2007 was the year you discovered your first hemorrhoid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the same thing is going on with the iPad now, that went on with Pocket Calculators, when they first hit the scene. There was a lot of this kind of thinking, that pocket calculators, and the ease with which they can be whipped out and use, was 'ruining peoples ability to do math'.. and well .. after all the iPad is just a pocket calculator on steroids. I don't see people complaining about calculators nowadays, but then again the generation that complained about them have all retired, I suppose ..

<comment><USER10> My calculator did ruin my ability to do mental arithmetic, because I had it in my pocket basically every weekday between the ages of 11 and 17. Damn school blazers and their capacious pockets.

My general ability to do maths (in terms of understanding and applying mathematical concepts) is good, I got a degree in computer science, but my ability to do maths _in my head_ is really bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bad analogy. A laptop is not only more conspicuous than an iPad, but heavier, louder, larger, and much less convenient. I'm not sure what he's angling at by the comparison to a hip flask but I'm quite sure I don't like the implications.

You could make the same argument about a modern smartphone.

<comment><USER12> I think he is saying that the iPad is a more convenient form-factor for fueling our addiction to consuming social media (I would include other internet content on here - HN is a mild addiction for me although I would consider it to be a little more enlightened and useful than your average social media). The implication is that we are much less productive and also less aware of other more important things in life when we are addicted to social media. I wholeheartedly support any efforts to minimize its role in our daily lives.

<comment><USER11>
      >I wholeheartedly support any efforts to minimize its role in our daily lives.

While getting addicted to anything is a bad idea, isn't this a bit extreme? There's absolutely nothing wrong with social media.

<comment><USER12> I was sort of overstating for dramatic effect although that's hard to convey online. From time to time, though, I really find myself consuming more and more and producing less. I can't really tell if its getting worse but I think it's a good idea to schedule internet consumption quiet-periods every now and again.

<comment><USER13> One of the things I keep hearing over and over is that people are being flooded with so much crap that they can't keep up. Thats not the problem. The problem is that theres such _a glut of good material_ that people can't keep up. If it was all crap people would ignore it. The thing is, a lot of this stuff is interesting, and thats where it gets tricky.

 _To read all the stuff that you want to read will leave you with no time to actually do anything._ But on the other hand _not reading anything will stunt your ability to generate new ideas._ This is the question: How much do you need to read before you've read enough that the diminishing returns are no longer worth it.

Reading is sort of a thing that becomes less and less useful the more of it you do. Eventually the returns from reading become low enough that it makes more sense to actually go _do something._

If you've been following hacker news long enough to be sick of it you've probably hit that point.

<comment><USER14> The returns from reading are completely nonlinear.

If you find yourself doing cost-benefit analysis on the benefits of reading, you're doing too much cost-benefit analysis.

Economic valuation of words and ideas is absurd.

<comment><USER13> (Disclosure: I have never taken a financial math course.)

[http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer- Prog...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs- Edition/dp/0070004846/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331484569&sr=1-1)

Apparently at the time of writing it's worth $34.78 on paperback. You could argue that that's the printing costs. However, if I were to copy that book with a scanner and distribute it online for a cost of $0 it would be copyright infringement. Thus the words and ideas themselves must have some form of economic value. (Or at least _perceived_ economic value.)

You can already measure one variable associated with reading: Time spent. After all, by some metrics time translates to money and vice versa. And okay, the benefits of reading are nonlinear. So instead make it a probability. What is the chance that the book I am about to read will, even in conjunction with other books, will have justified the amount of time I spent reading it? (You can probably use some subjective measures here like happiness generated from fantasy.) In the case of reading to enrich your knowledge in a particular field you ask an important subset of that question: _What is the chance that this book will, even in conjunction with other books, have a significant impact on my ability to work in my chosen field versus the chance that if I went and started one of my projects right now I would succeed?_

Theres more than one project I have right now for which I've said "Nope, need to do more reading.".

<comment><USER11> >However, if I were to copy that book with a scanner and distribute it online for a cost of $0 it would be copyright infringement. Thus the words and ideas themselves must have some form of economic value. (Or at least perceived economic value.)

Percieved, perhaps, but keep in mind that copyright is nothing more than a government granted monopoly. There is no requirement that something have a certain value (or even positive value) for copyright to apply.

After all, just because I perceive my blog to be worth $1,000,000 doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot, even though it's copyrighted ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kickstarter sued over 3D Systems' printer patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20434031

<comment><USER2> Formlabs 'by promoting the Form 1 printer had caused "immediate and irreparable injury and damage to 3D Systems".'

Conveniently both Formlabs and 3D Systems have a 3D printer that might be able to replace that damage.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see 3D Systems be made to pay for the frivolous suit against Kickstarter. Why not sue Formlabs' ISP while they're at it? Surely the ISP's service was used to promote the new printer as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish I was in the market for a 3D printer so I could boycott 3D Systems on principal alone.</comment>


Ask HN: Did Twitter just revert to #oldTwitter? - <AUTHOR>

I seem to not be the only one, has Twitter reverted? <comment><USER2> There was a tweet that said #newTwitter was revealing the timelines of other users so they shut it down and reverted back to #oldTwitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> ahh. thanks for the info. it's back to #newtwitter again it seems.</comment></comment>


Clipboard Hijacking with HTML5 in Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://tbranyen.com/post/clipboard-hijacking-with-html5

<comment><USER2> This needs to be a thing (global, and also per-site):

        [ ] Allow reading clipboard content
        [ ] Allow writing clipboard content

I much prefer the "if there's an API that websites could abuse, there needs to be a setting to disable it" line of thought when it comes to browser functionality. I know it could result in many options (how about organising them better), and cause some to oppose with "but it'll be too hard/confusing for the users!", but this is how you empower your users to take control of their browsing experience - with fine-grained controls, not only large categories, and _certainly not_ "it can't be changed from the UI".

<comment><USER3> > Allow reading clipboard content

This should never be a thing. The amount of snooping that's possible is incredibly high and people don't realize that kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment> adam-a There are also people doing this by listening to the element.copy event then switching out the selected element. TYNT[0] are the primary culprits (they promise to let you "leverage on site copy and paste activity"). I found out about this a while back and made a demo and a small writeup[1].

This method is totally impossible to spot, works for Ctrl-C as well as right- click copy, and is fairly widely supported.

0 - [http://tynt.com/](http://tynt.com/)

1 - [http://joeba.in/joebain/Javascript%20Copy%20Hijack](http://joeba.in/joebain/Javascript%20Copy%20Hijack)

<comment><USER4> Semi-interesting trivia. Trello lets you copy the URL of a card by just hovering it and hitting Ctrl-C. They do this by intercepting Ctrl to change the current selection to an invisible input field...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not really seeing the issue here. So the user agent is allowed (via Javascript) to modify the content the user copied on its way to the clipboard, but they're not allowed to read the clipboard without user consent, right? It's the latter that's scary (allows untrusted client code to see, for example, maybe my bank account number or a password if I used the system clipboard to move it around).

I've seen enough legitimate use cases of fixing the browser's mistaken assumptions of how to translate HTML to plaintext to feel that the benefits to being able to edit the clipboard output offset the cost of putting up with a few "Want to read more? [mysite]" edits.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I'm not really seeing the issue here."

"...to modify the content the user copied on its way to the clipboard..."

The browser can copy data into your clipboard without you requesting anything. Your assumption is that the user hit Ctrl+C and the app augmented the value, which is not the case in my post.

<comment><USER5> Ah, thank you for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't seem to be so much 'clipboard hacking' as 'select highjacking'. It's a small distinction, but this attack has been around since before the HTML5 clipboard API, and the actual clipboard API does pop down an allow/deny box, eg like a webcam access does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh, it does not in desktop or mobile. What browser/os are you talking about?

<comment><USER7> It does in IE.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well this post is about how Chrome screwed up, so props to IE for doing the right thing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to put in another word for an explicit per-site permissions model. I have a project which is (among other things) a terminal emulator, which runs in Chrome's App Mode. It has a scripting system in between the keyboard and the user's actions, which is not Javascript and lives outside the browser. Right now, copy and paste are ugly hacks because Chrome restricts clipboard access to inside of event-handlers, which doesn't allow the necessary roundtrip to interpret the keystrokes.

</comment><comment><USER9> To tldr this:

1\. It does not allow web pages to read the clipboard (which would be a security violation, and what comes to mind when you say "hijacking"), only to write to it.

2\. Browsers can already trap clicks and keys to override standard copy functionality, so if you're worried about Tynt-style stuff, this doesn't change that equation at all.

3\. The only effect of this is that it lets sites overwrite your clipboard when you don't signal that you want to copy something. Which they could already do today if you have Flash.

So... at worst, that counts as a minor annoyance. And since most sites aren't actively hostile to their users, it's not likely to be widely-misused, and it's more likely that it'll be used for its intended purpose -- making it easy for users to copy, say, big wodges of code to the clipboard with a single click.

The proposed solution to this non-problem would make this feature so cumbersome it might as well not exist, on its way to solving a problem that in practice will almost never be seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. The term clipboard hijacking predates my post, so I don't get your point. And yes, if it could access your clipboard that would be insanely insecure.

2\. This has nothing to do with overriding standard clipboard functionality.

3\. "Due to browser and Flash security restrictions, this clipboard injection can ONLY occur when the user clicks on the invisible Flash movie. A simulated click event from JavaScript will not suffice as this would enable clipboard poisoning."

So no, this cannot occur already with Flash. Simply hovering over text is enough with this new API to augment your clipboard.

At worst this overrides your clipboard which could contain important information. Visiting a click bait site accidentally could potentially destroy your work (assuming it was in the clipboard).

How often do you use this feature already? Would it really make it so cumbersome that you'd never use it. Do you never use location, microphone, full screen, webcam, etc APIs because they ask for permission? I doubt it.

I think it's a bit bold and bit too early for you to be making any claims about whether or not this will be abused. I think you have far too much trust in advertisers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure advertisers will love this.

One more reason to upgrade to FOSS Mozilla Firefox.

<comment><USER7> You're out of luck I'm afraid, they're implementing it too: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/oWhmLMv...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/oWhmLMvGAD0/3eXWSRjJAZsJ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was already possible on desktop using the following flash polyfill: [https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard](https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard). So on desktop at least this doesn't introduce any new threats, so this seems a little strongly worded to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except that this is baked into the browser and affects mobile. It's also been discovered that your clipboard can be hijacked by purely loading a page. So yeah, I think the threat is very real and very obnoxious.

</comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux One important thing to note is that this functionality is also available through Flash. So, anyone who has Flash enabled has already been vulnerable to this.

We haven't seen anything terribly bad happen with the Flash implementation.

<comment><USER12> But if we are going to provide a modern, standard API, then we better make it right.

A possible attack scenario could be showing a certain Bitcoin address but copying a different one to your clipboard.

<comment><USER13> You try to copy a Bash snippet and it gives you something very dangerous instead when you paste...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> An article's comment reports it works in Firefox, here it seems to work in Safari too.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the kind of feature which should be HTTPS-only :)</comment>


Goto in Scala (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.richdougherty.com/2009/03/goto-in-scala.html <comment><AUTHOR> (had to post this after seeing the Visual Basic post )</comment>


Backstage with the Gameover Botnet Hijackers - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/backstage-with-the-gameover-botnet-hijackers/ <comment><USER2> It's kind of a shame that they can't give more details, but also completely understandable. Advanced crimeware posts alway fascinate me.</comment>


Eat the Document - <AUTHOR> http://reallifemag.com/eat-the-document/ <comment><USER2> There is a good reason why these pictures are called food porn...

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article, great webdesign. Thank you for this submission.</comment>


StackOverflow Offline - <AUTHOR>

Stackoverflow is currently in read-only mode; Stackoverflow'll return with full functionality soon. PS: Not only Stackoverflow is down, but the StackExchange network is down. <comment><USER2> $&%^ maybe they have been hacked!!!! OMG!!!

Being a little more serious. They have actually had some sort of outage as described on there website. [http://stackstatus.net/post/85902805739/stack- exchange-prima...](http://stackstatus.net/post/85902805739/stack-exchange- primary-data-center-offline-may-16th) Stackexchange network status updates are on there twitter feed. [https://twitter.com/StackStatus](https://twitter.com/StackStatus)</comment>


Commuting 4 hours every day to avoid paying $4,500-a-month San Francisco rent - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/20/pr-rep-commutes-4-hours-every-day-to-avoid-45000-dollar-san-francisco-rent.html <comment><USER2> Some ideas on how to avoid a 4 hour commute AND also avoid $4,500 rent

1) get lots of roommates

2) live in a "bad" neighborhood closer to work

3) commute to work by gyrocopter if possible

4) lobby local government for more high-rises and train lines

5) negotiate a remote contract

6) sleep in the office

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish remote work was more popular.

<comment><USER2> I decided to move to a quite rural area that's still maybe 1.5 hrs away from a major city and airport. My car costs me maybe $200 a month in total and the commute is 25 mins of easy highway miles. Not the best, but not worst. Transport in so many American cities is truly torture</comment></comment>


DHS Monitors Social Media For 'Political Dissent' - <AUTHOR> http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/14/233203/dhs-monitors-social-media-for-political-dissent

<comment><USER2> The government is listening to its people to find out when they disagree with it? It's almost like they're a democracy!

Folks, this is GOOD news. I know it's fashionable to complain about squashed civil liberties, but seriously, I'd be a lot more concerned if the government _weren't_ making efforts to discover public sentiment against it from social media.</comment>


WebOS is vulnerable to XSS, zero-day exploit found - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/231001078

<comment><AUTHOR> Would Windows 8 apps be likewise open to this sort of web programming language-based vulnerability?</comment>


High School Is Killing Creativity - <AUTHOR> Schools are killing creativity by forcing students to memorize factoids rather than teaching them practical problem solving and pattern-recognition skills, and inspiring them to pursue their intrinsic motivators. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> You ask for thoughts so here's mine: Anyone can make a controversial, opinion- based statement. Anyone. There's nothing interesting about your particular statement in that regard. It _could_ have been interesting if you'd taken the time to explain your opinion. But you didn't, and thus all I read is a one sentence opinion. Why should I take the time to offer my own explanation of my opinion when you couldn't be bothered to do the same?

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree, but do not consider myself knowledgeable enough in the matter to actually think about a solution. Instead I think a lot about hacking this for myself (when I was in high school, back when we used to ride a t-rex to get to school) and for kids that I meet, friends' children etc. The optimal strategy that i've found is to challenge the child until the 7th grade with after curriculum activities, and then at 7th grade to start avoiding school as much as possible while still attending for the social benefits. this can be done by participating in special programs that vary from school to school but common examples are teaching the kid math after school that he may take the final exams by 9th grade and starting a university degree in a high school / university combined program. This way the student can avoid roughly 50% of high school while still getting the social benefits of making friends and getting used to being around people, yet get 50% of his time back so he can invest it in real education.

</comment><comment><USER4> Memorizing stuff is good for excersizing long and short term memory capacity, which is a big bonus when you get into programming... though then again, I built my memory skills more from developing my programming than much other stuff... I'm sure if you talked to someone who has a degree in child development and higher learning they could give you the ins and out that both rote and process learning are valuable for cognitive development.

And sometimes all you need is a factoid to get by and not the process that went into its production.

</comment><comment><USER5> When all you have is the ability to construct solutions, but no knowledge of solutions that came before you, you'll spend your life inventing wheels.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Schools are killing creativity...

Assuming this statement were true, unschooled populations would have demonstrably higher rates of creativity and happiness indices. "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it is that bad. In high school there are things like creative writing. University can be way worse. In some majors like business studies original thinking gets punished systematically.

</comment><comment><USER8> Absolutely true. Students shouldn't be forced to memorize facts, they should be encouraged to memorize those facts are that are necessary for problem solving and pattern recognition.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Thoughts?

My thought is this is not a fast-breaking story.

Also, remember that high school students get exactly the education their parents want and are paying for.

<comment><USER10> > high school students get exactly the education their parents want and are > paying for.

Not true. Lots of parents don't have any other options but to put their kids in their local public school.

<comment><USER9> > Lots of parents don't have any other options but to put their kids in their > local public school.

That's certainly true, but think about what you're saying. When a Midwestern state tries to outlaw the teaching of Evolution in public schools, which letter-writing political constituency do you think is behind it? How about sex education? How about the treatment of controversial topics like Marxism? All these hot potatoes are vetted by the parents of the students.

I'm not saying parents have realistic alternatives to public school. I'm saying they can whittle away a progressive curriculum, item by item, until you see a clear ground truth in many places -- enforced mediocrity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> you need to have a certain corpus of knowledge -- before you can begin to innovate. We all must stand on the shoulders of giants.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is already a known fact. Read about the education system in Finland to see the solution in action.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The reason I ask is because I wrote a book after my senior year of high school called "What High School Didn't Teach Me: A Recent Graduate's Perspective on How High School is Killing Creativity." You can get a copy here: [http://amzn.to/1B98oi8](http://amzn.to/1B98oi8)

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree, we memorize too much things that cannot be used in real life.</comment>


Boris Johnson has an alarming track record of technology stunts - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-prime-minister-reaction-analysis <comment><USER2> It's Boris-season in the press at the moment, for obvious reasons. Sadly, this article is very poor, seeking to harness anything vaguely related to tech (apparently, that is - a garden bridge?) and spin it negatively, whatever the real situation.

Within the article, he's criticised for:

* supporting ideas which were explored but abandoned (the estuary airport idea, and the garden bridge) - when surely this shows a leader who is willing to be imaginative but who is also willing to listen to reason... which I would have thought would be a good model to espouse?

* supporting people in his wider organisation in exploring tech ideas which were innovative (the gang matrix, for example) - when surely we should praise our governments for adopting more of a tech-style approach to be willing to try new ideas and fail fast?

* things being popularly named after him, whether they were controversial (Boris buses), highly successful (Boris bikes) or unsuccessful (Boris island) - when none of these would have been officially named like that by him (they would probably have been thus named by the press due to his prominence in their creation or start-up, and his newsworthiness, approaching meme status) and when it would have been impossible for him to influence the popular name once adopted by the public.

Don't get me wrong - I'm genuinely not a Boris supporter. But this article is nonsense, jumping on the zeitgeist with weak, trash journalism.

<comment><USER3> Wired has completely gone down the toilet compared to its glory days.

This article is just another example of how their thinking is political points scoring first, journalistic quality second and technology detail last.

Sadly politics is infecting everything now including HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't kept up with British politics, because- as a Canadian- it's hard enough to keep up with my own and the American's.

What's the appeal of this guy? He seems like a buffoon. Is he the British Donald Trump?

<comment><USER5> There is no appeal, really. He wasn't elected by the general public, he was elected by 0.35% of the population in the form of the Conservative party members.

This is worth a read if you're trying to understand Boris Johnson: [https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/08/15/boris-johnson- ha...](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/08/15/boris-johnson-ham-of-fate/)

<comment><USER4> > _This is worth a read_

Perfect, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Overall venture funding goes down - industry pundits panic. Let them - <AUTHOR> http://blog.snaptalent.com/?p=9

<comment><USER2> slightly cocky, comming from a startup that depends on other startups being able to hire.

For every 6 crappy ideas not being funded, might a good one that unfortunately might not be funded as well.

And it is crazy thinking that overrall economy and investors' sentiments don't matter. What if in 3-4 years the economy is still not fully recovered, and your company is running out of cash? What if you want to exit? A lot of companies that cashed out around 2002-2003 were undervalued, because such was the sentiment right then. Rottentomatoes sold for something like 10million (don't remember the exact sum), and if it waited few more years it probably will have fetched a lot more.

We don't know how long, and how bad this downturn will be, this is just the beginning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Ardit33, our longer term outlook isn't build around serving startups - thats a very cyclical market. Instead we believe that a better online approach will win customers as they cut costs in their recruiting budgets.

My point is centered around not getting distracted by the media frenzy around this problem. If it affects your startup adjust - its doesn't mean ignore it completely. Crazed optimism and a desire to do whatever it takes is what startup founders should be focusing on. At least we are at Snaptalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand the argument that "less investment means only the better companies will get funded." At best, you would have to say "less investment means only the better companies [according to VC's] will get funded". VC's are probably better at picking companies than disgruntled entrepreneurs admit, but all of them clearly fund more failures that successes.

But I think the most likely result is that "less investment means that only the _safer bets_ will get funded." If there is a general economic downturn and fewer opportunities for a big exit (from either buyout or IPO), than I would think that VC's would get more conservative.

The other key indicator will be the health of the online ad market; if it collapses than you can expect the entire VC/startup ecosystem to collapse. This is why Google's earnings last week were such good news. But even if a downturn in the ad market does happen, maybe that won't be such a bad thing - then _everyone_ would have to listen to DHH!</comment>


Self-Replicating USBs Spread Software Faster than an Internet Connection - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/522166/self-replicating-usbs-spread-software-faster-than-an-internet-connection/ <comment><USER2> IPoAC.</comment>


Qualcomm's FastCV Computer Vision SDK - <AUTHOR> https://developer.qualcomm.com/software/fastcv-sdk <comment><USER2> How does this compare to, say OpenCV?

<comment><USER3> I think it's a subset clone with closed-source optimisations for Qualcomm chips (Android)

<comment><USER4> Yes, but is it good for the Jews?

[http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english- lexicon/words...](http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english- lexicon/words/199)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why did they sold Vuforia if they have another CV and AR lib ?</comment>


Generate Regex from Examples - <AUTHOR> http://regex.inginf.units.it/ <comment><USER2> The scholarly articles behind this:

Automatic Generation of Regular Expressions from Examples with Genetic Programming[0]

Automatic String Replace by Examples [1]

[0] [http://machinelearning.inginf.units.it/publications/internat...](http://machinelearning.inginf.units.it/publications/international- conference- publications/automaticgenerationofregularexpressionsfromexampleswithgeneticprogramming)

[1] [http://machinelearning.inginf.units.it/publications/internat...](http://machinelearning.inginf.units.it/publications/international- conference-publications/automaticstringreplacebyexamples)

<comment><USER3> A nice discussion on the hardness of finding regular expressions from examples: [http://cstheory.blogoverflow.com/2011/08/on-learning- regular...](http://cstheory.blogoverflow.com/2011/08/on-learning-regular- languages/) . One interesting point: A good such system could easily break RSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hi guys, thank you for your interest in our system of automatic generation of regex.

we are experiencing some trouble with connectivity due to the... unexpected popularity :)

we are working to solve this, but we are a very small research group with limited resources.

meanwhile, if you are interested in the details of our algorithm take a look at the source code hosted here: [https://github.com/MaLeLabTs/RegexGenerator](https://github.com/MaLeLabTs/RegexGenerator)

<comment><USER5> Is it hosted by Università di Trieste?

<comment><USER4> It is hosted on our machine in our lab. Maybe it's time to move elsewhere... ;)

<comment><USER5> Mi sa di si ;)

<comment><USER4> LOL :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given example strings:

      {a, b, c, d}

The most restrictive regular expression is:

      a | b | c | d

The most permissive regular expression is:

      *

If the system produces anything in between I cannot predict the output without knowing a set of rules that are more complicated than the regular expression that the system of rules produces. TANSTAAFL.

<comment><USER4> Moreover an equally restrictive regex could be:

[a-d]

I start to think that we are talking about different topics ;-)

<comment><USER6> That assumes a particular encoding, e.g. that a,b,c,d are not names of expressions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like the Universal Field Extractor: [https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/494/](https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/494/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Archived site, seems to be down right now: [https://archive.is/J8MIR](https://archive.is/J8MIR)

<comment><USER9> What regex does it generate for the inputs shown on that page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't test it right now (site down), but I assume that if I give it the examples 1, 2, 23, 512, 461, 781, it will come up with the regular expression ([0-9]+).

However, it could also have come up with the rule ([0-8]*).

So how does it know which one to choose? Can one also submit counter-examples?

<comment><USER4> the system tries to generalize, so probably it choose something like \d+ (it is shorter)

<comment><USER11> Depending on unicode settings, \d != [0-9]. See:

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/6479605/4359699](http://stackoverflow.com/a/6479605/4359699)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks promising if the title matches what it does - but page does not load.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been looking for tools that would help me do this. Are there any interesting datasets that you have converted to regexes with this?

Zipcodes would be something I'd like to see available as regexes.

<comment><USER14> I can't load the site, so I'm not sure exactly what it's offering, but I'm also not sure what you mean by a regex for zipcodes. Surely it'd be simpler, quicker, and more maintainable just to match /(\d{5})/ and filter out invalid codes after the fact?

(Edit: If you want the full ZIP+4 where it's given, you can add (\\-\d{4})? as a term in the regex, and you can validate them the same way. USPS also offers an API for validating address information; it's been some years since I used it, and I recall it being somewhat recondite in the fashion of most .gov APIs, but it's there and it works.)

Edit again: OK, the site loaded. It looks like a tool for generating regexes via machine learning techniques to match highly complex targets. From a purely technical perspective, that sounds really neat -- but from a maintainability perspective, it sounds like even more of a nightmare than complex regexes usually are.

<comment><USER15> The site has gone down, once for a power outrage and another time cause the traffic peak... I think the problem are solved now. :-)

<comment><USER14> > power outrage

I like that!

<comment><USER15> Auch! my fault, it sounds like but it is not :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chavo-b why the resulting regex contains ++ instead of only one + ? such regexs are wrong!

<comment><USER16> "Possessive quantifiers are a way to prevent the regex engine from trying all permutations. This is primarily useful for performance reasons. You can also use possessive quantifiers to eliminate certain matches."

[http://www.regular-expressions.info/possessive.html](http://www.regular- expressions.info/possessive.html)

<comment> chavo-b ok, tnx, now it makes sense

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> crossposted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4682545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4682545)

<comment><USER18> ... 1006 days ago.

<comment><USER15> ... in order to be fair we have recently updated the engine and webinterface; the new application is a big step forward, the same URL but a totally different thing. The older tool is here, [http://regex.inginf.units.it/extract/](http://regex.inginf.units.it/extract/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you practice Test Driven Development? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yes. For me the tests are actually part of the class, which is one of the reasons I implemented my own test framework ([https://github.com/mpw/MPWTest](https://github.com/mpw/MPWTest)). The other reason is that at the time I started, there was no other test framework for Objective-C...

I recently saw a new language that actually makes tests part of the class definition, so maybe that idea is gaining some traction. TDD also meshes well with "hexagonal architecture".

</comment><comment><USER3> TDD is suitable for routine, predictable projects with predictable, well described in advance interfaces.

For less predictable, more challenging, more unique, more consuming and more intensely creative development TDD is a drag. And so is plethora of many other buzzwords invented in the last 8-12 yrs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, I practice TDD. Hrm? My coverage is only 60% you say? About that... ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes</comment>