Secure ShellFish – SSH and SFTP Storage for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/secure-shellfish/id1336634154?ls=1 <comment><USER2> "The app contains no crash reporting or analytics frameworks with the exception of the beta version that uses HockeyApp for crash reporting." [https://secureshellfish.app/privacy.html](https://secureshellfish.app/privacy.html)

More apps need to have a policy like this!

<comment><USER3> I need proof first. Seen too many apps call home that say they don't.

<comment><USER4> I'm the developer of Secure ShellFish.

You could use something like Charles for iOS to see that it doesn't connect to anything except the servers you configure.

<comment><USER5> That's not perfect btw, many apps today are using websockets (e.g. [https://github.com/daltoniam/Starscream](https://github.com/daltoniam/Starscream)) to connect upstream and they bypass iOS/Android proxy settings entirely with no way for http based mitms to see that traffic.

Gotta fall back to wireshark for 100%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> notably, this is the developer behind Working Copy ([https://workingcopyapp.com/](https://workingcopyapp.com/)), which Does Not Suck (tm).

<comment><USER7> Big fan of Working Copy. Seeing that in the portfolio made this an easy app to install, for me.

<comment><USER6> yeah. i was dubious and then i saw the name and felt reassured. Already bought the onetime IaP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> MacStories also has a nice review: [https://www.macstories.net/reviews/secure- shellfish-review-a...](https://www.macstories.net/reviews/secure-shellfish- review-adding-your-mac-or-another-ssh-or-sftp-server-to-apples-files-app/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Just yesterday I was designing something on my iPad Pro and had to save it to Local Storage (which is another great app, btw) only to use Blink to scp it over. SCP in the end didn't work (in Blink) with key authentication, so I had to resort to [https://transfer.sh/](https://transfer.sh/)

Complex, and this might make it a lot simpler. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> While i use SFTP a lot using sshfs, it is a terrible storage solution in general. If you don't know, SSH does its own flow control on top of TCP (that is, you have TCP flow control outside the SSH sleeve and SSH flow control inside it). The result is SFTP often bogs down and has dismal transfer rates. You can do much better using e.g. WebDAV and dav2fs, which lets you use https to authenticate and transfer.

<comment><USER11> suggest an app. My daughter has an iphone and my kids use ipads for school. My biggest problem is their inability to backup to my linux server, or grab stuff easily off my samba share folder.

<comment><USER12> I'd suggest waiting until iOS 13 for native SMB support.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is going to be huge. And amazing that it took so long

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be cool if it could import keys from clipboard. I've tried to export my existing keys from Shelly and found out that I'll have to write them to an iCloud file before importing them.

But overall this is great. I'm already a happy working copy customer.

<comment><USER13> Oh wait my bad aparently it does. I've exported a key without password to clipboard in my iPad and the button text changed from "import from clipboard". I think I've accidentally exported the pubkey instead. My bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I might be able to get rid of Dropbox with this...

<comment><USER15> I did! I'm using ResilioSync to synchronize across devices, including a cheap Hetzner server with a 6TB harddrive, and then use Secure ShellFish to access that server from iOS devices (while ResilioSync does have an iOS app, that one is too buggy to be useable)

<comment><USER16> How much is the 6TB Hetzner machine?

<comment><USER15> about $25 per month, depending on the current EUR/USD conversion rate. It's a machine from their "server auction" ([https://www.hetzner.com/sb](https://www.hetzner.com/sb))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FYI can't be found via search on ios app store app, even though the name is unique. instead, navigate to it via browser. I guess b/c it was released just today?

I've been wishing for a long time that Auristor (AFS) on ios would work with the Files app, but sadly it doesn't. Making it less than useful.

For personal-only use, this is far easier anyway.

<comment><USER18> In my experience it can take 1-2 days for the AppStore to index a newly released app.

<comment><USER19> Which seems crazy. But, yeah.

Also can do a search for "Working Copy", tap that app, then tap the button to show more from the same developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hmm. The lack of any kind of user-accessible local filesystem is one thing that makes me not prefer iOS.

But it's a real puzzler: is this really a brand new implementation of the ssh protocol? I know I'd feel a LOT better knowing that it used OpenSSH.

<comment><USER21> According to the About screen in the app, it uses libssh2.

<comment><USER22> Is that the reason for supporting only rsa keys?

<comment><USER4> ShellFish developer here. Recently libssh2 1.9 was released with support for modern ssh key types, but I need to do some extra work to calculate public key from private keys that depend on each key type.

I just really wanted to release a first version and more key types will be coming soon.

<comment><USER23> Thanks, I am looking forward to ed25519 support as RSA and DSA are considered too weak [1], [2].

[1] [https://blog.g3rt.nl/upgrade-your-ssh- keys.html](https://blog.g3rt.nl/upgrade-your-ssh-keys.html)

[2] [https://latacora.micro.blog/the-default- openssh/](https://latacora.micro.blog/the-default-openssh/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does this integrate with the native cloud file manager for iOS?

<comment><USER25> If you're asking whether the server directories appear in the Files app, then yes, they do.

More info - [https://secureshellfish.app/](https://secureshellfish.app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, Panic's Transmit is EOL, it's good to have replacements, although this does not do S3 (yet).</comment>


Help write a recipe for the jQuery Mobile Cookbook - <AUTHOR> http://jquerymobilecookbook.com

<comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to helping out with this. Thanks Mike for kicking off this project!</comment>


3D printed coffee cups - <AUTHOR> http://cunicode.com/one-coffee-cup-a-day/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking for stackable coffee cups for a long time. The idea of designing my own -- with the ability to make them hollow walled (!!) -- is tremendous.

One interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts.

(pun intended)

<comment><USER2> _One interesting artifact of 3D printing: no volume discounts_

When you arrive at a design which is commercially feasible in larger volumes, you'd use the printed design for making plaster casting moulds, then use clay slip casting to produce the same cup over and over...

<comment><USER3> Is something like this possible to produce on mass scale? <http://www.shapeways.com/model/25846/ora.html>

<comment><USER2> Well, you can always find examples which are hard to cast. I was thinking more of serially producing coffee cups rather than ceramic art forms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing how Shapeways has improved the quality of these: [http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/1078-New-Ceramics- is-...](http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/1078-New-Ceramics-is-Back-with- a-Bang!.html)

I wonder how much handwork is involved in cleaning up the printed model and applying the glaze (unless the glaze is printed, too).

<comment><USER5> They're made by <http://www.viridis3d.com/ceramics.htm> The materials are dirt cheap ;-) and I believe they were applying the glaze by dipping them in racks.

<comment><USER4> Yup, it seems Viridis3D are the ones doing the actual printing and firing. I thought it was done in-house by Shapeways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this. I have in my mind a future where we don't just use open source software for our computers, but we use open source designs for our home appliances and electronics. I have the feeling that, if done well, you could get all sorts of very nice stuff for almost nothing. The next big revolution, after the information revolution, will be the home fabrication revolution.

<comment><USER7> Somehow I think it's more likely that they'll get a flawed product and will have to buy a replacement from a store.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. Just like people always end up going to the counter at the airport because those home-printed boarding passes are worthless.

<comment><USER9> I've printed my own boarding pass many times, never had a problem

<comment><USER10> There was just a bit of sarcasm in the parent, I think ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm interested to see what happens when these 3D printers become mainstream and people start to "pirate" physical objects.

<comment><USER12> One of my favorite short stories is highly related: Printcrime by Cory Doctorow ( [http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_- _Overclocked...](http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_- _Overclocked_-_Printcrime.html) ).

<comment><USER13> On the subject of 3D printing and Cory Doctorow I expected to see Makers mentioned, not printcrime. <http://craphound.com/?p=2371>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems like a good idea, but the end result isn't smooth enough for me to get one.

<http://cunicode.com/the-octocup-3dprinted-review/>

</comment><comment><USER2> This is inspirational. I'm going to try to reproduce some of these cups using traditional means: throwing on the potter's wheel, and some assembly when the clay is leather hard.

For example, the 'half cup' isn't hard to make, and a great joke cup for when you ask someone "Do you want another coffee?" and she answers: "Hmmmm, ok, a half one then".

The octocup is easy too, just attach 8 handles to a standard cup, but the effect is surprising. The 'double espresso cup' is the same, only two handles vertically stacked.

And a cup with two bullhorns ;-) What would be a nice name for that cup? A 'Texas Cup'?

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice idea. Some of the designs are very funny (spouted cup, aroma cup). At 50$+ a cup, I wonder who'll actually buy them. But as they say at the beginning of the article, the intention is to experiment and not profit?

<comment><USER16> I almost bought one, but the smallest one is $ 40.91 + $ 19.99 (international shipping) = $ 60.90 a single cup. So I had to gave up.

<comment><USER17> Most of the designs don't look that great and certainly aren't worth the price. But I don't think the point of the project was to really sell any cups, rather than to show how far the technology and processes have improved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'd like a 'bullcup', a cup with two large bullhorns.

And a 'spongecup', where the inside of the cup is filled with a filament-like structure. Maybe impractical, because hard to clean.

</comment><comment><USER18> My designer friends are salivating over this. Does the future mean a home- fabricator as a household item, where we can create tools as well as edible items? I can imagine it would cut down on waste. The business model, like an iTunes for 3D models, will be massive.

<comment><USER19> The price has to come down dramatically before this will be a reality.

<comment><USER5> It's less a factor of price for most things than just the material properties of the finished product and the fact that most things aren't a blob of material, but have circuit board, etc. that requires assembly.

That said - cups, jewelry, etc. that can be made at once don't have these material/assembly issues. Jewelry only costs $20 more to do using 3D printed patterned (as opposed to molded patterns), but with ceramic cups you're right: price is the biggest hang up currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> so much for 'cloudflare' the site's is offline.

</comment><comment><USER21> These are unbelievably awesome. Christmas gift for that family member who has everything x2?</comment>


True Link (YC S13) To Help The Elderly Avoid Scammers With Pre-Paid Visa Cards - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/01/yc-start-up-true-link-financial-is-out-to-help-the-elderly-avoid-scammers-with-pre-paid-visa-cards/ <comment><USER2> Wow! Great idea, great mission. Someone smart and well advised solving serious problems for real people who need help, that makes me happy.

My 2 cents: as you want to preserv their sense of autonomy, please use a card design that looks like an usual credit card. The "Visa" is already there, so just use some of these typical shiny, fancy, "3d" background designs of the credit cards we all get used to. If your card is like the one at the picture on the landing page, it looks like a "toy card", something you give to children to pretend they have credit cards. Your customers will notice it and feel their son just substituted their real credit cards for make-believe ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Brilliant stuff.

THIS is something we need in my dear country Nigeria. Internet commerce has refused to take off because of the fear (sadly not misplaced). I am thinking if this service is not better positioned towards the Banks than the individuals themselves.

There would be default permitted websites and locations from where transactions are permitted. If a new website wants to be "registered" they apply to the bank to be put on a whitelist.

Presently, it is a blanket over securing that is taking place that makes it almost impossible to perform online transactions with Nigerian companies.

Great job.

</comment><comment><USER4> _In Stinchcombe's words, True Link's mission is quite simple: "Fuck these scammers."_

Amazing how fast you can neutralize all that noble work with just 3 words.

(FriendAndCoworkerLanguage != BusinessAttractionLanguage)

<comment><AUTHOR> Meh, I'll let it pass.

Two of my elderly neighbors were really badly fucked by these scammers. Actually, I know a lot of old people who were run dry by these scammers. Think for a moment how disgusting this is -- robbing and manipulating people who are at an age where their wits are leaving them... robbing them of money to live their last years on earth peacefully. I say fuck these scammers all the way, they know _exactly_ what they're doing.

To say that those 3 words are 'neutralizing' the work they're doing is a rather ignorant thing to do.

<comment><USER4> 1\. I've been an caregiver for 20 years and love this idea. But there's no way I would engage any business that uses the f-word in their promotions. And believe me, I'm not the only one who feels this way, especially in this demographic.

2\. My feedback, like much that I've give here in the past 6 years, was sincere. I hate to see a promising business shooting itself in the foot like this.

3\. There's not much more "ignorant" that calling constructive feedback from a potential customer "ignorant".

4\. If you're going to insult others here, the least you can do is identify yourself in your profile. Comments from anonymous posters like yours send contributors like me away and drive this site further into the toilet.

5\. Don't say "Meh".

<comment><AUTHOR> To the best of my knowledge, the "Fuck these scammers" statement does not appear officially anywhere on their website -- it was something that was said casually in an interview.

Let me ask you this: do you use Facebook? Because Zuckerburg doesn't just call "bad people" (scammers, thiefs) names, he calls the users of his own site "dumb fucks". [1]

There are greater injustices happening elsewhere in the world right now, save your indignation and outrage for them.

[1]: [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)

<comment><USER5> This is a tangential point, but that quote is idiotic. I've called most of my best friends assholes (and much more vulgar expletives), never in a serious manner. If anything, it comes off as self-deprecating:

> "That client thinks I can do X, Y, and Z and not completely fuck it up. What > an _absolute idiot._ "

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that quote is so un-serious, Zuckerburg is literally and rather specifically offering his friend private information of the users of Facebook, and ending with calling them "dumb fucks".

To the extent that I am learned about Zuckerburg in his earlier days of Facebook by having read various biographical accounts, I can pretty confidently say that the seriousness of his offer and the seriousness in his calling Facebook users "dumb fucks" goes well with the rest of his persona and doings.

But anyway, this is getting pretty off-topic so I'm stopping here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the hard part is identifying/normalizing the merchant based on the 20 character billing name + phone. Each McDonalds and Starbucks have wildly different text. Large purchases are immediately flagged for sure, purchases outside the local area. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. Crowd sourcing helps too. Interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really like this idea. My grandmother has had alzheimers for about a decade. There was a time at the beginning when this would have helped her spirits.

<comment><USER8> Prepaid cards have existed for quite a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bit confused with the difference between this versus something like an Amex pre-paid card. Why would someone use True Link over one of the existing pre- paid card options? A web interface?

<comment><USER10> (Disclosure: I'm an investor in True Link).

A key difference is that the True Link card has built in protections against specific cases of elder fraud, not just the general cases of fraud that something like Amex targets.

Just to give a concrete example: there are bunch of charities that sound like legitimate ones but aren't. An example is the Cancer Fund of America, which spends less than 1% of their income on charitable activities (see [1][2]). These charities specifically target the elderly, sometimes calling them over and over again to take advantage of cognitive decline (cf. [2][3]).

[1] [http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst- charities/](http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/) [2] [http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst- charities](http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities) [3] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse- vic...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes- one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html) [4] [http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887...](http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887605_1_financial- abuse-elder-abuse-senior-population)

<comment><USER11> As someone who is signing up his mother today for this, #shutupandtakemymoney.

$20/year? Well. Worth. It. Don't even give me the first year free. I'll give you guys the $20 today.

<comment><USER12> Haha, thanks for that. Well taken. The goal is to make sure we've provided the value we promised before we bill you for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome. I wonder if they will publish stats and ideally stories about "saves" they make. I guess they would need wide adoption to cause "herd immunity" for non user elderly though.

</comment><comment><USER14> _...it's hard to put an exact number on the scope of scams out there. But he estimates that there are 10 million people in the U.S. above a certain age who are living alone and susceptible to fraud._

I'm not sure what the point of the latter sentence is - I had to read it twice to make sure that I wasn't missing something...am I?

<comment><USER15> In answer to this question; the phrasing could be more specific. I believe he's referencing the number of seniors who are targets for scams like these and would benefit from a card like this. In this case, the question is: how many seniors are there in America, who are living alone, with some cognitive decline, and highly susceptible to fraud and scams?

See this Bloomberg piece -- 2010 estimates that financial abuse victimizes 1 in 5 elderly; about 7.3 million senior citizens have reported being taken advantage of. [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse- vic...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes- one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html)

The scary part is that it's likely much, much higher (the number of people being taken advantage of) -- because so much of it goes undetected, or worse, unreported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does this differ from Amex PASS?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a great idea.</comment>


Step by Step Guide to Building React Redux Apps - node-bayarea https://medium.com/@rajaraodv/step-by-step-guide-to-building-react-redux-apps-using-mocks-48ca0f47f9a#.5qbuaxkrf <comment><AUTHOR> If you want a guide to doing this with a "here are some specific libraries we will use today" perspective and automated testing, take a look at [http://teropa.info/blog/2015/09/10/full-stack-redux- tutorial...](http://teropa.info/blog/2015/09/10/full-stack-redux- tutorial.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's really disappointing to me to see Redux being the "defacto standard" for React applications. It's overly decoupled for simple applications, which makes it harder to reason about the application. It also doesn't help that the Redux codebase itself is hard to understand.

It is only a tool you should reach for after you find you need it. Too few developers approach software development with this level of pragmatism and instead we get "use X because it's being used". I guess you need to understand the tool to know when to use it - but that doesn't mean it should become the "defacto standard".

Ironically Redux is being coupled with React, which is a great library for structuring UI into components and resulting it simpler to understand code.

<comment><USER3> I'm a little confused by what you're trying to say, so help me out here. You say "it's overly decoupled for simple applications" and then "it is only a tool you should reach for after you find you need it." This would imply that you view Redux as a tool that primarily helps maintain larger React applications -- does that mean you think it doesn't make sense as the defacto standard as compared to, say, Flux? Or that there shouldn't be a defacto standard, or that neither of these is a good enough defacto standard?

I'll take this as an opportune time to link to two very helpful and useful posts about Redux from its author (Dan Abramov) about upsides ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32461229/why-use-redux- ov...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32461229/why-use-redux-over- facebook-flux)) and downsides ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32021763/what-could-be- th...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32021763/what-could-be-the- downsides-of-using-redux-instead-of-flux/32916602#32916602)) of using Redux.

Namely, I see Redux offering a nice advantage over flux in encouraging reducer composition (and functional purity) for modularity. "This pattern also enables wonderful features like no-user-code undo/redo. Can you imagine plugging Undo/Redo into a Flux app being two lines of code? Hardly. With Redux, it is—again, thanks to reducer composition pattern. I need to highlight there's nothing new about it—this is the pattern pioneered and described in detail in Elm Architecture which was itself influenced by Flux."

In short, the key value add for Redux, is not necessarily that it's (overly/inadequately) decoupled, but that it is necessarily forcing a decoupling via functional purity for the /purpose/ of modularity. That is, it is taking a more functional approach to state management for React components, favoring the event log paradigm rather than black box paradigm. This brings with it the ability to be "designed with use cases such as logging, support for Promises, Observables, routing, immutability dev checks, persistence, etc, in mind." Of course, these aren't impossible with Flux, but these things follow intrinsically from Redux.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I'm not super experienced with Redux yet, but I really like what I've seen so far playing with it.

<comment><USER4> I believe what he is trying to say is this:

It will take a person a couple of days to "grok" Redux, and a quite a bit longer to fully understand the ins and outs so one can make informed, confident decisions on how to solve problems "the Redux way".

Now you gain "cool" things by doing it, but here is the catch: Is the benefit worth the time investment to get there?

His argument is that for a lot of simple apps it isn't. You get very far with plain React, and a project has to have significant complexity to pay back the costs of fully understanding Redux.

I would argue a lot of people picking the React ecosystem make the mistake of choosing too much architectural complexity, not too little.

The extreme pluggability helps to broaden usage of Redux. But it is overkill for many projects. Decoupling is important, but it is not free (see parts of the Java ecosystem).

Devs should consciously decide what to introduce, and leave out stuff that simply doesn't increase development efficiency given the nature of their project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow what an absolute nightmare to wrap my head around. Reminds me of J2EE days of abstract patterns everywhere just because we can. Talk about simplicity.

Here is the same app in 130 lines:

[https://github.com/techlayer/espresso.js/blob/master/example...](https://github.com/techlayer/espresso.js/blob/master/examples/todomvc/app.js)

<comment><USER6> The author addresses this point early on: "... earlier frameworks made building Todo apps simple but real apps hard. But React Redux make building Todo apps hard but real productions apps simple."

I don't think the author advocates using react-redux for the simplest todo list app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "action creators" from step 4 can be further reduced:

        export const addTodo =
         text => ({
          type: 'ADD_TODO',
          id: nextTodoId++,
          text,
          completed: false
         });

        export const setVisibilityFilter =
         filter => ({type: 'SET_VISIBILITY_FILTER', filter});

        export const toggleTodo =
         id => ({type: 'TOGGLE_TODO', id});

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the funniest part is that the _total_ number of meaningful lines in Redux source code is less than 250. Compare that to the supplied documentation with over 6,000 lines of Markdown.

If you have any FP background, this is really nothing innovative, more of a common sense kind of thing. With the main achievement being that it's trivial enough and has nice documentation with examples so that mass JS programmers can actually grok it...

I've nothing against Redux, it's a good idea but quite a bit overhyped is all.

<comment><USER9> also the amount of boilerplate needed to use redux leaves a lot to be desired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anybody tried both Redux and Baobab? If so, do you think Redux is better and why? I'm using Baobab in a couple of projects and really liking it, but Redux from the tutorial I read seems to a bit too general to me. In Baobab you can subscribe components to their particular branches and only those components will re-render if the branches change.

In Redux, it seems to me, there's no way you can do it, or at least nothing is provided out of the box. Am i correct?

<comment><USER11> I accomplish this in Redux with a simple:

        componentDidMount() {
            item = store.getState().get('item')  // Get function from Immutable.js
            this.unsubscribe = store.subscribe(() => {
                let nowItem = store.getState().get('item');
                if (item !== nowItem) {
                    this.forceUpdate();
                    item = nowItem;
                }
            });
        }

Someone may have a better solution, but I think this works fine for my needs. The internet is full of people dissuading redux users from subscribing to actions.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I see, Redux also requires Immutable.js to work, correct?

<comment><USER12> Reduce requires that functions be pure (no side effects). Immutable.js is one way to enforce this but ithe is not required.

The examples mostly use things like the spread operator and Object.assign.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Probabilistic Multiplicity Counting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seiflotfy/pmc

<comment><USER2> I didn't know that one of the authors was Philippe Flajolet, one of the leads in developing of analytic combinatorics, a mathematical tool that simplified the analysis and the discovery of algorithms. Of course, the HyperLogLog paper is a pretty example of how powerful the tool is for analysis of algorithms with stochastic components.

It's quite silly of me that I've used Redis and never figured out the PF prefix of functions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat; the code is pretty simple actually.

I think this could do with a better example which actually demonstrates its utility. Probably many people who will see this here on HN won't understand why this is useful for reducing storage requirements.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am working on a benchmarking blog post where I will be comparing count-min, count-mean-min, count-min-log and psc... Its very nice to see how much space is being saved sadly estimating is a bit expensive (yet doable). I plan to also do some minor optimisation to the code before the benchmarking. I find it very sad that no one implemented it publicly. AFAICT this is the only implementation around.

<comment><AUTHOR> voila. my first benchmarks based on my use case [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149522)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, interesting. I replied in the comments there.

<comment><AUTHOR> With zipf distribution did you mean for every flow insert a zipf fetched number of events?

<comment><USER3> You mean whether to decide the number of events randomly? You could certainly do that, whether you do that or use the "ideal" distribution without sampling noise just effects how much noise you get in the computed/actual graph.

But maybe the order in which you add the events to these sketches affects the results? If so it might be bad to add X of flow Y before moving to the next flow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The physics of Angry Birds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/physics-of-angry-birds/

<comment><USER2> The cool thing about the article was that I learned about the free video tracking/analysis software. Could be pretty interesting stuff in other contexts.

<comment><USER3> I have a friend who recently started teaching physics to high school students. I showed him this software, which I found through searching a few weeks ago, and he loved it.

Another great program is Vernier Video Physics for iOS devices. <http://www.vernier.com/soft/videophysics.html>

Also, Angry Birds physics makes _me_ angry -- it's terribly unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate the endless "zomg angry birds is teh best evar" rhetoric.

How is it that one of the most copied game mechanics in Flash gaming gets treated as original?

Raise your hand if you have played 20 different pre-angry-birds catapult destruction games! Worse yet is that it is like an instant implementation with Box2D.

<comment><USER5> You got downmodded, presumably for snark (or for being off-topic?) but not being a game dev I'm glad to have learned about box2d; thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a lighter note, what is the physics behind a bird hitting and breaking through concrete walls and ice barriers?

<comment><USER7> That's what I hoped to see when I clicked in the link; an explanation of the collision model when the bird hits the blocks. The initial parabolic flight is just basic physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Parabolic trajectories? Snooze.

Let's get a game that makes a mechanic out of Lorentz transforms!

<comment><USER8> Seriously though if anyone wants to brainstorm about this, you send me a tweet thru my HN handle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid. Very addictive, hugely successful and deservedly so.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is somewhat related: <http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER11> This type of article on the front page makes me not want to read HN anymore. Yes, it is slightly interesting, but how does this apply to hacking or entrepreneurs at all? It is just a basic physics problem. I fail to see any value added to the HN community.

<comment><USER12> HN is not just about hacking and entrepreneurs, it's about anything interesting.

I found it mildly interesting, not interesting enough to upvote, but a bit - it had a tip on an interesting piece of software too (Tracker Video analysis). Obviously other people found it a bit more interesting, there's nothing wrong with that.

The title is a bit cheating though, since I thought it was about actual birds, not a game.

<comment><USER11> There are plenty of places on the internet to find "anything interesting" (see: reddit, digg, youtube). Those places do a great job at wasting time that could otherwise be spent being productive. In other words, those places exist as entertainment portals. There is nothing wrong with that. Entertainment is healthy.

I do not come to Hacker News, however, to waste time. I come to Hacker News for intellectual debate and a deeper form of thinking. Both of these, among others, foster personal growth and learning. That is the value I pull from Hacker News. I'm sure PG would understand where I'm coming from here. So let's keep "anything interesting" to digg. They're doing great so far.

<comment><USER13> From the guidelines:

 _What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER11> Thanks for looking this up, but I think it's reasonable to note that "anything that good hackers would find interesting" is not necessarily the same as the vague category of "anything interesting".

<comment><USER14> Also in the linked document:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate > for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going > to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; > there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also > comment that you did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Should Refuse to Build a Startup on Content - <AUTHOR> http://www.georgesaines.com/?p=582

<comment><USER2> I agree with this but I also think if you build a startup, you should rely on some content in the initial stages to get the ball rolling.

I also think the dirty little secrets of most web companies is that > 80% of their daily traffic comes from search engines. And you need content to rank in those. Pinterest and Facebook are just exceptions to that rule. That's why it's hard for newcomers to breakthrough - everyone else has a 5-10 year head start establishing themselves in Search engines, and building millions of pages of content. People these days don't like to be "pushed" a website (they're more likely to not trust it too) - they want to find it themselves, either through friends, or search engines, or forums.</comment>


The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html <comment><USER2> Please add (2012) to denote that it's not a current article.</comment>


National Park Service is hiring a photographer - <AUTHOR> http://petapixel.com/2015/12/08/ansel-adams-job-opening-in-us-govt-pays-100000-per-year/ <comment><AUTHOR> For all those times you said to yourself, "maybe I'll quit this game and go take pictures of nature."</comment>


One Bowl = 2 Servings. F.D.A. May Fix That. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/business/06portion.html

<comment><USER2> What's with the confusing system? Maybe it's from growing up with it, but here in Europe the system makes a lot more sense: all foods specify the calories/ other food info per 100 grams. This makes it easy to compare different foods. Since the weight of the pack is also given in grams, it's really basic level math to figure out how many calories eating half a pack of something gives.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. How many grams of Cereal did you just pour into that bowl? How many Chex Mix grams did you just chomp down? How many grams of Tang did you mix in with that water?

Sure, using grams is great for comparison... But getting the average person to find out how many grams of xxx they just consumed, _unless_ it is easily quantifiable as "all/half/quarter of the total amount" is pretty hard.

<comment><USER4> The best use of the "per 100g" version is that you can compare different brands of the same kind of food. If you're buying breakfast cereal the interesting question is which cereal suits you best, not if it contains more energy per 100g than butter (if it does, it's unlikely to be healthy).

<comment><USER5> Except for water and fiber all cereals have almost exactly the same amount of calories per 100g.

So really, all you should check for is the fiber content.

(And it's physically impossible to make a cereal with more energy per 100g than butter.)

To a good approximation ALL foods have about the same amount of calories per 100g. The only real difference is how much water. (And how much fat, but in normal food that doesn't vary so very much from food to food. Water varies a lot.)

This system just encourages manufacturers to add water, (and salt) to their food.

Much better would be "fiber per 100 [kilo]calories", "percent of calories from protein", and "percent - NOT number - of calories from fat".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The truly deceitful food industry trick here isn't with calories but trans fats.

The FDA allows food companies to round down and say "0 grams of trans fat" on the label if the product contains less than 0.5 grams _per serving_.

So food companies proudly say "0g trams fat" on the front of a package, even though it might be loaded with heart poisoning hydrogenated oils.

Unsurprisingly, FDA requirements are fairly relaxed in this area compared to Canada and the EU.

<comment><USER7> I have a PAM non-stick cooking spray that says '0g of fat' and has something like 430 servings, a serving is a 1/3second spray, something tells me that 1/3 second spray is what has less than 0.5g of fat and hence why they used that number.

EDIT: As someone mentioned below, wolfram alpha has a good database. According to that the can (5oz) has 112g of fat. By my math 112g/430servings = 0.26g/serving =/= 0g/serv

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pam+cooking+spray+5oz>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any one who has actually read a food label will realize that serving size != package size and for things like cereal my bowl != serving size.

It's hard to believe how touchy people are. Will people really take increased serving sizes as a signal to eat more? Probably not. It won't change anything for those who don't pay attention to calories/serving sizes nutrition. People who count calories will shit a brick and hopefully start eating less processed foods.

This is all really pointless anyways. If the FDA really wanted to address obesity they need to take a hard stance against processed foods and high fructose corn syrup. That will never happen because food companies will lobby to protect their empires and a large portion of Americans can't afford to eat real food.

<comment><USER9> It would be nice if there were a nutrition label for the entire package. Until then I can use Wolfram Alpha, which has quite a good database.

And I agree with you on the fructose. It is bad stuff, at least in the concentrations found in processed food.

It is a bit comical that the EPA is raising holy hell over carbon dioxide while the FDA turns a blind eye to HFCS.

<comment><USER10> Citation? I've heard lots of people talk of the dangers of HFCS, but I've never even heard of a scientific explanation, let alone seen a study.

<comment><USER11> "Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

<comment><USER12> If you've watched the video then you know this already, but for those who haven't: For most intents and purposes, HFCS is biologically identical to table sugar, except it tastes a little sweeter. Sucrose (table sugar) is a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule. HFCS is roughly half fructose as well. The problem is overconsumption of sugar and consumption of sugar unaccompanied by fiber. Watch the video.

<comment><USER11> Yup, I figured I'd just let the video speak for itself. It doesn't support the idea that HFCS is _especially_ evil in the way that, say, transfats are, but it's still bad enough for you that the presenter is willing to call it a "poison", and he backs that up reasonably well even if you aren't _quite_ willing to go that far.

<comment><USER13> But it is important to note the presenter calls normal sugar a poison as well because they're both high in fructose and devoid of nutrients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand the obsession with the nutrition labels. And if you really think that nutrition labels can help fight obesity in any way, you are dreaming. FDA thinks that people are stupid and need to tell us what we should eat. Show me one man/woman whom, while munching away on big bag of chips OR pint of ice cream, doesn't know that chips/ice cream is not going to help his/her waistline. I don't know of any. I think everyone knows that vegetables/fruits are vastly superior to processed food. But we still eat the crap which tastes good and no regulations FDA can think of, will change that.

Here's a riddle. The nutrition labeling became law in 1990 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Educatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Education_Act)). Do you think obesity has increased OR decreased after 1990?

On a side note, I am from India and we don't have this nutrition label requirement and India doesn't have obesity problems. It's about what and how much people eat, nutrition label ain't gonna change it.

<comment><USER15> _Here's a riddle. The nutrition labeling became law in 1990_

Correlation does not imply causation. The cause of the "obesity epidemic" is overeating of nutrient-poor processed foods. These foods exist because the food industry needs to show its shareholders that 12%-per-year growth, but the population is not growing that quickly, and it's hard to get people to eat 12% more carrots per year. The solution is to sell less nutrients for the same amount of money, the side effect is that people eat more calories than they should, and balloon into the current problem. Food labeling is completely irrelevant, because the people that become obese eat what tastes good, not what a label tells them is healthy.

I find food labels to be very useful. Sometimes things have surprisingly high fat content, and the label points this out to people who care. (Ever cook your shrimp in coconut milk and notice how delicious it is? It's because the coconut milk has 20 grams of fat in 2 tablespoons. Bet you wouldn't have realized that without the label.)

You're right that it's obvious that a pint of ice cream or a bag of chips is unhealthy. The labels are for the cases when it's not as clear. There is a lot of junk-ish food that is actually pretty healthy, and there is a lot of healthy-seeming food that is actually very unhealthy. The labeling allows you to identify these special cases.

 _On a side note, I am from India and we don't have this nutrition label requirement and India doesn't have obesity problems. It's about what and how much people eat, nutrition label ain't gonna change it._

I think this is because a large majority of India's population can't afford to overeat processed food. Give everyone more money, and you'll see the same problems as in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Officials say such labeling will be voluntary, but the agency may set rules to prevent companies from highlighting the good things about their products, like a lack of trans fats, while ignoring the bad, like a surfeit of unhealthy saturated fats."

That one is pretty bad because saturated fats are actually healthy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Who are these people that can't do the simple math required to convert from serving size to the amount they consume? If they are too stupid to know that (3 servings per can) X (130 calories per serving) = 390 calories per can, then they are too stupid to count calories. Of course, counting calories isn't that smart to begin with. It's quality, not quantity, that matters.

<comment><USER18> Lazy ≠ stupid.

<comment><USER17> The people this new regulation seeks to help are the ones that count calories, but can't multiply serving size by calories per serving. People that count calories aren't lazy in this context, so we're left with the subset of people who are too stupid to multiply. My comment demonstrated that this subset is the empty set.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple will reduce international prices for future iPhones - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/01/30/apple-will-reduce-international-prices-for-future-iphones/ <comment><USER2> The cost of a new iPhone or iPad has grown out of proportion in South Africa. Used be able to get a new iPhone for R11000-20000 now it's more like R20-30000</comment>


Why Writing Is So Hard - <AUTHOR> http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/65849-why-writing-is-so-hard.html

<comment><USER2> In similar vein, and in case these could be of interest/use to some people out there:

[http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-i- write.html](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-i-write.html) [http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-write- your-r...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-write-your- research-paper.html)</comment>


What's New in Apple Filesystems [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://devstreaming-cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/710aunvynji5emrl/710/710_whats_new_in_apple_file_systems.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the video: [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/710/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/710/)

<comment><USER2> This is the key. The PDF fails to make sense in parts without the video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially only found the PDF, then saw the video link at the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The read-only system volume really seems like a neat idea. It reminds me of the Transactional Server role in openSUSE where they make system upgrades as atomic as possible: [https://news.opensuse.org/2018/05/15/transactional- updates-i...](https://news.opensuse.org/2018/05/15/transactional-updates-in- opensuse-leap-15/)

That said, I don't understand the use case for firm links. Seems like the problem it's trying to solve can just be solved with simple mount points: mounting read-write /Users and /usr/local. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> > I don't understand the use case for firm links

Haven't watched the video yet, so I'm speculating. We know APFS doesn't support directory hard links, which means Time Machine can't back up to APFS. I'm guessing firm links are designed to fix this problem (perhaps among others).

<comment><USER5> I suspect they will eventually migrate time machine backups in one go to APFS+snapshots, then use the new ASR tool also mentioned in this talk to stream local time machine snapshots to the volume.

I also suspect that will launch 'soon' (after September but possibly in March) , but I have to imagine the complexity and testing requirements for such a in- place migration are staggering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So containers with a new bi-directional hardlink "Firmlink" (intended to be invisible to applications, link between encrypted containers), with read only volumes protecting system software.

ZFS send/receive style volume serialization for replication backup, etc. File system snapshot support included.

iOS or should I say iPadOS supports external USB media and SMB.

What seems to be missing is block level checksumming and integrity checks, scrubbing, block level duplication to protect important files, etc. No whiff of deduplication either, but that might be too memory intensive for Apple's purposes.

<comment><USER7> My understanding is that deduplication has generally been not worth the effort for a general use filesystem. The cost in memory, cpu, and sheer complexity doesn't pay off in enough storage savings. Disk space is relatively cheap. Filesystem crashes/corruption are not.

<comment><USER8> Disk space isn't cheap on a Mac laptop.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but that's a customer cost, not an Apple cost.

In any case, dedup just makes things more confusing to the customer— like, "you have X GB in files on your computer, but more than N-X GB free space because of magical deduplication." Or worse, "You deleted all those files, but didn't actually free up any space because they were dupes. So sad."

<comment><USER10> In my opinion storing, not deleting, is the most important job of a file system. Increased efficiency and free space is a better proposition than replicating the average user's mental model of free space in the volume.

(If my opinion holds true, then deduplicating is a problem when it comes to storage: a copy made to prevent bitrot/other damage to the original data doesn't work as such.)

<comment><USER11> > Increased efficiency and free space is a better proposition than replicating > the average user's mental model of free space in the volume.

I'm not sure if I agree.

In an ideal world, it makes sense that performance should be paramount. In reality, I think it's often more important that computers do what we _expect_ them to, so we can predict when they'll break and know how to resolve the problem when they do. This is all the more important in consumer software.

"My hard drive is out of space" is a very basic computer problem that most users will run into at some point. The intuitive solution is to delete stuff. If that solution doesn't work, it could be a major problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thats probably very neat. Got rid of .DS_Store files yet?

<comment><USER13> And the .Trashes, which always manage to make my camera SD card full even after "deleting" everything. I'm not sure that there is a good solution to this other than to always use permanent deletion on removable volumes, like I think Windows does.

<comment><USER14> > And the .Trashes, which always manage to make my camera SD card full even > after "deleting" everything.

The trash isn't magic. You delete stuff, it goes into the Trash. The Trash is represented by a ".Trashes" directory on removable media. You can delete it manually or just _empty the trash_.

<comment><USER13> My point is: Joe Average takes some photos with his camera, finds that he's out of space on his SD card, pops it into his MacBook to transfer over a couple of good photos and delete the rest, and when he plugs it back into the camera it's _still_ full. Finder doesn't show anything, and neither does the camera's image review function. I don't think that looking to empty the Trash is an intuitive next step, since it seems to me that the Trash wouldn't be on the SD card.

<comment><USER15> > Finder doesn't show anything

Finder shows a full "trash can" in the dock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Still nothing on transparent compression? It's one of the main reasons why I keep a ZFS partition on the Macbook.

<comment><USER17> There is afsctool, git clone and build from [https://github.com/RJVB/afsctool](https://github.com/RJVB/afsctool) or brew install afsctool (an older version).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Read-only state of the system volume can be disabled but not persistently, > will revert to read-only after a reboot

Wait, what? Even with SIP off?

Can it be disabled from within the OS? Can I add "command-to-make-system-rw" to a launchd plist that runs at load on my machine?

<comment><USER18> I think having persistent access is the file system equivalent of logging in and working entirely from root.

The default should be a restricted system, with intentional, temporary, jumps into unrestricted access for making whatever infrequent system configuration changes.

What's the use case for constant RW access? What changes at this level so frequently?

<comment><USER11> > I think having persistent access is the file system equivalent of logging in > and working entirely from root.

Except that those system files are already protected behind root privileges, so they're only read-write if I have root. And, one reason the root privilege system works is because temporarily gaining root when necessary isn't painful.

I indeed don't change root files on a daily basis, but when I do, I don't want to have to go through an extended rigamarole every single time. Typing in my password should be enough.

I totally respect that Apple wants to keep normal users out of this stuff. I just want a way to remove the safety wheels one time, instead of again and again.

<comment><USER19> Disabling SIP, at least from Apple's POV does _most_ of what you want. They've also implored people to be good UNIX citizens and make liberal use of /usr/local, which they explicitly give you - the user of the hardware - ownership of.

<comment><USER20> > They've also implored people to be good UNIX citizens and make liberal use > of /usr/local, which they explicitly give you - the user of the hardware - > ownership of.

/usr/local is root:wheel by default. macOS provides it to you as a place to put your software, but it not give _your user_ ownership of this directory.

<comment><USER15> > but it not give your user ownership of this directory.

Admin users can sudo, sudo should be used to install software. Your thinking is the shenanigans that Brew does, making `/usr/local/whatever` writable by anyone, without a password.

This is not how smart people install software.

Edit: wow what a typo. One character completely reversed the intend meaning of the last sentence.

<comment><USER20> > This is now how smart people install software.

On the contrary, I think what Homebrew does with regards to permissions is fundamentally incorrect. /usr/local, being shared, should be owned by root, and it should require administrator permissions to install software there.

<comment><USER21> If I shared my Mac with anyone I'd agree, but as it is, my Mac is a single- user machine and I'd rather run brew as myuser:mygroup to avoid running the install scripts as root.

<comment><USER15> With Brew it's a moot point - you can't choose to do otherwise, it will refuse to run as root, and has no capability to do the "normal" `make && sudo make install` pair, where you build as user and install as root.

<comment><USER21> I'd rather not run a random `make install` (or, in Brew's case, as random ruby script) as root, though.

<comment><USER15> And that's what a user ~/bin directory is for then - you don't want to run as root, install in your home.

Installing user-own software, in a user-specific location is fine.

/usr/local is not user specific, and setting the permissions so it is treated that way doesn't stop other software referring to it as a system-wide $PATH.

<comment><USER11> There is no ~/bin directory on macOS though. Homebrew could create one, but iirc Apple's guidelines discourage creating new directories in the user's home folder. (Which I generally agree is a bad practice, btw, although this might be an exception.)

I guess you could put something in the ~/Library folder, although that's not ideal either...

<comment><USER15> There's no `/usr/local/Brew` (or whatever directory it uses) either, but it creates it, and it changes the ownership of `/usr/local/bin` to make it writable without a sudo prompt - which is more egregious than creating a `~/bin` directory, any day of the week.

If they didn't insist on using `/usr/local/bin` (which is in the default $PATH) the permissions issue would be much less of an issue IMO (not a non- issue, but less of an issue than it is currently)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully somehow maybe while they are in there they might do something to fix the nasty system lockups I have seen when starting both time machine and carbon copy cloner backups since switching to APFS. I'm assuming it is related to having >5 million files, but haven't figured that out for sure.

The symptoms are the system becomes almost totally unresponsive for up to 5 minutes to the point where you can't even drag and drop an existing window sometimes.

<comment><AUTHOR> What physical medium do you use (HDD, SSD)? I had a faulty HDD act up on me like that.

<comment><USER22> SSD on a 2016 macbook pro. The timing coincides exactly with the FS (and OS...) upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone know how they made these slides? I'm speculating it's just Keynote with San Fransico Bold or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the file's meta information, the content was created using Keynote and then converted using macOS Quartz PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am left with the feeling that in 2019 the filesystem is the weak part of the operating system.

* mmap doesn't really work well on 64 bit systems * mmap will block if it has to page data in from a file * there are ten different backends to handle layering on Docker and that simple fact implies that none of them are good; if you could compose layers arbitrarily the speed and scalability of Docker would be in a different league than it is now, but you can't. So Docker is just as easily something that slows you down as speeds you up. * Filesystem metadata scans are slow, shockingly so on Windows.

I know I like developing with S3-style object stores. To some extent this can replace the traditional filesystem, in other ways it can't.

<comment><USER25> _> there are ten different backends to handle layering on Docker and that simple fact implies that none of them are good_

overlay2 is fast, it's in the mainline kernel, and it's now the default for new Docker installs. I expect all the devicemapper / aufs mess to be history soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any idea how this might affect (or help) projects like iSH, or similar?

I've been fighting to be productive on my iPad, and currently that takes the form of a remote terminal.

I've been craving the ability to run a proper Unix shell locally.

<comment><USER27> I highly doubt that you're going to get a proper shell on the iPad.

<comment><USER28> I'm assuming you mean _a shell into the iPad 's own Unix environment_. You could build something for iOS that works like Crouton does on ChromeOS just fine. (Just, nobody has done it yet, for some reason. The iPad Pro is plenty powerful enough to run VMs!)

<comment><USER29> I don't think it's as easy as crouton. There's no chroot or user namespace equivalent for XNU.

<comment><USER20> iSH does this by emulating Linux rather than virtualizing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> nothing to address the docker mounted-volume slowness issue?

<comment><USER31> It is very unlikely that docker issues are a priority for Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can you back to an APFS volume yet, or does it need to be HFS+?

<comment><USER33> I was really surprised when APFS came out that it didn't support time machine. From the looks of this, it appears they're going to be able to write a new- style time machine on-top of APFS with the additions here. Interesting, over- due IMHO.

<comment><USER5> I suspect they are waiting until they can migrate a time machine volume in one go (e.g. migrate the filesystem from HPFS with directory hard links to snapshots and a potential non-backup volume for other files).

They have a lot of deep time machine integration in other parts of the system, so I suspect the staging of the projects means it is pushed off to sometime next year.

<comment><USER19> Hearing about how snapshots work over the years during APFS sessions made me immediately think of 2007/2008 when they were describing the tech that eventually became Time Machine, but it wasn't a one click operation yet.

As a perverse experiment, do we know what happens if you take an APFS SSD and try to format it as a TM volume? Guessing it's still not pretty despite the fact that HDD's under APFS are PNG, but directory hardlinks are gone.

Does it work, but just fill up the disk - no deduping?

<comment><USER32> Time Machine refuses to back up to APFS volumes at present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Mods: Can someone add [pdf] suffix to this please?

<comment><USER35> Added. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Aren't PDFs automatically marked anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> Title got renamed</comment></comment>


Hand-cranked penny-dispenser allows anyone to work for minimum wage - <AUTHOR> http://blakefallconroy.com/18.html

<comment><USER2> This is a potentially off topic question, but what is the average wage that the typical sculptor makes, considering hours invested/sale price of the art? I have known at least a few former art student friends/family that have definitely worked for less than minimum wage.

Is it possible for an artist to create a piece like this that is actually more profitable for the user of the art than it is for the artist who created it?

<comment><USER3> Or, to reframe the question for the startup crowd, what is the average wage that a typical high-tech entrepreneur makes, considering hours invested/sale price of the business?

<comment><USER4> Depends on where on the timeline, what exactly you mean by high-tech entrepreneur, and the experience of said entrepreneur.

$1.50 per hour isn't uncommon.

<comment><USER5> Some people go negative. However, the average is so heavily influenced by a few people making 100+$/h or 10,000+$/h. It's not really worth looking at. I would suggest consider looking for the bottom 10 percentile the middle 50 percentile and the top 10 percentile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally, a way for politicians to _actually make jobs_!

Seriously, I got a very eerie feeling as I understood this machine. Good art.

</comment><comment><USER7> The original, non-linkjacked page is strangely barren compared to the Boing Boing attention-a-palooza. <http://blakefallconroy.com/18.html>

<comment><USER8> I guess there is nothing like packaging a short post in tons of advertising and brand name. Thanks for the link.

Edit:

There is some really interesting stuff on the rest of the original site as well, at <http://blakefallconroy.com/>

A printing calculator rigged up with looped receipt tape:

<http://blakefallconroy.com/11.html>

A box which records the date and time of everything that takes place in the vicinity:

<http://blakefallconroy.com/08.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about hooking this up to the power grid and paying you for how much power you generate into the grid? They already do this with solar panels.

You'd make a lot less than minimum wage though. Say .5KWH in an hour, that's 5 cents.

<comment><USER10> Worse still: factor in the costs of building, installing, and maintaining the machines, and of renting the space where they stand.

Humans simply aren't worth much as a source of energy.

Something like a public Mechanical Turk console would be better.

<comment><USER4> It is the new minimum-wage crank-machine economy. All those things are _good_ things.

It would help the homeless to boot-strap themselves. And every human can always say, "well, at least I can work the crank machine if I have to."

It'll be like the new social security.

<comment><USER10> Why pay anyone, in essence, _purely to suffer?_

(see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy>)

What would be wrong with a similar machine which dispenses, say, one dollar per retina scan pattern per day?

<comment><USER4> Ever watch Metropolis? I was giving that movie a slight nod. Every worker in that movie is doing the most pointless work. It is amazing to watch the human workers file into the machinery, then to see them crank levers and move the hands of a clock-thing.

They are meant to look like they are suffering, very badly. These energy comments are interesting since I have always thought that the city of Metropolis slowly got that way by giving the lower class people more and more menial work that was less and less meaningful.

I mean, as long as we're living... right? We shouldn't complain.

As someone who has worked fast food before, I can say that the work is probably only a few steps less painful than cranking a energy-machine box would be.

\----

I should add, before anyone yells "off topic," that this is probably the sort of discussion that the artist would welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That isn't work. That's subsidized pseudo-work in the Roosevelt New Deal tradition. Some poor schmuck has to pour pennies in the top hopper, and gets nothing for his pains.

<comment><USER12> If you think that was the idea of the New Deal you don't really understand the economics behind it. The idea is infrastructure improvement such that money is put back into circulation but improvement of concrete (and greater) value is actually produced.

<comment><USER13> As well as production of valued concrete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One could hook up an electric motor to that crank handle. But I suspect the overseeing bureaucrat would disapprove.

<comment><USER15> From the sound of it, the rate at which you turn the handle isn't directly connected to the dispensing rate.

I suspect the crank just turns a small generator that powers the rest of the mechanism, which dispenses pennies at fixed intervals.

Attaching the crank to a motor might kill the electronics with an overvoltage, but probably wouldn't produce any additional payout.

<comment><USER4> I'm a little confused by your comment in relation to tungsten's. I think he was just saying "easy money." A way around the need to manually crank.

Between your comment and tungsten's, I think I'm missing something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> does it give out less pennies for foreign students?</comment>


WooThemes has partnered with Codeable - <AUTHOR> http://www.woothemes.com/2013/02/announcing-our-partnership-with-codeable/

<comment><USER2> This is exactly what I was looking for, but at $29 a task, it's a little steep when I just have a small question. If the task took 15-30 minutes of their times I suppose that's a fair price though.

I've had luck with one good programmer I found on oDesk for a lot less per hour, but it's not for everybody, and there's definitely a trust factor.

<comment><AUTHOR> $29 will soon be history - we are updating the app with the new approach: you'll be able to negotiate a price once your task will be submitted. Stay tuned!

<comment><USER2> That sounds a lot better, I will stay tuned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love this site idea. As a freelance web developer in the past, I experienced first hand the world of these types of clients. I think a site like this is a great way to address the needs of this type of client.</comment>


VitaPerk: Smart Your Coffee by adding 15 essential vitamins and minerals - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vitaperk/x/843622

<comment><AUTHOR> VitaPerk: Smart Your Coffee by conveniently adding 15 Essential Vitamins and Minerals</comment>


Ask HN: Is There a Hacker News for Politics? - <AUTHOR> I know politics are one of the more polarizing things to discuss, but are there any decent communities that have a similar level of respect and discourse to HN? <comment><USER2> The closest thing I know of is a subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/)

Pretty well moderated and mostly rational if left leaning (not an issue for me but...)

<comment><USER3> Reading reddit politics makes me more knowledable than those that watch Fox News, nbc news, msnbc. I'm more well rounded and know arguments made on both sides.

<comment><USER4> You sure you're getting arguments from both sides? In /r/politics at least, unless you're sorting comments by "controversial," you are definitely not getting both sides.

What I liked to do before the election was bounce between T_D and HRC subreddits. Finding any unbiased source of news is a hopeless quest. The next best solution is to read bias on both sides and use it to triangulate the truth so you can develop your own point of view.

I actually think bias is very useful. As long as you consider all bias equally, it provides a mechanism for separating facts from narrative.

<comment><USER2> > The next best solution is to read bias on both sides and use it to > triangulate the truth

You might be able to make a conclusion comparing two rational arguments.

You can't compare a rational, or factual argument to a lie and make any sort of progress. Unless your clear headed that one is a lie... Welcome to the reality of post truth America.

<comment><USER4> I agree that America has a massive cultural + media problem right now, but I'm skeptical that the problem is literal "lies," i.e. factually incorrect statements presented as facts. The real issue is in embellishments, misrepresentations, and generally mixing of fact and opinion.

The actual facts, i.e. _verifiably accurate descriptions of events_ , would probably average less than 100 words per article. And yet every article is 800+ words. What are the other 700 words about? That, IMO, is the real issue with the content of media these days (ignoring the larger problem with the distribution of it, i.e. social media).

The other issue is lack of ability for the average reader to verify facts presented in the article. There is so much information on every topic, but we cannot be experts in every topic. So by nature, we must trust others to be experts and accurately interpret the facts. Not only does this inhibit us from verifying facts, it also makes it impossible to provably judge which facts are true, but embellished.

Before a false claim exists, there is a vacuum. It takes no energy to create false claim X. Anyone can post an article claiming X, with no real need to cite any authority. But for someone to then disprove X, it does require energy. They need to read the article, find motivation to disprove it, and finally write and publish a counter-article disproving the claim of X.

There will inevitably be a delay between the article claiming X and any article refuting it. Since there is a constant influx of new articles, there is a constant subset of articles that are provably false but have not been refuted. This comprises a certain percentage of news, which commands a percentage of daily eyeball time. In recent years, both these percentages have become way too high.

Interestingly, this seems like the same pattern of cat-and-mouse games that we see repeatedly in infosec. Perhaps there's something to be said for that analogy. False articles are like bugs in the global information system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Others have mentioned several subreddits; I would like to recommend r/NeutralPolitics. I occasionally browse it and I'm blown away by the quality of the discussion compared to the discussions at other popular political subreddits, e.g. r/politics. Neutralpolitics's success is probably due to its rules and moderation, which help promote constructive discussion, and its lesser traffic compared to other political subreddits, meaning that it doesn't suffer from the unconstructive comments that result from the popular audience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. Unfortunately, it's Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.fark.com/politics/](https://www.fark.com/politics/)

Also good

</comment><comment><USER8> The best resource for dispassionate, objective and accurate information regarding international politics that I know of is actually a YouTube channel called Caspian Report. I have literally never found another place, in the physical world or the digital world, where people are dedicated to being objective about political or human issues. Hackernews is very bad in this respect and it has gotten really bad recently. I've been on this website for years and years so it's not the illusion mentioned by the moderators -- I'm pretty sure that there has been a large influx of people who used to be on Reddit exclusively. Refugees who were driven out by reddits own disasterous decline in quality. This website can in fact be found when Google searching "Reddit alternatives." This is extremely sad because if hackernews dries up then I have no idea where to go.</comment>


The Semantic Web Is Dead. Long Live the Semantic Web - <AUTHOR> http://blog.blikk.co/long-live-semantic-web/ <comment><USER2> > The Semantic Web means different things to different people.

There is no better way of expressing why "the semantic web" as it was originally conceived failed, and will always fail. This is not to say that automated processing to extract higher-level information of the kind the article argues for might not be both helpful and possible, but it will always be awkward, difficult and imperfect. The awkwardness and difficulty will go down as AI gets better, but the imperfection has a fairly high minimum level because the kind of meaning humans extract from language varies enormously between individuals.

As a friend who works in geology put it: "If I send a bunch of geologists out to survey an area and combine their data naively, I can tell who mapped where but not what anybody mapped." The illusion of shared meaning is powerful, and with enormous effort we can get communities of shared meaning that are large and powerful enough to be extremely useful, but we do that either through top- down control (politics, corporations, militaries) or intense bottom-up interaction (the sciences), not the kind of loose, informal, disconnected mechanisms that the Web enables.

<comment><USER3> The great idea of semantic web, as conceived in the early beginnings, was mostly visionary and rather impossible to build. This doesn't mean the that whole concept has failed. It advanced many fields of AI and created many initiatives which are quite vibrant to this day (e.g. Linked Data). The illusion of failure of the semantic web is mostly due to the fact that today there are less semantic web projects funded. The money goes to other things that are now on the rise, the same as it was with semantic web 10 years ago. However semantic web is still here, with many tools mature enough to be applied in the industry. I don't expect it to dissapear completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I got exposed to semantic web probably 4 years ago, I realized what a huge mistake it was/is.

My take is that it is a bunch of ideas to make it easier for search engines to crawl and use your data about all kinds of things. On one hand, that is great.

However, the huge problem with using it is that you end up creating your own search engine to crawl data sources to do anything useful. That is to say, you have to crawl the data, store it somewhere, and then build up your own systems for querying or doing anything useful with the data.

The use case many people have is that they want to use and API to get some particular bit of data out and that's it. Like, say you want to do a search for a list of tweets on Twitter with the hashtag #HackerNews. The sane thing to do is to be able to hit a twitter api endpoint and have it send you back a list of tweets with that hash tag.

Now, imagine if instead you had to index all of twitter and filter yourself for tweets with #HackerNews in it. Is that better for that particular use case? No, it sucks.

There are certainly cases where you DO want to crawl data and do your own data analysis on it. But, that is a much more limited use case for many developers and there isn't as much value in that as people seem to believe.

A better solution would be something like REST with HATEOS on a much larger scale. You'd be able to index things nicely, but still have the benefits of smarter API calls.

Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anytime soon, despite the interesting things you could build with it.

<comment><USER5> I agree, the crawling / indexing problems you describe are definitely true for _Linked Data_. But there are still other use cases for semantic web technology.

> The use case many people have is that they want to use and API to get some > particular bit of data out and that's it.

 _In theory_ , that's what SPARQL and SPARQL endpoints are for. Plus you get things like federated queries and an open data model (RDF), that allows to combine multiple data sources without "wrapping" schemas.

But well, this is kind of utopia and yes, I doubt it will ever be "a thing".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having attended ISWC numerous times, this conference is long dead. It is the perfect example of eminence-based vs evidence-based science. Technicality of paper if low, most of the paper gathers bad and useless description logic theorems from the very same guys each year. The consanguinity rate is higher than any other CS conference. The quality of the conference is in fact well disputed among academics. Core[1] ranking puts it as a B conference (later updated to A due to request based on scholar values[2]). Arnetminer[3] and Academic Search[4] put it in A+/A tier. These latter are drawn from bibliographic metrics while the first ranking is the result of a poll among australian researcher. Altough we disagree on rugby, I'm with the aussies for this one.

The industry track exists for the record. Much of semweb companies were funded using EU money and went bankrupt when the money went out. I can't believe the EU continues to inject plenty of money for the semweb in H2020 despite having wasted more than 1B in the previous decade (publicly admitted by the EU).

At ISWC 2012 in a workshop that took place the day before the conference, some guy (don't remember his name) asked the speaker "would this building explode, do you think the semweb would still exist ?". The speaker tried to find examples of people doing semweb in the industry, but did not manage to convince anyone, not sure if he did it for himself. This was (and is) a nice summary of the situation of the semantic web.

[1] [http://core.edu.au/](http://core.edu.au/)

[2] [http://188.8.131.52/core/1338/](http://220.127.116.11/core/1338/)

[3] [http://arnetminer.org/page/conference-rank/html/All-in- one.h...](http://arnetminer.org/page/conference-rank/html/All-in-one.html)

[4] [http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3...](http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&topDomainID=2&subDomainID=15)

<comment><USER7> Having attended ISWC this year, where I also published in the proceedings of a workshop, I believe you don't understand exactly how academia works. Academic fields such as the semantic web have nothing to give to industry.

It's like asking Einstein back in 1905 how is his work going to be used in industry.

Semantic web is not an industry or engineering field. It's theoretical and academic and it has its purpose because it lays strong theoretical foundations.

<comment><USER6> The Semantic Web is developing a technology, like the Web is a technology. It is something that aims to be used by people, so to be implemented in real systems. Therefore it aims at giving smth to the industry. The theoretical argument of the semweb is absolutely meaningless.

Physicists study law of nature, there is no such thing in the Web which is a deeply human field. It's quite an insult for Einstein to be compared to the Semantic Web ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will the KDE people get the message? </troll> Sorry I had to get that out of the way.

In all seriousness, 'Semantic Web' has always felt like a SciFi inspired version of AI intelligence. A concept that sounds cool, but in reality can't ever work.

Take movie ratings & "suggested viewings" for example. Jim, Bob, and Steve all watch the same movie. Jim thinks it's funny because of the physical gags. Bob thinks it's funny because of the dialog & jokes. Steve likes it because the hot new actress is naked. Dave likes the director and cinematography. All 4 guys give it a rating of 4/5.

With this one data point Streaming-movie-place.com cannot ever 'guess' what to suggest to these guys to offer more movies for them to watch. The hope is that once these guys start watching and rating other films a pattern will emerge. That pattern can then be marketed and offer valid suggestions.

BUT reality is too different. We like different things for different reasons, and no algorithm can ever get it 100% right. How many of you have a Netflix queue of things that you want to see, but the suggested movies are full of crappy suggestions? most or all of us I bet.

Which brings me back to my point; it's a sci-fi illusion. It can never exist in real life. Humans are too damn fickle. (Which brings me back to KDE; I wish they would give up on neopunk/symantic desktop crap. it's bloated, slows the system down and offers nothing in return. Or I am just using it wrong.) </rant>

</comment><comment><USER9> All I want from the Semantic Web is to know if I see that an API follows the standard, things with the same name will be the same kind. For all I care, that API's underlying model could output to HTML, rendered PNGs, ASCII art or 3D plastic.

In particular, scraping the View is pretty much a last resort. If you have to, it's likely that either the source doesn't have the manpower to become semantic anytime soon, or it's hostile to providing easy to parse data anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have some personal insights from following the SW world for some time:

1\. Most of the implementations and formats and everything really boil down to a great way to publish graph data on the web, and query it using a pretty nice graph query language, and for most general cases everything just works.

2\. A lot of the web is implementing incomplete select parts of SW technologies even if they don't realize it, and then promptly putting it all behind an API key and shared secret. When SW takes hold, that will all have to be different, IE a common mechanism for authentication / authorization, and some kind of way to quantify what is supported by a service, and all of that exists but again, every service is different it seems right now, and they all fear unfettered access.

3\. You can use all of it today if you want, and the library ecosystem is very rich, IMHO. Plop it all into Neo4J / Jena / rdflib (etc etc) and have at it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Humans are all unique so there will be differing views of semantics. It does exist in pockets but not to the schema or spec as imagined. For instance, hashtags and geolocation on tweets, categories/tags within wordpress blogs, the social graph within facebook and others. Small pockets of semantic culture within.

When implementation is left to a large population, there will be differentiation as that is our nature. The semantic web wanted it easy, it wanted the implementers to organize. Organizing it with all the differences is how it will have to be. Unless a system implements the standard for you and each author upon creation, there will be differences, deltas and no standard.

Probably the best semantic web / metadata system that has been built does do this and that one is at the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER12> The approach currently used is in its death throes, to be sure.

But a working Semantic Web is a _huge deal_ (think: bigger than Google) and will happen, make no mistake. But when it happens, it will be via a different approach.

Edit: spelling (thx Joshua)

<comment><USER13> We are on the cusp of solving natural language understanding, which will enable natural language for humans and relational databases for computers. There will be no "Semantic Web", there will the "Web" and the machines that read it just as well as humans.

<comment><USER14> >>We are on the cusp of solving natural language understanding

Why do you think this? Is it just a feel or is there some company that is really close. As another user mentioned in this thread natural language understanding seems to be the same thing as solving strong AI. Solving strong AI is a huge deal. So big that the people in control of it will probably become the most powerful people in the world.

<comment><USER15> Whether we are on the cusp really depends on what we mean by "natural language understanding" specifically. What about Watson? It seems to "understand" quite a bit of natural language just fine and can answer interesting questions posed in same. If that doesn't count as "understanding", I'd like to know what does? It probably can't do extended reasoning based on its "understanding", but that would seem to me to be moving the goal posts.

I doubt that a sufficiently well-defined notion of natural language understanding that does not specifically include strong artificial intelligence in its definition would require strong AI. Constructing such a definition is left as an exercise to the reader.

Thinking that strong AI is required for natural language understanding may end up being similar to how it was once thought that beating humans at chess would require advanced AI. Brute forse can do wonderful things, as can weak AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time I begin to explore using RDF and the associated technologies for a knowledge rich problem I always find the tool support a major disappointment. I understand there are exceptions (4store is a good example of a mature triple store) but generally speaking I always leave feeling much of the core tools never made it out of academia. And in a world where development time is a precious commodity, I always end up going with a lower friction but ultimately less powerful technology.

</comment><comment><USER7> Semantic web is mainly an academic field. The theoretical research produced by this community is a foundation valuable for a variety of different fields. Stop thinking about the semantic web as the next big thing or the future of the web.

Just like many other research fields it lays strong theoretical (and at times also practical) foundations.

</comment><comment><USER17> Since the site seems to be down still : [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.bl...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.blikk.co/long- live-semantic-web/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The Semantic Web is more about the semantics of schemas than amount the semantics of data.

This is very poorly explained; people tend to think it means something about computers understanding the data.

<comment><USER19> Any linking provides context thus semantics. Linking to a schema makes this explicit and enhances latent semantics. So it's both right?

<comment><USER18> But that doesn't provide meaning to the data itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The site is down. Does anyone have a mirror?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, restarted it :) I should probably upgrade that small DigitalOcean instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I reposted it here while I'm upgrading the instance: [https://medium.com/@dennybritz/the-semantic-web-is-dead- long...](https://medium.com/@dennybritz/the-semantic-web-is-dead-long-live- the-semantic-web-eddbca0a8b6)

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright, should be back up again. With a bit more memory and swap space this time :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Welcome to the party pal.

Love, RSS

</comment><comment><USER22> I wrote my counter response to this article. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8552989)

</comment><comment><USER23> The semantic web as I understood it was just using the right HTML tags. Most importantly, no tables for layout and using semantic names for CSS classes rather than names like "blue". This has completely failed, imo. Tables are no longer constructed with <table>, <tr> and <td> but with a combination of <div> and <span> tags with classes that are not semantic at all :(

Edit: Not sure why this got downvoted, just trying to illustrate what I thought the term meant.

<comment><USER24> > The semantic web as I understood it was just using the right HTML tags.

Using semantic HTML (rather than presentational HMTL) for content is somewhat related to the Semantic Web, but not equivalent to it -- the Semantic Web is/was about open, composable ways of extracting and processing meaning from content on the web. HTML itself (even HTML5 or the current state of the HTML Living Standard) -- even when used in a cleanly semantic way -- isn't expressive enough to do much with that without building additional ontological structure on top of that, hence things like RDF and Microformats.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I improve my resume? - <AUTHOR> I'm graduating in May and have started the job hunt now. Here's my current resume:
http://postimg.org/image/kw4ozymup/
What can I do to improve it? I'm worried that it might be too long and wordy, but at the same time I don't want to skip any important details. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Good start. Couple of quick thoughts:

I agree with others the look and feel can be improved. A great solution to that problem is the open source project JSONResume [0] and its brother-from- another-mother HackMyResume [1].

The exercise of entering your information as structured data may be beneficial in itself (both projects run off a JSON file), as the schema forces you to adopt generally accepted best practices (e.g. each job should contain a short intro summary with a few bullet points to showcase accomplishments/highlights). The primary benefit is it gives you access to dozens of well designed templates, many geared towards recent CS grads.

Good luck!

[0] [http://jsonresume.org/](http://jsonresume.org/)

[1] [https://github.com/hacksalot/HackMyResume](https://github.com/hacksalot/HackMyResume)

</comment><comment><USER3> You have a very good profile. But the look and feel of your resume can be improved. I do have some suggestions.

1\. Remove the objective section.

2\. Remove unnecessary new lines and spaces.

3\. Make the education section short. I don't think you need to add specific topics that you read in your courses.

4\. List what you did on your job and projects as bullet points instead of a paragraph.

5\. Create a Github account and upload your code there. Then provide a link to your Github account in your resume.

6\. Create a Linkedin account and add it to your resume.

7\. I always add a Hobbies section. Not sure if it's necessary or not.

8\. Also if you have a personal website, add it to your resume.

I would suggest you to use any sample CV template. Take a look at [http://www.careercup.com/resume](http://www.careercup.com/resume). Hope it helps.

<comment><USER4> > 2\. Remove unnecessary new lines and spaces.

Add new lines and spaces. A cramped wall-of-text is the last thing someone needs when reading a CV.

<comment><USER3> You are right. But I meant restructure it to make it look simple and clean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd remove the objective and references sections. Those tend to be unnecessary on modern resumes. You can then move your school and degree information down to the education section.

I also prefer bullets for project / job descriptions. People are only going to skim over the content, so detailed paragraphs aren't ideal.

Do you have a GitHub? It can be helpful to link to your profile if you have any projects or open-source contributions. I landed my current internship as a result of having code posted online for people to look at.

</comment><comment><USER6> You forgot to list your skills that you used to make those projects. What languages and technologies you use, did you work in a team did you manage any people on a team?

You resume is still a bit short.

You might also want to create a Linkedin profile and link to it in your resume. Get some friends to endorse you on skills so you get credit for them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi, I think your resume is fairly strong. You seem to have the right structure.

The thing to remember is that recruiters typically spend about 6 seconds on a resume. And this I hear from recruiters.

The objective section is crucial by the way, and can be improved by succinctly summarising your past. It is often the only thing that will be read.

You should prepare a tailor-made resume for each application, with the name of the job title you are applying for, in each application. This creates a level of personalisation that will put you ahead of other applicants.

If you want more help I'd get the book, 'Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions' by Martin Yate. In part, it describes how to sculpt your resume. Everyone I know who got that book got multiple job offers, and no, I'm not an affiliate for the book!

</comment><comment><USER8> Please use a different image hosting site. Preferably one without ads. This one kept giving me pop ups on mobile.

Get rid of objective, it is unnecessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry about that -- Imgur wasn't accepting uploads.</comment></comment>


AppHarbor (YC W11) adds support for Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appharbour.com/2011/03/07/better-support-for-mercurial-on-appharbor

<comment><USER2> Nice, glad to see it. When's native SVN support coming, and Perforce?

[Ed: I'm not poking fun, I actually think for a .NET platform those make sense]

<comment><USER3> I don't think it makes sense to spend time on SVN support.

Any .NET shop who is stuck on SVN is NOT going to outsource their deployment/hosting to AppHarbor. It's better to serve the people on the cutting edge first.

<comment><USER4> Wrong. The reason why Git/Mercurial users are more likely to use AppHarbor is that AppHarbor is probably more likely used by open source projects. Enterprises, where SVN is actually the preferable system, are less likely to host on AppHarbor (or EC2 or Azure).

The issue isn't cutting edge of the source code control system (which frankly makes no sense if you actually understand Git and SVN), but business model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pondering when I'm going to be able to start pushing production sites to AppHarbor. Does anyone have any experience to share in terms of robustness, scalability, support etc?

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice. I wish heroku would get on this. :)

<comment><USER7> You may find this relevant to your interests: <http://herocutter.heroku.com/plugins/23>

<comment><USER6> Thanks! If you're in San Diego I'll get you a beer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great to see; loving what AppHarbor offers over other .NET based 'cloud' hosts. Simplicity above all else.</comment>


The Brain vs the Mind - <AUTHOR> http://bennesvig.com/the-brain-vs-the-mind/

<comment><USER2> What is talking about are called more technically called second order desires. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_volition>)

From his example he "wants cheese cake" but he "wants to want to focus on his work" and instead he is "wanting cheesecake". Wikipedia gives the good example of the drug addict who "wants drugs" but he "wants to not want drugs".

Its very close to the ideas of self control and willpower.

Second order desires are important in artificial intelligence as most AI only has 1st order desires (e.g. 'make a plan of actions to accomplish something'). Second order desires can be used as a controller for 1st order AI processes, and are therefore very powerful (think about a real time system that can know when it has spent too much time planning, and needs to use whatever its current best plan is).

<comment><USER3> I found your post much more informative than the original article. His work vs cheesecake seems to be an issue of discipline vs temptation, and to be honest, something we all face with various amounts of success (especially considering how popular home-grown projects are in this community)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problems a lot of people have with self-control stem from the way they deal with the split.

If you think of the brain as something to be controlled then you will run out of energy very quickly. You can't hold it in place.

If you think of it as an animal to be trained, then you can slowly alter its behaviour until it does what you want.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its funny that a hundred years ago, this article would have been the mind versus the body. Apart from highlighting a particularly interesting form of dualism (with which I have some sympathy), this article shows how much neuro- science has altered our perceptions of ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think as far as models of the brain goes, this one is somewhat useful and popular, but basically wrong. This book outlines a model that I think is a lot more accurate (as reviewed on Less Wrong): <http://lesswrong.com/lw/6yh/consistently_inconsistent/></comment>