Show HN: Remotehh – Virtual hangouts for remote workers - <AUTHOR> https://remotehh.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey y'all. I've been working remotely for the last 7 years now and while I love it, there are definitely some drawbacks to it — most notably, loneliness. In past roles, I tried to get ahead of this by hosting remote happy hours where a group of us just hang out and chat about non-work things.

I created this site last weekend to help others find similar groups. It is still a work in progress, so let me know what you'd like to see in something like this. I'm hoping to get a few groups set up soon.</comment>


Paris Hacker News Meetup on March 14th - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/ParisHackers/events/53314342/

<comment><USER2> Recaps of the 3 first meetups :

<http://blog.medusis.com/first-paris-hackers-meetup>

<http://blog.medusis.com/second-paris-hackers-meetup>

[http://wazoox.posterous.com/paris-hackers-meetup- january-201...](http://wazoox.posterous.com/paris-hackers-meetup-january-2012)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's in our Hacker News Meetups guide: <http://lanyrd.com/guides/hacker-news- meetups/>

As always, let me know if there are any that we're missing (or sign in, join the guide and add them yourself).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Simon. In general, should I sign in to Lanyrd with @ParisHackers or my own account (@tbassetto)? I'm never sure which account should I use to create an event or which account to list as organizer.

Oh, and when will you come visit us? :)

<comment><USER3> I'd suggest listing both as organisers - it doesn't matter which one you use to create the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome logo

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice initiative! Do people on the waiting list usually get the chance to attend anyway, or is 100 participants a hard figure?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're counting on 30%~40% of "no-show" (we expect ~60 people, no more because we can't have enough space) :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looking forward to it!</comment>


Introducing Cloudant Sync, Open Source Libraries for Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://cloudant.com/blog/introducing-cloudant-sync/ <comment><USER2> From the Github page:

 _" CDTDatastore is available through CocoaPods, to install it add the following line to your Podfile:_

Why CocoaPods? What is wrong with a static library? Or simply adding the relevant class files to a project?

I don't want to have Ruby infrastructure just to add a bunch of files to a project! Why are Ruby folk obsessed with doing things their 'Gems' way? They bring the same mentality to Go(lang). I always hear (ex)-Ruby folk asking questions at meetups about packaging and versioning...

<comment><USER3> As long as you also pull in the dependencies specified in the podfile, you'll be absolutely fine just adding the class files to the project. I've tried to be careful to maintain that as a viable option. That you retain the option is one of the strengths of Cocoapods to my mind.

While far from perfect, I chose to use Cocoapods as it's becoming the defacto standard in the iOS community. I've used it in my apps, and have found it easier to manage my deps than a bunch of git submodules or copying source code into my projects.

The problems with static libraries on iOS have been well documented at [1]. Essentially, that you can't build static libraries as a third-party for iOS without resorting to low-level trickery. This seemed like it would become a maintenance burden vs. the Cocoapods approach.

[1]: [http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/ios/Radar_15800975_iOS_Fr...](http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/ios/Radar_15800975_iOS_Frameworks.20140112.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those interested in the replication side Cloudant and CouchDB, there is some start to documenting the protocol on [http://www.replication.io](http://www.replication.io). It's exciting to have more things can seamlessly replicate! Another great example is the PouchDB project ([http://pouchdb.com](http://pouchdb.com)).

<comment><USER2> CouchDB, CouchBase, TouchDB, PouchDB...

How is anyone supposed to figure out who/what to use for the long-term? CouchDB? CouchBase?

<comment><USER4> There is definitely some confusion to the names and efforts there are efforts to ensure there is a clear identity for the CouchDB project moving forward. (Couchbase is not compatible with CouchDB so there will likely always be some confusion there which boils down to historical trivia more than anything.)

TouchDB & PouchDB were some of the earlier projects which extended CouchDB's reach to in-browser and on-mobile databases respectively. In those days the brand confusion problem wasn't as clear. Hopefully in the future all you'll need to know is that the projects support CouchDB replication. Cloudant is a big supporter of the CouchDB community. It made sense to build upon community efforts where they existed already rather than replace them with completely proprietary components.

(Disclosure: I work at Cloudant.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks...

How do I decide between CouchDB and CouchBase?

What are the major technical differences?

Is there a philosophical difference?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: OSwatch – A News Aggregation Site for Open-Source Software - <AUTHOR> https://oswatch.net/ <comment><USER2> A problem with the domain name is that to mean OS means operating system. Also, hardcore free software folks hate using the term "open-source" for their free code.

But, I hope it does well and will keep an eye on it.

<comment><USER3> When I first noticed the headline on the HN wall, I thought it was a show-and- tell for new smart watch software.

OP, for some reason I'm getting verification errors when trying to load the site. My office has some rather aggressive firewall policies, but I might look at the SSL cert.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't mind sharing the error you encountered (screenshot?) feel free to drop me an email - address in my profile. I just got the SSL via Namecheap a few days back, I haven't had issues with them before, but I'm by no means an expert on certs, and may have set up something wrongly.

<comment><USER3> Glad to! Sent you an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's really important to understand that the news aggregation site is not about topic or implementation, it's all about the community around it. So instead of forming your own, why not improve existing? Filtered by "open- source" tag?

By no means trying to ruin your enthusiasm here, but please DO consider using one of the existing aggregators for the same purpose.

Also Open Source seems like a very broad topic to me, covering most of the programming languages, *nix systems and so on...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's all valid feedback. I kind of felt a gap for a timely updated and focused news source focused on "open source". At this point I don't plan to shift to an existing news aggregator, but if you don't mind sharing - do you have any in mind that would allow such filtering?

<comment><USER4> I don't think guys at lobste.rs would mind this approach, try starting a discussion on GitHub.

Obvious choice here of course is Reddit, but it's a bit overblown.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! Will reach out to jcs. Reddit may not be optimal though I feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The automatic postings by listbot should contain the original source URL. Some posts are not helpful if there is no way to get to the project's website. Also the formatting of the automatic excerpt is sometimes broken, so I would prefer the original posts on the project's website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the constructive criticism, it's a good suggestion - I've been contemplating the same myself. I'll look into how I can obtain official original links (currently the information is fed via email).

<comment><USER5> In some cases the List-Archive header contains a HTTP link to the mail in the archive. But often enough it is just a link to the archive in general, so not a general solution.

You could leverage the Gmane archive, which allows linking to mails by Message-Id like this: [http://mid.gmane.org/<CA+55aFx93de2f2bRbCp74uNX0LxkgpSKE8uOG...](http://mid.gmane.org/<email@example.com>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! Will definitely look into that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know what code you're using, but there's actually a great piece of OSS that does exactly what you need: [http://www.telescopeapp.org/](http://www.telescopeapp.org/)

<comment><USER7> Awesome! This is great! Will try and get this running on dokku. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please make it possible to block/ignore postings by specific usernames (e.g. "listbot"). That's 75% of the front page right now and I already get a number of those in my inbox. For me, at least, it's pretty annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion! I'm thinking I can create a tag specifically for automated submissions. I'll look into this tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think your default text size is a bit too tiny (I'm on a 1920x1080 15" display). Although that's a problem for HN as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK noted. It was also highlighted by others, will address this (tomorrow).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to be mistaken for/confused with:

[http://oss-watch.ac.uk](http://oss-watch.ac.uk)

<comment><USER11> Nor:

[http://oswatch.org/](http://oswatch.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great idea, I'll definitely follow! Is the site itself open source? If so, I'd love to help out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Actually the implementation is based on [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs) code at [https://github.com/jcs/lobsters](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters) but yes, the plan is to open source this fork quite soon.

<comment><USER12> Cool! I'll keep an eye out :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice work, naming aside, I would suggest maybe if possible add an IRC channel (you don't have to host your own server or anything, Freenode or Quakenet etc is fine). It could help build up a community whilst things are slow, and registration is still invite only it seems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hadn't thought about having an IRC channel. I'm trying to keep up with the invitations. Didn't honestly expect that much interest. :)

I hope the website is still usable (I'm monitoring 'top' here and ruby/nginx is still constantly below 25%).

I'll probably not be setting up an IRC channel today/tonight as it's pretty late where I am, but may consider it in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> @d99kris I just went to the filters page, and saved filters, went back to the home page, and the filters were not applied. I am not logged in; does it only work when you're logged in? If so, you might want to hide that link for non- logged in users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes it's actually supposed to work with cookies, but I haven't tested this properly. Will probably follow your advice and hide it for non-logged in users until I'm sure it's working correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It may be useful, thanks, will keep an eye on it. Although, its name made me think of a new Swatch watch and I found it a bit slow. Also you should consider adding some font color other than gray.

<comment><USER15> And please consider changing the favicon perhaps? (letters too small)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It was the last item I was planning to address before "launching" the site, but I decided to put it off for another day. It'll soon be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really cool to see the moderation log. Hope that it contains everything and doesn't apply certain filters for certain actions. I'd like to see the same thing for HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't take any credit for that, as I forked lobste.rs implementation which already has that feature. But yes, I like the transparency too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought it was about about operating systems when I saw the name. Kind of like OSnews. Probably should've been OSSwatch.

<comment><USER18> Came here for the exact same comment. And, while at it, consider also FOSSwatch, as the free software people do not think that open soure includes their philosophy.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, we were thinking along same lines: OSSwatch and FOSSwatch came to mind for comment. I deliberately avoided mentioning FOSSwatch due to the ideological angle you mentioned. I figured someone from OSS or FOSS one would be on the attack in minutes haha.

<comment><USER18> Well, there are a lot of zealots in every camp, so they'd attack even if you named it PISSwatch. But you have spent time and put out great, useful work, and nobody has the right to complain, as you didn't do it because you had to, but because of your good will. Kudos for that, very nice website.

<comment><USER17> I agree. They put in the work and got the results. Anyone that doesn't like it can have an opinion but is just talking rather than building. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find the use of two tagging systems a bit off and may harm the aesthetic and usability of the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you are referring to some submission titles containing [Project Name] and at the same time carrying a tag-"button"? The submission titles for automated submission are taken from the email subject, and kept to make twitter/facebook feeds have proper context. But I'll look into how I can clean it up - especially from the oswatch.net front page itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was used to check [http://osnews.com/](http://osnews.com/) daily for Years now. But for me, they update frequency is quite poor, so i stopped visiting the site at all. This looks promissing and nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! To ensure timely updates I "cheated" and have subscriptions set up for a bunch of open source projects announcement lists, and auto-posting them to osnews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the idea but perhaps OSSwatch would be a better name?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I realize the name clash with [http://oswatch.org/](http://oswatch.org/) and the fact that OSS is a more proper abbreviation of open source software. The name was picked based on the name "open source watch". May rename in the future if it makes sense, but it's just a small side project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> what's the difference with lobste.rs ?

<comment><AUTHOR> OSwatch is focused on open source news, or sharing of open source projects, while I believe lobste.rs targets broader topics/audience.

Implementation-wise OSwatch is very similar, being a fork of lobste.rs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is technology behind it? How do you automatically collect news?

<comment><AUTHOR> The base site is based on lobste.rs and the automatic news collection is just email subscriptions to a bunch of open source projects announcement mailing lists.

I may need to extend it to poll websites or github for release notes in the future, as some (still relevant) projects do not have mailing lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I dig the innovative user interface metaphor. It's refreshing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm by no means a UI expert nor an English native speaker so I'm not sure if you're sarcastic. Would you mind elaborating on the feedback?

<comment><USER24> English is not my first language either. Sarcasm has no place here on Hacker News, and I was not being sarcastic. I guess I could have elaborated.

I think the way you have placed the category/categories, website domainname on each row is interesting. Also how comments are moved to a separate area which I find a fresh take!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Thought provoking [0] .

How will the site will filter for informational value? There are huge numbers of releases on a vast array of software most people won't care for following even if it is important, e.g. the Linux kernel, Hadoop, Spring.

The hard problem is determining what votes _confirm_. That is, what distinguishes a good submission from a bad submission is what makes a community. If it's just votes without standards then me and my friends and our sockpuppets can make it all about the LOL's.

Others have touched on the hard problem of community in regard to the name. From a community standpoint, there's no big tent uniting all open source communities any more than there's a big tent uniting all political communities.

There are three big approaches to contributions: copy left, any use allowed, and assign copyright to the project. [1] It's politics by any other name. Some people play the game hard. A few play it for keeps. And most people don't really care very much except when there's titillating gossip or a bare knuckled knife fight. And on the internet, my money would be on people tuning in for an unending stream of unreconciled battles royale.

The term "free and open source software" is a way institutions sluff off accusations of having taken a stance even though the institutions have -- for adamant copy leftists there's no disjunction between "free" and "open source" that requires the "and". As the institutional view has come to mainstream development, there's been an opportunity for institutions to collapse the terminology down to "open source" which is a property not a community. It's only cold calculation and good manners that keep technology CEO's from saying "Richard Stallman, who the fuck are you and who pays you?"

Catering to the open source community suffers from the problem that it's hard to capture a market segment and build a community around it. Rationalizing along the lines of "There are one billion people in China and all we need to do is charge each of them $1.00" is easier even though it doesn't work for any institution other than the government of China and even then not so much.

My advice:

\+ Scale back the idea where it is clearer who might use it and what value those people will get from investing in building a community. More importantly, it needs to be clearer who might almost be the right fit but: fail to see the attraction, not abide by community standards, lurk, go off and clone it on a different topic.

\+ Start with something clear and narrow and with some semblance of an existing community, e.g. projects under the Apache foundation. Even better if there is some buzz, e.g. Microsoft's open source efforts.

\+ Building around enterprise is actually congruent with the idea of "open source". It also may be easier to impose higher standards of behavior than are typical of the internet.

Finally, I doubt that the look and feel of Hacker News is the secret sauce. I suspect that it's mostly what I don't see that makes it work.

This turned out to be more of an exercise than I expected. Imagine that.

Good luck.

[0]: To state the obvious.

[1]: I'm not not advocating one position over the other. I'm just coarsely modeling. Like all models it's wrong, but it may be useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Much valid points and interesting view. I did think about a few of these aspects - in particular community fostering and whether to focus on a specific project or area. It was all becoming a pretty complex problem to figure out, so I decided to just put it out there and see what happens - and make changes and iterate as needed.

In essence I created the website because I wanted a HN focused on open source news, sharing, discussions.

I'll take some more time to digest all your feedback, it's late here (midnight), but I do value the comprehensive feedback a lot!

<comment><USER25> It's free random advice from the internet and probably worth twice what you paid for it...or at least half.

But I had fun writing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A search for "Erlang" showed zero results.</comment>


Ask HN: Cache the frontpage links on HN? - <AUTHOR>

It really annoys me when the links on the frontpage of HN are clicked on so much they overload the server of that website. What about a website/service which caches all the pages on the frontpage of HN, and throws them away after X amount of time after they disappear from the frontpage. If you think this is a good idea, me and my co-worker might create something like this. <comment><USER2> Or, before submitting their* sites, they could do the bare minimum of 1) Use the free version of CloudFare or similar. 2) Get a web host with unlimited / high bandwidth levels. 3) If using WordPress, use one of the many cacheing plugins.

I've been hit several times by being on the front page. By my estimates, that worth around 700 requests per hour ([http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats- the-front-page-of-hack...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front- page-of-hackernews-worth/)). I don't think that's excessive and using the above, my bog standard WordPress install has never fallen over.

*I'm aware not all stories are submitted by their writer - but I consider the above to be best practice for any competent website owner.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a lot of content providers would not be keen on this as a default mode of operation. They'd lose stats, access to dynamic stuff on the page, and more.

On the other hand, if HN could frequently check if a page is still responsive and, if not, _then_ show a cached version until it's back up, that would be awesome, but given the underlying software doesn't get many updates anyway, I doubt we'd see anything like this soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it's a bad idea, mainly because I'd like to see how much traffic my site received. It occasionally happens that I want to read something here, but the server is down. In that case, I always Google the URL. So far, in all cases, Google has spidered and cached the URL I wanted to access.

People would be better off optimizing their site/server. It's a good lesson to see what happens when your site gets a boost in traffic.

</comment><comment><USER5> It wouldn't be hard to run every submitted link through [http://www.coralcdn.org/](http://www.coralcdn.org/), then if the site goes down add a comment to the thread linking to their .nyud.net address (eg [http://google.com.nyud.net/](http://google.com.nyud.net/) )

<comment><USER6> I love Coral CDN... and could see it being a model for (or supporting-part) of a generalized cache-popular-submissions solution. But, it seems it doesn't support HTTPS sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's good when it hurts.

It's better to struggle with the hacker news treatment early on and learn to cope with traffic spikes than have the same problems when your site gets mainstream coverage.

</comment><comment><USER8> If they use varnish on their end, the problem solves itself. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Check this out [http://hncache.bensbit.co.uk/](http://hncache.bensbit.co.uk/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic, although the extension doesn't work for me? Does it work for the latest Chrome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> if(site doesn't respond) {link.domain_name = link.domain_name + ".nyud.net"}</comment>


Nokia D1C: The Comeback - <AUTHOR> http://inmobility.org/20161673/nokia-d1c-the-comeback/ <comment> amiga-workbench Such a shame trojan horse Elop tanked the company by partnering with Microsoft, I'd have loved to see more of their Linux based phones, I've still got a Nokia N9 which has to be my favourite handset so far.

I hope Ubuntu for phones can gain at least some traction.

<comment><USER2> I have heard this statement so many times and I feel it doesn't justify the truth. Here are some counter points. Nokia came back into my view when they started launching the Lumia phones. It was slick, fast and solid phones with amazing camera. Any mention of Nokia here on HN and Reddit before that was met with DOA as the top comment. When they started releasing the Lumia phones, the tune started to switch to "if they made an android phone, I would totally buy!". Remember the whole silly fiasco with even Siri calling Lumia 900 the best phone in the market? [1]

I think Microsoft gave it a premiere spot with Windows Mobile which would have otherwise gone unnoticeable in the Android market. Despite me jumping ship from Windows Phone, I still believe Windows Mobile was one of the best (*subjective) of all mobile OSes. Its extremely fast, less resource hog and well designed (flatness before it got trendy). Given the stereotypes about Windows OS, the mobile OS seemed nothing like it. Heck, I bought a $15 Lumia phone from Best buy and it seems like a $200 buttery smooth phone.

Lumia also had good set of apps, which created an amazing group of loyal buyers. Offline GPS - You could download the maps for the entire world on your phone. Offline Radio - Download the entire mix radio to you phone and use it where you went. Camera Apps - Nokia cinematography, Live Images, Selfie, Panorama.

However, I do believe that Microsoft's Nokia buyout was a stupid idea. Nokia was amazing at advertising, viral marketing and creating a brand loyalty. Microsoft however sucks at both advertisements and marketing but they seem to be very good at pissing off even their loyal followers.

[1] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/255508/siri_says_nokia_lumia_...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/255508/siri_says_nokia_lumia_900_not_apple_iphone_is_the_best_smartphone_ever.html)

<comment><USER3> There is an interesting story by the New Yorker: "It wasn't just that Nokia failed to recognize the increasing importance of software, though. It also underestimated how important the transition to smartphones would be. And this was, in retrospect, a classic case of a company being enthralled (and, in a way, imprisoned) by its past success. Nokia was, after all, earning more than fifty per cent of all the profits in the mobile-phone industry in 2007, and most of those profits were not coming from smartphones. Diverting a lot of resources into a high-end, low-volume business (which is what the touch-screen smartphone business was in 2007) would have looked risky. In that sense, Nokia's failure resulted at least in part from an institutional reluctance to transition into a new era."

[http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/where-nokia- went-...](http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/where-nokia-went-wrong)

<comment><USER4> > _Diverting a lot of resources into a high-end, low-volume business (which is > what the touch-screen smartphone business was in 2007) would have looked > risky. In that sense, Nokia's failure resulted at least in part from an > institutional reluctance to transition into a new era._

It's a bit of a nitpick, but Nokia had put considerable resources into Series 60, Symbian, and subsequently Maemo. Nokia's management, before Elop, was in no way reluctant about a smartphone future beyond high-volume S40 devices. The S60 features of integrated PIM apps are foundational to smartphones, and Maemo/Meego was a credible smartphone OS. As I recall, Tomi Ahonen had good reason to think the N9 was outselling Windows Phone when Meego was killed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not a comeback. This is a once-famous name being reused, it seems.

Imagine if Apple went out if business and then "returned" with an Android phone.

<comment><USER6> This isn't quite the same. Apple's platform is a closed garden. Hardware and software are bundled together and are inseparable. There can be no iPhone without iOS.

Nokia didn't do that. They had Symbian, Windows Phones and Asha to name a few.

What's happening here is Nokia taking their excellent hardware for which they were known for (remember those phones you could throw at a wall?), and sticking Android on it as the operating system - just like they would do with Windows Phone.

<comment><USER5> I'll be very glad if Nokia ends up making very good Android phones.

Lumias were quite good, too, from the hardware perspective.

What is the saddest part is the loss of their mobile OS effort; it had a number of good UI ideas.

BTW I wonder when some reasonably large player will try to offer an entirely (or at least significantly) different UX on top of Android's open-source core.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah...the name nokia has been licensed to a couple of different consumer devices. the only remnant of the old nokia that still exits is a networking device company that makes infrastructure for data and cell networks.

these are not the droids you are looking for...

<comment><USER8> That "remnant" is much larger than the handset division they sold. 114k employees after acquiring Alcatel-Lucent. Seems to be doing well. (I just learned that Bell Labs is now " _Nokia_ Bell Labs".)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the update. That's interesting news.

<comment><USER9> In fact Nokia always was an infrastructure company. (Well, "always" as in "telecommunication infrastructure products since 1960's", i.e. it started in telecoms about 100 years after its founding in 1867).

One can always say that there are other mistakes Nokia did. Like, why did it not acquire Cisco back around 1990 when it could have done it? But then again, many other Nokia acquisitions did not work so well so very likely Nokia Cisco wouldn't have been anything like Cisco is now.

Nokia came to telecom infra because before that it was a cable manufacturer, and it came to cable manufacturing due to being a rubber product manufacturer, and before that it was also wood industry manufacturer. You can still by "Nokian" brand boots and shoes in Europe, although it's a separate company, and you can also buy "Nokian" brand car and bicycle tyres, though that is another separate company.

(I worked in Nokia's infra side for 20 years and 1 day.)

<comment><USER7> That's true. They bought a company back in the 90s that had a technology that was a big influence on MPLS. Ipsilon? Something like that. It would assign tags to packets and then let you assign tags to specific paths.

<comment><USER9> Yes, Ipsilon Networks was one of several Nokia infra acquisitions, and not that successful. There was Vienna Systems, Diamond Lane, CopperCom, Rooftop, many others. That's quite normal in the business.

<comment><USER7> yeah, they have a really good portfolio of products in that space these days. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want a refresh on the Nokia Communicator. I want a micro laptop.

<comment><USER11> Casio sold some a while ago [https://youtu.be/qZ7TUJQjH74?t=68](https://youtu.be/qZ7TUJQjH74?t=68)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nokia has only themselves to blame for the downfall of their brand. There was a time then a Nokia phone was a status symbol. Now it's a gimmick at best.

If they didn't jump on a DOA platform and instead concentrated on the high-end Android market, they would still be #1 or #2 in Europe at least. Now they now collect paltry licensing fees on a yet another Foxconn phone, which judging by specs is obsolete anyway.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's a pretty 'average' phone for a comeback.

<comment><USER14> It's not like they have to live up to any particularly high expectations... As a brand, their history is made of two decades of mediocrity in both design and technology.

If a new brand licensing on Android phones was all they could come up with, it's no surprise their CTO left two months ago.

<comment><USER15> Where did you get the two decades? Before IPhone came 10 years ago and changed the game from hardware to software plus ecosystem Nokia's phones were in the top category - no, sorry, they were in all of the categories since there were so many of them.

Even after IPhone Nokia had years of great market position.

Technology wise mediocre? Thats.. not really the general perception.

Perhaps the fact that Nokia tanked as fast as it did creates a shadow over the history before this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They're not coming back. Being a smartphone OEM is a massive money sink with little upside unless you're the #1 or #2 player in a market. Wearables, VR, health, etc are the next targets for Nokia.

<comment><USER17> Probably they are not coming back, but it seems to be that they are not closing the door either. This whole deal seems to be setup so that they could just acquire the newly formed "HMD global" in future IF they wanted to do a comeback.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/18/nokia-phones-are-back- after-m...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/18/nokia-phones-are-back-after- microsoft-sells-mobile-assets-for-350-million-to-foxconn-hmd.html)

</comment></comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Any recommendations for a small form-factor, yet functional, Android phone (about the size of an iPhone 4/S)?

<comment><USER18> With Android huge update problem, I wouldn't go near to Android phone,unless Google's own phone. Let be honest Android manufacturers, just ripping off people and don't care a little bit about customer experience/security.

Think about this fact , many of high end phone from last year or year before that (which customer spent ~700$ -which is quite money-) has not fixed stagefright vulnerability and don't have any plan to update to new version. Thats total fraud , which they pull off (manufacturers).

<comment><USER19> > Think about this fact , many of high end phone from last year or year before > that (which customer spent ~700$ -which is quite money-) has not fixed > stagefright vulnerability and don't have any plan to update to new version

And that would be exactly which ones? Samsung did update their high end phones, so did Sony, HTC and LG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's good to see they have Android 7. It shows a lack of product management savvy at most OEMs that they don't get that delivering up-to-date Android might be a key advantage in selling Android phones.

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks like another "Alcatel" phone, a classic brand inside comoditized hw.

I would pay to have android running my Nokia lumia phones. (like someone manage to get onto the lumia 525).</comment>


Metaprogramming using Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-metaprog2.html <comment><USER2> Interesting, I guess it's a good sign to see this kind of article on a more mainstream site like developerworks.

The open-brace, close-brace style of parenthesis placement is not very nice, though, and not idiomatic; and "then" and "else" in his examples aren't exactly reserved words. Still, kudos for trying to explain syntax-case macros.

Syntax- _rules_ macros have a beauty worthy of Scheme. Syntax- _case_ macros have a power worthy of Scheme. That the author's examples were not beautiful was not helped by syntax-case itself ;-)

Andy, who hacks a lot on syntax-case macros and an implementation thereof...

<comment><USER3> It's from 2006, so I'd hardly consider it a good sign ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _...making it easier to craft boilerplate code_

Funny... I thought the goal of metaprogramming was to _eliminate_ boilerplate code. I suspect that's what they really meant here - maybe they phrased it that way to make the intent understandable to Java programmers.

<comment><USER5> It was worded a bit awkward, but again the goal is not to eliminate the boilerplate code, but to abstract it to a level where you only need to write it once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't looked at them, yet, but there is also a part 1 and a part 3. Part 3 has a scary title ;-).

The art of metaprogramming, Part 1: Introduction to metaprogramming

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-metaprog1....](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-metaprog1.html)

The art of metaprogramming, Part 3: Enterprise metaprogramming

<http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-metaprog3/></comment>


Show HN: Notably – minimalist markdown content editor - <AUTHOR> Hi, I just launched Notably: https://notably.cc
Notably is a free markdown based tool for creating and sharing beautiful content using markdown syntax.
You can use notably to create notes, text snippets and blog posts which can then be shared publicly with seo-friendly urls or kept as private notes
Notably is completely free to use
Thanks Chris <comment><USER2> From the web site:

> Notably is completely free!

That's a bit misleading, freedom means different things to different people. You explain that later as "free of charge", which is good, but the first impression is still bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure I agree with that. What else could free mean in the context?

<comment><USER2> Well, there's not much context... the website presents a software, and that's it.

But software freedom is an established concept, at least as much as much as freeware is. There's no clear idea what definition is in use when someone looks just at the headings.

<comment><USER3> To the average consumer, free means free of charge rather than free as in liberty. Very few people would think the latter when talking about the word "free" in the context of a product, of which the majority are developers, and even still, developers who are acquainted with the free software movement which is some fraction of that majority.

The copy on the page is clear to most people and is therefore good enough without needing to introduce consumers to the concept of software liberty, which would be more confusing and drive less conversion than just using the word "free."

<comment><USER2> > and drive less conversion than just using the word "free."

I'm addressing the issue of being unclear. Sure, you can drive even more conversion by being outright misleading, but I'm hoping that's not the author's goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's another one [https://trynocturnal.com/](https://trynocturnal.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll be honest, there's a LOT of markdown editors out there. What's your USP for Notably?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of that, but I'm yet to find one that I like personally. I made this primarily for my own benefit. Appreciate it's still a work in progress, however

<comment><USER6> but how is it different from others? Did you try a bunch of them, and decided to make your own, or just wanted to make something, so why not md editor for yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the choice of this sort of app is largely a question of personal preference. What I'm trying to replace for myself is evernote, which is what I've always fallen back to when I've tried other offerings, but it doesn't support markdown, is largely dependant on a mobile/desktop app download and to my eye, has a distracting/unattractive interface/output. I know evernote, like other apps, have a lot more features than Notably, but ultimately at the moment all I'm trying to do is validate the basic premise to see if this is something other people like, too

<comment><USER6> thanks, for the answer.

I personalty don't use web apps for such things, i've made a little app for myself that helps me to write markdown in vim with sideview preview, so i just use vim on laptop/pc and markdown editors on mobiles(can't say which one is better, don't really write in them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Attempting to sign in with google gave me a 500 Server Error

<comment><AUTHOR> I just saw it pop up in the logs. Apparently Google doesn't have your last name, which confuses it. Will take a look in the morning</comment></comment>


The Problem Delivering Dynamic Content from AWS to a CDN - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datapath.io/the-problem-delivering-dynamic-content-from-aws-to-a-cdn <comment><USER2> Nothing but a basic glossary and contact info harvesting form - I kept waiting for the actual technical content.</comment>


The 3DS Cryptosystem - <AUTHOR> http://yifan.lu/2016/04/06/the-3ds-cryptosystem/ <comment><USER2> That was an amusing read. The big takeaways are even deliciously quotable:

 _The irony is that the feature designed to bring more security was the one that completely broke it._

 _Too much complexity: having lots of blocks that say "AES" and "RSA" in your plan might impress the boss, but it just adds to the attack surface. Always go with the simplest plan that secures against your threat model._

Security is hard to get right, and retrofitting security features into existing systems is ripe with very subtle traps. Add backwards compatibility into the mix and you've probably created a fragile Frankenstein.

<comment><USER3> i suppose a handheld gaming device could be considered low consequence on the spectra of encryption use, which may simply answer my own question..

but being someone interested in factorisation i am baffled as to why anyone has or is using rsa

my intended inference is that factoring numbers is deterministically achievable in sub polynomial time, and having your crypto rely on 'it's hard for me it must be impossible for you' reads so sophomoric

<comment><USER4> That is what _all_ cryptography is based on?

And I don't know what subpolynomial time nonsense you're talking about.

<comment><USER5> If you're going to be rude, at least be correct. All cryptography is not in fact based on factoring; in fact, most public-key crypto isn't.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't referring to factoring. I quite like lattice based and ECC systems. I was referring to 'if it's hard for me it must be hard for you'. ALL cryptography is based off of that assumption.

edit: I can't seem to reply to you again, so I'll edit. This is all a big miscommunication. I was more confused than hostile, though I recognize how it came off poorly. I genuinely thought he had some fundamental understandings due to the combination of things he said. I was mistaken and my response came off poorly.

<comment><USER5> That's a reading of the original comment so uncharitable as to seem tendentious. The commenter was specific about factoring; they were not calling into question the entire idea of a trapdoor function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Finally, I will summarize the findings and provide a few tips to fellow engineers in hopes that these kinds of mistakes will not be made again._

On the other hand, those of us who like to actually own our hardware very much hope that these mistakes do happen again. :-)

<comment><USER7> And I would prefer a legal solution to that. Cryptography is great when you control the keys.

Do not allow restricted devices on the mass market if the legal owner is unable to override the restrictions.

<comment><USER8> Why should restricted devices be forbidden? The device is on the market, you know beforehand it's restrictions, and you are free to buy it or not.

<comment><USER7> Because the feudal model of today must be destroyed since i consider it harmful.

<comment><USER8> Calling a voluntary consumer purchase a "feudal model" is really stretching it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-cryptographic-doom- pri...](https://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-cryptographic-doom-principle/)

<comment><USER9> I was hoping I'd find this link here. It never fails to deliver.

<comment><USER5> You could see it in the very first diagram, with "AES-CTR" and no other blocks. And, sure enough...

At this point, the term "CTR" has become a design smell.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a simplification, I did not draw any of the blocks contributing to code signing. RSA is used everywhere to ensure that the code is signed. If you consider the signature as the MAC, it does "Authenticate Then Encrypt" (the signature is over the NCCH or FIRM header. The header contains hash + size of each section.)

<comment><USER5> Help me understand a bit more about how a bogus key was able to generate a gibberish text segment that code could successfully return into if all program text was protected by RSA signatures. I may have misread the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> So we have FIRM, the main firmware image. It has three segments: 1) main ARM11 kernel modules, 2) ARM11 kernel, 3) ARM9 kernel/ARM9 process. The FIRM header has a SHA256 hash over all the segments and the size of all segments. The FIRM header also has a RSA2048 signature over the header. Then everything (sig + header + FIRM) is encrypted with AES-CTR and placed on the NAND.

On system start, the whole chunk is decrypted, the signature is verified, and everything works as expected. Until in the New 3DS, they decide to also additionally encrypt segment 3 (the ARM9 stuff) with a separate key on the NAND. That's what led to the whole mess. So I guess their mistaken assumption was that since FIRM was signed, the encrypted ARM9 section was protected. However, they didn't take account of the fact that the key to decrypt it can be corrupted. It's a bit subtle.

<comment><USER5> I follow. But, if they'd encrypted every segment with AES-OCB or AES-GCM, rather than raw AES-CTR and then relying on the RSA signature of a header with hashes, this bug wouldn't have been possible, right?

(I get that there are multiple ways to break a bug. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, in a perfect world we would all be doing that. However, there is a tradeoff of boot-time/power consumption/hardware complexity (the hw AES engine only does CCM/CTR/CBC). Given their track record though, I wouldn't be surprised if things still broke if they used GCM. I think the main takeaway isn't that there's a couple of things they could have done differently to prevent this (which is always true in hindsight), but that certain major design decisions made such bugs inevitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A funny thing about the key generator. There was originally a project within the community to raise the funds to do a successful decap of the AES engine and key generator.

They successfully raised the $2000 before the person claiming to do a decap (Jl12) stole all the money and disappeared off the face of the earth.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20121227085042/http://3dbrew.org/...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121227085042/http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Fundraiser)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20140209211220/http://3dbrew.org/...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140209211220/http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Fundraiser)

<comment><USER11> All that goodwill pissed away for a paltry 2k? I mean, at least get into five figures if you're planning a heist like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For anyone interested there is PS3 security explained and it's one more proof that complexity don't make system more secure:

[http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Boot_Order#Chain_of_trust_Diagr...](http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Boot_Order#Chain_of_trust_Diagram)

[http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Keys](http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Keys)

</comment><comment><USER13> Another illustration of the classic thesis "security should be built from the ground up and can't be added later". Also shows the importance of minimizing the attack surface. Would love to hear some inside stories about discussions that ultimately led to these implementation decisions.

</comment><comment><USER14> Still, it held off for 4 years. That's pretty much the usual lifetime of a console generation, so I'd say the system was a success.

<comment><USER15> It was broken much, much earlier. At first you required an external device (special cartridge) or hardware mods, but there was a software exploit via the web browser for over a year now.

<comment><USER16> In addition to being broken earlier, it's been _trivial_ for even a casual user to pick up the exploits and use them to run arbitrary software on the device. There's a long-running website out there you can load in the 3DS web browser to exploit your device with a single click.</comment></comment></comment>


CVE-2016-1521 Webfont Exploit in Firefox Because of Graphite Library - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/vulnerability-in-font-processing-library-affects-linux-openoffice-firefox-500027.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> I don't see this mentioned anywhere but it might be possible to turn graphite support off entirely via _about:config_

         gfx.font_rendering.graphite.enabled

Graphite was turned on by default after FF 28

[http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects...](http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_firefox)

CVE-2016-1521

[http://www.talosintel.com/reports/TALOS-2016-0058/](http://www.talosintel.com/reports/TALOS-2016-0058/)

Firefox builds before February 11 are vulnerable [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/security/advisories/mfsa2016-1...](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/security/advisories/mfsa2016-14/)

 _The directrun function in directmachine.cpp in Libgraphite in Graphite 2 1.2.4, as used in Mozilla Firefox before 43.0 and Firefox ESR 38.x before 38.6.1, does not validate a certain skip operation, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code, obtain sensitive information, or cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read and application crash) via a crafted Graphite smart font._</comment>


Show HN: Serverless Analytics Built from Scratch - <AUTHOR> https://statsbotco.github.io/cubejs-client/aws-web-analytics/ <comment><USER2> "serverless" is really the misnomer of the year.

<comment><USER3> "Still on a server, but not your problem" just doesn't have the same ring to it though

<comment><USER4> "/cgi-bin/ with javascript instead of perl" doesn't make me want to buy it, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting and nicely presented!

I built a prototype of something very similar, but using Google BigQuery to store and extract data[0] but never took it beyond the concept phase. I'm still using and actively maintain an open source lambda-based A/B testing severless framework however with similar (but simpler) architecture[1]

[0] [https://blog.gingerlime.com/2016/a-scalable-analytics- backen...](https://blog.gingerlime.com/2016/a-scalable-analytics-backend-with- google-bigquery-aws-lambda-and-kinesis/)

[1] [https://github.com/Alephbet/gimel](https://github.com/Alephbet/gimel)

</comment><comment><USER6> The blog post about it is probably a better link for HN: [https://statsbot.co/blog/building-open-source-google- analyti...](https://statsbot.co/blog/building-open-source-google-analytics- from-scratch/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I mean as a POC its not bad, but google analytics is not the same as analyzing server logs (contrary to what most people would suggest). Most of the value of ga comes from session and user level metrics, which are 1000x more difficult to implement than showing pageviews. Unless you are planning on building a device graph that rivals google, you can't clone ga.

<comment><USER8> > google analytics is not the same as analyzing server logs

This is what most people don't get with ga.

Google Analytics does the heavy lift by removing incoherent , corrupted or malicious data insertion.

Let's say I use Puppeteer i can scrap this page a million time with completely wrong headers like « Netscape 8.1 ». GA purify this type of malicious attempts , it will probably look my IP Adress and figure out that it's actually coming from only one IP and « Netscape » is too rare to be considered as an actual browser so it would probably ignore it.

All others « free google analytics alternatives » that exists today don't have this type of mechanism to prevent from data corruption.

In general they just get an Http Request and acknowledge it as a legitimate visit.

Logging an Http request from a browser is not even a tenth of the work GA does under the hood.

<comment><USER9> > Google Analytics does the heavy lift by removing incoherent , corrupted or > malicious data insertion.

Unless it's referrer spam...that somehow still sticks around (at least last time I checked, which was several months ago).

<comment><USER7> If you hire an expert to set up your ga referrer spam doesn't get through, its super easy to filter before hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Build serverless app to track web stats. Get it featured on Hacker News and use the flood of traffic to demo what was done. Very meta. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd be curious to see a cost estimate for some traffic level. I wonder if there's a way to put the pixel in s3 and process the access logs more cheaply.

<comment><USER12> I've seen folks put their pixel endpoint behind Fastly and process the access log delivered in S3. A Fastly VCL can handle the same transform that this Lambda is doing.

<comment><USER13> Is fastly free? Why would they use fastly and not s3?

<comment><USER12> S3 access logs alone are not sufficient to replicate this pipeline. This pixel is stateful (for the anonymous user ID) and S3 access logs don't include arbitrary headers, in this case the cookie with the user id. Fastly would let you eliminate API gateway, Lambda, and both Kinesis steps.

API Gateway by itself is $3.50/million requests, which is 2-4x more expensive than Fastly at $0.75 - $1.60/million

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We should really stop using the word "serverless".

I would rather call them instead "zero config servers".

</comment><comment><USER15> I think you can use API Gateway as a proxy for Kinesis, removing the need for Lambda.

<comment><USER16> Seems to be:

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/integrating- api-with-aws-services-kinesis.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This sort of thing works until you have one person run a security scan on your site, corrupting your user agents and event types.

</comment><comment><USER17> Side note: If you want to build your own mid-size event analytics data pipeline, then I recommend looking at snowplow: [https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow](https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow)

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. I once built a ga clone using appengine, cloud dataflow, and big query. I guess that would count as serverless? Benchmarked it against the official dumps to big quey too and it was pretty spot on for every metric we could lookup!

<comment><USER13> Bigquery takes minimum 2-3 seconds for every query.

Google Analytics is much faster, responds in a few hundreads milliseconds.

What did you use dataflow for? How did you get data from end points and insert them into bigquery? Using streaming inserts?

<comment><USER19> > Google Analytics is much faster, responds in a few hundreads milliseconds.

Are you referring to their reporting API, or their collection endpoint? The collection endpoint is certainly fast to respond, but the actual reporting API can be quite slow depending on what you're trying to get from it.

> What did you use dataflow for? How did you get data from end points and > insert them into bigquery? Using streaming inserts?

I'm not the parent, but I've created setups like what was mentioned. It sounds like they hosted the collection endpoint on AppEngine, then used DataFlow for streaming the data into BigQuery. Potentially using a Pub/Sub topic to queue up for DataFlow, since that has native integrations with DataFlow and even has a template available to support it[1].

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/dataflow/docs/guides/templates/prov...](https://cloud.google.com/dataflow/docs/guides/templates/provided- templates#cloudpubsubtobigquery)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Endless loading... I think there's a bug

</comment><comment><USER21> Genuine question. What does this do that just inserting vanilla GA code in the page doesn't? Trying to understand the "why".

<comment><USER12> Some people don't want to put a GA tag on their site because of concerns around how Google uses the data. Also you can't arbitrarily query GA data so this gives you that capability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> is PHP serverless :thinking:

</comment><comment><USER13> Please explain what is cube.js doing in this? I mean, what exactly cubejs does.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the question! We should do a better job describing this. In short: 1\. Generates analytic SQL queries based on Cube.js schema. It can be simple ones like calculating page views or more advanced like calculating session metrics, attribution models or funnels. 2\. Caches sql responses to not to overwhelm SQL backend with user requests. 3\. Pre-aggregates data to be able to query trillions of data points in matter of seconds. 4\. Orchestrates SQL query execution. Organizes dependencies between pre-aggregations, queue priorities, cache refreshes. 5\. Provides REST analytic API for end users.

<comment><USER13> Why do you need to select all rows in your Cubejs section when you can directly run query in athena and get back the aggregates you need.

Basically you select all rows then cubjs does something on those rows when you can infact directly run queries in Athena

Am i missing something?

<comment><USER23> It actually works exactly as you describe. We generate SQL query to return aggregates based on SQL supplied in Cube.js schema. We never fetch raw data from SQL backend. Architecture overview can probably help to understand: [https://github.com/statsbotco/cubejs- client#architecture](https://github.com/statsbotco/cubejs-client#architecture)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech as hopeful – beyond the honeymoon phase? - <AUTHOR> I want to explore revisiting the augmentative capacities of the web and ways in how we can help each other help ourselves be the Le Guinian "children who have survived" - i.e., creative adults. I'm writing a book on networked learning but it won't be complete if I don't at least try to reach out directly to those in the industry (this, as opposed to only including passive bibliographic references). Also, a great trend in academe is co-creation, which I seek to make space for in all I do. I am so grateful to so much tech - and hope that by raising this question I am returning to tech a space for relaxed reflection.<p>((If an additional prompt is needed, if I were to submit a point for 'talking therapy', I'd ask about "boundary issues" that threaten a healthy hopeful relation to tech. E.g. what stops one from feeling "whole, sound or well"; "uninjured, of good omen"? This is deliberately broad. Some problems affording creative solutions to cultivate hope could include building new networks to improve the currently lamented unusability of the web - but also learning to establish healthy work/private life boundaries...)) <comment><USER2> To put it bluntly: This is very vague. If you want any kind of response, you might have a better chance if you state your question more clearly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate the feedback and will work to get over my "James Dean moment" and try again. (It can be hard to make the shift from HN reader to participant.) I was also unsure if I needed to link to my site which has more background info but wasn't sure if that was entirely necessary. So your input is really helpful, thanks for your time.</comment></comment>


WeWork seen as startup lesson in what not to do in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wework-lessons-analysis/wework-seen-as-startup-lesson-in-what-not-to-do-in-silicon-valley-idUSKBN1WI23M <comment><USER2> Dude made 3/4 of a billion dollars. Seem plan worked great</comment>


Csiro scientists: Humans have a "natural" lifespan of around 38 years - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-shows-an-animals-lifespan-is-written-in-the-dna-for-humans-its-38-years-128623 <comment><USER2> This quote in particular didn't excite me: "We removed humans (Homo sapiens) from the data set as they were listed with a maximum lifespan of 120 years, which does not reflect the variability and the true global average lifespan (60.9–86.3 years)."

Editing out data like that seems like fitting the data to expectations rather than letting it lead you based on its own trends. It doesn't do much good for the headline either.

I'm fairly sure that modern humans lifespans were shortened due to infant mortality rather than some aspect of the genetic clock. Its hard to keep average lifespan high when most of your children die due to disease and DNA doesn't have that many opinions relating to that and its view of maximum lifespan. If it did have opinions (unlikely) it would be simple enough: "lets find some individuals with some resistance to mix and make more of them". But requiring that DNA fit a narrative seems unnecessary.

<comment><USER3> 1: They threw out the 120 year number since it was reported differently for humans than it was the rest of the animals in the data set. Those numbers would have been the average of the 10% of the eldest members in the study, while 120 is the maximum reportedly seen in humans.

2: You're thinking of life expectancy instead of lifespan for the last part.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Report: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-54447-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-54447-w)</comment>


Show HN: Mattermark for PR built whilst in College - <AUTHOR>

I'm finishing my last year at college and built a PR SaaS tool that is currently at $1k MRR. The goal is to build a Mattermark for PR, using machine learning to analyse press opportunities for startups.<p>Any feedback would be appreciated: www.contactable.io <comment><USER2> Saw your post on PH as well few days back, I really enjoyed checking out your demo... really interesting product! Could you detail some of the machine learning techniques behind it? Looking forward to seeing further developments on your project in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! We mostly use NLP on the articles for entity extraction, using a mixture of Alchemy, open calais and NLTK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How big is your team size?. By the way its a cool idea !.

<comment><USER4> just two, me and the OP

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check your copyright declaration. It's 2015 :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers! nice find :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Transparent, clean and nuanced! I can't wait to start using this...</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to manage all your domains and hosting? - <AUTHOR>

Doing a little market research here: Those of you who have a lot of projects, domains, and hosting accounts out there -- how do you keep it all managed?<p>I am familiar with a mac app called Domain Brain [1], but I was wondering if there were a SaaS app out there that can alleviate this pain of managing this.<p>[1] - http://domainbrainapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I have a Google Docs spreadsheet with all the server information I need, and KeePass to store all credentials.

This works for about 10 active projects at various stages in their life cycles.</comment>


Choosing Linux Compatible Printers - <AUTHOR> https://haydenjames.io/finding-linux-compatible-printers/ <comment><USER2> Hmm... Our office has a Kyocera M6235cidn (around 2k$ with extra trays and a little rolling cabinet).

The offcial linux driver for it is literally two PPDs (one for EU with duplex- as-standard, one "global" with no-duplex-as-standard ... i diffed them as they are textfiles, and that is the sole difference).

After setting a static ip on the printer on the panel, there is one command, guys and girls, and it runs..

One further command to set the default options and the printer is ready for prime-time. (Technically speaking you could also use the cups web gui, but why...)

I have never had such an easy printer in linux before (and I have tried for more than a decade)..

As it has scan to email (local email server standing a foot way) I haven't tried network scan from the computer, but printing is flawless and easy.

Our two earlier printers: Brother MFPs have a bastardized cups/lpd blob thing, that works but are brittle. Samsungs (big ass x4300 A3-MFP) never could choose input tray from linux ever after throwing a weeks worth of work after it..</comment>


The Bloom Clock - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.13064 <comment><USER2> Hi everybody. I'm the author of the paper. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

<comment><USER3> Are you familiar with hybrid logical time systems like " HybridTime - Accessible Global Consistency with High Clock Uncertainty" ([http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~garg/pdslab/david/hybrid- time-t...](http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~garg/pdslab/david/hybrid-time-tech- report-01.pdf)) or "Logical Physical Clocks and Consistent Snapshots in Globally Distributed Databases" ([https://cse.buffalo.edu/tech- reports/2014-04.pdf](https://cse.buffalo.edu/tech-reports/2014-04.pdf))? I'd be interested in reading what you view as the tradeoffs between Bloom clocks and these systems.

<comment><USER4> I really like the Logical Physical Clocks paper. I'm glad you mentioned it :)

There's also Hybrid Vector Clocks which seem to accomplish the same goal as Bloom clocks:

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2f05/8c7bfe3ddce90f9715842b...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2f05/8c7bfe3ddce90f9715842b2b3a915b1e0862.pdf)

[http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2016/6677/pdf/LIPIcs...](http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2016/6677/pdf/LIPIcs- OPODIS-2015-34.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think understand the advantages of using a vector clock instead of a timestamp and the advantages of a bloom clock vs vector clocks.

But since a bloom clock can sometimes return an incorrect order of events (false positives), wouldn't using the timestamp be a simpler solution on most cases that can allow some unordered events?

<comment><USER2> Author of the paper here. Imagine it like this, if your bloom filter overlaps by a lot an incoming bloom filter, what you can do is go over your logs, find the bloom filter closest by increments to the incoming bloom filter, and then compare them. If the events are not comparable, i.e. concurrent, you will know it immediately. If they are comparable, your false positive rate now will be extremely low (because you picked the bloom filter in your logs that is closest to the one you received).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like this could be useful in DAG data structures.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this a hyperloglog?

<comment><USER8> I've only read the abstract, but I think this does ordering where hyperloglog does presence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an intriguing paper. This seems highly related to proof of work algorithms in blockchain systems. Working out which events happened and at what time.

<comment><USER10> >> This seems highly related to proof of work algorithms in blockchain systems. Working out which events happened and at what time.

This is not a byzantine algorithm so it's got nothing to do with proof of work.

<comment><USER9> Just because it's not Byzantine doesn't mean it might not be relevant to proof of work algorithms where one of the challenges is understanding when work was completed relative to other components.

<comment><USER10> You might as well say the flap of the wings of a butterfly in Africa may later become the cause a hurricane in the US.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Young People Are Happier Than They Used to Be - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/the-age-happiness-connection-is-breaking-down/414349/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> It's very strange that even the authors of the study are taking this headline position. If you go and look at the actual paper:

[http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/10/194855061560...](http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/10/1948550615602933.full.pdf+html)

You will see that 18-29 year old self-reported happiness is flat when compared with the last thirty years, off the post-1975 lows of 2005, but below the 1985 and 1990 measurements:

[http://i.imgur.com/VXpYCy7.png](http://i.imgur.com/VXpYCy7.png)

 _Older adult_ happiness, however, is breaking decidedly to the downside.

One can only conjecture why this research is being spun as "happier young people" rather than "less happy old people".

<comment><USER3> Might have something to do with this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/good-news- spreads-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/good-news-spreads- faster-on-twitter-and-facebook.html?pagewanted=all)

Also the trend seems stronger the younger you go. My guess is 18-29 is too broad a range to show the real trend.

[http://imgur.com/q1WtBPe](http://imgur.com/q1WtBPe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > One reason for this shift may be a collective rise in how well Americans > expect their lives to go. Happiness is sometimes defined as reality divided > by expectations

Is it really expectations rising, or reality falling? I think it's a combination. I know my expectations used to be sky high, and yea my younger years were optimistic. But reality still hit like a ton of bricks.

When I was in my late teens, I was relatively certain I'd be retired as a dot- com multi-millionaire in 10 years or so. Throughout my 20s, I thought, well all I need to do is work my ass off in a tech company and, even if I'm not retiring early, at least I'll be rocking an upper class lifestyle with a few vacation homes! Then, I reached 30 and thought, jeez, I hope my standard of living at least ends up a little better than my parents' one day. Now that I'm closing in on 40, I'm wondering if I'll even be able to afford to raise a kid let alone have anything left to retire with.

<comment><USER5> really? you _expected_ all that? shit. all i ever wanted was a sports car and a decent apartment, and i have that after quite a bit of work. i've entertained the possibility of striking it big, but never expected it. it's still a goal i work toward but if i were to crash and burn tomorrow i'd probably just go find work on a boat somewhere tropical and warm.

<comment><USER4> High expectations, no grasp of statistics, and a total misunderstanding of just how much of a role luck plays in everyone's outcome.

That was back when the first dot-com bubble was rapidly inflating, and it seemed that all you had to do was put in a few years at Netscape, Sun or SGI, and then go found a startup, and you'd be a guaranteed success. People really believed this!

In reality, the job environment consisted of those few known companies plus this big spread of unknowns (much like today, actually, except back then they were actually hiring). Nobody knew which ones would go out of business, which ones would succeed, and which ones would mean Maseratis for their early employees. I mean nobody had a clue. If you graduated in Comp sci or Comp eng or EE, you basically just rolled the dice and picked one, and that ended up being the difference between doing astoundingly well and just putzing along after 20 years.

<comment><USER6> Heh. Yea, I remember all that. If you know how to spell "HTML", you were certain to be a billionaire by 30.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how this ties in with the increasing trend of young people living with their parents. In 1999, a quarter of all 25-year-olds lived with their parents. By 2013 this number has doubled, and currently half of young adults live in their parents home. [1]

[1] [https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the- economy/2015/october/mille...](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the- economy/2015/october/millennials-living-home-student-debt-housing-labor)

<comment><USER8> I've often been thinking how an ideal living situation for me would be a commune-like collaboration between good friends - each (or each couple) having their own space, but in the same building so it's easy to meet, share chores, etc. Something like in the series Friends.

Definitely beats commuting for 30mins to another side of the city just to meet for a 2hour dinner.

<comment><USER9> With the exception of 'good friends' (unless you're lucky) you're just describing a houseshare.

This is what everyone does in their 20s (and probably becoming the norm for most people through their 30s too) in cities in the UK, London in particular, because rents are so high there is literally no alternative that doesn't involve spending most of your salary on rent.

Even with a houseshare, a 30 min commute is not just normal but actually, rather good! You're usually nowhere near the centre. Again, this is particularly true of London.

I'm sorry to deflate you on this one but I can tell you, having lived in houseshares for years, it is absolutely not an ideal living situation. Everyone in one wants their own place, but can't afford it without moving way out of the city, or saving nothing, or living somewhere truly awful, or some combination of the above. It's not a choice but a corner you're backed into by the market.

If you're contemplating this as something which is optional, you are lucky indeed, and I'd advise you to stick with your current, non-shared, living arrangements :-)

<comment><USER10> There's a middle ground between living in the same house (your houseshares) and living 30+ minutes away from friends. As your parent described it "like in Friends".

Obviously comes with it's own downsides - it's not so easy out side of TV to think "right, these are the 5 people I want to live near", and not neccesarily easy to find somewhere to live that gives you the space each of you want (e.g. separate appartments) while still being suitible for everyone in your group.

Personally I wouldn't want to live in a houseshare, but in the same appartment building as good friends? Sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Being young used to involve lots of boredom - technology has changed all that.

Being older used to mean having a career - the economy being in the toilet has changed all that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Kids are exposed to more information than before to keep them stimulated, but they are also guided down predetermined paths more than before.

Child-rearing has become more data-centric than ever. Parents naturally want to do what is best for their children, which means eliminating all the uncertainties, and sticking with winning formulas.

So while we pay lip-service to celebrating diversity, in reality we're actually going in the opposite direction towards convergence, and risk- aversion.

Kids are happy because they are constantly stimulated, and the guided rearing has led them to believe in certainty of future.

Unfortunately, there is now less 'slack' in the society and economy to accommodate serendipity. And that's what the grown-ups face in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER13> I stumbled upon this site a couple of years ago--maybe more? I don't add much to discussions, and embarrassing use it as therapy. Thanks guys for not being too hard on me.

For so long, I didn't even know how certain features work. I still haven't even read the rules. That would probally explain why forever I didn't know what you guys were talking about with down/up votes. The arrows weren't on my screen. I guess I was banned? They are now there, but I wish the only arrow was a up arrow. Never saw the need for the down arrow?

I only access this site when I'm on my iPad. I guess it's just habit.

I never come back to a post, unless I ask a question. Just don't like to argue, and unless we are talking about the poor, or animal abuse, I don't want to get all riled up.

I did look into this making a HN type site, but haven't succeeded. It would not clone HN. It would just be for a niche group of people, interested in old mechanical watches-- basically their repair. When I found out this site was built with lisp, I immediately got a book on lisp. I still haven't got through it either. See the pattern; I don't follow through.

I can honesly state, I believe this is the best site on the Internet, and I'm so glad Paul Graham decided to build it, and not change it up too much. Thank you Mr. Graham!

<comment><USER14> >For so long, I didn't even know how certain features work. I still haven't even read the rules. That would probally explain why forever I didn't know what you guys were talking about with down/up votes. The arrows weren't on my screen. I guess I was banned? They are now there, but I wish the only arrow was a up arrow. Never saw the need for the down arrow?

You unlock privileges as you gain karma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> All those cat videos are paying off.

<comment><USER16> It may sound like a joke, but there might be something to it. It's probably hard to measure, but I can't imagine the easy access to lightweight mood- improving content doesn't have an impact of people. Personally, I don't browse cats too often, but I've experienced many times how a single picture of a cute cat sent by someone can keep me smiling for a long while.

<comment><USER17> I think this is the tail wagging the dog here, akin to saying that easy access to violent video games makes people violent.

Culture can affect mood, but I think mood affects culture much more strongly than the other way around. We mostly seek out things that validate the way we already feel inside, not go, "I'm feeling pretty crappy today, let me go watch some cat vids to cheer me up." If something comes along that doesn't feed into our current state, we tend to ignore it.

We had the Internet for a lot longer than we've had cat videos. It wasn't that we couldn't have had them or that none existed, they just weren't all that popular. There was a definite turn in the 2000s where people, and the Internet, suddenly got a lot happier.

My theory is that Internetting before Facebook was mostly a solitary thing that loners would do to get away from lives they otherwise hated. With Facebook the masses came, and so everyone all of a sudden had to cater to a wider audience. People who really do want to get away from humanity have their 4chans, but they're in the minority now. Reddit would have been a very different place in the late nineties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This contradicts studies showing that people who spend a lot of time on Facebook are unhappier [1]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/04/08/new- stud...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/04/08/new-study-links- facebook-to-depression-but-now-we-actually-understand-why/)

<comment><USER19> No it doesn't. The first study is relative to people in the past, the other study is relative to people in the present.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The result of this study really resonates with me. The accuracy of the conclusions it draws may be questionable, but it resonates none the less. I think that we may be finally experiencing the consequences of our irresponsible behavior in earlier decades. Many good changes have been brought about, sure. But we threw away the sanctity of the family unit. We taught everyone that making a modest living is for "losers." We let our schools become daycare centers. And in many ways I feel that we lost our morality. And now that all the money is gone it doesn't work anymore.

<comment><USER21> > _And now that all the money is gone it doesn 't work anymore._

There is more global wealth than at any point in human history, and it's still growing. A financial crisis and a decade of "economic stagnation" are nothing in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER22> Increasing inequality sucks the wealth into the top. At first, most citizens in developed countries benefits from rising inequality as the wealth from poorer countries are channeled into the country. As inequality rises, the bottom levels start to lose wealth to the upper levels. As it rises past your neighbourhood, you'll see your neighbourhood getting poorer, while the countries' richest get richer and richer. That's why there's more global wealth than at any point, still growing, but it looks like everyone is getting poorer, because almost everyone is. Not saying that's good or bad, maybe it's even necessary in our society for inequality to continue to rise and then collapse. Many communist experiments have already been tried.

EDIT: All conjecture.

<comment><USER23> Even if that's true, you're average person on earth is generally better off than their parents were. In the United States it's not quite as cut and dry, but in general you are likely at least as well off as your parents. Inflation adjusted wages have been relatively flat, not decreasing (unless new data I haven't seen suggests otherwise).

At a macro scale people in the United States aren't getting poorer, they're just not getting relatively richer over time.

<comment><USER24> > Inflation adjusted wages have been relatively flat, not decreasing

Inflation adjusted median household income peaked in 1999, and its current level is below what it was in 1997. [0] _Mean_ household income has done better, because the very good results at the top influence the mean, but have no impact on the median.

Real hourly wages for middle- and low-income workers have been stagnant for decades; over a ~3 decade period dropping slightly for low income workers and gaining slightly for middle-income workers. (And lower for both categories than they were a decade ago.) And real hourly wages for young college graduates are below what they were in the late 1990s.

And, in the same time as _wages_ have dropped, the key non-wage benefit (employer health coverage) has also dropped, with fewer recently-employed young graduates (of high school and college, measured separately) having employer-sponsored insurance than in the past. [1]

> At a macro scale people in the United States aren't getting poorer, they're > just not getting relatively richer over time.

No, other than capitalists and a narrow slice of elite workers, they're actually getting poorer.

[0] [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MEHOINUSA672N)

[1] [http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage- stagnation/](http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

<comment><USER25> Not sure I'd be referencing a study by EPI....

 _There are several reasons why the Top 1% has done so much better, says Josh Bivens, EPI's research and policy director. These include tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of Wall Street and big increases in executive compensation. At the same time, the weakening of unions and the failure of the minimum wage to keep up with inflation depressed the wages of the middle class._

<comment><USER26> > Not sure I'd be referencing a study by EPI....

Why not? Besides which, the rest of your post is not a defense that the bottom 99% has fared well, it is itself an explanation for why the 1% has done extraordinarily well. On the backs of union workers and the middle class I might add.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> About damn time. From 17(23 now), I've kept reading news that my generation is flawed in someway or the other. First time I'm reading a news article which says otherwise. This makes me happy.

<comment><USER16> It's your (our) generation that will be trashing the next one in the press now. Standard conflict-of-generations stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> moochers

</comment><comment><USER29> Possibly we are letting this your special, your opinions carry weight, others should not hold views you find offensive, and such, will come back to bite us in a few years.

Letting kids think they are special is one thing, but the idea of going about it by not offending them and excusing them of failure by redirecting blame as is the current trend isn't going to lead to happy adults, if anything their fall is going to be harder</comment>


311 years ago, Alexander Selkirk was rescued on a desert island - <AUTHOR> https://anniversary7.blogspot.com/2020/02/311-years-ago-alexander-selkirk-was.html <comment><USER2> The Wikipedia article tells a slightly different story:

> Selkirk had grave concerns about the seaworthiness of their vessel, and > wanted to make the necessary repairs before going any farther. He declared > that he would rather stay on Juan Fernández than continue in a dangerously > leaky ship. Stradling took him up on the offer and landed Selkirk on the > island with a musket, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking pot, a Bible, bedding > and some clothes. Selkirk immediately regretted his rashness, but Stradling > refused to let him back on board.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Selkirk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Selkirk)

<comment><USER3> If the ship later sank, do we have any other source for this story?

For all we know, Selkirk was chucked off the ship for being a thief, the ship later sank, and Selkirk made up the story to not reveal he was a thief.

<comment><USER4> > For all we know

No, much more is known than what is casually assumed in this sentence. Unfortunately the sentence turns out to be just "for all londons_explore knows" but surely not "for all it is known from the survived texts."

And what is known is written in the very Wikipedia article which thewarpaint linked and which "londons_explore" obviously didn't read:

"Cinque Ports did indeed later founder off the coast of what is now Colombia. _Stradling and some of his crew survived the loss of their ship_ but were forced to surrender to the Spanish. The survivors were taken to Lima, Peru, where they endured a harsh imprisonment.[16]"

Wikipedia also cites the source, the article from 1713:

Steele, Richard (3 December 1713). "Alexander Selkirk, an Account of His Living Alone Above Four Years in a Desolate Island". The Englishman. 1 (26): 168–173.

Also the link to the online readable form of the article, as it was printed in 1714, more than 300 years ago:

[https://books.google.at/books?id=IY2UnI4L6g8C&pg=PA168](https://books.google.at/books?id=IY2UnI4L6g8C&pg=PA168)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It crazy that he was so confident the ship would sink he was willing to stranded, and he was right. I can hardly think of anything I am that confident in.

<comment><USER6> Well, if you're sure it's going to sink compared to resources and your survival skills, it's logical to choose the lesser of two weevils.

<comment><USER7> Is that a typo? I like it either way.

<comment><USER8> It's a joke from "Master and Commander"

<comment><USER9> A man who would pun, would pick a man's pockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's strange, but being marooned wasn't as unusual as one might think.

William Dampier (who Selkirk served with some years before being marooned)[1] had himself been marooned in the Nicobar Islands:

 _Later that year, by agreement, Dampier and two shipmates were marooned on one of the Nicobar Islands._ [2]

I believe this was mostly about disagreements at sea with commanders. Many empty islands had been stocked with animals such as goats and rabbits in case of shipwreck, and would have ships call at them a few times a year for water and resupply.

It does seem an odd thing to modern thinking though.

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

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier)

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the LOT 5055 / Il-62 / Soloviev D-30 that AgentJayZ talked about that ended up killing 183 people because the engine manufacturer was low on supply of LP main roller bearings, and so used half as many and sometimes the wrong sizes of bearings. He took apart 5 of them and they were missing these critical components, and some of the engines even wobbled by having a couple of millimeters of play when they should be solid perpendicular to the the shaft.

<comment><USER11> Will have to dig that one up. One of my favorite channels on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't want to be that guy, but I can count at least two spelling mistakes: It's spelled "Colombia", not Columbia. Also, it's Daniel Defoe, not Defor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks dude, I've fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is such an incredible story. This dude was a BA buccaneer and accomplished sailor.

He had one book with him: The Bible.

If you were allowed one book on a deserted island what book would you bring and why?

I'm taking the ESV Study Bible. Massive book with loads of commentary. Regardless of one's beliefs it would be a phenomenal thing to concur.

<comment><USER14> Encyclopedia Britanica Book S. Look up survival training and hope it has some useful information. Religion really is interesting to me and I am always curious to those discussing it what their thoughts are on other gods. If you believe in your bible and Jesus and god, and other people believe in their god who is right? Do you believe in more than one god or is this person who believes in another god wrong? How do you know? You don't actually have to answer me these are just the questions I often wonder when I hear people talking about religion. I used to be religious in the past as we went as a kid. I lost my faith many years later and to this day question religion. Still looking for answers. Have a good day.

<comment> dane-pgp Those are good questions to ask, but I wonder if you think they only need to be answered by religious people. If someone doesn't believe in some particular god, it is still possible to ask them "Is this other person who believes in that god wrong?" and "How do you know?".

Perhaps a helpful example for showing this is the conspiracy theory concerning Bielefeld in Germany[0]. Is non-belief in Bielefeld any less subject to questioning than belief in it?

Anyway, keep looking for answers, and I wish you a good day too.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy)

<comment><USER13> If one has read the Bible it becomes pretty apparent that YHWH, the God of the Bible, claims (and I believe is) the only God and that all other gods essentially aren't real.

A god is usually thought of a some deity but the meaning is much deeper than that: a god is something one worships. Many people worship money as god, their job or company as god, drugs or sex as god.

But like I said, the Bible makes it very clear that there is only one God (according to the Bible).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Small world. He was born 16 miles from where I grew up.

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks like the island where he was marooned? [https://goo.gl/maps/1TUQqWZPHsaLJmQw9](https://goo.gl/maps/1TUQqWZPHsaLJmQw9)

</comment><comment><USER17> Also remembering William Cooper's famous poem, 'The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk'.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's almost a "frozen o-rings" moment.</comment>


Google, Verizon Web Deal Could Upend Net Neutrality  - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/05/google-verizon-near-net-n_n_671500.html

<comment><USER2> No one checks for facts anymore:

"Google and Verizon's agreement could prevent Verizon from offering some prioritization to the biggest bidders who want better delivery of content on its DSL and fiber networks, according to the sources. But that wouldn't apply to mobile phones."

[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/08/google_and...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/08/google_and_verizon_have_come.html)</comment>


Opportunity knocks but once, so don't miss it - <AUTHOR> http://entrevate.com/opportunity-knocks-but-once/ <comment><USER2> 'But you also need to spot, grab and run with opportunities. Not many do. Don't be that person.'

Seems like great advise, with the benefit of hindsight. The contrary position is risking spending your time with something that will never come to fruition, whilst the real opportunity presents itself elsewhere. There are no easy answers, at least none you can possibly pare down to a single statement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. A decision either way, to consciously got for it, or not, is much better than making no decision when you reach that fork in the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An option that you missed was, "let it pass, but have no regrets." Every opportunity followed comes at the cost of 100 others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. That option should've been there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article could be improved with information relevant to spotting said opportunities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point. I should probably do a full follow-up. A few thoughts for starters: 1) Listen carefully to what people say about their problems 2) Use your intuition as well as logical analysis 3) If a customer discovered you, that's a great opportunity

<comment><USER5> Which makes me think of customer development... And how difficult it can be to sort through which feedback matters and is worth iterating around and what you should ignore. I think the biggest successes of recent times, Inatagram and Facebook just had an innate sense of what their users wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a different perspective. There is opportunity all over the place. User experience is crap most of the time, security poor, solutions to real customer problems weak.

The skill we need to develop is the ability to identify when a problem is ripe for solution. That is real opportunity, and there is a lot of it out there.

Absolutely grab a great opportunity when you see one. But if you miss it, the next one will come along in another five minutes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Opportunities never stop showing up to those who live in a mindset of possibility. It's more an issue to validate which opportunities people want, and are willing to pay for. This remains the single biggest challenger any aspiring technical founder faces.

Opportunities likely seem few and far between for those who entertain, feed a mindset of doubt. Doubts slay all possibilities if you let them.

It's best to have a middle of the ground approach to remain open to possibilities and let them eliminate themselves through a idea validation process like finding product-market fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant. Two mindsets of possibility or doubt. I'm reminded of the concept of resistance or the lizard brain [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/quieting- the...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/quieting-the-lizard- brain.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the link, I liked it a lot.

Too many doubt worshippers around = too much thinking and not enough learning by doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks Colin for this piece. I agree with your view on grabbing opportunities and yet I often allow this belief to live in my unconscious mind without a speaking role. Articles like this help to make the topic explicit and by doing so they allow oneself to refocus on a key to personal success strategy that is both simple and elusive all at once.

In any event, best of luck in grabbing your opportunities. I must run now so as to grab my own opportunities. Cheers and talk soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> Off topic but i though this was about curiosity's landing early next week.</comment>


Convergence in action on Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3PUYoa1c9M

<comment><USER2> This looks great. Obviously a bit rough around the edges but a very solid start.

This convergence story is the future of computing for the average consumer and Ubuntu are poised to take a slice of that.</comment>