IBM Watson via Entrepreneur.com: What Your Writing Says About Your Personality - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244687

<comment><AUTHOR> I just submitted three very different pieces of writing - a business letter, a short story I wrote last year, and a portion of my YC application. The results were freakishly consistent.

Click through to the IBM live demo, and let me know if you think they're on to something, or if IBM just knows me too well.</comment>


Strongbox and Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/strongbox-and-aaron-swartz.html <comment><USER2> > Nine days after Aaron's death, his familiar Skype avatar popped up on my > computer screen. Somewhere, somebody—probably a family member—had booted up > his computer. I fought the irrational urge to click on the icon and resume > our conversation. Then he vanished from my screen again.

Holy shit, that ending. Chilling.

<comment><USER3> It is chilling—but is it true?

My immediate reaction when reading that paragraph was that someone as security-minded as Aaron would probably not leave his password saved in a Skype client.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that safer than typing it every time? A key logger could get it then. Has anyone ever extracted a password stored in a client like that?

<comment><USER5> I don't know anything about Skype but yes, people have definitely extracted passwords saved in IM clients like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The link to Swartz' 2006 essay for Wired is broken. Here's the correct link:

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2006/11/ringside_at_cop>

<comment><USER7> Found the same, didn't feel like creating a newyorker/facebook/twitter account to post it as a comment to the original piece either :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "His suicide also raised new questions: Who owned the code now? (Answer: he willed all his intellectual property to Sean Palmer, who gives the project his blessing.)"

Isn't his deaddrop code GPL licensed?

<comment><USER9> That doesn't answer the question of who owns the code. The code must have an owner to enforce the GPL or re-license or whatever.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but the quote still implies some confusion about things.

If the code is licensed GPL, you do not need the blessing of the owner, you already have a license. If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright? There are reasons you might care, but they are not obvious, and the OP does not say why he was interested -- the implication of that sentence to the casual non-geek reader, is that the new yorker needed the copyright owners permission to launch. The OP doesn't even mention the GPL.

If the code really is licensed GPL, that passage is misleading, is it not? Probably because the author himself is confused.

<comment><USER11> >If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright?

GPL protects the users' investments in that as a purchaser (there has to be a better word than purchaser here) of a derivative of GPL will have freedoms 0 through 3[1].

\-- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. \-- [1]

<comment><USER10> Right, that's why you care that it was released as GPL. Other than to verify that it was legally released as GPL, why would you be concerned with the identity of the copyright owner?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inlu.st - new dating startup - <AUTHOR> http://inlu.st/about

<comment><USER2> > she was known among her friends for her ability to meet guys online.

No offense, Julia, but that's not much of an ability if you are a woman.

<comment><USER3> Online dating is harder than you think for women also. If you stick with the mainstream sites you lose interest VERY quickly with the unwelcome attention. So if Julia has spent a lot of time and energy in this area she'll be an expert in how to create a site that works, and keeps women interested. This is a prime example where we need more women in tech - to build these subtle tools with direct insight for the target market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right on. Its not hard to meet random people, but its very hard to meet awesome people that you actually feel like spending time around.

<comment><USER4> that's because 'online' doesn't do much selective filtering. Lets say you go the symphony (of the orchestral type, not the framework) and meet some boys. You are _selecting_ , let's say you go a coffee shop in the Mission, or Lower Haight, again you are selecting. Sitting in Dolores park on a sunny sunday afternoon automatically selects certain demographics. When you look for boys or girls online you use primitive criteria for selection which results in poor matching. Facebook is a much better dating site because groups are more organic, formed by real people coming together around common values.

I am rather surprised that Julia has any problems meeting boys, I'm sure she could just sit in a coffee shop in the Mission with a laptop (preferably with a few stickers, including the obligatory CC) and be approached by decent young men all day.

<comment><USER3> >be approached by decent young men all day

I wish! I am in cafe right now surrounded by decent young men and all we do is glance at each other's laptops and smartphones.

<comment><USER5> So why don't you approach?

<comment><USER3> Oh, believe me I have done. It got tiring being the instigator and I made a promise to myself to let the guys do the approaching for a while. (Someone did and now we're in a happy relationship).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm the founder of the site, and just want to point out that the submitter submitted the about page, which is not at all supposed to be the focus of the site. Please click the logo for the front page.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I see something like this, I have to ask:

Whats different about inlu.st and match.com/chemistry.com/$datingSite?

And how are you going to attract users (especially female users, because the men go where the females go)? There is really nothing sadder than an empty dating site.

<comment><USER6> while i'm not ready to get into the details of what sets us apart, i wrote a bit here <http://blog.inlu.st/post/3198840889/introducing-inlust> divulging the reason for the site and spirit behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I prognosticate that inlu.st will have an easy time attracting at least one of the two sexes as users.

Now, which one will that be? Hmmm..

<comment><USER6> hi, i'm the founder of this site and am actually quite curious what you mean by this. do you think the feminine design will scare men away? or do you think the name will scare women away?

<comment><USER8> It will aways be harder to attract/keep women on a dating site than it will be to attract/keep men. That is why almost ALL advertising for dating sites on TV is targeted at women, IMO.

Further, if you start with a domain like inlu.st, you are eliminating the % of women that actually care about long term relationships over one night stands. That is a very large %.

Just my opinion. I have no data for you.

<comment><USER6> Ah yes. I'm not particularly going after LTR-seekers right now. Of course, this might change in time, and I suspect the name might have to change in that case.

<comment><USER9> Why not specialized frontends on a common backend? Common accounts for "inlu.st" and "solone.ly" or something, but with ability for activating/deactivating visibility on some domains.

I think that both the and community requirements can be very different for casual contact and ltrs, but there will be some natural mobility between those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the concept, but I would consider re-branding before you launch. This domain name and the keyword 'lust' has a negative connotation as related to relationships. At first glance, the site will be perceived as another "hook up" social network. After reading your site, I don't believe that is your primary aim. Also, a domain hack isn't user-friendly.

Consider a creative two-word .Com domain. If you need assistance or available domain suggestions, please feel free to get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER11> > cultivating a community where next-level singles can connect intellectually, > emotionally, and physically.

What differentiates a single person from a next-level single person? Or a date from a next-level date (I'm seeing a lot of 'next-level' throughout body copy). Barring a pre-selection/approval process for users, I'm assuming all people will be equally able to sign up and take part in the website, making the pool as "current level" as other dating sites.

</comment><comment><USER12> Edit: that's not the homepage.

Since I recently saw "The Social Network", its got me thinking that what dating sites are missing is exclusivity... isn't that why Facebook took off? ...because you were guaranteed that the members went to Harvard? Maybe a similar approach with dating sites is worth trying.

<comment><USER6> that's not the home page. you are looking at the about page. click the logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, you guys could be a competitor for us, but I can't quite tell yet. In lust implies a strong sex focus but the phrasing on the site indicates dating. I'm curious to see where you guys end up going with this.

<http://www.heyfoxy.com>

<comment><USER6> cool, i haven't heard of heyfoxy, but i love the image on the front page. i'll check it out. there is a focus on sexuality, but it is not a hookup site anymore than reddit or tumblr are hookup sites. i don't see us as competitors, i see us as friends!

<comment><USER13> Awesome, I'm really excited to see what you guys come up with. Also, I'd definitely be interested in trading some guest blog posts at some point. On the off chance that you're NYC based as well we should totally grab drinks and talk shop sometime.

And the pic on the front is my girl and I. Glad you like it :)

<comment><USER14> Will I need abs like yours to sign up for the site? Mine are bit more... spongy.

<comment><USER13> Ha! No, there's no ab requirement ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find listing John Resig as ex-boyfriend kinda cool for a geek girl. I wish I could list Julia West as an ex-girlfriend for my next startup :) Would it kind of make me and Resig related? (Transitively speaking <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitive_relation>)

Anyhow, the website seems promising and I'm looking forward to see the "killer" feature that would make it different from other dating sites.

As a side note, I had an original idea for matching people that could be used for facebook. I talked about it with friends and they pretty much like it. So, if you're interested just get in touch with me and I will tell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The transitive relationship questions do make for some interesting conversations in dating. Things get even worse (or better?) when your social/dating network is really tight.

</comment></comment><comment> tomh- From reading the intro text, this is not for people looking for serious relations (you shouldn't be looking for a soulmate). This is just for meeting new people and one-night stands? What problem does it solve and how?

<comment><AUTHOR> The same one that Grindr and ManHunt do in the gay community. Finding people who aren't looking for a LTR can be tricky among heterosexuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Secret email"?

Is meant to be a "cheating" dating site or regular?

<comment><USER6> definitely not a cheating site. 'secret' was just supposed to mean i'm not gonna give it away.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was slightly confused by myself with this too. I'd put a star beside email instead and put *we keep your email secret. For a moment it made me wonder if the email address would be listed to the public or something non-anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, what makes this site stand apart from its competitors?

</comment><comment><USER16> Not to thread high jack, but people are already asking how are you going to be different than the thousand other dating sites?

My Dating Site Idea:

A marriage between boutique clothing stores with a dating platform.

Make a list of the top 20 boutique stores in your city. Talk to the owners until you find a receptive audience. Try to get some male fashion stores as well.

You can coerce people at the stores with discounts to register to get it started (just need a camera and a laptop, good lighting, and a backdrop with logo on it).

Validated Profiles (aka. Real People) - Must try on/buy an outfit from the store and wear it on the photo to be able to use all of features of the site (look but don't touch model).

The pictures are tagged with the store and outfits that were purchased, so I can look at your profile and buy your outfit (or part of it).

It's kind of exclusive (no ugly people... well no ugly clothes anyway) and you can make money selling clothes.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love (er.. lust) the name. Any reason why you're not collecting email addresses? Having an email list you can blast out to on launch day will help you reach critical mass quicker, avoiding the chicken and egg issue all together.

<comment><USER6> i am collecting them on the front page, so please put your email address there :) the submitter submitted the about page.

<comment><USER3> Hi, it's not intuitive to know to click on the logo to go back. Maybe you could add a link at the top saying something like 'Click here to go to front page and submit your email for early access'. Another girl here - though I'm in a relationship it's an interesting problem to solve and I'm curious to see what you've come up with.

<comment><USER6> i think that if you entered the site on the homepage, as intended, and then went to the about page, it would be pretty obv how to get back.

thanks for your comments on this thread! you seem to understand the female online dating problem as i do, and it's nice to have another female backing me up on here.

<comment><USER3> Hey, you're welcome. If you're coming from a background similar to mine (which it seems from the info on your blog), you're part of your own sub-culture that is reflective of your target market so I'm sure you're getting great feedback from other sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tiny design thing: your background image doesn't match the background color. Seems to be a color profile issue. Doing a "Save for Web" in Photoshop should fix it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Inlu.st...

In Luv? Insult? Oh! In lust!

<comment><USER6> personally, i'm a fan of in slut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The about page states "dating in new york city" in the title, is it only for NYC (initially)?

</comment><comment><USER22> The page looks great, and I really like the way it tells the stories of how the founders met.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's a great tech dating resumé!

</comment><comment><USER24> is this an application? what is this?

<comment><USER25> To get to the (pre-) application, you have to click on "InLust" at the top left. It admittedly took me a few moments to discover this, it wasn't very obvious.

</comment></comment><comment> oleg-d the name is pretty bad...

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm male and not all that traditional, but the name is _very_ conspicuous. I can only imagine the name making it even harder than usual to attract women.

The commentary about her personal life is...awkward.

Neat as it is that she dated the patron saint of modern JavaScript, I don't think that's going to help me get a date.

The geek content just makes me even more skeptical about bringing women and keeping them engaged, if it's any indicator of the greater aesthetic to the site.

That said, I hope it goes great and I wish you the best of luck. The world needs better dating sites.

Cheers.

<comment><USER3> >The commentary about her personal life is...awkward.

I disagree. As a woman who has previously dated via many online/offline means it's refreshing to see an honesty from a real woman about a topic that has too long been dominated by the 'let's get you married' dating sites (okcupid aside). If I were dating I'd be happy to invest some time in the site to see how it works.

<comment><USER26> You're an outlier that is comfortable with the internet and open to connecting with a company at a personal level.

Most people seek a professional, stable, and safe image in a company they're going to share their personal details with. Misplaced commentary about the founder's personal life is one of those 'split' decisions where it'll make 5-10% of women love her, and the other 90%++ will get scared off.

Like OKCupid, I'm sure she'll have a passionate userbase if she continues to be personable and connect with people, but the awkwardness and lack of women will drive many away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How will you compete with okcupid, plentyoffish, match, chemistry, eharmony, adultfriendfinder, lavalife, perfectmatch, jdate, ashleymadison, wealthymen, mate1, singlesnet, date.com, americansingles, passion.com, singles.com and a million other dating sites?</comment>


Ask HN: Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical replacement? - <AUTHOR> After 18 years' service my Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical's scroll wheel is no longer working reliably, and I need a replacement.
I appreciate:
- this mouse's size
- being able to use it left-handed or right-handed (it's symmetrical/ambidextrous) - I switch to help with RSI
To many it's a classic mouse, as much as the Microsoft Intellimouse.
What do you recommend as a modern-day replacement? <comment><USER2> Apple Magic Mouse ;)</comment>


NetBSD on the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://www.cambus.net/netbsd-on-the-raspberry-pi/

<comment><USER2> NetBSD is one thing, but I still can't get over running [http://www.raspberrypi.org/risc-os-for-raspberry- pi/](http://www.raspberrypi.org/risc-os-for-raspberry-pi/)

Having grown up with those machines suddenly finding a tiny board that costs $30 which runs this better than any of the desktops ever did . . . mind blowing.

<comment><USER3> As an American I'd never even heard of these things except through internet exploration, but I was always particularly fascinated with RISCOS once I did; even ran ROX briefly. I've been tempted to get a Pi just to try the real deal.

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROX_Desktop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROX_Desktop)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI, the Plan9Front raspberry pi image is also surprisingly useful if you want a fast-booting graphical terminal (I use it to VNC and SSH to normal boxes):

[https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/9pi](https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/9pi)</comment>


Ask HN: How to access my bank account using Open Banking? - <AUTHOR> My bank (in the UK) has recently switched to Open Banking / PSD2 and switched off their old API. I was using their API to access transaction data and feed that into various scripts to automate some of my accounting.
They suggested I can use Yapily (https://www.yapily.com/) in some cases, but the documentation for that says I need to be FCA registered. All I want is an API for my bank account, not the bank account of anyone else.
Am I missing something here? <comment><USER2> You are not missing anything - open banking is a sham. It's designed to offer the illusion of choice while in reality only the big players have the resources to go through the FCA certification process.

You could try using TrueLayer (which is FCA certified) as a proxy. Alternatively, switch to a bank like Starling or Monzo which allow you to create an access token for your own account.</comment>


How We Designed the Librem 5 Dev Kit with Free Software - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/how-we-designed-the-librem-5-dev-kit-with-100-free-software/ <comment><USER2> A mini-HDMI port seems like an odd choice. Considering most people who might use it will probably have to buy some kind of adaptor anyway, it seems like it would've been easier just to require a USB-C to HDMI adaptor and leverage the MHL Alternative Mode spec.[0] That, in my mind, would be preferable to adding another port that hardly anyone will use to the phone. Pretty much every smartphone/tablet I've ever owned supported some form of MHL, even when most of them only had MicroUSB.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High- Definition_Link#US...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High- Definition_Link#USB_Type-C_\(MHL_Alternate_Mode\))

<comment><USER3> I wish they'd just drop the idea of external monitor support. We desperately need an open phone in our pockets. Everyone keeps trying to make an all- purpose device and the gimmick features keep holding the projects back and killing them. Just make a thing that supports the built-in screen, can handle calls/text, and that's it. I'll buy it, for a lot of money. Increment from there.

<comment><USER4> > can handle calls/text, and that's it

The number of people who just want a phone to call and text is I'd imagine vanishingly small now. It won't replace anyone's proprietary smartphone like that.

<comment><USER5> True, but good video drivers, and good calls/texts, are often the very hardest parts for an open-source phone project. The rest _can_ be improved later, by community contributors even.

Historically the case has often been "well it can do wifi and browse the web, has some built-in chat apps, it's just a bit slow to scroll around, cellular data kinda works sometimes ... not worth trying to call with it, maybe next rev will have better modem support". Without calls and texts you really need another phone, so the project never gets a big enough community.

<comment><USER6> It's got a low res screen and a slower processor than 2018 phones, and it costs $700 US - I don't think it's going to get a big community.

I owned an OpenMoko and a N900, too - but sometimes you just need to get stuff done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Once this is shipped as a real product, with reviews that it is functional and doesn't require tinkering constantly. I will drop money on it. I'm getting excited!

</comment><comment><USER8> Anybody remember Openmoko? Ubuntu Edge?

It's a great and noble idea, but really hard to pull off.

Also, there's no final specs for the Librem 5 yet they have a 4/2019 ship date. Sure... Hats off to them if that actually happens.

Does anyone have a Librem dev kit? Thoughts?

I like the Linux distro + e2e encryption support and would consider this in the future when they ship.

<comment><USER9> Am I the only one more excited about Librem 5 than about previous efforts at the time? When Openmoko shipped, I haven't even yet considered buying any smartphone. Then when Ubuntu Edge was a subject I had a phone, but thought about the project as a me-too kind. At the time there was a plethora of alternative platforms. Now I feel that things settled with mobile OSes, so it seems that there is a place for moderate hype. I had higher hopes for FirefoxOS, but devices were weak and nothing better came up. FirefoxOS set too high expectations.

With Librem I feel it's a bit more straightforward. There will maybe be also Necuno Mobile with similar software stack, but cheaper hardware. So it's just maybe more realistic this time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm also using KiCad for personal projects and small prototypes at work. Version 5 with a proper 3D export and interactive routing mode is definitely good enough for me. I find it much easier to use than Eagle and I don't really feel the need for Altium (for relatively low complexity things, but I don't do latest gen SoCs).

What really helps for hand assembly is interactive BOM viewer plugin: [https://openscopeproject.org/InteractiveHtmlBomDemo/](https://openscopeproject.org/InteractiveHtmlBomDemo/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems the High Density parts of the system are on a separate off the shelf SoM (System on Module) that was presumably not designed in KiCAD. It'll be informative to see if they can continue to use KiCAD when they do the final integrated version of Librem that will presumably have the SoC on the mainboard. I'd very much like to use KiCAD for projects like that in the future, so hoping they can prove it viable.

<comment><USER12> KiCAD and Blender (to name a few) consistently give me so much hope for the future of open source. The world is moving towards an information based economy so having free(dom) applications that allow you to design and shape the world around you without any access to capital is effectively "seizing the means of production" in the best way possible. Everyone should have the power to learn and build whatever they want with enough time and effort. $1000+ CAD packages are not the way forward...

<comment><USER13> I'd like to add SolveSpace to the hope-inspiring list, it's excellent for quickly slapping together and iterating engineering designs. Even with it's quirks...

<comment><USER14> I've played with SolveSpace. I would love to see it grow. Is the dev on Patreon?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My biggest concern with using a phone sans ios/android is not being able to use the ID app used in Sweden for basically everything important. It's used everywhere now, banks, government, my kids preschool, insurance etc etc.

As soon as I can figure out a way around this I'm going back to a feature phone.

My dreamphone is iPhone 3gs sized, has gps and maps, Hotspot and the app I mentioned before.

<comment><USER16> You could run Android in a container. I run an android container and Linux container, thought not at the same time on a computer with mobile specs: Intel Celeron N3060, RAM: 2 GB SSD: 8 GB and I can use Snapchat, Instagram, VS Code, etc

A well configured OS is magic, and with Lamby on the purism team, I'm sure it's going to knock socks off.

<comment><USER17> That's interesting. How did you get that container running? I tried running Android via anbox and my laptopb basically exploded as the Android container suddenly allocated more than two gigabytes of ram (having been running Firefox didn't help...).

Have you got some notes or a blog post about that? I would really really be interested. TY in advance!

<comment><USER18> Agreed! I'm curious about how well it will run on the phone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish the article started with a one-line description of what a "Librem DevKit" is. Then I would at least know if I wanted to read the rest of the article.

<comment><USER20> Librem 5 is going to be a phone that runs free software (Purism's Debian- derived, FSF-endorsed PureOS) on mostly–open-source hardware; any closed- source hardware will be physically separated and kill-switched.

The dev kit is essentially a late-alpha version of the hardware, capable of running the software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know what language(s) will be used for app development? My understanding from reading the documentation is that it will be GTK+ for the UI and there are 2 examples of C/GTK+ apps. Since this is a debian linux distro and applications will be distributed via a debian repo, could you theoretically write it in any language ex: python, java, c++ and use GTK+ or QT?

Doc Source: [https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Apps/index.html](https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Apps/index.html)

<comment><USER17> If the examples are in C/GTK+ that means that as long as your language of choice has a runtime on (or can be compiled to) the Librem 5 CPU architecture AND has a binding to GTK+ available, that should "run", if my understanding is correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Doesn't miniHDMI require paying a license? Probably a waste of resources, if there is a way to route DisplayPort over USB-C?

<comment><USER23> This is for the dev kit. I don't think there are any plans to put an HDMI connector on the final product...

<comment><USER22> I guess, but it's still a waste for a dev kit I think.

<comment><USER23> Not really. The onboard/integrated display panel on the devkit does not have a working controller driver, so the _only_ way we can get a display on the devkit right now is over HDMI. I wouldn't consider that a 'waste'.

<comment><USER22> So it can't drive DisplayPort over USB-C? Then sure, something else is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Question as a cautiously excited potential buyer: Do we know what apps it will be launched with? Is there documentation on that somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER25> Having ordered one, I am waiting for them to ship!

</comment><comment><USER26> This is great!

</comment><comment><USER27> So I'm reading this and I'm wondering, is Librem pulling a BlackBerry here? When the BlackBerry PlayBook came out it had no native email or calendar or contact management capabilities.

Purism is going to ship the Librem 5 without the ability to do calendar, notes app, calculator app, and PDF viewer. My question is why? Why is this a good idea?

Edit: Reference their site: "Upon initial shipment of the Librem 5 in 2019, it will offer the essentials: phone functionality, email, messaging, voice, camera, browsing. The featureset will expand after shipment and over time to more free software applications. Your user experience will improve as we incrementally add commonly requested applications and features (such as calendaring, notes, calculator, PDF viewer, etc.) while keeping performance in mind."

<comment><USER28> The phone is going to be niche regardless, and its likely users will be able to solve those problems their own way if GNOME apps are usable.

Everyone is different, but for me, 90% of my phone usage is: phone calls (I have no landline phone at home), text messages, and maps/navigation.

If there's no maps, I'd pass on this phone.

Calendar, notes, calculator, etc. are relatively unimportant for me.

Other apps are relatively unimportant to me. I don't use Facebook or other social media on my phone. I don't use ride-hailing services. I don't rent bikes or scooters. I don't use my phone to make retail payments. So none of that stuff matters to me.

<comment><USER3> I'm willing to go back to paper maps, I just want a damn Linux phone and I will gladly pay more than iPhone prices for it.

<comment><USER29> Fortunately nobody will have to, as this phone supports the internet. In addition, I am sure there are many OSM maps that will work on it anyway.

<comment><USER3> What about the location and GPS hardware and the security and privacy concerns that come with them? I'd rather just give up nav. Again, I'd still pay more than an iPhone without the location hardware. Could still do manual direction searching on the web, though I secretly _want_ to go back to paper maps.

<comment><USER30> That's only a problem if you don't control the software.

<comment><USER31> When you're using web maps, you do not control the software - they request location, you give access to it (because you want your maps to show where you are), and you don't control that location information once it leaves your phone.

<comment><USER30> You don't need webmaps. OSM data are free to download and render locally. Navigation devices have offline maps, typically.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber Goes Unconventional: Using Driver Phones as a Backup Datacenter - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/9/21/uber-goes-unconventional-using-driver-phones-as-a-backup-dat.html <comment><USER2> > _(A benefit that 's not talked about, that probably doesn't matter for Uber, > but may matter for smaller players, is that the driver phone plan is > subsidizing bandwidth costs by not having to pay as much for inter- > datacenter bandwidth.)_

Is the amount of data being transferred per trip significant? I mean, how much of a difference would it make for "smaller players" (Lyft?) to go this route? And if the savings are significant, does that mean that the cost to drivers is non-significant? If Uber has enough money that the savings on datacenters to them isn't huge, I'd hope they would eat the cost if the phone-as-a-datacenter route ends up being a burden to their individual drivers.

<comment><USER3> Are they doing dual writes from the phone? That is, updating datacenter A and B (and possibly C) at the same time? If so, then yeah this will cut down on their need for backhauling between datacenters. If they are only using the phone as the arbiter of truth during a datacenter failover, then no they're not saving any money. You're going to have a circuit or transit in place and that has a monthly fee at 95/5 or flat rate, not per byte transferred.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Find your next book to read - <AUTHOR> https://www.booksuggestions.ninja/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made this to find a book similar to Weaveworld by Clive Barker. [1]

Basically, I was motivated from frustration with book suggestions services that inevitably included suggestions with unrelated genres, multiple books from the same author, or sequels. I wanted to get suggestions without those, hence this app.

I ended up finding one of the best books I've ever read, Library at Mount Char (#2 on the suggestions for Weaveworld). [2] Maybe it will be useful for you too!

[1] [https://rpiai.com/why-i-made-a-book-recommendation- service/](https://rpiai.com/why-i-made-a-book-recommendation-service/)

[2] [https://www.booksuggestions.ninja/book/weaveworld-by- clive-b...](https://www.booksuggestions.ninja/book/weaveworld-by-clive- barker/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Tested it out. Seems to work well. How's it implemented?

<comment><AUTHOR> The matching is done by finding similar genres. Each book has a genre- probability vector. I then measured the pairwise distance between all the books for each genre-probability vector (~3 million books, so this takes some time). The book suggestions you see are the top closest matches to that particular genre-probability vector.

The searching is done with elasticsearch and the backend is Flask.</comment></comment>


We Are Living in a Material World and I Am a Material Girl - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trello.com/we-are-living-in-a-material-world-and-i-am-a-material-girl/

<comment><USER2> Amazing write up and really great work.

I don't think Trello's brand is emphasized enough. It was a #1 goal, but there is no mention of the app name in any screenshot (unless I missed one).

Do people need to know which app they are in? I would argue yes, but maybe the app icon on the desktop and in app switching is enough. Perhaps most users only use a few apps and they tend to have disparate look and feels, so there isn't much confusion.</comment>


Bias in Criminal Risk Scores Is Mathematically Inevitable, Researchers Say - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/bias-in-criminal-risk-scores-is-mathematically-inevitable-researchers-say <comment><USER2> The second graph in the WP tells the whole story, and it's not a complex one: A greater proportion of black offenders were in fact high risk, than white offenders. So naturally the "fair" and sort-of-accurate test flagged a greater percentage of the set of all black offenders as likely reoffenders, and this had the obvious consequence that there were BOTH (proportionately) more false positives amongst blacks AND (proportionately) more true positives when black offenders were tested, too, 'cause there were just plain more positives, proportionately, and would have been in any accurate test.

One could fiddle the test so that the percentage of false positives was the same for black offenders as white offenders, but only by reclassifying some black high-risk offenders as low; which would make the test less successful (less predictive) in sorting black offenders into high and low risk groups.

Somewhat similarly, if you tax rich people and poor people by an income tax you have to choose to be "fair" by charging them each the same number of dollars; or "fair" by charging them the same percentage of their income. You can't be "fair" by both measures at the same time because their incomes aren't the same. Not rocket science.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: There are two different intuitive definitions of predictive fairness. Given populations with different base crime rates, it is impossible to meet both fairness criteria.

If you can survive the WP payroll, the clearest article I've found on this is here:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2016/10/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2016/10/17/can-an-algorithm-be-racist-our-analysis-is-more-cautious- than-propublicas)

The full paper is here: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.07524v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.07524v1.pdf)

<comment><USER4> The clearest I've seen is this interactive visualisation: [https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking- discriminat...](https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking- discrimination-in-ml/)

<comment><USER3> That is great to play with, although it seems to gloss over the fact that you can't have both kinds of fairness.

<comment><USER4> It defines 4 separate objectives (profit maximisation and 3 types of fairness), and shows that they each result in different thresholds. Just click any of the 4 red buttons.

It then goes on to advocate a particular kind of fairness.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do not use AWS S3 / CloudFront for static assets delivery - <AUTHOR> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/do-not-use-s3-for-static-assets/ <comment><USER2> If you insist on brotli compression, sure.

And if you don't pay attention to your network costs, including CDN costs, sure.

There are always going to be cheaper solutions than AWS. But now you've got at least one piece of your infrastructure that is more likely to be custom built, with custom components, and possibly more difficult to maintain.

How do you compare those $332 S3 bucket costs against the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars you might be spending on the salary for your people?

You've got to look at the total cost of all your operations, not just a single line item.</comment>


Review my HTML5 game Freeciv.net again one year later - <AUTHOR> http://www.freeciv.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi again HN, It's now been over a year since the first time I asked HN to review my webapp (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005299>), so now I would really like to ask the HN community to review my HTML5 online strategy game again. I have fixed all of the issues that were reported the first time, so now I would really appreciate some advice and ideas about what to do with this project from now on. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have also. Thanks a lot in advance! - <USER2>

<comment><USER3> Is there any way to mess around with the UI without setting up the whole environment? I see a few bits I'd like to clean up but man that's a lot of bootstrapping :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You will have to setup the entire environment. It will take a few hours to set everything up. I'll be happy to give you any help in setting it up. The documentation on github is a little out of date, so if you are interested I can update it for you.

As a start, perhaps you could open a new issue on the project's github page and we'll discuss the changes that you propose. Bugreports are just as valuable as patches at the moment. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. It's dramatically better! Within about 20 seconds I was filled with that rush of curiosity / grandiose ambition that Civ creates so wonderfully. I immediately closed the window. Fuck. I don't have time for Civ. Must ship more code, startup crunch time, no time for playing I tell myself. I know I'll be back. Fuck.

<comment><USER5> I purchased Civ 5 like a week ago. I haven't played it besides checking out the tutorial, because I know my startup success is inversely correlated with my Civilization's success.

<comment><USER6> making a note here for potentially lucrative game idea: _Sid Meier's Startupization_

<comment><USER7> There was a flash game a while back that someone drew up a concept for that, to me, looked really compelling. It included buying coffee machines, source control, hiring developers, etc.

Anyone know if that game was ever actually made?

<comment><USER8> Was it Journalizm?

<http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540913>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once you get to the graphics/interaction they are great. I recommend: * Try to embed a live-game into your main page, it took me 2 minutes to navigate the options until I could get some graphics on the screen. * While you're at it make sure you embed a fully mature/active game so that we can see how awesome it looks when the screen is full of stuff. * The UI flow is very non- intuitive, perhaps you've invested most of the dev in the game itself but its hidden behind a dozen screens that are hard to navigate.

</comment><comment> Hyphen-ated When I click the "Start single-player game" button, it puts me into a multiplayer game. I had to leave and re-start several times before I got into a game with only AI opponents.

<comment><USER10> Same here, and if you try that first and then go into a tutorial, it seems to have the same result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for your efforts, overall it looks awesome.

A small quick request: please can we have a loading bar on the load screens. It loaded relatively quickly, but it's still painful to be waiting for 10s and not knowing how long to wait for.

</comment><comment><USER12> An idea: add it to the Chrome app store? I'd love to see a quick-link when I open a new tab...who wants to be productive anyways?!

<comment><USER13> It's there: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgad...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojdnkfmlponpahkgadcaodiaeieadcbl) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It certainly looks interesting and very powerful, but horribly complicated. I haven't played any Civ type games before, so I really don't know how to get started. I don't know what the tutorial was suppose to do, I loaded it and it didn't show me how to play.

<comment><USER15> This, like the old "freeciv"

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

...is targeted to people who already know civilization ii.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The tutorial needs work. How would I know what's a good place to build a city? Bigger problem: I explored a little bit, and then suddenly I couldn't do anything anymore with no explanation.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the main thing it could use now is general UX polish. The Freeciv server messages are "noisy" and many of them could be hidden or represented in more graphical ways. Actually playing the game is pretty good if you already know how to play Civ, but I felt some unclarity about how many starting units I actually had, and it's the kind of game that demands plenty of tutorials for new players.

</comment><comment><USER18> It looks much better than before. As a novice flash programmer myself, I'd love to know how you go about creating tile sets. I've never done a 4x game, but I used to love them and there don't seem to be many out there in recent years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. The tileset can be found here: [https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv- web/tree/master/freeci...](https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv- web/tree/master/freeciv-web/src/main/webapp/tileset)

The isometric map is basically rendered using the HTML5 canvas element, by image clipping tiles from the tileset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks pretty cool and I'm impressed that anyone could build something like it in HTML5, but as a non-gamer and someone who hasn't played a game like this before I wasn't really sure what I was doing or how I was suppose to play.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Invalid username, it is too long or short. Please go back, and try again.

could you tell me what is wrong with it, giving error messages where users have to figure out if its a or be is not nice.

</comment><comment><USER21> it does not work in opera 11.01.

stops at lobby, start game does not do anything.

<comment><USER22> Firefox 3.6.13 is also very slow and hard to respond, but I guess that's not your problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great job! Could you please recommend references you used to learn HTML5?

</comment><comment><USER24> Make it touch compatible. I want to play it on my ipad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, a lot of people have asked for iPad support. Unfortunately, the Javascript performance in the iPad1 is too slow, so the game is unplayable there. I have high hopes for a version running on the iPad2 though.</comment></comment>


150-Year Green Card Wait for Indian Immigrants With Advanced Degrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.cato.org/blog/150-year-wait-indian-immigrants-advanced-degrees <comment><USER2> This is _one_ of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue.

Republicans get to use 'illegal immigrants taking jobs' as a stick to beat democrats with, and progressives use cries of racism to rally support amongst Latino voters.

Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and 'anti-immigrant'.

<comment><USER3> Umm reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for. The only difference is that the conservatives want to somehow deport everyone who is here and has been here for decades to somewhere while the "progressives" recognize that they are an integral part of the economy and want them to pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile.

This isn't both sides not wanting to do anything. This is both sides having very different solutions.

All of which is irrelevant to the article since this is discussing legal immigration.

<comment><USER4> Conservatives (the politicians) _pretend_ to want to deport illegal immigrants to get votes. They don't actually want to do it because a lot of businesses depend on them for cheap labor. You don't even need to deport anyone, just start actually enforcing laws that require employers to check employee eligibility. Fewer jobs for illegal immigrants would mean less incentive for them to come. That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants it. They just want a few examples to grandstand about for votes.

 _pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile._

This is basically amnesty/open-borders. Not arguing for or against, but it is. There is no "line" for citizenship, after five years of permanent residency anyone qualifies. The "line" is for the permanent residency (green card), and you have to qualify to even get in the line, that's why people come illegally. So what's the new qualification? "already in the country"? Then what about the people here 20 years from now? Is it a rolling admission? If not then you have the same problem as before. If yes, then the policy is 'open borders' possibly with a qualification of "can avoid getting caught for X years".

If you don't find open borders acceptable the only reasonable compromise I can think of is a capped category that anyone can apply for, where the cap is adjusted as needed. Somewhat ike the current Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) which is capped at around 50K per year, though that cap rarely changes.

<comment><USER5> > That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants > it.

Sheriff Joe tried this and ended up with a federal indictment, a pardon from Trump and (apparently) is now running for congress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So this is the result of several factors that are at odds with each other.

1\. There is no per-country quota on H1Bs

2\. There is a per-country quota on EB-1/2/3 GCs

3\. And this is crux of the problem: H1Bs are issued indiscriminately, most problematically to so-called bodyshops.

There are various proposals to fix the immigration backlog. There's one bill that would get rid of per-country quotas. I wonder what that would do to the backlog of everyone. I kind of see this one as a nonstarter.

Bizarrely, it's the current (otherwise abhorrent) administration that is the first to even talk about fixing the real problem, which is (3). H1Bs are a lottery now. When the likes of FAAMG companies can't hire people because the likes of Infosys and Tata are flooding applications for people who will essentially become indentured servants, that's a problem.

Infosys settled a visa fraud case with the US government several years ago including a payment of millions of dollars. How exactly are they still able to apply for visas?

There are problems with ranking applicants based on salary (or total compensation) as the one proposal would do. This would potentially drown out lower-paid STEM fields that have legitimate need with FAAMG SWEs. Then again... that's still probably better than the current system.

People have also complained "well you can't hire graduates if you rank on salary". That's true. But at the same time, are newly minted college graduates fulfilling unsatisfied demand for specialty occupation? Or just being used to lower labour costs?

<comment><USER7> Every time the topic of H1B comes up, people bring up Infosys. Why is that? Why is nobody talking about the 100 thousand Indian students who come to US every year? Who is employing them? These students are one of the primary abusers of the H1B system. They go through lengths to stay in US. They will settle for low salary so that they don't have to leave the country. Literally every scam I saw in H1B is from body shops in US, not the Indian companies. Indian companies do abuse it, by forcing the employees to sign a bond that if they want to resign, they have to come back to India and serve a 3 months notice (I know a Indian arm of an American product company who is top 1 or 2 in what they do with a 12 months notice policy by the way) or pay 5-10 lakhs Indian rupee if they want their experience certificate. And the pay offered is also only half or less of what they charge the customer.

>IT industry body Nasscom on Monday came out in defence of its members TCS and Infosys, saying the two accounted for only 7,504—8.8%—of the approved H1B visas in 2014-15.

[https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pHkRcTtIoKd8MkTkBNdtSN/Inf...](https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pHkRcTtIoKd8MkTkBNdtSN/Infosys- TCS-accounted-for-only-88-of-total-H1B-visasNass.html)

<comment><USER8> > Every time the topic of H1B comes up, people bring up Infosys. Why is that?

They must be partial to Infosys. I mean, what did it do. [https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa- Sponsor.asp...](https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

> These students are one of the primary abusers of the H1B system.

Right, the startups in bay area, good groups at Apples, Googles and Facebooks of the world are filled with people from Infosys ;)

>Literally every scam I saw in H1B is from body shops in US

That's partially true; I will let it slide

I understand you are frustrated, but you are barking up the wrong tree. The trouble is the easy jobs i.e, low-skilled in high-tech, are already filled. For example, see clouts of Infosys employees in some US companies. These days, people have two options, be really good at what they do, or find a clout to stick to. May be you had a hard time sticking to the Infosys clout(I am not surprised, given that you like to think). Don't blame it on others. If anything, most of the technically competent desi people in US have a US degree.

<comment><USER9> > If anything, most of the technically competent desi people in US have a US > degree.

What I understood GP to be saying is that "most desi people in US having a US degree are technically incompetent".

Both these view points are not incompatible, and true in my experience.

<comment><USER8> Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 How does this wait play out in real life? I doubt any company actually waits 15 years, and clearly not lengths exceeding a human lifespan, to fill a position, even if it went through the trouble of filing an I-140 and certified that zero US workers were available.

So what do all these applicants do in the meantime? Are they overseas? Are they in the States on dual-intent visas? Are they in some creative legal limbo?

If somehow, in the meantime, they obtain a green card or work permit, are they allowed to take that same position, if it's still open -- clearly, they can accept any other position, as they're fully allowed to work in the States, but can they take the one EB-2 and I-140 was filed for originally?

<comment><USER10> After you apply for a green card and cross the first step (takes about a year or two), then your H1B visa can be extended indefinitely. So the applicant can continue working. The company doesn't care because in this scenario they have an employee who'll think 10 times about leaving even if they are not being treated well. That's not to say the employee can't leave and join another company who's willing to make the necessary adjustments to the green card process. But it does mean that the applicant is forever in this limbo without freedom, can't plan long term, and has to leave the country in a week or so if he/she loses their job.

<comment><USER7> >then your H1B visa can be extended indefinitely

This used to be the case. But not any more. A lot of people I know are getting RFEs and rejections for their extensions after i-140. I am actually one of them. Got my I-140, then got RFE. I am in a state that gives license based on your visa and won't renew license unless I have an approved work permit. So, I cannot renew my license, and has been using ride sharing for the last 1 month. Its going to be another 1-2 months before I get a decision on whether I can stay. Fun times. They always find creative ways to make your life difficult. Its amusing they refuse to give me license, but the state has no problem taxing me, even for the income I get in India.

Trump talked about self deportation. He succeeded at least in my case. I am done with all this immigration bull __ __. I hope I can find a job in India soon so that I can escape from here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The dilemma of intolerance is that tolerating intolerance makes you intolerant.

Some forms of intolerance: believing in gender superiority, a caste system, exceptionalism based on ethnicity or country of origin. If you believe in those things, you might have a tolerance problem, no matter where you are from.

I try to be as tolerant as possible, and do not have negative views against immigration. But if you are intolerant I will have a hard time getting along if you openly express those views or if you apply those at work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am one who can be in this boat and don't know what to do yet.

<comment><USER12> I am thinking about coming aboard this particular boat i.e come to the USA. What would you do if you were me ?

<comment><USER13> Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ. There are places with Bay Area style salaries, there are other places with lower salaries - either way, you'll be living a comfortable life since costs will be lower than Bay Area.

You'll universally find a much better healthcare system (e.g. health insurance not tied to your employer), with the exception of the UK. You'll find a humane immigration system that doesn't kick you out if your employer decides to screw you over (again with the exception of the UK). You'll generally have some form of state support if you lose your job instead of being thrown to homelessness. Etc etc. The US is a second world country nowadays.

And any children you might have will be far safer, and at lower risk for severe mental health problems.

<comment><USER14> None of those places have anywhere near Bar Area salaries: London, by far the city with the highest salaries in the West outside of the US, has salaries that are 70% of the ones you'd get in California before counting a significant amount of extra income and sales taxes and almost similarly ridicolous housing.

On the other hand, the private insurance in the UK that's usually included in big tech companies' work is absolutely top-notch.

<comment><USER15> In absolute values, those salaries are the highest, but for quality of living, that's largely irrelevant unless your hobbies need large amounts of capital.

For example, in big cities in Europe, you can easily and happily get by without a car, which saves a lot. You have more vacation. No tipping. Easier/more obvious ways to save for retirement. Your kids not having to do active shooter drills at school. Cheaper/free schools and universities. Maternal/paternal leave. Etc, etc.

So if you have a family, or thinking of starting a family, it's worth factoring that stuff in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics)

</comment><comment><USER17> 97% people in India are poor by global standards [http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in- india/](http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/)

They'll wait for 250 years

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it a false assumption that immigrant workers should eventually get Green Cards? The whole point of the H1B system is to temporarily fill shortages of skilled workers, not to be a path for permanent immigration.

<comment><USER9> The point of H-1B is to both fill a skilled job temporarily, and as a path to permanent immigration. This is called _dual intent_ technically.

<comment><USER18> From the DOL:

> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise > obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by > authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not > otherwise authorized to work in the United States.

The focus seems to be on the temporary nature.

<comment><USER9> > The focus seems to be on the temporary nature.

For the DOL, yes. For you too, maybe. But for the individual involved, probably both intents are in equal importance, and that is perfectly legal and moral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not a bug: working as intended

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it really discrimination if the system is already known to have a per- country limit, and yet more and more people from that country continue to file for Green Cards? Indians who come to the US these days know for a fact there is a 10+ year wait for a Green Card, so they're the ones taking their chances. If they scream discrimination, I call BS on that.

It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think a point-based system like Canada is far more efficient, but it's not discrimination. If there are already known rules, and one particular country comes in an adds a massive amount of applications, you can't turn around and yell discrimination.

<comment><USER21> Yes, dude. If I already know you're discriminatory and I still apply, you're still discriminatory. It's in the antecedent of the clause. Just apply basic propositional logic.

<comment><USER22> If I know that by jumping off of a bridge I will get hurt but I still jump, it is the bridge that is at fault.

Brilliant logic on your side!

<comment><USER21> Haha, the irony of it all.

Whether you know that jumping off a bridge will hurt has no impact on whether it will hurt. It's not a question of fault. It's a question of fact.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what linux log file analytics to use - <AUTHOR>

Linux servers generate something like 20 different log files. Are there any tools that gives complete system level alerts & overview analysis by taking these log files as input? I am looking for easy setup & go, with something as simple as setup, tail & pipe the log files to a remote server.
Most tools I am aware of like Google analytics seem focused on customer/end user analysis. Does any startup, use splunk to track single-system/multi-system management dashboard and provide insights?
It'll be great if such a software was available as service. <comment><USER2> I don't have specific recommendations, but here's where I'd start looking:

Ganglia - <http://ganglia.sourceforge.net/>

Zabbix - <http://www.zabbix.com/>

Zenoss - <http://www.zenoss.com/>

collectd - <http://collectd.org/></comment>


RESTless: a robust, simplified alternative to ember-data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/endlessinc/ember-restless

<comment><USER2> I've been using jQuery to handle JSON API requests in my Ember app. This looks like a promising alternative. Ember-data has been in too much flux to use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks promising, might be an alternative to create your won jquery implementation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just what I wanted. Hopefully this project will get swallowed up by ember core.</comment>


Introducing the Squarespace Engineering Blog - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.squarespace.com/ <comment><USER2> Good work Gals & Guys, great to see a bit more transparency into your platform, looking forward to upcoming posts.

</comment><comment><USER3> The announcement of a new blog isn't an interesting story in the HN sense, so it would be better to pick the most substantive article from the new blog and post that instead.

Also, it's against HN's rules to directly or indirectly solicit upvotes for a story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

</comment><comment><USER4> RSS feed? :/

<comment><USER5> [http://engineering.squarespace.com/?format=rss](http://engineering.squarespace.com/?format=rss)</comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Aaron Patzer, founder, Mint - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3218837306

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell anyone and everyone your idea without fear they're going to steal it.

\- Aaron Patzer (@apatzer)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3218837306></comment>


Global warming: Why the world has taken to chilies - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12792719 <comment><USER2> For folks who are excessively literal thinkers and read it 3 times trying to find the "global warming" angle, let me do the work so you don't have to: it is a pun.

<comment><USER3> And in the south it's warmer...if you know what I mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Several years ago I used to find black pepper too spicy, then one day I put on some hot sauce and kinda liked it, so I started adding a bit to every meal. Just as with programming or music, when you push yourself and go a bit beyond your limit, you get good. Well, after several years of this, I now eat frightening amounts of spice. If I want a spicy meal, I use about 2-3ml of 600000 scoville sauce, which isn't too much in hothead circles but would cause a lot of pain in most people.

<comment><USER5> You do have to be careful though...

(warning! incoming anecdote!)

My grandfather grew peppers and ate massive amounts of them. When he was old though, he lost his sense of taste. It was really sad to see him put Tabasco sauce on _everything_ just to be able to taste it.

<comment><USER6> This is why I like to keep my tastes pretty tame. I specifically search out 'tangy' sauces rather than simply 'hot' sauces. When I eat whole or sliced peppers, I cut out the membrane on the spicier varieties because I'm more interested in the taste than assaulting my senses.

If you can't tell that a bell pepper has a tiny bit of zesty spice to it, your choice of peppers is too spicy and you are destroying your sense of taste.

<comment><USER7> I'm originally from Louisiana. I have yet to encounter a place with better food, I lost 20 lbs. when I moved away. However outside of Louisiana, Cajun food simply mean pour Cayenne pepper on it. There is a whole lot more to Cajun (or Creole, which is different) cooking than heat. Generally the heat level should be enough to feel but not enough to overpower the the other spices. This level varies from person to person depending on how much spicy food they typically eat. I've met a cook from Commander's Palace in New Orleans once and he admitted to spicing differently based on where he thought someone was from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Speaking of peppery I just made some Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato soup, it's great! Not very spicy as the name implies but you can always add more hot sauce, paprika or hotter peppers (I used Bell Peppers).

Here is the recipe I used: [http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Roasted-Red-Pepper- and-Tomato-S...](http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Roasted-Red-Pepper-and-Tomato- Soup/Detail.aspx)

<comment><USER8> Thank you. That's an excellent recipe. I just made the soup and it was very delicious. A lot of work, but it's worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Among other things, that may give a scientific explanation for the habit, not formally researched, of snorting the 'pink fix' (a mixture of cocaine and chili powder)."

Anyone have any more information on this?

<comment><USER8> Although without any information on the real "pink fix", this MetaFilter thread on chili peppers is quite awesome:

<http://www.metafilter.com/58885/Pink-fix>

Teaser: capsaicin works by hacking our heat and pain receptors. It's a signal, telling us there is danger when there is actually nothing wrong going on.

Its presence in chili peppers may evolved for discrimination among animals that would digest seeds (mammals) vs. ones that would just spread seeds (birds).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> ...the Aji (pronounced ah-hee), a Peruvian chili, which "ripens to bright yellow, with a strong lemony taste when fresh, very zesty. When dried it picks up a banana flavour."

Being peruvian, I am just a bit biased, but the Aji Peper just tastes great with anything. I remember Sundays back home when my mother 'd cook a simple chicken soup to which I would add some Aji and make the perfect soup. Something so simple, yet so good. It is a taste I have never had again outside of Peru.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't get the connection between the article and global warming but have heard that Mr. O's transition team is discussing the possibility of starting a policy initiative that makes it against the law to be a "Global Warming Denier".

So here we are. It's 2010 and it's OK to make porn movie because that activity is protected by the first amendment.

But, boy, if you don't believe in "Human Caused Global Warming" and you haven't bought any of those Carbon Offsets..

Well, the constitution isn't going to be able to help you there. You just went too far over the line.</comment>


ByteDance will not sell TikTok's U.S. operations to Microsoft or Oracle: Sources - <AUTHOR> https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-09-14/ByteDance-rejects-Microsoft-s-bid-for-TikTok-TLLgABWx56/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Article from official Chinese state media seems to refute an earlier front page article on hacker news:

Oracle Chosen as Winner in Deal for TikTok's U.S. Operations

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24464933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24464933)

</comment><comment><USER2> Not surprising. Their political goals are not furthered by having the US control TikTok</comment>


Elsevier = Evil - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/elsevier_evil.php <comment><USER2> Very interesting to see Darrell Issa (R - CA) as a sponsor on this bill, given how eloquently he's spoken out against SOPA in the Judiciary Committee. Here's the copy of the email I just sent his office: I'll try and contact his office by phone tomorrow.

      Hello,

      It's been with great pleasure that I've been able to watch Representa-
      tive Issa speak out against SOPA in the Judiciary.

      However, I'm concerned at seeing him offer "H.R.3699 -- Research Works
      Act" as such an act is a major blow to scientific openness.

      As you may well be aware, in many nations it's a requirement that re-
      search receiving federal funds (i.e. research at taxpayer expense) be
      made available for free to the public. The recent policy proposal by
      the NIH would move the US towards a similarly open policy and would
      help foster the openness of research that made this country such a
      leader in science and technology for so long.

      Unfortunately, companies like Elsevier have increasingly treated pub-
      lishing as a private cash cow, banking (in part) on the burgeoning
      costs of a university education to widen its coffers. The journals
      published by Elsevier cost colleges and universities millions of
      dollars each year and burden students with growing debt (and for
      others, preclude the possibility of higher education at all).

      I ask that Representative Issa revisit his stand on this issue.
      Thank you.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, since people don't seem to know this: Dead tree letters >> phone > fax >>> email >>>>>>> any online petition, in terms of how motivated staff are to convey your sentiment up the totem pole. (Anecdotal from brothers' service with a few congressional reps.)

[Edit: Sorry, checked on my screen but didn't realize my resolution was too high to show me if it broke lines.]

<comment><USER4> In-person meeting is top, and not THAT hard to get if you can plausibly represent a group.

<comment><USER5> Generally I've had no issues getting meetings, at least with a staffer, of my congressperson.

On a sidenote, does a group that focuses on gov't relations and PR exist that represents what would is largely the consensus HN community interest - i.e. making the case to elected officials and the public what sort of laws would improve prospects for technical innovation. The EFF focuses largely on digital civil rights, but that certainly isn't the only realm where Washington, Sacramento, Albany, etc. affect us.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> I'd be really wary unless it had a very very focused mission. I think there's a lot of diversity among HN readers, and I hate being a part of organizations which claim to speak for me but end up supporting things I oppose, etc.

Right now, I think the startup visa thing and opposition to new stupid laws like sopa/pipa is all I have mental bandwidth to care about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Elsevier itself has a pretty bad reputation (for overcharging)...Donald Knuth protested about this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editori...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Resignation_of_editorial_boards)

excerpt:

 _At the end of 2003, the entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned to start ACM Transactions on Algorithms with a different, lower priced publisher, at the suggestion of Journal of Algorithms founder Donald Knuth._

The actual letter (pdf): <http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER7> Really all NIH and NSF grants should come with open access requirements. I would suggest that all raw data be made available no later than 1 year after initial collection and all publications be open-access upon publishing with curated data also available upon publishing.

The "1 year after initial collection" allows slower writers to get publications in the pipeline before unleashing their data to the hounds of "competing" scientists.

Scientific publishing is broken. Industry and government have limited access to modern, relevant academic research. Utilizing the best science for science, management, construction and business decisions shouldn't be a daunting task that I usually chose to overcome by contacting current individuals in academics with access to publications.

<comment><USER8> Depending on what you mean by open access, all NIH grants already _do_ come with such requirements. Any publications resulting from NIH-funded research must be deposited, in full text, including figures, into PubMed Central.

<comment><USER9> That (NIH's policy of requiring things to go into PubMed) is precisely what this bill is taking aim at.

<comment><USER10> I thought this bill is for private-sector research, which NIH funded research is not. Or am I missing something in how the lawyers are going to twist this once it gets passed?

<comment><USER11> "Private sector research works" is the disingenuous and obfuscating term that the publishers are using to call publicly funded research manuscripts that the publisher has then 'added value' to. When they say they 'add value', what they mean is copy editing, archiving, distribution, etc. They include in this peer- reviewing the manuscript, but in reality that is done for free by scientists whose salaries are again, mostly paid for by public funds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Since Elsevier's obscene additional profits would be drained from America to the company's base in the Netherlands"

I agree the proposed act is bad, but the author does not do himself any favors by quoting such bone headed nationalism. Surely anyone with a mild grasp of the way world works knows that the profits go to the _shareholder_, not to the headquarters.

Elsevier's shareholders are all over the map. Their headquarters are based in the Netherlands for tax reasons but it does not mean they don't pay tax in the US on profits made there.

<comment><USER13> Minor correction: Elsevier's headquarters are in Amsterdam for historical reasons, not for tax reasons.

<comment><USER12> my wife used to work as a tax attorney for Elsevier in Amsterdam and while it is true the company was founded in the Netherlands (Haarlem actually), the main reason they are still there are the excellent "tax facilities" (euphemism for a great deal with the tax man).

<comment><USER14> A surprisingly large number of companies have a 'great deal' with the tax man behind closed doors whether in US or elsewhere. Published corporate tax rates are, admittedly anecdotally but from good sources, not representative of what corporations actually pay.

Understandably, a company providing jobs and infrastructure investment in the local area can always strike a deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For every evil bills that is on the public consciousness, another bill slip by. It's basically a game of whacking a mole.

<comment><USER16> Ha, but our Congress is so inept they can't write bills faster than we whack them. So it pays to be vigilant.

<comment><USER17> Not exactly, since lobbyists often write the bills and hand them to congress fully baked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Im not sure why scientists are still publishing in Elsevier journals nowadays. Pre-internet, OK, but now I think journals should be following the model used by the Journal of Machine Learning Research, open on the internet.

<comment><USER19> Scientists still publish Elsevier because of the so called "impact factor" of some of these journals. As a young researcher currently looking for tenure- track positions in academia I can tell you that it is still extremely important to publish in some of these journals (ex Cell). Unfortunately there are still very few (or none) open access journals that have the same perceived impact. I try to publish in PLoS journals or other open access journals as much as I can but given the chance to publish in higher impact journals I have to take it or risk not having a job in the future. Once you have the job you need to secure funding and so there is always pressure to publish in the "best" possible journal. The ridiculous thing about this situation is that would be fairly easy to create a new open access and highly prestigious journal in any field if everyone would switch to publishing in these new journals at the same time. You would probably just need to convince some of the leaders in the field to do it. This was how PLoS was born in fact. Unfortunately for the PhD students and postdocs it is hard to do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe the silver lining is that a large scale uproar could incline more people to publish in open access journals in the first place (so-called "gold" open access). </wishful thinking>

<comment><USER21> Counter-point: [http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense- of-...](http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-defense-of- submission-in-scientific.html)

<comment><USER22> In many areas of computer science, conference proceedings are where most people publish. (See the CRA's best practices memo: [http://www.cra.org/resources/bp- view/evaluating_computer_sci...](http://www.cra.org/resources/bp- view/evaluating_computer_scientists_and_engineers_for_promotion_and_tenure/))

Publishing in ACM and IEEE conferences are essentially author-pay. Technically, you don't pay to publish in the conference, but you must pay to _register_ for the conference. And most conferences have a rule that if you don't register, you can't publish.

There are many objections to the ACM and IEEE practices about maintaining paywalls, but I think that as professional societies, their policies can change. The for-profit journals, on the other hand, probably cannot survive if they allowed such open access. And nor should they: their business model is no longer valid.

<comment><USER21> I prefer the CS model in some ways, but there are issues.

* The review process for conferences is necessarily compressed relative to journals. This usually lowers the quality of reviews and also limits paper length.

* It is difficult to "grow" a highly selective conference, so the acceptance rate is usually quite high. This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on _where_ you publish instead of _what_ you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers. If people are not submitting their best work to a conference, it can't afford to be overly selective. This is much the same problem that new journals have, but worse because conferences usually have to reach a critical number of people to be considered a success.

<comment><USER22> The conference versus journal issue is orthogonal to professional society versus for-profit entity, since the ACM and IEEE have journals.

 _This means that archaic tenure review committees evaluating on where you publish instead of what you publish will ascribe little weight to your conference papers._

Not in CS, in my experience. People in CS know which are the highly selective (what I have always heard called "top tier") conferences. In my experience in industry and academia, conferences are our primary consideration and journals are an afterthought. (Sometimes not even a thought.) The CRA memo is from 1999. I think most people have caught on by now.

<comment><USER21> That is specific to CS. I have one foot in CS, but the other two feet are in applied mathematics and natural sciences where conferences are not especially attractive publications venues.

<comment><USER22> Yes, I agree, it is specific to CS - if you re-read my posts, I think you'll find that I prefaced everything with that qualifier. I have friends in the hard sciences, and we sometimes talk about how the publishing models are quite different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems easy enough for the NIH to counter by changing their funding policy to exclude all "private sector research works", leaving academics and universities to decide whether they'd rather carry out research nominally under the auspices of some public sector organisation that handles distribution or not take the funds. If they really wanted to they could even introduce their own peer review process for final publications too...

It's remarkably short-sighted and pointless legislation, unless the real objective is to start suing authors for forwarding PDF copies of their work and related documents to interested parties without journal access.

</comment><comment><USER24> Elsevier (or any other company) that uses lobbying or gives money to politicians is just using the system in their favor. That's not evil. It's evil that the system allows for this to happen.

<comment><USER25> Thats a very naive view - laws are often drafted by lawyers / polaticians - and what makes non corporate actors in lobying any better or worse they are just lobbying for their constituents.

With your model extremist churches or other organisations could lobby to reduce employment rights for women/LGBT etc. For example returning to the 50's wheer women who got married had to resign like they did at one compnay I used to work for.

A company with progressive views on employment issues say Google would be banned from lobbying against this.

And you would have od position where say the UAW could put their views on a bill concerning the Auto industry but Alan Mulally could not - not teribly fair.

<comment><USER21> Two problems:

1\. Money is an extremely effective campaign tool, so effective that it is almost impossible for a candidate with no money to get elected, no matter how popular their views are. Since quite few constituents contribute money, and individual people don't speak with sufficiently organized objectives, politicians are only very weakly accountable to their constituents.

2\. The promise of a high-paying job after congress, along with other benefits, influences the decisions of our elected officials.

To make politicians accountable to their constituents, we have to solve the first problem. Since advertising costs money and seems to be necessary for a campaign, this suggests finance reform along the lines that Lessig suggests (<http://rootstrikers.org>), whereby constituents control campaign funding, all in small-dollar amounts.

<comment><USER25> You need to first remove any civil service position from being in the presidents gift as a bribe for contributions no jollies as an ambassador ETC and NO presidential pardons for anything Scooter Libby ought to be in the cell next to Manning or more properly have been taken out and shot.

Oh and move to a fully professional Judiciary elections to Judgeship are far more corrupting.

Oh and you didn't answer my point about other actors do you want to have an internet where telcos and ISP can't lobby for common carrier status welcome to the church and other interest groups deciding what is allowed on the internet

Or would you care live a society like China or Russia where your employer and your job and sweat equity can be expropriated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would somebody please do a startup to provide an alternative to these evil people? It shouldn't be difficult to disrupt them, as you literally need a printer and a webserver.

<comment><USER27> You don't need a printer, online only is fully acceptable.

However, what you do need is an "impact rating" calculated by Web of Science(TM). That rating is based on the number of citations articles in your journal gets from other rated journals.

Since your journal is new, it won't have an impact rating, meaning scientists won't publish in it, meaning you won't get an impact rating.

But the alternatives exists, e.g. Bentham and Hindawi are both running spamtastic marketing campaigns for 100s of open access journals, most with none or negligible impact ratings.

There are good and successful ones too. PLoS have very high quality open access journals. Expensive, though.

<comment><USER26> There are plenty of academics who don't like the traditional publishing racket. Some of them are bound to have tenure.

<comment><USER27> That matters less than you would think. Even with tenure, you typically need research grants in order to have money for research. Research grants are typically granted based on your publishing history in high impact journals.

But again, there are good open access journals out there. And even traditional publishers typically allows open access for individual articles for an additional fee. While these fees may seem high, they will typically only constitute a small fraction of a research grant, so if you care and you plan for it in advance, there is really no excuse for not going open access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How about another "Protest" for Open Access? How would that go though, maybe OA advocates could refuse to do article reviews.

</comment><comment><USER29> Please change title to "Elsevier == Evil".

<comment><USER30> "=" as a comparator is valid BASIC.

<comment><USER31> And FORTRAN and Pascal and Scheme and...

<comment><USER30> I think FORTRAN had .EQ. for that...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


From "Zero to Civic" in 5 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://codeforamerica.org/2012/07/10/from-zero-to-civic-in-5-minutes/

<comment><USER2> I'm not really a rah-rah API guy from the perspective of governance, but they genuinely solve business problems, often in areas not directly anticipated by the API.

For example, suppose you're making a local website for Ogaki restaurants. Getting the addresses and phone numbers of all of them (a couple thousand) would be sort of difficult. Happily, their owners will be thrown in jail if they don't leave that information with the Ogaki food inspector, so if they have an API for food inspection results you can query it, toss the irrelevant data ("In compliance: No rat tails in soup", etc), and get your site bootstrapped in an afternoon.

<comment><USER3> but you haven't considered the cost of making such information available. Are you willing to pay some extra tax dollars to make such information available (even if you most likely won't be making use of it)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty great -- question to HN: as a person learning how to program who has a somewhat tenuous grasp on python (i.e., I have done Project Euler up to 15, but I am daunted by full scale apps), how do I make the transition from learning the syntax to learning the methods of something like this? I feel tutorials can only go so far, but those are the only things I can think of to use to learn.

<comment><USER5> One approach would be to find a popular Python web framework and then follow the tutorials for that. Because you already have some familiarity with the language, the syntax won't distract you from absorbing the application architecture concepts.

<comment><USER4> I did that with Django -- I feel on the cusp of getting it, but the tutorial ends kind of abruptly. I'm working on a project to get my feet we, though (a simple tiered to-do that I am planning on integrating with a little under- construction site to show true %-done of aspects of a site).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your next goal in self-improvement? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'd like to commit to a really modest lifestyle, maybe until 2025, and see where I end up.

No high ambitions. No lust for good food or sugary water. No compulsion to impress anyone, including clients and bosses. No raging at things I don't take action on.

I'd like to go to bed, calm, not worried about the books I need to be reading or the projects I should be finishing. I'd like to actually be bored, and accept the boredom as a fine thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Throwaway cause this is personally embarrassing - have some semblance of a relationship with the opposite sex. I'm in my late twenties and have never been in any sort of romantic relationship. Never had sex or even kissed. I don't know what it is but I keep preventing myself from going through with any of these. I have just about everything else going half decently: I have a well paying job, some friends, hobbies, my own apartment, etc. but something in my psyche doesn't let me venture down that path. I have had a few dates here and there which obviously led to nothing, which leads me to wonder what is wrong with me. Actually committing myself to dating and romantic relationships would be a huge step in my life.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing wrong with you.

<comment><USER5> there is, he admits it and wants to fix. He is not going to be happier if we tell him that he should just be happy with what he have. He wants to have a healthy/happy romantic relationship with someone and he deserves it, and it is not a problem to have to work to fix it.

I had the same problem in the past and as a hacker I made a plan to fix it. I can tell you that it worked really well and I barely recognize myself from 5 years ago. But this change wasn't easy and was related to lots of areas in my life: friends, family, fitness, nutrition, work, interests in life. More than wanting to date someone, I invested in becoming someone people want to date.

<comment><USER6> I really love this: "I invested in becoming someone people want to date." Very wise words.

Although this sentence (about the kind of people people want to date) from La Bruyere's _Characters_ flashed cynically into my mind a moment later. :-)

 _A man who is vain, indiscreet, a great talker and a mischievous wag, who speaks arrogantly of himself and contemptuously of others, who is boisterous, haughty, forward, without morality, honesty, or commonsense, and who draws for facts on his imagination, wants nothing else, to be adored by many women, but handsome features and a good shape._

Also it reminded me of George Clooney writing somewhere that he started getting acting work after he totally changed his mindset in auditions–from asking, pleading _give me something I want_ , to seeing himself as offering his talents, contributing something unique to the production–he had something _they_ wanted, or should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> non-entity Most importantly I want to put on weight. At least 30-40lbs. Unfortunately I'm still trying to work out how to optimize my diet because I can only eat so mo much until I become bloated and moderately nauseous

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to improve my ability to focus and to gear my life towards optimal performance. This should take care of multiple challenges that I facing today.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to stop being my own worst critic, self-sabotage, and build something that improves someone else's life (and make money doing it)

</comment><comment><USER9> make more money/learn to code</comment>


Google Deprecates SOAP Search API - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/google_depreciates_SOAP_API.html

<comment><USER2> Hey, this is almost a year old news.. and it was just the search where they deprecated soap. (-- because it was primarily accessed from a browser?)

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... this is almost a year old news.. and it was just the search where they deprecated soap...."_

Old news maybe but where other companies are loosening their data, google is winding back access to theirs. I'm not sure of the motives why. But I can understand the implications. By holding back the access to raw data we are being set up for another monopoly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can it be true that there is no way to monitor that one important property, the position of my website in the search results for certain keywords? Granted, allowing to check for this in an automated way would probably result in a lot of requests to Google's servers, but on the other hand, people will check for it anyway, so why not let the machines do it?

<comment><USER4> my theory is that they disabled the APIs to fight SEO firms. Being able to check SERP rankings in an automated fashion would be a big help in trying to game your rankings

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Soap, REST in peace. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Soap, REST in peace. ;) ..."_

First the xml api, now soap. As much as I don't like soap, the replacement ajax api is hobbled and restrictive. Evil tactics are countered with EvilAPI's ~ <http://sitening.com/evilapi/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you look for in a resume, which gets you to talk to the person? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
This is a question mostly for first level recruiters/HR.
I've been job hunting recently, and while my resume (which is currently a list of companies I've worked for, the work duration, and the tech I've worked on), seems to get responses within India, the same resume when sent out to most European companies has so far gotten me only two call backs from about 300 applications.
So I'd like to know, when you receive a bunch of resumes, what makes you decide whom to call up and talk to?
I'm a full stack Javascript developer with experience in React, ESNext, Node, Postgres, Mongo, Express, Electron,  microservices, RMQ and GraphQL (amongst others). If there is anything specific about the tech I am experienced in that you would like to see in the resume, do let me know that also.
Thanks <comment><USER2> You can imagine three levels of skill ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior- softwa...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior-software- engineer/)):

1\. Implement a solution someone already came up with.

2\. Solve a problem someone gave you.

3\. Identify problems.

The higher the level, the more valuable of an employee you are.

If you are level 2, you want to make sure your resume doesn't give the impression you're level 1. So for example, don't just list "I wrote some code", explain how you came up with this design, and why.

If you are level 3, you want to make sure your resume doesn't give the impression you're level 2. So make sure you explain how you identified the problem, and why it mattered.

<comment><USER3> It's really hard to put level 3 on a resume though. For example, I had a situation where we built a product from 0 to release in 2 weeks, got revenue and hundreds of buyers by the second month, without any funding. But just writing it that way doesn't make it clear whether it was luck, skill or the effort of colleagues.

<comment><USER2> You can give context, and what you did.

"After noticing the need for X, I proposed we build Y. As a team we build an initial prototype, and within two weeks we had revenue and hundreds of buyers."

Example from my resume:

"I created a new product from scratch for the company. I researched user needs, explored the solution space ([http://...](http://...)), and then built Telepresence ([http://...](http://...)), a local development environment for Kubernetes. As of Feb 2019 the project had grown to 1600+ GitHub stars and is now a CNCF Sandbox project."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My company doesn't sponsor visas, but we get a lot of overseas applicants anyway.

One theme I've noticed from these resumes is that for the summary of experience they tend to list out technologies and job responsibilities. And also to have about a dozen bullet points for each job, which is overwhelming.

This makes the candidate look incapable of independent thought - reinforcing a negative stereotype of Indian developers. Too many of us have had or heard of bad experiences with outsourcing companies that need to be given instructions almost as detailed as you'd give a computer.

American and European companies (at least the good ones) aren't looking for coders to accept and execute instructions. We're looking for software developers who can synthesize context and business goals to develop software that will create value for the business.

What I'm looking to see on a resume are projects undertaken and even more importantly accomplishments. And only the most relevant 2-5 for each position. How did your work impact the business?

Instead of ticking off "I've used this technology" boxes, focus on highlighting your business value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice! I'd also like to know if you would consider a non- conventional resume (like a specialized resume website), rather than a conventional word/pdf document, as a positive or a negative?

<comment><USER4> Most places you'll have to submit a PDF (or sometimes Word doc), so start with that. Having your resume also hosted on LinkedIn or elsewhere won't hurt you, but it doesn't add much value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are you based in India? If so, I imagine the practicalities of getting a visa are more of an issue than the quality of resume.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I am currently based in India, and I know visas can be an issue, but I am specifically talking about openings that are advertised as 'Visa Sponsored'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a little deeper in the funnel, but I prefer narratives over lists of acronyms. Give me something to talk about.

Also, are people seeing your resume, or is some middleman changing it? I notice with Indian candidates agencies tweak them in ways or for reasons that often don't benefit the candidate.

</comment><comment><USER7> We start off with internal referrals...

Your best bet is to try and network into your top companies by reaching out via LinkedIn, asking friends and family for connections, alumni etc</comment>


Top five regrets of the dying - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying

<comment><USER2> See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643239>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615886>

The first is pretty much exactly this same story, the second was a complete rip-off of it, and both have a lot of discussion. Again.</comment>