How does D improve on C++17? - <AUTHOR> http://p0nce.github.io/d-idioms/#How-does-D-improve-on-C++17? <comment><USER2> D is a awesome language to work with, it's got many useful language features that make the activity of code writing a pleasure. - I hope this criticism is taking constructively.

However not a beat a dead horse, but if you want to process more than a trickle of data in it you run into problems with the GC really quickly. I really feel the language would be better off without the GC.

These are not the same issues address by the JSON compiler post or w/e that surfaces a couple months ago.

From what I can tell, theres a global lock around everything in the GC, including allocations. In a multi-core world, this just simply doesn't work and it one of the major pain point of the language. I write data-intensive processing on high core count machines (32), and have had to resort to 0-allocation strategies, or in map-reduce contexts actually sharding at the process level, writing the results to disk, and then running a reducer process over the results.

You can write performant D code, but you give up large amounts of code safety. It's essentially just whatever you'd write in C++ without the ownership semantics it gives you.

You can't have a core part of your language being an essentially unavoidable massive point of contention.

I've literally seen 20x or more speedups in multithreaded cases just by making sure I reuse every buffer rather than create new ones.

I feel this is really holding back an otherwise great language to work in.

This is discussed in the reddit thread in more detail.

<comment><USER3> > I've literally seen 20x or more speedups in multithreaded cases just by > making sure I reuse every buffer rather than create new ones.

Reuse rather than free and reallocate is a core practice whenever you feel the need for speed, regardless of the memory allocate strategy used.

For some very fast D code:

[https://github.com/facebook/warp](https://github.com/facebook/warp)

Minimizing the amount of heap memory allocated is a core strategy.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for responding. I've seen this code used an an example before actually.

Not that buffer reuse/avoiding heap allocations was unknown to me, it was just surprising to see this in an application that spent most of it's time waiting on the network.

I will say as a positive point that the equivalent D code to a C++ implementation was much cleaner due to build in array slicing among other things.

There are other areas where heap allocations are not so avoidable however (some hashmaps, some std's). My main point is that like at all languages, heap allocations are slow, but here they bear an unnecessarily large contention factor.

I really like D so I hope this is helpful feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > D has no need for a preprocessor

How does this work, specifically conditional compilation? I have lots of code like this:

       #if __APPLE__
          /* do things the OS X way */
       #else
         /* do things the Linux way */
       #endif

Where the OS X way calls functions that do not exist on Linux, and vice-versa. How does D handle this?

<comment><USER3> Check out [https://github.com/D-Programming- Language/phobos/blob/master...](https://github.com/D-Programming- Language/phobos/blob/master/std/file.d) at line 33 and on. You'll see: version (Windows) { ... } etc. For the specification on how this works:

[http://dlang.org/version.html](http://dlang.org/version.html)

The salient point is that conditional compilation in D is not text based, it is AST based. Furthermore, for 'static if', the conditional expression has access to the full symbol table and power of the D language - it is not a separate preprocessor language with its own rules and separate symbol table.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the reply. That's very elegant!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> D is a fantastic language. C++ is so difficult to unseat as a systems language now since it is back as a moving target which is both evolving and has extremely robust tools to go with it. Challenging it on the language level is not enough.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. C++ has so good tooling that despite what new language I try, I always hit some implementation, ecosystem or tooling issue that always leads me to conclude I would have been more productive with C++. Which sucks monkeyballs as aesthetics go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how many people out there on HN actully use D and what for? I don't typically see D based projects here on HN so it would be interesting to find out about any use cases where D was found a perfect fit.

<comment><USER8> WalterBright uses it in his compiler.

<comment><USER9> >WalterBright uses it in his compiler.

Ironically, the dmd compiler is written in C++.

<comment><USER3> D didn't exist when the dmd compiler was written. But Daniel Murphy has written a C++ to D converter, and it's looking like the next release will have dmd written in D.

<comment><USER9> >it's looking like the next release will have dmd written in D.

Is that going to make it trickier for GDC/LDC to stay in sync with DMD? (Either way, it's exciting news!)

<comment><USER3> Tricky or not, they're on board with the jump.

<comment><USER10> How will you then bootstrap it on new platforms? Will it become reliant on cross compilation for bootstrap?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > D has a package manager. C++ has none that is popular in its community. > Therefore, using a third-party library is many times easier.

This comes up all the time in reference to C++. C++ doesn't need a package manager because it has excellent support from distro package managers. Most libraries are in the system package manager. And yes, sometimes you need a newer version of a package or one not quite widely-used enough to be in the system package manager, in which case you need to do compile it yourself or install it manually. But that is a problem common to all package managers and there is nothing about D which will make it any easier.

<comment><USER12> Almost every C++ codebase out there vendor all dependencies. Looks like they are not using the system package manager. Windows has no package manager with such library releases. Language package managers have problems, but they do make the work easier.

Anyone here unhappy with pip?

<comment><USER11> > Almost every C++ codebase out there vendor all dependencies. Looks like they > are not using the system package manager.

Yeah, e.g. Chromium. But that was also the reason why Fedora refused to provide packages for Chromium. Distros don't like projects that include their own versions of libraries because it goes against how things are supposed to work (maintenance and, by implication, a security nightmare). I know that there are many C++ projects in the various distro package repos, and no way do 'most of them' include their own copies of dependencies.

<comment><USER12> In the closed source world I'd say most codebases are like Chromium (difficult to say of course). It's a bit like distributing an application with binary libraries and a no-go for security indeed.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I am sure it's very common in closed source or internal systems. One place I worked at recently did that. All of my comments are about open source systems such as Linux and BSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> D looks like a really interesting language, I had never checked it out prior to reading this. unittest blocks look like they'd be super helpful. And it has modules, which I consider a must-have.

In what areas would D excel? What are its downsides? What did you like and dislike the most? I'd be really interested in hearing about people's experiences.

<comment><USER14> As a D programmer currently making a small game engine + networked rts game in the language, invariant blocks are another thing I really enjoy about the language: [http://dlang.org/contracts.html#Invariants](http://dlang.org/contracts.html#Invariants)

Lets you specify contracts which are asserted on construction and destruction, it's great.

The meta programming is also wonderful for things like serialization of data, simply iterating over a type's members at compile-time to generate serialization code, cutting out much bloated code. It's worth noting that it's metaprogramming for humans, _compared_ to c++, but sometimes leaves a bit to be desired documentation-wise, all the building blocks are there, but sometimes you'd like to not need to reinvent the wheel every time you attempt some metaprogramming-related task.

Things I don't enjoy include the core language's reliance on the GC, including things like exceptions relying on GC allocations.

Thankfully they've made it a bit easier to track down things which may allocate gc memory lately with accompanying flags to the compiler, which prints a trace of where it may happen.

<comment><USER15> I'm always on the look out for improvements to C++, and it's been a while since I looked at D... Hope you don't mind if I ask you a couple questions.

Can you still turn off the GC? Lets say I don't like exceptions, and that I don't mind implementing library code on my own, would turning GC off impact anything else?

How is the story for deploying executables to mac/win/lin? Is it as easy as C/C++?

Also, do you know if anybody's shipped high quality games with it before? It's been a while now, I'd hope so, but I haven't heard of any. Pretty sure no AAA games have used it but maybe some indie?

<comment><USER16> > Can you still turn off the GC? Lets say I don't like exceptions, and that I > don't mind implementing library code on my own, would turning GC off impact > anything else?

You can turn off the GC in the sense that memory allocation will always request more memory from the OS instead of occasionally starting a collect cycle. However, you can alternatively use manual memory management (malloc/free, allocators/RAII on top of that, etc.), which will never trigger the GC.

> How is the story for deploying executables to mac/win/lin? Is it as easy as > C/C++?

Yes. I think for Posix systems, you can optionally link dynamically to the runtime/standard library.

> Also, do you know if anybody's shipped high quality games with it before?

IIRC, Remedy Games used D for engine scripting on XBox 360. Manu Evans talked about this at DConf 2013.

Here's a commercial indie game written in D: [http://www.inventivedingo.com/mayhemig](http://www.inventivedingo.com/mayhemig)

<comment><USER15> Well, a couple things about it make me nervous, but CTFE and a not horribly broken compilation model might make it worth trying out next weekend...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was working on a similar article just a couple of weeks ago for the D wiki, but I wanted to focus on the really big things, and I want to include more examples:

[http://wiki.dlang.org/Coming_From/C_Plus_Plus_WIP_article](http://wiki.dlang.org/Coming_From/C_Plus_Plus_WIP_article)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, my article is a bit of a quickie and not very good, I didn't expect people would post them here and on reddit. Moreover, it isn't a big picture post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> D looks great, but I feel like depending on a GC is kind of a deal-breaker. If that is accurate, then D fills the same niches as Google's Go rather than C++'s. Rust looks more like a proper replacement for C++.

<comment><USER19> You can still "delete" by hand in D. The GC just does it if you fail to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Kinda related: Apple's blog post on how they borrowed an idea from D, about assert statements: [https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=15](https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=15)

</comment><comment><USER21> I use C++ but I don't really like it, but ... we need all the libraries that exist in C++ rewritten in D. And also, the same compiler support in the development frameworks. Otherwise, it will be a failure.

</comment><comment><USER22> > No more header files, today

> Even when C++ compilers implement modules and you can finally use them, > headers will still survive alongside modules for backward compatibility.

Uh, that one is just weird. So, a reason to use D is because C++ can support older projects?

</comment><comment><USER23> Is now the time for D? I really wonder, I am not really sure. Certainly a lot of languages go thru a period of obscurity before success, but I'm still uncertain.

The one issue that sticks for me was the dual standard libraries. Just seems so messy.

<comment><USER3> The dual library issue ended 7 years ago or so.

<comment><USER23> enh shows how much i know.

Honestly, I'm pretty excited for Rust. Having a strong proof of lifetime enforced by compiler is very compelling idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Gusto Email App Coming Soon - <AUTHOR> http://gustoemail.com/?ref=sd I haven't a clue what this is. "Something to do with email", my friend told me. It's from a tech startup in Indianapolis. This could be great, or not .. one thing is for sure, they are so secret, they don't even want to tell you what they are before your sign up to get advanced notice. THAT's BALLS!   http://gustoemail.com/?ref=sd <comment><AUTHOR> I haven't a clue what this is. "Something to do with email", my friend told me. It's from a tech startup in Indianapolis. This could be great, or not .. one thing is for sure, they are so secret, they don't even want to tell you what they are before your sign up to get advanced notice. THAT's BALLS! [http://gustoemail.com/?ref=sd](http://gustoemail.com/?ref=sd)

<comment><USER2> Wow. Such viral. Many hype.</comment></comment>


A DIFFERENT GitHub redesign proposal - <AUTHOR> https://blog.alexrohde.com/archives/656 <comment><USER2> No offense but that isn't a redesign, it is a gutted version that takes signal rich features out and makes Github much less usable. Signals like "number of releases", "number of contributors", "languages used in the project", and "number of commits" are all important ways that people evaluate an open source project before adopting it.

This redesign even hides the "Insights" tab. Maybe that makes sense if you are someone who only ever pushes code, but if you are a user of open source, and doing something like trying to determine whether an NPM module is healthy, then one of the best signals available to you is to click on the repo for the module and check the "Insights" tab to see if it is actively maintained, if it is a one person project or a group effort, etc. Even if the project has no activity and therefore nothing to populate the "Insights" tab that is actually also an important signal that this project is probably kind of dead and if there are fixes that need to be made I'll have to do them myself.

<comment><USER3> Would be interesting if users were allowed to customize the ui depending on their needs actually, even if that was client side. — the more I think about this the more certain I am that there must already be a chrome extension that does that.

<comment> yoz-y In theory grease monkey, user scripts, custom css or even an ad blocker could be used to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I have zero expertise and no real design credentials.

> If these rules don't click for you, then you probably have a long way to go > in your UX journey.

You seem to establish yourself as knowing very little, but then belittle people that might know more than you if they disagree with your rules that you've just made up.

> Wiki and Insights are features I have never used on github and may never > use. They should be hidden by default.

Just because you have never used them doesn't mean nobody has used them, and I read the next line about "intelligently" showing them (since when has a boolean comparison been considered intelligence?) if they've been used before; but then how do those features get discovered?

I only want to sound as rude as you were to the person whose work you've criticised for pageviews, so I'll leave it at: stick to DevOps.

> There is always a flexible solution which caters to both experts and novices > simultaneously.

That's wrong, regardless of how bold you make the word always.

<comment><USER5> > You seem to establish yourself as knowing very little, but then belittle > people that might know more than you if they disagree with your rules that > you've just made up.

Yeah, that "you probably have a long way to go in your UX journey" comment irked me when I read it. I'm glad it's not just me who found it patronising.

Your point about feature discovery is a good one that the article didn't address. It's all well and good hiding less used 'expert' features, but all experts were once novices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > As a senior-devops engineer, I have zero expertise and no real design > credentials. Yet I think I can still do better.

> Far be it from me to tell everyone else how to do their job, but here are > some principles that seem intuitive to me, and maybe designers might > consider them too.

> If these rules don't click for you, then you probably have a long way to go > in your UX journey.

I guess I have a long way to go on my UX journey.

<comment><USER7> It always amazes me how arrogant some people can be without being aware of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> First thing I noticed was that text labels disappeared. Your proposal has a significant drawback right away, and I dislike it.

<comment><USER9> I would take the author's lesson and rewrite your comment as:

>> Your proposal has a significant drawback right away, _as_ I dislike it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You gutted most of the features out of sight that I use as a developer, at least based on that screenshot. I am not a fan of hiding things behind countless links, so, I'm a no on this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for taking the time to write this up and mock up your suggestion. I could not agree more on your changes. (Might have some issues with the position of the new buttons and lack of releases link but that's minor).

The only thing I'd add back somehwere under the description would be the languages the project uses and its labels.

<comment> yoz-y The author removed all functionality they don't use. I could do the same with Photoshop and end up with a tool that nobody wants.

I believe that GitHub has way better metrics for knowing which functionalities have to be put forward.

As a personal note, the author removed the Projects tab, which is the reason I moved back to GitHub from Bitbucket.

<comment><USER11> There is one good point in the post, which is that it would be cool if things not used by the repo were automatically hidden (but still accessible if you want to start using them). Dont have a wiki? Dont show the wiki button (hide it under "more"). Dont use Projects? Hide the Project tab.

<comment> yoz-y That is already the case though. You can disable wikis, projects and issues and if you do so they will not show up. Granted it is kind of opt-out rather than opt-in, but I think that if you are starting with GitHub it is better to see what is available and if you are experienced you know what to do to hide them.

In the end I disagree with the author that gratuitously hiding stuff under some submenu is good if there is no need to save space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There seems to be some general consensus that the github UI is in need of a refresh (which I strongly agree with). Instead of having random sniping via blog post, it would be awesome to see an open design competition where anyone in the community can submit mockups with some bounty for the winner.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's always hard to look at changes once you've gotten used to the status quo. When github first started I hated everything about it, wasn't clear at all how it improved over just using git.

Now that I've been using github a lot (we switched a lot of our corporate repos over to internal githubs) I don't even notice whether the GUI is good or not. I still feel a lot of common tasks are buried in weird icon/button/tab clicking sequences but I've committed them to my lizard brain so now it literally doesn't matter what the GUI elements look like or where they are.

It's the same with other tools that I've used for decades: VS, vi, word, excel. Do they have good GUI? I don't know but it doesn't matter anymore.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it just more, or wouldn't the blame (recent person who touched a file) be more relevant as a file detail than its most recent commit?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't love designers inflicting what they think looks good without having real user usage data and input from customers. Just don't do it.

<comment><USER7> Their words: "As a senior-devops engineer, I have zero expertise and no real design credentials."</comment></comment>


Using AI to scale up human rights research: a case study on Darfur - <AUTHOR> https://citizenevidence.org/2020/07/06/using-artificial-intelligence-to-scale-up-human-rights-research-a-case-study-on-darfur/ <comment><AUTHOR> Last week I published this article on Amnesty International's blog, co- authored with Amnesty's human rights researchers.

This is an example of AI helping to protect Human Rights. We discuss new results on satellite imagery of the highest resolution available commercially (Maxar) to help Amnesty track the extent of the Darfur genocide.

A lot of this work is credited to Julien Cornebise, Daniel Worrall, Micah Farfur, Milena Marin who started Decode-Darfur-1 (DD1) in 2017. (see paper published in NeurIPS 2018 AI for Social Good Workshop: [https://aiforsocialgood.github.io/2018/pdfs/track1/80_aisg_n...](https://aiforsocialgood.github.io/2018/pdfs/track1/80_aisg_neurips2018.pdf)). To Laure Delisle, ZL, Alex Kuefler who continued the project (DD2) in 2019. Buffy Price and I helped bring DD2 to the finish line.

We have no code yet publicly available, not a dataset to reproduce this study - main reasons being that training Maxar imagery come with permission for publicity only. That said, the backbone approach is based on a ResNet50 (pre- trained on ImageNet), so data licensing is the main blocker.

Happy to answer any questions.</comment>


'Vocal fry' creeping into US speech - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/vocal-fry-creeping-into-us-speec.html?ref=hp

<comment><USER2> Don't know what that article is talking about. I've been aware of the 'vocal fry' for as long as I've had pubic hair. (Several decades) I always thought it was something girls subconsciously did to their voice to sound sultry and sexy—usually accompanied by slower speech. In other words, phone sex voice. Nothing new.

<comment><USER3> "Probably not new" also seems to be Language Log's conclusion: <http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3626></comment></comment>


Samsung farms out more phones to fend off rivals - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-china-focus/made-in-china-samsung-farms-out-more-phones-to-fend-off-rivals-idUSKBN1XR0TJ <comment><USER2> [http://en.thelec.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=350](http://en.thelec.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=350)</comment>


I have 50 email addresses - <AUTHOR> https://idbloc.co/blog/2019/04/13/I-have-50-email-addresses.html <comment><USER2> I also have many email addresses, for similar reason. However, I run all of them on my own computer; messages sent to them cannot be accessed remotely.

I also set up each individual address manually (by editing the /etc/aliases file). If it receives spam, I will remove it, and the server will tell them that address doesn't exists.

I don't really trust Google to do my email, but I do not need to do so; I don't like their email software anyways, so that is why I use a different one.

<comment><AUTHOR> This makes total sense and there are a lot of people that do this. Unfortunately most people don't have the time or the skills to do it themselves, [https://idbloc.co](https://idbloc.co) helps fill that gap for those people

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. But wouldn't me passing all my mail through one provider kind of defeat the purpose

<comment><AUTHOR> Not entirely, it's a security / convenience trade off:

\- if you don't want to trust anyone, email is a lot of work- you need your own email server and domain, and you can use the catch all option

\- if you are willing to trust only google, gmail plus addresses work, but then you lose most of the security and privacy benefits, because it's trival to deduce your email address

\- if you're willing to trust a 3rd party (in this case idbloc) then that gets you highest level of convenience & security, but you do need to trust idbloc</comment></comment>


Show HN: PyGeno, a Python Package for Precision Medicine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tariqdaouda/pyGeno <comment><USER2> Apologies for a trivial objection: but the serpentine icon associated with this, likely otherwise fine, package embodies an odd little annoyance to all us structural biochemists: It depicts the DNA helix as left-handed. This is a rare form of DNA at best, most likely an unlucky graphical choice, and causes many nerdy folk to suspect that you don't know what you're doing. If you think i'm nuts (and hey maybe...) there are entire websites devoted to this error, because for some reason it's a common error and makes our eyes bleed [wink]: [http://users.fred.net/tds/leftdna/](http://users.fred.net/tds/leftdna/)

<comment><USER3> Other nerdy folks will be happy to grant that an icon is merely that and not intended to be a perfect embodiment of a molecule.

<comment><USER4> Those folks lack expertise in the domain. Sequences are simply abstract representations of real molecules, and knowledge of sequence means very little without exercising effort and rigor to understand structure and function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damn, that's a really cool logo they came up with. Looks to me like combining the snake from the Rod of Asclepius, plus Python, plus the DNA double helix and the mouse snake head (which I'm guessing is supposed to stand represent using computers for medicine). Whoever made it, that's pretty awesome.

Oh yeah, the actual package is pretty cool too ;)

<comment><USER6> That logo is awesome. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> 100% the work of: [http://www.sawssankaddoura.com/](http://www.sawssankaddoura.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just FYI, I found multiple spelling errors in the documentation and readme.

specically -> specifically

Therefor -> therefore

Instanciating -> Instantiating

aned -> and

Also the first sentence in the readme isn't grammatically correct. This is a cool library, but I think it's important to have these sorts of things cleaned up :)

<comment><USER8> contribute a pull request?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks to the persons who submitted pull requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As far as I can tell, this is just a python wrapper for common bioinformatics tools?

I feel like this might not be sophisticated enough for bioinformaticians, but too complex for the casual user or clinician. Unfortunately, proper bioinformatics requires a heafty dose of background knowledge. If you don't understand what you are aligning and filtering, and why, then the results will always just be a shot in the dark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually it's not. It has been written from scratch including the ORM that runs in the background ([https://github.com/tariqdaouda/rabaDB](https://github.com/tariqdaouda/rabaDB)). The goal was to have a powerful optimized tool with 0 dependencies that can be easily deployed on any platform. It was designed to be flexible and powerful enough to be appealing to both bioinformaticians and casual users, and it used daily here at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (www.iric.ca) by professional bioinformaticians, as well as biologists who have learned to program using it.

PyGeno was already used for two peer reviewed articles:

-Impact of genomic polymorphisms on the repertoire of human MHC class I-associated peptides. Granados, Sriranganadane, Daouda et al. 2014, Nat. Comm

-MHC I-associated peptides preferentially derive from transcripts bearing miRNA response elements. Granados et al. 2012, Blood

And four others are on the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Documentation: [http://pygeno.iric.ca/](http://pygeno.iric.ca/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ;)

<comment><USER10> You're welcome. It's an interesting project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's times like these that I wish I had a better understanding of biology/chemistry/genetics. I fancy myself a Python/data person, does anyone have any advice on what to read to begin understanding how to utilize a package like this?

<comment><USER12> Why not take an online course? [https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=bioinformatics](https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=bioinformatics)</comment></comment>


The Decline of MySQL? - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekgumbo.com/2010/11/06/the-decline-of-mysql/

<comment><USER2> Hegemonies don't end because they get weak, they end because something else gets stronger.

Oracle's been doing good work at the boring task of making mysql work better on large multiprocessor machines. They've done a lot more to improve mysql than Sun ever did. (For that matter, Oracle's finally putting lambdas into Java too...)

Postgresql is catching up, but like the Python and Ruby programmers who whine about PHP, team Postgresql has never seriously asked the question of why MySQL has had more market traction than Postgresql. (HINT: it's not just hype, for many people, MySQL was the product they wanted)

And then there is the whole half-baked NoSQL peanut gallery.

You can point to some success stories but if you pick the average NoSQL product and have run-of-the-mill results you might experience spending 8 months building a product and then discovering the performance sucks with any number of servers. Or getting a phone call Saturday evening from the CTO like "Dude, where's my data?"

I wanted to like mongodb, it's got a beautiful design and even some funding -- on paper it's the closest thing to a company that could take on MySQL.

But then there was the terrible sprint where I rebuilt something I'd built in MySQL, and despite mongodb supposedly having the correct kind of index, queries in mongodb took 20 sec where MySQL took 0.03 sec.

The competition isn't quite ready yet.

<comment><USER3> _(HINT: it's not just hype, for many people, MySQL was the product they wanted)_

Just curious, could you explain what it is that people want from MySQL that they don't get from Postgres?

I (and another team member) recently moved a big project from MySQL to Postgres due to deadlocks, failure to respect constraints and similar issues, but I'm curious what I might be giving up.

So far the main thing I miss is is "UPDATE foo INNER JOIN bar ON foo.id=bar.foo_id SET foo.x={x}, bar.y={y}...".

<comment><USER4> It's not really a functionality issue. MySQL just works.

The PHP API is incredibly direct and there's little development overhead.

Postgres on the other hand always felt kludgy for small projects. Just getting it up and running and creating databases took longer than with mysql. And phpMyAdmin is a tool most people are familiar with, for which I can't even think of the postgres analogue.

Pardon my butchering of the phrase but postgres is a hammer and mysql is a scalpel, and most projects call for a scalpel.

<comment><USER3> Compare:

        $ sudo aptitude install mysql-server
        $ echo "CREATE DATABASE dbname;" | mysql

        $ sudo aptitude install postgresql-9.1
        $ createdb -U postgres dbname

        mysql_query("SELECT * FROM foo...");

        pg_query($db_handle, "SELECT * FROM foo...");

<http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql/4>

[http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/howdoi/how-do-i-use-php- wit...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/howdoi/how-do-i-use-php-with- postgresql/110)

I haven't used phpMyAdmin, so I won't comment on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Error establishing a database connection

Complements the post title perfectly :)

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the things that won't change immediately, but will change over the long term is the availability of people familiar with MySQL.

With the cost structure described in the article, MySQL will start disappearing from university database courses. I used it when I taught databases. (It's bad enough that some of them use Access, but at least MySQL was supported for most.) This is double trouble, as MySQL Workbench was an introductory tool for many database features.

This is the reason (IMNSHO) Apple spent so much money in the 90s putting their software in schools, and why Microsoft has done the same this century at the university level. Software is a "gateway drug", and Oracle may be killing that.

<comment><USER7> "This is the reason (IMNSHO) Apple spent so much money in the 90s putting their software in schools"

I've known that to be the case as well. I was able to find this to back up the point that you make:

<http://www.marketingapple.com/>

 _"In the late 1980s, shortly after Steve launched the original Macintosh he faced a similar problem to the one we were facing ten years later. Very few developers were interested in building software for a platform that was much smaller than the standard at the time (in 1987 it was MS-DOS, in 1997 it was Windows). Steve's answer was simple: encourage higher education institutions to build software for the platform and hook students on the Macintosh, which they would later bring to their jobs after graduation. The AUC worked exceedingly well then, and so I suggested to Steve that we rebuild a similar program, and he emphatically agreed."_

<comment><USER8> Counterpoint: Acorn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this news?

        Posted on November 6, 2010

<comment><USER10> Well since mariuz is the developer for some Firebird admin tool (another open source database) I'm going to take a guess that spreading FUD about the most popular open source database is good business.

<comment><AUTHOR> We all knew that oracle mysql branch will go closed source and this is about that old prediction with the fact that now it really happens heroku is on postgresql engineyard is on postgresql can you spot some pattern here ? people started to leave mysql it's true that at a slower pace [http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2012/postgresql-is-our-new- de...](http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2012/postgresql-is-our-new-default/)

the most popular ? hmm i think the sqlite is more popular with more deploys at least on mobiles : android,ios ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Had been using mysql for 8 years. The product has improved over the years, and is still very simple to use. It would take a compelling reason for me to move to Postgresql. And right now, I don't see any. I want shit done!

<comment><USER12> Because nobody 'gets shit done' in Postgresql...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "As part of European Agreement, Oracle will maintain MySQL dual licensing > until 2015."

> "Oracle also striped out some of the capabilities from the MySQL Open Source > version, like the NDB storage engine, for example, and now charges for > this."

Can they do this? Dumb it down before 2015?

If they can, what would stop them from striping out more and bigger capabilities, effectively killing the Open Source version while maintaining dual licensing on paper?

</comment><comment><USER14> I do not think that MySQL will be in decline until PostgreSQL has a suitable cross-platform GUI that doesn't cost $80. It is easy to manage MySQL due to programs like PhpMyAdmin and Sequel Pro, but PostgreSQL lacks such software. While the early adopter crowd has long since moved away from MySQL, at the moment the software is too easy for more general users to abandon.

<comment><USER15> really? have you ever tried PgAdmin?

<comment><USER14> I tried using it, but it was quite a rigmarole to get it to work with Heroku.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This page gave me an error connecting to the database. Ironic twist, or was there some other point?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing this wasn't intentional, but it was still a good laugh.

<comment><USER18> f5

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hard to comment on this and not sound like a "hater", but wasn't the decline of MySQL as an open source solution pretty much inevitable the second Oracle acquired it? Oracle have handed other open source DB providers a gift, let's hope they make the most of it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wp MySQL error. Lol</comment>


Integer Factorization on Laptop (Iterative) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bosons-riemann/kosen-rufu

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/bosons-riemann/riemann](https://github.com/bosons- riemann/riemann) is the recursive version of the code for ease of understanding. this can factorize any number on earth in acceptable amounts of time provided your machine stacklimit allows

[https://github.com/bosons-riemann/kosen-rufu](https://github.com/bosons- riemann/kosen-rufu) (branch: laptop) can factorize any number on earth on a simple laptop running redis server.

sharing the complete code , just in case somebody wants to use it and I am not around

This version of the code can truly run on a laptop

[https://github.com/bosons-riemann/riemann/wiki/Integer- Facto...](https://github.com/bosons-riemann/riemann/wiki/Integer- Factorization-on-a-Laptop)

is a short writeup of the logic behind the code if you are interested.

</comment><comment><USER2>
        main.cpp : Main Driver Code, reads the input number
                   to be factorized, and tries to factorize
                   it. If it fails , declares number as Prime

Have you successfully factored any of the RSA challenge numbers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Now factorising Ras 1536. Will post the results when done

<comment><USER2> I'm fascinated by your claim:

        this can factorize any number on earth in
        acceptable amounts of time provided your
        machine stacklimit allows

You know factoring integers is thought to be a hard problem, right?

I look forward to your result of factoring RSA 1536.

I'm interested as to why you chose that rather than RSA-240, which should be much easier as it only has 795 bits as opposed to 1536 bits.

<comment><AUTHOR> I need volunteers to test out my code on their laptops/servers. Those interested, skype me: subhendra.basu, whatsapp: 9971304836, message me with phone number, or email me : firstname.lastname@example.com this is purely voluntary and there is no monetary benefit as such . but I will include the name of the person who helped me in the acknowledgements. Note that I have already open sourced my code to factorize prohibitively large integers. typical run time for a 4000 digit number might run to 24 hours. So think before volunteering.

<comment><USER2> I see no evidence at all that you've made any kind of breakthrough. Current belief in the factoring world is that the GNFS is the fastest way to factor integers - are you claiming you can do better?

From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_numbers#RSA-2048](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_numbers#RSA-2048) :

        RSA-2048 has 617 decimal digits (2,048 bits).
        It is the largest of the RSA numbers and carried
        the largest cash prize for its factorization,
        US$200,000. The largest factored RSA number is
        768 bits long (232 decimal digits), and the
        RSA-2048 may not be factorizable for many years
        to come, unless considerable advances are made
        in integer factorization or computational power
        in the near future.

And here from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization_records](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization_records) :

        On December 12, 2009, a team including researchers
        from the CWI, the EPFL, INRIA and NTT in addition
        to the authors of the previous record factored
        RSA-768, a 232-digit semiprime.  They used the
        equivalent of almost 2000 years of computing on
        a single core 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron.

You're saying that a 4000 digit number may take 24 hours?

I'd be interested to see at least _some_ evidence that you're doing something better before dedicating any time to your project.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Vim use Vimscript - <AUTHOR> I've been wondering about this recently and haven't seen a good answer. The question might be better put, "Why doesn't Vim support other languages for scripting?" I've found Vimscript illegible and difficult to debug, and the thought of implementing a meaningful project in it scares me off. Emacs has lisp, is there a reason Vim is stuck with Vimscript? <comment><USER2> It is probably primarily due to age and inertia. It is at version 8 now, an eternity in software years. While it might be easy to bind your favorite scripting language to an app today, that surely wasn't so straightforward when "vim" began. And once more than a few people have invested great effort to create useful plug-ins, you would not be helping anyone by trying to completely rewrite the extension mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neovim supports Lua. Neovim != VIM, I know, but still something worth looking into.</comment>


Submerged Servers: Green Revolution Cooling - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/03/17/submerged-servers-green-revolution-cooling/

<comment><USER2> Using 2.5x as much floor space as a standard cabinet, I have to question the scalability of a solution like this.</comment>


Webpack 5: Module Federation. A Game-changer to JavaScript architecture - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ScriptedAlchemy/bcdd30e02669 <comment><USER2> Not creating an account on Medium just to read your article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, not my article though. Here's the original proposal for webpack on github:

Merge Proposal: Module federation and code sharing between bundles. Many builds act as one #10352

[https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/10352](https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/10352)</comment></comment>


Two-thirds of iOS apps disable ATS - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/two-thirds-of-ios-apps-disable-ats-an-ios-security-feature/ <comment><USER2> Adtech is hurting humanity both technically and culturally.</comment>


Square Inch Project: 1 Square Inch 20Msps Oscilloscope - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.io/project/160802-1-square-inch-20msps-oscilloscope <comment><AUTHOR> "For the Return of the Square Inch Project, we are designing a 20Msps PIC32MZ based oscilloscope that is only 1" by 1" including an OLED screen."</comment>


Ask HN: What are you biggest complaints with search on GitHub? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The code search is very poor. Case sensitivity, whole word, regexp search...

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes nobody has made what I'm looking for.</comment>


How to Hack Udemy to Get the First Customers to Your Product - <AUTHOR> http://projectpivotal.com/how-one-course-got-me-1000-sign-ups-with-1-hour-of-marketing/

<comment><USER2> do you have any more of those free coupons for your course?

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoot me an email at tvlevell [at] gmail.com and I'll send you one!</comment></comment>


Stop pretending about passion 	 - <AUTHOR> http://romansnitko.posterous.com/stop-pretending-about-passion <comment><USER2> Utopian thinking. If you needed a job, you would do the same.</comment>


Handlestuffandwritetofile() is a total mistake - <AUTHOR> http://harunurhan.github.io/programming/2014/04/20/handlestuffandwritetofile()-is-total-mistake/

<comment><USER2> > Routines should have only one purpose, If a routine does more than one thing > then it is better split it into individual routines.

Yes, unless the routines's purpose is to decide which action should be taken, and unless each action is so small that branching to other routines is inefficient. I can't count the number of times I've seen someone pontificate about a rule that isn't a rule.

If the OP's views had merit, there would be no switch statements or function hashtables.

<comment><USER3> a routine that makes decisions on what action should be taken can still have a good name, like "routeOrder" or "dispatchWork". In C, inlining works if you are really worried about fn call overhead. No problem with the notion here, just... its 2014 not 1990.</comment></comment>


Did the Guardian use Twitter as a weapon of free speech? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/42350/did-the-guardian-use-twitter-as-a-weapon-of-free-speech/

<comment><USER2> "Even back in the _18th century_ the question about freedom of speech and the citizen's right to know what was happening in the halls of its parliament was fought and won by journalist and MP John Wilkes. The end result of all that was the _1688_ Bill of Rights."

Oh dear.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite possibly.

A more important question: is that a bad thing?</comment>


How Telephone Directories Transformed America - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/28/by-the-book

<comment><USER2> Ah telephone directories, the Google of the past era. They even evolved archaic forms of SEO based on the alphabetic ordering of entries: Here in Germany, we have several regional franchise chains in the emergency lock and key service "industry", with names like "A.A.A. SERVICE" and even "A.A.A.A.A.A GmbH". Register your entire company under a silly name and one of the top entries in the yellow pages is yours, no extra advertising cost.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've got a friend who worked for a while, last year, selling yellow page ads to businesses.

I was baffled.

Does anyone still use the yellow pages?

Well, I do.

SmartFlix.com has the ground floor of a two story building, and every year, the yellow pages folks leave four or five shrink-wrapped bundles of directories in our lobby.

NONE of these get opened up.

NOONE in the building wants even a single copy.

I usually take an entire shrink-wrapped bundle home, and use it to start fires with all winter long.

<comment><USER4> I'm writing this comment on a laptop elevated to a better eye level by four Yellow Pages.</comment></comment>


OS X Beta Seed Program - <AUTHOR> https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, all it takes to enroll is a shell command:

        sudo softwareupdate --set-catalog "https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.9publicseed-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz"

I previously stumbled upon this URL via a Google Search. (Remember to use your `robots.txt` folks!)

Aside: Seeing as how this circumvents the normal sign-up process, enrolling this way probably does not comply with the program or software license agreement.

<comment><USER3> Undo command, for those wondering:

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --clear-catalog

<comment><USER4> Does this you let downgrade too? (I'd presume not)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully these beta builds will be ineligible to write AppStore reviews or leave ratings, especially if this is ever extended to iOS. It was quite sad (and no doubt frustrating for developers) to see apps rated 1 star because "GARBAGE! DOESN'T WORK IN IOS7!!!!1" before iOS was even GM.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this makes me so happy that I am not in the App Store right now. But for the same reason, I have to assume that this will only be relatively late-stage betas — encouraging ordinary schmoes to install known-unstable versions of your OS is a recipe for bad PR no matter how many caveats you throw at them.

<comment><USER7> that's what I'm assuming but Apple PR hasn't responded with clarification. Pre-release doesn't have the same stigma as some of the builds, so that's encouraging.

I'd assume it's not just for bug testing but also user-feedback on specific features/functions/usability issues. For instance, the 4K scaling in 10.9.3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has been around since at least 2011, is there anything new now? Did they remove the request invitation roadblock now?

Also, does anyone know how security updates are handled? Would suck to be stuck on an unpatched beta while gotofail/heartbleed/Security Update 2014-002 type bugs are in the wild.

<comment><USER9> The new part is that it doesn't require a membership to the Mac Dev Program, but is open to everyone with a free Apple Account.

<comment><USER8> I thought appleseed never required a dev program account - but that membership was granted semi-randomly based on applying for an invite?

<comment><USER7> It was open for certain apps like Safari and iTunes, but not OS X.

Prior to the Mac Dev program restructuring at $99 for everyone (back when you got hardware discounts), I'm pretty sure that at least some betas were available to non-developers, but I might be misremembering things.

<comment><USER8> According to this Ars article, the AppleSeed program for OSX has existed since at least 2011 for non-developers (and for other apps since 2003, apparently). It's a different program than the (paid/registered) developers betas, I think.

But I think you had to apply for an invitation, and hope to get lucky and get picked to join.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/04/appleseed-gives- regular...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/04/appleseed-gives-regular-joes- pre-release-access-to-mac-os-x-lion/)

<comment><USER10> AppleSeed, seperate from the developer program, has traditionally been for Apple's employers and partners, giving them early access to software and hardware.

It's more or less an 'invite only' program where Apple will tell you (or your employer) is allowed access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mark my words, this is the first step. I predict we'll see iOS beta installs as an option in iOS 8. Looks like buying TestFlight paid off.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious how serious they intend to be about the NDA-ish section:

"don't blog, post screen shots, tweet or publicly post information about the pre-release Apple software, and don't discuss the pre-release Apple software with or demonstrate it to others who are not in the OS X Beta Seed Program."

<comment><USER12> > I'm curious how serious they intend to be about the NDA-ish section

These terms are standard for all the Apple developer programs. In practice, they have been largely unenforced due to the definition they use for Confidential Information:

> Information that otherwise would be deemed Confidential Information but (a) > is generally and legitimately available to the public through no fault or > breach of yours, (b) is generally made available to the public by Apple, (c) > is independently developed by you without the use of any Confidential > Information, (d) was rightfully obtained from a third party who had the > right to transfer or disclose it to you without limitation, or (e) any third > party software and/or documentation provided to you by Apple and accompanied > by licensing terms that do not impose confidentiality obligations on the use > or disclosure of such software and/or documentation will not be considered > Confidential Information under this Agreement.

Clause (a) generally protects anything interesting to talk about, because all the rumor mill sites have full run-downs within a few hours of release. Very rare and circumstantial cases aside[1], publishing the contents of pre-release software on such sites has been considered well within legitimate public interest.

[1]: The most recent case I can think of where Apple was able to go after a rumor mill site for divulging trade secrets (and, more importantly, have it stick) was the when they got Think Secret to shut down in a settlement related to its leaking of the original Mac mini.

<comment><USER13> Yea, I wish that Tim Cook would review the secrecy at Apple and look at what part of it is really needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The agreement mentions that (unless you disable it) Apple will collect various technical data about your system. Makes sense. I'm curious, however, why that data includes, if Location Services is enabled, "the real-time geographic location of your computer and location search queries."

I'm not sure if there's a way to just exclude location information from the diagnostic info, without disabling location services for all apps? I'm happy to share information about my system configuration with them, but I'm not sure what's so helpful about my location data.

<comment><USER15> For diagnosing any bugs with Location Services, I'd presume.

It's a beta build after all...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not enough developers using the betas and providing feedback I guess? Running iOS betas has always seemed far more popular.

<comment><USER17> It's probably because iOS betas attract a lot of non-devs. OS X market share is pretty low compared to iOS.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it has anything to do with market share, the iOS betas attract more users because they offer more attractive new features. For better or worse, iOS 7 was a huge redesign and many people wanted their phone to look "cool" early.

Trying to explain to non-techies why Mavericks is better is much harder, aside from better battery life.

<comment><USER18> For me, the standout feature in Mavericks is the "Ram Doubler" feature (for the old fogies among us who even remember what Ram Doubler was) -- lets you get away with having less RAM.

Given that Apple now solders the RAM and charges relatively high prices for it, the memory compression is a pretty nice feature to have.

<comment><USER19> And here I thought I was the only one in these parts old enough to remember Ram Doubler, which I do, fondly.

<comment><USER20> Although not RAM, but shows my age, how about Stacker?? (HD compression when I had a 20mb HD)

<comment><USER18> I was such a happy camper when the Mac version of Stacker came out. That was the one thing I envied about my DOS friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I joined. The OS X Update Seed offered for download is 10.9.3 (13D45a).

<comment><USER22> That's the same seed offered on the paid side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For those who've heard of the AppleSeed program and are wondering how this Beta Seed Program is different:

1\. AppleSeed users get a separate private discussion forum and other privileges related to bug submission and tracking.

2\. Bug reports from AppleSeed Program members are considered with a higher importance (which means they would most likely get to the appropriate teams with lesser filtering).

3\. AppleSeed Program members have now been asked not to sign up for this Beta Seed Program because of the "better benefits" that they already have.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting. I hope this is one step closer to Apple opening up a "Beta" App Store, where every developer can submit betas without waiting for app review.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know how this differs from the seeds already available through developer.apple.com?

<comment><USER26> You need to be a paying OS X dev member to access the seeds on developer.apple.com.

<comment><USER27> I think what OP meant was if there was a difference in the content of the beta programs.

<comment><USER7> Same seed and arguably easier to install (assuming you're using your primary system and not a machine dedicated to betas).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Note that it's kind of pointless to sign up for this if you aren't currently on your Mac, since part of the process is downloading a Beta Access Utility.

</comment><comment><USER29> Any insight on how stable the pre-releases are? I'm tempted to sign-up because updates seem very infrequent on OSX, but I'd hate to have to fight more bugs when working.

<comment><USER30> Later betas are usually pretty solid. Early betas are usually absurd messes - iOS7 beta 1 was, IMO, nearly unusable.

I wouldn't let any early Apple beta anywhere near a critical production device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> question is: does it fix the infamous kernel_task problem?

<comment><USER32> High CPU in kernel_task means one of your CPU cores is being force-idled because the computer is too hot or the wrong charger is being used. It's not a bug.

(There could be bugs causing excessive CPU/GPU usage heating up the machine. This is the kind of thing you'd want to report!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anybody know how to uninstall if at some point I decide I don't want to participate?

<comment><USER34> may the FAQ be with you.

»How do I leave the OS X Beta Seed Program? To leave the program, visit the Leave Program page and follow the instructions to remove your Apple ID and your computers from the OS X Beta Seed Program. This will stop pre-release updates from appearing in the Mac App Store on your computers.« – [https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/faq](https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/faq)

<comment><USER35> That's not an uninstall.

<comment><USER36> If you don't already know how to roll back an entire disk image or OS from a backup, you probably shouldn't install the beta.

It won't be that different anyway. You'll get the opportunity to check for resolved bugs, and report new ones. If that doesn't interest you, there's no benefit.

<comment><USER35> Agreed entirely, but leaving the beta program isn't the same thing as removing the beta.

<comment><USER36> No, it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This doesn't sound appealing unless it gives access to the next major point release. I'm sure only a marginal number of people are interested in testing 10.9.x compared to 10.10

<comment><USER14> I agree, but point releases can occasionally have new features. 10.9.3 apparently enables 60 Hz 4k output on late 2013 macbook pros. 10.9.2 is limited to 30 Hz which apparently feels very laggy.

<comment><USER38> Do you have a source on that? Are any other models getting 4K 60 Hz output besides late 2013 rMBP?

<comment><USER14> Google and you'll find a bunch, but sure, here's one:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/03/first- os-x-10-9-3-beta-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/03/first- os-x-10-9-3-beta-comes-with-improved-4k-display-support/)

60 Hz 4K appears to require DisplayPort 1.2, which I believe is currently only available on the late 2013 rMBP and the new Mac Pros.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Hlspy, a Simple headless browser based on qtwebengine(chromium) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kanishka-linux/hlspy <comment><USER2> Very nice, bookmarked - this will be great for scraping 'advanced' websites!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Wipe Any PC in 2 Minutes [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls0fdUr885E <comment><USER2> This is a strange video.

1\. They recommend a $45 USB key to erase a drive. It's essentially DBAN, which you could create with any USB key you have sitting around in a few minutes. They seem to understand this in the video, so why do they recommend the $45 key?

2\. They also mention how manufacturers have secure erase for cleaning an SSD, and how writing over an entire drive can cause unnecessary wear and tear. But, then they use this $45 key to write over an SSD.

So, I'm confused. They use and recommend this $45 key to erase an SSD by writing over it for a few hours. But, the freely available secure write tool from the manufacturer will safely erase all the data in literally a few seconds and cause no additional wear and tear. They seem to understand this, so why the recommendation?

What you should actually do...

If you need to erase an HDD, download DBAN on any USB key, and wait for it to write over the drive.

If you need to erase an SSD, download a secure erase tool, and wait a few seconds.</comment>


An Inside Look at Google's Self-Driving Cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE

<comment><USER2> The end of the video is what really got me. I won't spoil it, but it's worth watching all the way through.</comment>


Project Ihmehimmeli: Temporal Coding in Spiking Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/09/project-ihmehimmeli-temporal-coding-in.html <comment><USER2> There is somewhat related work performed by Bledsoe and Browning in 1959 [1] and later discussed by Dress [2]

[1] [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pattern-recognition- an...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pattern-recognition-and-reading- by-machine-Bledsoe-Browning/f6e7311b9e560f3a12c895b751d275bac161b31b) [2] [https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6742527](https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6742527) and [http://soton.mpeforth.com/flag/jfar/vol5/no3/article7.pdf](http://soton.mpeforth.com/flag/jfar/vol5/no3/article7.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> As a Finn, I really love the name of this project. Seems quite appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER4> I heard some Chinese researchers have really been focusing on spiking networks. How do these results compare to the leading edge in that country? Or maybe to the leading edge in general from less famous groups?</comment>


David Attenborough has betrayed the living world he loves - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/david-attenborough-world-environment-bbc-films <comment><USER2> Rubbish. Or show me a single series from the last three decades without the mandatory remarks of threat and need for action. There's plenty enough, and more, of it for the context.

Attenborough's thoughtful, tasteful presentations about the beauty and value of nature has done and will always have done more for environmental awareness and conservation than this ideologue nobody.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did I know it was George Monbiot before even opening it... Just watch the last episode of Planet Earth season 2 ffs and stop whining.</comment>


Ask HN: What licences does my statup need to hold customers money for them? (US) - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on kind of an 'eWallet', similar to what the Bitcoin community is doing, but for USD. It's just a small project now, but I am considering launching it. I doubt it'll go anywhere. What kind of licences to companies need in the U.S. to hold customers money, like a savings account would? I know getting a banking licence is almost impossible, but I hear I don't need one to do this. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure about the license, but you can use BancBox to do it. (Not affiliated, just met them a few weeks ago in Austin and love the use case).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think egold got in trouble for not having a money tranmitters lisence or something.you might search about egold</comment>


How Plentyoffish Conquered Online Dating (Hint: Its Founder Works Just One Hour a Day) - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-in.html <comment><USER3> This is Frind's response to this on his blog --

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----- I found myself reading an entrepreneurship forum today talking about the Inc Article. I thought I would post here as well as some others might find this useful.

1\. I hardly call myself lazy or a sloth. I built the site in 2 weeks 5 years ago. Since then and even now all the user interaction happens in only a handful of pages. At the end of the day there are only so many ways in which you can reorder the search results. It's like trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic, it accomplishes nothing.

2\. The only way to grow a site once its running its self is to have brilliant ideas. Great ideas don't come from sitting in front of the computer screen for 8 hours of the day wondering what to do next. You have to inspired or have a really deep understanding of what is going on. So a Brilliant idea may start a business but you need to have many many more brilliant ideas if you are going to go from one of many to an industry leader.

3\. Opportunity/luck doesn't come to you, You are the one that creates it. I debated with myself for weeks before posting the million dollar check, and I figured the best way of doing that was by creating a blog and give myself a voice. I knew my free site competitors where going to venture capitalists and asking for huge sums of money, and my competitors where claiming to be first movers etc. After posting that check their chances of raising money went to 0. The wall street journal called after reading that post. WSJ article came out, next day the Today Show Called. The next week my total US site traffic was up over 50% and kept on growing. In Fact many things i've written on my blog have made it into the national papers. Inc Magazine story was a result of my blog, and i'll be going on a national talk show next week again as a direct result of my blog. I post a lot of things on my blog, many of which seem like bragging, but when reporters read that it gives them an idea for a story which is the whole point of a blog anyways.

4\. Work smart not hard. If all you do is work hard making incremental improvements you are just like a hamster running in a wheel and never really getting anywhere. If you want to get somewhere you need to come up with great ideas, or something that is significantly better than the competition and execute on that. Then you go back again and do the same thing over and over. Far too many people think entrepreneurship is like an attendance award, where you can win just by showing up.

<comment><USER4> so what great ideas did POF have that noone else was doing? Seems to me that the guy is completely discounting luck, when in reality his site would be nowhere without it. Luck plays a huge part...and almost every single successful person accounts their success to some degree of luck

<comment><USER5> I would try not to look at 'luck' as some random, mystical force that just happens to favor some people. Instead:

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - <USER2>

Could be interpreted in this situation that he was in the right place, with the right idea, at the right time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now where have I heard that story before? Only mabye about a million times? Hopefully with this submission the last three people on the planet who didn't know it yet have been "filled in", so that we can turn to other things.

The funny thing is that this "story" is probably the single most effective marketing factor for plentyoffish. Nobody would have heard about it if it wasn't for the story...

<comment><USER7> A million times, yes, but this in particular is the best I've read. Wish I could go and retroactively delete the past ones :)

<comment><USER6> Fair enough. I guess it was just the "hint: he only works one hour a day" that ticked me off...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For an apparently really smart guy with all the time and money in the world, he doesn't seem to do much of... anything.

Congratulations, you created a pedestrian website which makes gobs of money and requires 10 minutes per day of "work" to keep the current iteration running.

Now, _do something interesting_. Because, I'm sorry, but Plenty of Fish _isn't_.

<comment><USER9> Not everyone can do something as interesting as selling tickets :)

Seriously though, what would you do after you finish your hard slog?

<comment><USER10> That's not fair. I completely see his point. As I was reading this, I also realized that this guy's kind of an empty void. And that bugged me at first. But those same qualities probably helped him out a good bit.

<comment><USER9> A lot of people say they want to change the world, then do something that won't. I often hear excuses how a bug tracking application or a twitter app will change the world - come on, be realistic. Your simple webapp just won't change the world in any real way.

Very few things actually help or change the world - and those that really want to change the world are doing it already. If you want to change the world, go do it - you don't need money to make a difference. What are you wasting your time for?

Full props to the pof guy, he is obviously doing what pushes his buttons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm calling bullsh^H^H on the one hour a day of work... Markus is the king of obfuscating his business practices with strategic misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting:

When searching for a prospective mate, one is inundated with pictures that are not cropped or properly resized. Instead, headshots are either comically squished or creepily elongated, a carnivalesque effect that makes it difficult to quickly size up potential mates.

Frind is aware of his site's flaws but isn't eager to fix them. "There's no point in making trivial adjustments," he says. Frind's approach -- and the reason he spends so little time actually working -- is to do no harm. This has two virtues: First, you can't waste money if you are not doing anything. And second, on a site this big and this complex, it is impossible to predict how even the smallest changes might affect the bottom line. Fixing the wonky images, for instance, might actually hurt Plenty of Fish. Right now, users are compelled to click on people's profiles in order to get to the next screen and view proper headshots. That causes people to view more profiles and allows Frind, who gets paid by the page view, to serve more ads. "The site works," he says. "Why should I change what works?"

<comment><USER13> "The business works," said Mr. Peterson, owner of the East Lansing Horse and Carriage company in 1891. "Why should I change what works?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best quote:

"I don't listen to the users," he says. "The people who suggest things are the vocal minority who have stupid ideas that only apply to their little niches."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also accompanying video from the photo shoot:

<http://www.inc.com/inctv/2009/01/oh-shoot-markus-frind.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> It sounds like one of the more overlooked parts of that story is his use of SEO (From March to November 2003, his site expanded from 40 members to 10,000). 10K is enough to cross the chicken-egg chasm, which is probably a make or break for this kind of site.

I wonder how hard it would be to do something similar today using SEO.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't see how anyone can read this blog post by Markus from 2006 about faking site traffic rankings and not think his current traffic stats are severely manipulated.

[http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/competitive- int...](http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/competitive-intelligence- and-counter-intelligence/)

I'm not saying I don't respect what Markus has done. I just don't think his stats are anything near what is reported.

<comment><USER17> Isn't that post about how he tried to prohibit people with the alexa toolbar etc. to enter his site? This would actually decrease the number of pageviews these services would show for pof. I wouldn't consider this an argument not to believe his own numbers by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> i assume there are tons of millionaires out there who do as little (if not less!) work than Frind. espeically considering inheritance and resting on the laurels of subordinates or slaves (re: recent alavery article that appeared on hn a few weeks back).

the neat part is that Frind very strategically set this up for himself. maybe this will encourage more people to value smart moves over cramming work-hours (mindless or otherwise).

</comment><comment><USER19> An interesting note about the dating market is that there is almost no consistent repeat business. People don't get fed up with the site and leave - they either get a match, or they don't. If anything, people might return after a few months because they found a moderately successful relationship. To my mind, that's precisely the reason something like this can work. If Facebook had a lousy interface, people would eventually lose interest because they wouldn't stay continually interested. But for PoF, that's just not a factor. They come for the results, and if it works, the interface is irrelevant. They'll be back regardless, and if they aren't, there's always more people looking for a date.

</comment><comment><USER20> plentyoffish is one of the worst websites I've tried, dating or not, the style of it is like something from 1999. Random technical problems that if you ask about go unanswered or you're told to shut up, if not the thread is deleted.

The forums are a mess too, bickering and thread closures I mentioned seem to happen all the time. I left when I got tired of witnessing personal attacks on members...by the moderators!

</comment><comment><USER21> That's quite an amazing feat that he accomplished. The message rings true. Find something people need, and provide it.</comment>


Reboxing iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/04/10/reboxing/

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, though I wonder if you really need to buy it to realise that you don't have a use for it. I suppose a trial run is reasonable, in case it has some magic use you don't consider till you have it.

I'm still though, to this day, boggled by the commenters who seem to think that a Flashless browser is crippled. What sites do these people use all day whereby the Internet is entirely useless without Flash? I see it _only_ on an occasional Flash Game and video sites who have not yet rolled out HTML5 (a number dwindling month on month). Once a particular TV catchup service I use deploys <video>, I'll literally see Flash once a week.

Is there some usage pattern for the web that I'm unaware of, wherein people require Flash continuously?

<comment><USER3> I don't really look for it but I noticed earlier today that ESPN/ESPN360 use Flash. Also most porn sites use Flash and nearly all game sites use Flash (jayisgames.com is one of my top 5 sites).

For me, those 3 above limitations make the flash-less web "crippled".

<comment><USER2> I think EPSN (and porn :) are basically just video. Porn is normally at the cutting edge of tech, so I expect <video> there soon enough and I'd guess EPSN would get it once enough of their users start moaning. So, in the long term, this once again just leaves "games" - something the iOS isn't really suffering a shortage of.

I didn't believe it even 6 months ago, but given how many sites I use are now rolling out <video>, I'm coming around to the idea that Flash could be largely irrelevant within a year or two. The only holdout that might cause problems will be the landing page/"entire site as flash" 'designer' nonsense. How quickly those transition to HTML 5 (or a sane end user experience) will be interesting to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At least his reasons are not ideological, he doesn't find any practical use of an iPad. Neither do I. He openly admits that he uses other Mac products.

I will probably consider buying an iPad (or other slate device) once the market matures and there are other reasonable slate devices I can compare to. Also there is a good chance that Apple will release the second iteration soon, which might improve on an already impressive device.

Just following the hive minds and buying things because everyone else is doing it too, even if you don't see any use of it, is quite silly IMO.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you view the iPad as a replacement for a laptop, then it falls short. Text entry is difficult, you can't print, can't use USB devices, can't use flash, can't videochat, etc. People who have extremely limited computer needs will find it sufficient, but that's a niche market.

However, as an adjunct to your computer, it's quite nice. Certain kinds of web browsing are much more pleasant. Curling up on the couch with ABC video is comfy. Comics are fantastic. Within narrow domains, it's better than anything else on the market. That being said, a laptop or phone does all of those things, just not as well.

The question is, which way are people going to see it?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised he bought it knowing he had no use for it. One week out I'm finding it extremely useful for various things -- largely leisure stuff like reading long articles that test my attention span browsing on the desktop, a resurgence in my interest in casual gaming, and I already read an entire book on it. I'm checking the App Store 3 or 4 times a day. My favorite geeky app at the moment is MyCongress which really shows off what a bigger screen can do for simply aggregating information from other sources. It pulls together Twitter, YouTube and OpenCongress into a nice GUI that you can pop around really quickly and explore. I'm excited to see this model applied to other areas of interest for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> > it's not out of dogmatism but because I simply don't see a good use for the > machine and don't want to spend $500 on something I'm not going to use.

So why did he buy it?

<comment><USER8> It's reasonable to think you might find a use, once you've used it.

<comment><USER7> So you go to an Apple store, or friend's house, and try it.

Purchasing something with intent to treat it like a free trial is sketchy. And then writing a post complaining is worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the most important use case is one where you don't already have a Macbook or an iPhone. In fact the most important use case for an iPad is when you don't use computer at all ... <http://buzz.dennykmiu.com/ipad-is-the- prequel>

<comment><USER10> you need to own a computer to sync the damn thing.

<comment><USER9> And I have a computer to sync. But now my parents can have their own computer to browse pictures of their grandkids, read newspapers and magazines in their own language, and an infinite other possibilities as more apps appear, all using their arthritic fingers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the most telling part of the video is the 2 screens he has behind him.

I have seen a few people contemplate getting an ipad, it wasnt to support their primary computer, it was their primary computer, I cant see any use for an iPad, but I have those 2 screens as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> Given that it's sold out everywhere, I'm sure he won't have trouble finding a buyer. He could probably resell it a slightly higher markup too.

<comment><USER13> There's plenty at the local Apple stores and Best Buys around here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's hoping we see more of these when people sober up, if nothing else just to spite the newspaper people.

<comment><USER14> because if there is one group who deserves our spite, it's the newspaper people?

<comment><USER10> among others, yes, mostly for pushing an unnecessary $500 toy in a time of high unemployment because they plan to monetize it, it's highly unethical.

<comment><USER15> Seriously? _Unethical_?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The evolution of Java build systems - <AUTHOR> http://shanemcintosh.org/2012/08/01/the-evolution-of-java-build-systems.html <comment><USER2> "Unfortunately, build systems require substantial maintenance effort. Kumfert et al. find that on average, build systems induce a 12% overhead on development effort"

I can't imagine a build system taking a percentage of overhead. When we have build problems it's usually a junior dev having to stay 30 minutes late to figure out that our github repo is too large.</comment>


An app that translates air pollution into cigarettes - <AUTHOR> https://shootismoke.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but this doesn't need to be an app (or more importantly, it doesn't need to be _only_ an app).

<comment><USER3> Yep, I can't see myself doing the process of downloading this via the store just to check a trivia fact.

Perhaps there's more than the catchphrase that can justify the smartphone-only format.</comment></comment>


Bunnicula, asynchronous messaging with RabbitMQ for Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nomnominsights.com/bunnicula-asynchronous-messaging-with-rabbitmq-for-clojure/ <comment><USER2> I loved those books as a kid. "The Celery Stalks At Midnight" was my favorite. I hope that pun made it into the code.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this submission was surprise-nostalgia for me too.

It strongly reminds me of another series, "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks".</comment></comment>


Warming Ocean Temperatures Are Starving Reefs and Harming Marine Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/coral-bleaching-warming-ocean-temperatures-starving-reefs-771104 <comment><USER4> That Chasing Coral documentary is well worth looking at. They had the perfect metaphor - the divers were filming a dying reef, and staying on a floating bar/club just above it where people were partying.

[https://www.netflix.com/title/80168188](https://www.netflix.com/title/80168188)

<comment><USER5> This is a fantastic documentary, and extremely sobering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any diver, snorkeler, or spear fishermen can tell you reef ecosystems are in serious trouble.

And it's certainly not just warming temperatures, it's also acidification, overfishing, destructive fishing with dynamite and cyanide, and overwhelming volumes of plastic and trash in the ocean. It's fairly rare to find a reef that doesn't have garbage embedded in it today.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hardly seems like news to anyone remotely sentient. Economic 'growth' at a real physical level is straightforward entropy increase. Complex evolved systems are destructured to fuel & supply crude technological systems.

Expect more of this until most complex living systems collapse.

<comment><USER8> Seems unnecessarily pessimistic.

Life itself is a complex system that radically altered its environment - <USER3> here we are now, billions of years later.

I'm not a climate change denier. The problem is very real, it's huge, it's definitely caused by us, and it needs to be addressed by taking a variety of vigorous measures. I just don't see it as a mandatory death sentence. There are some ways to deal with it, and we'll figure out more if needed.

<comment><USER7> > Life itself is a complex system that radically altered its environment - <USER3> > here we are now, billions of years later.

We are replacing complex systems maintained by homeostatic dynamic stabilities with simple systems requiring continuous inputs from the very systems we're deconstructing. And we're doing so on drastically asymmetrical time scales -- we're increasing the complexity of the replacement systems orders of magnitude more slowly than we are deconstructing existing ones.

> I'm not a climate change denier. The problem is very real

Climate breakdown is not the problem. It's just the most exigent of literally hundreds of breakdowns caused by a malignant ideology (unending so-called economic growth). We have only 50-70 harvests left due to rapid topsoil loss. Freshwater is disappearing fast. Most ecosystems on the planet are in various stages of collapse.

> There are ways to deal with it

If we put all hands on deck and made it a global priority, we might avert the complete breakdown of the stable climate our agriculture depends on. Whether this would be enough to deal with other crises is questionable. It would be worth trying.

But the question is irrelevant, because all hands are not on deck. They're mostly working on trivia, warfare, and further ecosystem destruction. There isn't the slightest hint that we are ready to deal with any of our global crises (indeed, on most issues, we're slowly retreating into national, mutually-hostile bunkers).

> and we'll figure out more if needed.

Ah. The faith-based solution.

<comment><USER9> > We are replacing complex systems maintained by homeostatic dynamic > stabilities

Yes because sudden unsustainable population explosions of animal and plant species is strange, weird, and never happened unless humans were responsible for it.

Oh wait. Nope. It's in fact ridiculously common. Areas that have had the same fauna and flora for thousands of years are a rare exception, they're not common at all. Exceptions include of course extreme environments like deserts or ice sheets.

Rapid unsustainable change is the norm in nature, not the exception.

That means that human population growth fueled by fossil fuels is not strange, nor will it be anywhere near as destructive as advertised.

> unending so-called economic growth

Okay, now look up what happened to species whose growth stagnates. Now, don't get me wrong. After a total disaster, their populations usually remain over zero for millions of years, so they don't quite go extinct, or perhaps I should say, not very quickly. They do however lose 90%+ population in a short time.

That seems like a much preferable way of living, doesn't it ?

> We have only 50-70 harvests left due to rapid topsoil loss. Freshwater is > disappearing fast. Most ecosystems on the planet are in various stages of > collapse.

This is the norm, not the exception. Also, they're in a state of change, not collapse. The end result is simple: we will need to adapt, and failure to adapt will affect humans in the exact same way it will affect every other species.

> Ah. The faith-based solution.

Well, having the economy adapt worked for thousands of years, and most attempts at forcing a fix from above are documented disasters.

I don't get it. Just how many examples of governments forcing change ending in disaster do people need to admit that they do not have a solution. That they are not in fact any better than, for example, the early 20th century socialists and that their solutions, however well-intentioned and however "true" and non-corrupt and ... their execution will be, it can't work ?

The problem is that you need to come up with a solution, not one that would work in theory if you had total and complete willing obedience of 100% of the world population, you need a solution that would mostly work if 90% of your own party was doing their very best to sabotage it, with 50% of the higher up posts in the party taken up by malevolent psychopaths. Why ? Because they will. Look at Bill Clinton, arguably leader of progressive America for over a decade, and then remember that he used his power to force women to have sex with him. And on the other side of the coin, there's Trump. Grabs 'em by ... Those are the people in charge. This is the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nature paper published January 2018. [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25152](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25152)

"Using a new method of measuring krypton and xenon ratios in Antarctic ice core, an estimated temperature rise of just 0.1°C over the last 50 years was determined. This is well below many other estimates of ocean temperature increase. Mean global ocean temperature increased by 2.57 ± 0.24 degrees Celsius over the last glacial transition (20,000 to 10,000 years ago)."

<comment><USER11> You linked to the journal abstract, but your quote is from this article: [https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/04/new-study-from- scripp...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/04/new-study-from-scripps-puts- a-crimp-on-claims-of-recent-rising-ocean-temperatures/)

Please attribute your quotes correctly.

<comment><USER10> Correction noted - thanks! The same observation "0.1 degree warming in 50 years" is made here [https://sciencesources.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/u...](https://sciencesources.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/uoc --nsi010318.php) as well and is evidently authorial - Severinghaus?

"Our precision is about 0.2 ºC (0.4 ºF) now, and the warming of the past 50 years is only about 0.1 ºC," he said, adding that advanced equipment can provide more precise measurements, allowing scientists to use this technique to track the current warming trend in the world's oceans. "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When is the last time oceans were this warm and warming up this fast?

<comment><USER11> ~100k years ago [https://www.sciencealert.com/the-last-time-the-ocean-was- thi...](https://www.sciencealert.com/the-last-time-the-ocean-was-this-hot-sea- levels-got-9-metres-higher)

<comment><USER13> According to the link, the temperature was as warm back then, but the warming trend that got the ocean there was much, much slower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From Newsweek. Of interest, Newsweek had a cover story in 1975 titled "The Cooling World" that suggested cooling "may portend a drastic decline for food production."

A 1974 Time magazine article "Another Ice Age?" painted a similarly bleak picture:

        "When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

I guess the pendulum swings back and forth for some of these news sources.</comment>


Tired of capitalism? There could be a better way - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/30/tired-of-capitalism-lets-try-basic-income/ <comment><USER2> This reads like it was written by an undergrad who just took Socialism 101. Flagged for being tripe as much as for being off-topic.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was done after the first sentence: "Capitalism is a coercive economic system that creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation."

Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

I mean, I suppose that could possibly be a reasoned opinion. But you're going to have to do a _lot_ better than merely stating it as fact if you want me to believe it.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. The bell curve in the western world starts considerably above the rest of the world. What is relatively deprived in America, for instance, is already head and shoulders above most of the planet.

<comment><USER3> Which doesn't mean that it's impossible to build something better. But if you want to build something better, you have to understand what's good about what you're trying to replace.</comment></comment></comment>


Learn Spanish with the natives - <AUTHOR> https://www.spanishlivechat.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I want to share with you my MVP. Through this site, people can book a Spanish conversation chat. The site is only for those interested in learning Spanish (language and culture). Obviously is work in progress, but any criticism or advice is welcome.</comment>


Seller's Responsibility or a Payment Gateway (Paypal/Stripe)'S Responsibility - <AUTHOR> I have website selling service and customer pay through Paypal/Stripe. When customer make an order, I sent him an invoice. If I receive notification from Stripe/Paypal saying that I get a payment, then I deliver the work.
Problem happens when a buyer use a stolen credit card to Paypal/Stripe and use it to buy service.
My questions are: - Who take the responsibility to check if a payment is fraudulent? A seller or a Payment Gateway (Paypal/Stripe) - How to deal with Stripe/Paypal fraudulent?
My point of view: I think Stripe/Paypal is a payment gateway service, it is their responsibility to check if a stolen credit card is used to make payment. A seller has not any method to check that. It is not seller's responsibility to check.
However, here is what happen if I use Stripe/Paypal. Stripe/Paypal tell seller:
1. Hey, you receive a payment, deliver the service. and we will take about 4% commission fee. 2. Hey seller, we are sorry, but the payment (WHICH WE ALLOWED) is fraudulent, buyer used stolen credit card, the owner of credit card  (the bank) is making dispute, we will take the money from you and return it to credit card's owner, you still have to pay 4% commission fee, and chargeback fee...
What the F* is this? I has already delivered the service, it is impossible to take the service back, it is digital service, it is not a physical product. Moreover, you (Paypal/Strip) tell me that I get a payment, that is why I deliver the work. If you did not tell me, I would not deliver the work. You are liar, don't you? What is your responsibility in this case? (angry!)
So..., Stripe/Paypal take the commission fee, and take no risk. Whenever something happen, they send the risk/responsibility to buyer or seller. What a bad middle man! Now I know why Stripe/Paypal worth billions dollar.
(Sorry for my bad English) <comment><USER2> This is how all of these payment gateways work and it really sucks to be a provider of digital goods, because you will almost always lose disputes.

One of the reasons it's so easy to get access to a payment gateway is because there is no checks of your business up-front to mitigate the gateway's risk.

Before it was so easy, you had to basically have someone come out to your business and interview you before you were accepted.</comment>