Ask HN: Hosting personal site on a VPS, or in the cloud? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a software developer currently in the process of setting up a new personal site. The goals are 1) Google insurance (somebody who searches for my name should find some good, real info about me) 2) A place to put content I'd like to share (personal programing projects, slides of talks, language reference sheets etc) 3) A place to point people to so they can see what kind of guy I am before meeting me (both personal - blog, pictures etc and professional - resume)
I was planning to get VPS hosting, and run everything myself (Apache, MySQL, Wordpress, Gallery, Svn-Server, Trac etc). But in the process, I realized that almost everything I need is available as a cloud service: Blog on wordpress.com, photo gallery in flickr, code hosting on github, slides on slideshare and so on.
It's 2010, is it still a good idea to run your own webserver for a site like this?
Main advantage of cloud hosting: A lot less work, leaves more time to create content.
Main advantage of my own server: You gain experience on the admin side, too. And you're fully independant if a cloud service is shut down.
What are your thoughts on this?
Also, if you run, or know of, good examples of such a site, I'd be thankful for a link to it. <comment><USER2> I've done both, and I would strongly recommend putting your personal stuff in the cloud. It is one of the most frustrating things in the world when you can't work on any of your actual paying work, because you have to spend the entire day getting your personal site back online after an unexpected spike crashed it.

The only caveat is to absolutely make sure that wherever you host your site, you can set your own URL. That is the only way to ensure maximum flexibility so that you can later self-host or move all your info (and google juice) to another cloud service. If you build all your reputation on mysite.posterous.com, then so help you.

EDIT: I'm not picking on Posterous, just saying if you're going to put your blog there or anywhere, use your own domain! If you don't, you cannot undo that later after you've built a reputation and tons of backlinks pointing to their domain.

<comment><USER3>
      > and tons of backlinks pointing to their domain.

That's going to be a problem anyways, since whatever system you choose will probably not use the same URL scheme. You'll either need to break those backlinks or spend the time to write a compatibility layer.

<comment><USER2> True, but if you own your domain, it's possible. If you don't, you're stuck. For example, if you wanted to switch to WordPress, there are plugins that allow you to easily redirect old URL schemes to new ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd go for a simple static site (on a VPS) containing a brief introduction -- a main profile if you will -- and then let your actions on other services (github, bitbucket, facebook, twitter, flickr, tumblr, posterous etc) describe you.

You'd remove all the must-dos and still be able to learn a lot by administrating your own server. You can, for example, simplify deployment of your static site (fabric, capistrano, git-hooks etc), tweak performance (try different web servers, different settings and benchmark), increase security (keep up-to-date with best practices, patch software), set up ssh tunnels, a backup server, a closed version control repository and a lot more.

<comment><USER5> If you're running a static site, then you can host it on S3 for much cheaper than the $5 / mo you're probably paying for your VPS. All you have to do is create a CNAME www.yourdomain.com that points to bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com, then upload your site to the bucket. Make sure to set the ACLs on the objects such that they are publicly accessible, and also upload the files with the correct mime types.

For a 50MB site that transfers 5GB of data per month, you'll pay $0.61 / mo. Not too shabby, and if the site is just your resume and a few static pages you'll use much less.

<comment><USER6> I like this idea a lot. Can you recommend a service to take care of e-mail forwarding?

<comment><USER7> Google Apps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Github pages has worked great for me. It's free, you don't really have to worry about anything, and it's all Git.

<comment><USER9> He plans to have Blog, Pictures, Slides. Can you do that on Git?!

<comment><USER8> Yes you can! It runs on Jekyll.

<https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So much for a personal site?

If you really wanna ship it (the site) then even shared hosting is enough.

But if you want to dive into something bigger for sake of it and you like more control then go VPS.

This really is more of a personal choice then technical decision - since you don't need either Cloud or VPS. Shared hosting is enough for personal site (unless you are Paul Graham, of course)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've got a $20/month VPS at RootBSD, and I snagged a $5/month Linux VPS that was promoted here a few weeks ago (VPS Tree). I love 'em both, as I'm an admin by trade and I love the total control I get. Not that I have a site to really speak of, since I'm kinda stuck in that deer-in-the-headlights phase of someone with a cool idea but can't seem to muster the creative juices to make anything not look like a mid-90s Geocities page.

If you want cheap, I (as a former costomer) recommend you check out NearlyFreeSpeech.net, as they give you some control (a shell). The service is pretty good and the owner is pretty damned sharp. You deposit a pool of money and they drain from it depending on the resources you consume. It's tiered in such a way that it's often a good deal for many sizes of sites.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a huge fan of WebFaction.com for hosting. I host my personal stuff and sites I'm tinkering with on there, it's shared hosting but acts like a VPS (gives you application memory), and they also have a bunch of 1-click installers for Wordpress/Rails/Django etc.

For a personal site I'd probably do something static with your blog hosted on posterous - but wordpress w/ wp-supercache plugin works pretty well. Grab a theme off of ThemeForest (or one of the 80 million other theme sites) and tweak it a bit.

I think everyone should have some basic server admin experience, but having to update a personal server can be a hassle. I login to my hosting control panel probably 3-4 times a year, max. It's just a convenience thing, they patch it and make sure my site stays up.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't do either.

What you want for this is control-panel hosting. I used Dreamhost, but there are hundred of other options.

The thing you are looking for is a simple control panel to let you install & upgrade software.

From your list Dreamhost has the following as one-click installs: Wordpress, Gallery, Subversion, Trac (also MediaWiki & plenty of other things).

It has MySQLAdmin (or whatever the MySQL admin thing is called)

For things that aren't on control panel you get (non-root) shell access, so you can install most PHP, Python, Ruby & Perl applications.

I have a number of VPS's, and I work on AppEngine applications, and I wouldn't use either for my personal site. Getting Wordpress auto-security updates is worth it in itself.

</comment><comment><USER13> I recently set up my personal web page at www.prgmr.com. For $8/month for 256mb/6gb, I have no problem paying that much. It's been a great experience, trying to get everything set up and running the way I want it. I couldn't be happier with it. I really enjoy running my own site, and getting to choose when and what gets upgraded.

You can always integrate external services as needed anyway. I use google apps for mail. I wanted to use Google App Engine for another project, but being restricted to Python 2.5 was a bit of a deal breaker for me, so for now I'm just testing it on a sub-directory on my personal site. When I'm ready to launch it on it's own domain, I will simply get another VPS and push the site over to it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd recommend checking out Drupal Gardens by Acquia: <http://www.drupalgardens.com/>

It's hosted Drupal, similar to Wordpress.com but you can point your own domain at it for free, and you can do custom CSS for free. It's completely free for the ad-supported version and very reasonable after that. It has most of the blog/gallery/social media/videos, etc stuff that anyone could want.

The biggest feature is the ability to export your whole site, database dump and and all if you want to host it yourself, or add other modules that they don't provide.

</comment><comment><USER15> The major problem with 'in the cloud' assuming you mean something like EC2 or Rackspace Cloud is performance.

Many of those types of hosts use a similar setup for file-systems (Amazon might not, but not sure): GFS. Now, GFS has suffered from problems, and even huge, expensive hosts like EY got hit with it. In fact, the last time I worked with cloud hosting (I much prefer my own box) load times for static images could take up to 200 ms due to the design of GFS.

My suggestion is either go shared (If you don't want to learn sysadmin tasks) or if you do, go with a good VPS host, or get a dedicated box.

<comment><USER16> By cloud I think OP means just linking or CNAME-ing out to multiple fully hosted services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, exactly, thanks for clarifying. Just wanted to be fully buzzword- compliant, I guess...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wouldn't run my own VPS because then you have to worry about security and patching. If getting sysadmin type experience isn't high priority, go fully hosted.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been wondering the same thing. I already manage a high traffic site and its enough work having to worry about 1 site, I don't want to spend time in another one. I wish there was a fully customizable and cheap WordPress hosting somewhere that took care of all the security updates. Wordpress.com does not let you create CNAMEs unfortunately. Any suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're a software developer I'd argue that it's better to sharpen your skills by having your own vps with your own stuff. Amazon has a free tier promotion thing as you probably already know, so that's a good bet. Also, Prgrmr [<http://prgmr.com/xen/>] is really good and freaking cheap.

<comment><USER19> I'm currently setting up an EC2 instance to serve up my personal site using this free tier. I just need to figure out how all of this domain level stuff works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You didn't mention email, but if you have your own server one nice thing you can do is run something like fetchmail on it to grab your mail from all your other email accounts, where you can apply a uniform set of spam and sorting filters, and serve it up via IMAP over SSL, and if you like also via a web interface.

</comment><comment><USER21> A friend of mine has a combination of cloud/hosted setup for his personal site, and I'm leaning towards setting up something similar. Why not set up a landing page on a cheap server (a la NearlyFreeSpeech) and use that to link to your presence in the cloud?

</comment><comment><USER22> Two small things. First, Cloud Hosting != cloud service. Last, at $5 or $10 a month, it's a pretty good deal to rent a VPS and learn a couple of things along the way.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you go with App Engine, check out Django-cms and Vosao, two ready-made CMSs designed for it. Might save you some time building your site.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you know python, go Google AppEngine. If you know Ruby, go Heroku.

Both have free options and can host everything you need.

<comment><USER25> I use Ruby on Google AppEngine. I was running out of resources on Heroku (free plan). It's good and has some community support. It does start up slow, so you have to be prepared to run a cron to hit once a minute or so. <http://code.google.com/p/appengine-jruby/>

That being said, I wouldn't go overboard creating your own blog engine (which is what I did initially) you can just end up dumping countless hours into a site lacks features and data that's difficult to migrate. I agree with the sentiments of one static page with links to a word press blog, Twitter, Facebook, Github, etc.

<comment><USER26> _I was running out of resources on Heroku_

This is something I'm concerned about. I like a whole lot about Heroku, but the upgrade path is strange and seems illogical. Could use some insight here.

The jump from 1 dyno (free) to 2 dynos ($36/mo) seems excessive. What seems even worse is that the database options are: 5M (free), 20G ($15/mo, reasonable), and then the next step up is 2T at a whopping $200/mo. Where's the in-between? I can imagine running out of space with 20G, but I would reasonably expect a next step that costs maybe $30/mo -- measured growth! $200/mo could easily be too much too soon and would probably force me to go elsewhere.

I've been thinking about going to the next HUG (Heroku User Group) meeting just to try and talk to them about this. Heroku would be the perfect place to grow a startup from the micro stage all the way up to the big time, except for the roadblocks in the growth path.

<comment><USER27> Heroku is killing it in RoR today, but I also noticed their rates jump up real fast.

The reason is, they're on the forefront in this area, and really don't have any legit competition yet. They make it so, so easy to get going, and people rave about this constantly.

I'm a WebFaction guy, they hit just the right point for me, with regard to price vs. features vs. a technically competitive/modern configuration.

I haven't started moving into cloud services yet, because I just have a natural aversion to "leasing" as opposed to owning, though I realize a hired host isn't much different.

I just see all the cloud services nickle-and-diming you to death - the meter is always running, all the time, in small ways and large. A flat monthly fee is plenty enough for me to worry about.

With Heroku, they've obscured so many of the sub-components behind cute, fabricated names... I don't want to have to worry about contracting enough cycles, or workers, or R2D2's, or time, or speed.

Though I realize this does work well for some users, I'm not that kind of user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I always end up using my private server as a second development sandbox, so, if it were me, I'd pick something that's different from the stacks you have elsewhere.

Of the servers I have that aren't attached to any actual projects, I have one Solaris box, two Ubuntu Linodes, Github, an EC2 Micro with Ubuntu and a Fedora Slicehost. Oh, and a couple apps on AppEngine.

I rarely have to look far for an environment to 'test things out on' quickly without having to stand up a whole new VM or anything crazy.

That's just me though, and I don't know of anybody else that does it this way, so I wouldn't call it optimal.

The point though, was that if you've never played with the quirks of setting up something to run on EC2, do that. It's fun knowledge to have. Never coded against AppEngine? Do that. It's worth learning. Stick something up on Heroku if you want. Build a blog there.</comment>


A Message for Children About Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/09/23/a-message-for-children-about-climate-change/ <comment><USER2> Dear children, do not listen to this man.

He is leaving out important details. He didn't tell you that the only effective solutions to climate change are on the policy level. That means new laws. Laws which apply to everybody in the whole country.

The smart climate experts all agree on this point, but Scott did not mention it. He should mention that these policies are nowhere in sight for the USA. He should be telling you children to tell your parents to vote for the right policies.

It seems like Scott is actually saying the opposite-- "it's no big deal, don't worry!". That's not true. If we do nothing, climate change will be a huge deal. And right now, many countries and their policymakers are doing nothing.

If we continue doing nothing, if we do not enact the right policies, we will not solve climate change fast enough. We will solve it eventually, yes, but too much damage will be done.

And that's the problem that Scott is ignoring. Nuclear energy takes too long. Technology takes too long. And people won't stop emitting on their own. So we need laws!

He is right about one thing though: you children, the ones Scott is speaking to, you will be fine. But many, many poor children in other places will not be fine. These poor children will be hurt and have their lives changed even though they did not have anything to do with climate change.

If something happens to them, it's because we let it happen. It's our fault. Isn't that enough reason to be worried?

</comment><comment><USER3> >Please note that two Democrats in favor of nuclear energy (Corey Booker and Andrew Yang) are among the youngest and smartest in the game. To be fair, the oldest Democrat running for president, Joe Biden, also supports nuclear energy because he is well-informed.

Telling us names of politicians who have policy proposals the author likes tells me that perhaps the real target of this message are adults.</comment>


As a Data Scientist, what challenges do you face? - <AUTHOR> Some of the challenges I feel prevalent are finding value in data, integrating open source software, not enough platforms for feedback and improvement. <comment><USER2> The most frustrating challenges I've faced boil down to just cleaning the data. It's not too bad when everything is stable and you're just cleaning up a database, though this can still be pretty hard depending on the scale of the operations required. The worst is when I have a live data feed that is liable to occasionally mess up. In one instance I was reading in stock data from an API, and on their end they messed up and sent the same timestamp for two different instances, which caused my local data aggregation to merge them together into a series, and later when that value was actually queried, expecting a numpy float, it just crashed. So writing data processing code that's anticipatory of potential noise, with mechanisms to resolve it, or that sends errors early instead of finding them a week later by performing asserts on your assumptions are what I've done to face this.

I do agree with the general lack of feedback/improvement platforms, at least on the non-analysis side (I've seen good feedback on Kaggle forums before when it comes to questions on problem solving methodology.) I don't really follow the not finding value in data part though, in my experience it's pretty much a binary question like 'can I use this data I've found to solve my problem, or improve my solution', and if so it's valuable relative to that application.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the major challenges, where you need the data processing code to reassess what comes in.

Is there any way you share this piece of code across teams? One of the challenges I have seen, is how to avoid re-inventing the wheel. Like, its all there, somewhere, however, across team members, its quite difficult to pass on that knowledge of "hey, already have this data processing script" for another similar usecase.

<comment><USER2> Private git repo's, with Jupyter notebooks documenting the scripts is the primary means of sharing. I have duplicated quite a few things inadvertently though, just due to them being fairly simple and not asking about it. That's more of a communication issue than anything else though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A significant chunk of my work involves no use of algorithms, statistics, or math. For the most part, my days are filled with one thing: cleaning up data.

If more firms took an educated, standardized approach to their data, I would do my job significantly faster, and the company would have access to their data-related products in far, far less time. Firms I have worked for, overall, refuse to do that.

Instead, such notions are treated as toxic- and I am too, by the associative property. They think I'm making _extra_ work ("You want us to stop copying Powerpoints into Excels and put data into a whole new Excel that stops me from pasting in whatever I want? But I already have it in my own Excel!"), or they think I'm automating someone's job away to be replaced by a robot. This makes getting support from both employees and leaders near impossible.

It could save firms millions a year in reduced labor costs alone to not have entire teams of people sitting in basements fixing problems with data. However, data scientists are sold on what math they can do and what algorithms they can write, not on what processes they can improve.

It's, frankly, hell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely agree. It reminds me of an article that I read, had the statistics of Data scientists spend 80% of their time cleaning data rather than creating insights.

Curious to know, did you in any ways accomplish to standardise the way data was collected/ stored?

<comment><USER3> It's more like 90%.

On existing processes, standardizing collection has been nearly impossible unless I promised that it would be easier, it will take less time, and I'll do all the setup. It always takes leadership backing, and if I don't get it from one leader, I go over their head to the next.

On new processes, if I jump forward and volunteer, I find I'm given leeway to do it my way- that is, a standardized way.

If this sounds ruthless, it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is, what it is :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you think about the scientific lifecycle: Gather Information => Form Hypothesis => Test Hypothesis => Analyze Data => Interpret => Repeat.

Then I would say the hardest parts are the "Gather Information" and "Test Hypothesis" phases. But its like this in every scientific endevour and this is nothing unique to data science.

One interesting point is, perhaps, that we as data scientists are aware that our sources for gathering information and our means for testing hypothesis are often tied to man made software or hardware systems - as opposed to dynamical real world structures. This means that theoretically and practically there is only ingenuity and will-power keeping us from building better and less time consuming ways for automating away the tedius (data cleansing/prep/etc.) parts of those processes.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my company, the biggest issue is finding the right data sets in company's vast data landscape, figuring out the exact definition/meaning of each column etc. Then, it's dealing with the data quality issues. Then, it's getting access to it and setting up an ingestion job for the data to be copied to some common storage (e.g. Hadoop). At the very end, it's the actual data science. I suspect a lot of the PhDs we hire start drinking before they reach the data science stage :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that! Do you use any tool to centralise the data that you use across your Data Science teams? Like a central repository of sorts, so that each one can be given access to it and from there you can start off building your models for training etc?

<comment><USER5> Yes. We ingest all that data onto central Hadoop, where data science team can access all of it in an uniform way. This solves the physical access problem.

Unfortunately, the DQ and meaning of data are harder to solve. They require essentially caretaking of the datasets done by the data owners (cannot be done by a centralized unit). My organization is currently undergoing a transition, where it will be a responsibility of the data owner to maintain the metadata of his/her dataset and also to measure the data quality, but implementing it across the whole org is a journey that will take a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Salespeople trying to coax us into the next automl or drag and drop ml tool. We have an army of phds at my job and you think your jack of all master of none software is going to impress us? The whole reason they started seems to be "ai is so hot right now and it will look good on our cv". A single domain expert grey beard in our field would have impressed us more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, true almost all the time! :) There are only a handful of folks that have an impressive balance of understanding what hot and how to make an impressive product/solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mangers not understanding what you are doing or why it is not instant.

<comment><USER8> It took me four years before I built up the experience and confidence to advocate for myself and the length things take. Now I'm trying to protect newer data scientists"

"Hey, new_hire, can you build this model by Friday?" "Sure, let me just get the data" Me: No you can't. The data will take a month to get. No one is getting anything from you on Friday, because I'm not going to let our team develop a culture where data scientists work all night on thankless failing data jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kudos to you for that!

It starts with, "We need accuracy for this problem statement" and ends with "wait, lets find and prep the data first". Timelines anyone?</comment></comment></comment>


Your Chemical Romance - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/should-marriage-therapists-give-couples-mdma/605059/ <comment><USER2> > One example from early in the book: Even otherwise compatible romantic > partners can be rendered miserable by a big difference in sex drives

How is this a supporting fact? This just proves that supposedly well- intentioned medical interventions can wreck havock in other areas.

Doctors seems to want to medicalize normality at every turn. They've done so with disastrous consequences. We have more people with mental health issues than ever in this country, with the burden getting bigger every day.

This is aside from the fact that the supposed guilds that should be working to help us act more like cartels trying to drug us, lie to us, and corrupt our institutions at every turn.

If that sounds harsh - the offense is all on their side.

<comment><USER3> This is indeed an issue, but so many people are already on libido-suppressing drugs, between birth-control and antidepressants.

I guess you just chemically castrate everybody, and we live in platonic peace and harmony like in Futurama's Neutopia.

<comment><USER4> Birth-control is libido-suppressing?

<comment><USER5> Can be. In general it can be lots of things because shitloads of hormones do weird things

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested in learning more.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Heat death of the universe - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_Universe

<comment><USER2> I read this page about once or twice a year, when I have some time to go through it in it's entirety. It gives me a great reminder that nothing that may stress me out today is worth worrying about. I don't know if it's the inevitability that makes it not worth stressing about the small stuff, or if it's simply thinking at that kind of time scale that makes this week's or today's issues that much smaller, but it always works for me.</comment>


Nokia N9 has no problems multitasking 36 apps - <AUTHOR> http://mynokiablog.com/2011/09/20/video-nokia-n9-review-eng-meego-os-for-dummies-no-problems-multitasking-36-apps/

<comment><USER2> I don't think any phone solves the multitasking problem UX-wise quite as elegantly as the N9. iOS' double-click and Android's long-press isn't anywhere that natural, not to mention that there's live view of all applications which shows updates without even switching apps. That's really useful if I have multiple chat windows open for example.</comment>


MIP*=Re - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.04383 <comment><USER2> From Scott Aaronson

> Yet another reason to be excited about this result—one that somehow hadn't > occurred to me—is that, as far as I know, it's the first-ever fully > convincing example of a non-relativizing computability result.

This is one of the three known barriers any proof of P vs NP must overcome. Not saying any of this applies to P vs NP but the proof technique demonstrated is important for such a proof.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could someone explain what this means? I read it as proof that quantum computers cannot compute more functions than Turing machines, is that correct?

<comment><USER2> It's a highly technical problem that doesn't have much practical use. Essentially it says that a weak (polynomial time) classical computer (called the "verifier") with the ability to query (polynomial number of times) a small number of all-powerful computers (called the "provers") with unknown/unbounded computing power is able to be convinced that the prover is indeed all powerful (convinces the verifier that it knows the answer to some problem that is known to be difficult). These specific provers can not communicate with each other (collude) but can share some entangled bits (the quantum part). The result here is (basically) that the verifier can be convinced that the prover knows the answer to the halting problem.

The result is more interesting with some context though. One of the biggest discoveries of the 21st century is that PSPACE=IP. That's where a single all powerful prover can convince a weak verifier of any solution in PSPACE (an extension of P that we believe to be more powerful than P). Then more recently we found MIP=NEXP which is a bunch of classic all powerful provers (with no collusion) can convince a single weak verifier of any problem in NEXP (which is like NP but with much larger proof sizes, thought to be more powerful than NP). The surprising fact is that multiple all-powerful provers can convince a verifier of harder problems. Intuitively this doesn't make sense because we know each provers are all powerful and are permitted to do anything, even physically impossible tasks, so the fact that a single prover cannot convince a verifier of any problems harder than PSPACE is surprising. More surprising is that multiple all powerful provers can somehow prove harder problems when it feels like we're not adding any extra power (they're already "all powerful").

So in that context we find the also surprising fact that if we weaken the "no collusion" requirement to "only quantum entanglement" and suddenly they can solve the halting problem (but still no more!).

This line of proving both upper and lower bounds about complexity classes is exactly what we want to see in the P vs NP world (which is in many ways less "powerful" of classes but more "practical"). But we don't even know if P ?= NEXP.

<comment><USER4> NEXP is nondeterministic exponential time, right? In that case we know that P /= EXPTIME by the time hierarchy theorem and EXPTIME is contained in NEXP. We also have a direct result that NP /= NEXP (reference given in [https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Complexity_Zoo:N#nexp](https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Complexity_Zoo:N#nexp)).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Standing Desks Feedback and Comments on your experience? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HNists!
As many of you here, I sit at my desk for extended periods of time so my thinking is that I would combine a daily session of standing and sitting in a good chair. For the chair, I was thinking of sticking with a SteelCase Leap. I saw this thread earlier today (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2518898).
I'm thinking about investing in an electronically height adjustable desk by Steelcase. ve seen a lot of DIY options too but (I think) I'd rather not mess around adjusting the height manually since I do have 2 monitors and a bunch of other stuff.
I'm curious to know about: How long you can typically stand and do work?
Do you catch your shifting your weight to one side due to fatigue? Do you use and still use the standing desk religiously or did it turn into one of those fad ideas?
I'd appreciate any thoughts, comments and experiences. Thanks!! <comment><USER2> I just moved into a new place and have gone back to sitting as the stand-up desk I was using belonged to the landlord.

I am not comfortable! I hate it! I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy myself a stand-up desk.

I would break my work into about 2-3 hour shifts, and always take a bit of time away.

I have 3 monitors for two computers.

I was standing on a balance board for about 70% of the time in front of my desk. The balance board lets you shift your weight around easily, and somewhat keeps you on your toes, but it isn't like being on the balance board in the gym. Just having a hand on the mouse or keyboard pretty much takes all the balance challenge out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using a standing desk all day, every day at work for 3-4 months now. I like it.

For the first 2-3 weeks, my feet were absolutely killing me. Between getting used to it and switching to more appropriate shoes (which I keep at the office) from Shoes for Crews, the only pain I have is sore heels, because that's where I keep my weight. I'm working on changing my balance. My heels stay sore for days; by the end of the weekend they're still not completely relieved.

Facilities set me up with a Fredrik desk from IKEA. The desk portion is adjusted so my elbows are at right angles and I try to keep the keyboard and mouse at the edge of the desk. The monitors are at eye level and pushed to the back edge of the top platform, with their brightness turned all the way down.

I shift my weight and move in place a lot, and I find this preferable to being completely sedentary. Meetings are much more tolerable now, because they're the only time I'm not standing. I'll still sit to read papers and books, and occasionally to "think differently."

I don't know if it's made me more productive or healthier, but I _feel_ better at the end of the day (when I leave at a normal time; long days are much longer by the end because I've been physically exerting myself to some degree).

</comment><comment><USER4> I stand all day. Have for a year. My legs were a little tired the first week, but after that I was fine. I shift my weight around, lean on the desk, pace, etc.

I have no idea if I'm healthier or will live longer or have more sex or my hair is growing back, but I do prefer it to sitting down.

</comment><comment><USER5> Long before the adjustable or standing desk was fashionable (long before I was a grown-up and could buy my own desk), I had an old workbench of my dad's and a drafting stool. To date, it's the best work set-up I've ever had, and I plan to build a big desk at about that height when I have a place with enough room to put it. :)

It's less expensive than a trendy standing or, even pricier, adjustable desk. Drafting chairs can be quite comfortable, and are tall enough that you can sit at a standing-height desk without trouble. Also, keeping my feet under one on the ring under the drafting chair seems to make me sit up straighter.

</comment><comment><USER6> Im currently experimenting with a standing desk -- an IKEA Jerker that I got off Craigslist for $50:

<http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/7231/imag0346m.jpg>

Its been a week and im able to stand most of the time, although every now and then i would take a sitting break for an hour.

I do like the idea of Geekdesk, but its price is too much -- over $900 delivered. For that price I could buy one standing desk, one sitting desk and two sets of keyboards and monitors and still have money left over :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought a Geek Desk a couple months back, ot as expensive as the Steelcase.

I'm not standing all the time yet, but am doing so more often now, I expect in a few more months I'll be standing as much as sitting, if not more. Certainly feel more energetic than I did beforehand.

The other benefit of an adjustable desk is it works for various tasks, you can change the level from programming to something more suitable when you are dissecting a pokey computer.

Along with that desk purchase I got a great chair (not an Aeron, but still quite comfortable and adjustable.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I have been using a standing desk for 6 months. I use it in combination with a small, movable sitting desk for some tasks. I stand most of the day, and generally prefer standing. Sometimes I associate hard concentration with sitting.

It took me a few weeks to tolerate standing for long but you can definitely stand all day every day once you straighten your posture and strengthen your back.

</comment><comment><USER9> I bought a GeekDesk a number of months back. At first I would adjust from sitting to standing from time to time.

In the end I bought a drafting chair so if I want to sit, I sit at the standing desk. Otherwise I stand. It's much more convenient than adjusting the desk (even automated). So if you want to save some $$, I don't find the adjustability actually necessary.

</comment><comment><USER10> Have used standing desk daily for 10 months now. Love it. Commissioning my brother to make one for my home (opineart.com).</comment>


Ask HN: What is the chance of single non programmer founder getting funded? - rush-tea

My friend who is not a programmer is thinking of starting his own startup.  He is a single founder as his friends are not willing to take the risk of going full time due to the current economy situation.  He is determined to do it, so he would outsource his project.
I told him that the chance of getting accepted in an incubator program may be close to zero, not that I discourage him, but I am just reading from Y Combinator FAQ (even a single programmer founder is having a hard time getting accepted at Y Combinator).  He told me that to prove that his idea can work, he will have the prototype made.
Assuming he gets to that point and able to demo it, what would be his chance of getting accepted at some incubator programs like Tech Stars, Y Combinator, etc?
What about his chance of actually getting some funding (hundred of thousands USD) and actually can go full time and hire 1-2 technical people to improve and implement new features?
I appreciate your inputs.
Thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid that unless he brings something substantially unique to the table, his chances are just very very slight.

There are a few people who can raise money on their name and reputation alone. See: Steve Jobs. If he were one of these people, however, he wouldn't be applying to incubators, he'd be turning money away at the door.

Instead, he NEEDS something to show off. No matter how awesome he is, he NEEDS a product. Slides won't cut it.

Again, let's look at Steve Jobs. Arguably the best "idea man" or "business guy" in the history of tech. Until he and Woz put together their Apple I, and started selling it in shops (read: traction), even he had zippo.

In short: Get a demo, get users. Ideally, get a co-founder. Then, maybe, you can get funding, if you still need it.

<comment> rush-tea He won't just do slides and expect to get funding or accepted in the incubator program. He WILL have his MVP up and running like I mentioned earlier.

And, NO, his name is not Steve Jobs. I wish... :)</comment></comment>


It's the Postgres Age - <AUTHOR> http://dickey.xxx/mysql-is-done-it-s-the-postgres-age

<comment><USER2> Horrible article. The same guys that pimped NoSQL three years ago now just hype something else. I have nothing against Postgres (I use it myself) but inflammatory articles like this are of use to no one other than their authors.

<comment><USER3> He's half right, it is the end of the MySQL age. Well, specifically, the LAMP age. MySQL is still used by some people. But that doesn't mean we're in the Postgres age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Puppet Labs just released PuppetDB an optional (for-now) component of their configuration management software. The supported backends are HSQLDB and Postgres. When asked why MySQL wasn't supported, the developers' response was

"The short answer is performance. To effectively implement things we've got on our roadmap, we need things that (current) MySQL doesn't support: array types are critical for efficiently supporting things like parameter values, recursive query support is critical for fast graph traversal operations, things like INTERSECT are handy for query generation, and we rely on fast joins (MySQL's nested loop joins don't always cut it). It's much easier for us to support databases with these features than those that don't. For fairly divergent database targets, it becomes really hard to get the performance we want while simultaneously keeping our codebase manageable...

We certainly didn't make this decision cavalierly; it was made after around a month of benchmarking various solutions ranging from traditional databases like PostgreSQL to document stores like MongoDB to KV stores such as Riak to graph databases like Neo4J. For Puppet's particular type of workload, with Puppet's volume of data, with Puppet's required durability and safety requirements...I maintain this was the best choice. "

[http://groups.google.com/group/puppet- users/browse_thread/th...](http://groups.google.com/group/puppet- users/browse_thread/thread/66b123570d54a47f)

</comment><comment><USER5> Worse is better. MySQL's terribleness is its feature; it means you stop and think before putting business logic in the database, writing a stored procedure, or joining on five tables. While it's a worse database, the /systems/ I've seen built on MySQL are all better than those built on "real" databases.

<comment><USER6> _While it's a worse database, the /systems/ I've seen built on MySQL are all better than those built on "real" databases._

This could be a symptom of which businesses choose which databases. Large established businesses are probably going to prefer the commercially supported database, and are probably also going to have the resources to build impressive systems.

<comment><USER5> No, the trend (and I'm generalizing from a small number of examples) is in the opposite direction; it's the small businesses or startups that use MySQL and produce better systems. Slightly bigger companies use Postgres and produce worse systems. Actually big companies use Oracle and produce terrible systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I seriously want someone to tell me just ONE feature that MySQL has over Postgres. I ask everybody this question, and I haven't heard a single thing. "

Built-in two-way (aka master/master) replication.

<comment><USER7> Postgres has had solid replication since 8.4

<comment><USER4> It was only in Postgres 9.0, released in Septermber 2010, that support for a "hot standby" (e.g. master/slave replication where you can run read-only queries on the slave) was added.

MySQL has supported this since at least version 3.2.3, released in January 2001.

MySQL supports

• Single master to one slave • Single master to multiple slaves • Single master to one slave to one or more slaves • Circular replication (A to B to C and back to A) • Master to master

Postgres supports

• Single master to one slave • Single master to multiple slaves

(lists from [http://www.theserverside.com/feature/Comparing-MySQL-and- Pos...](http://www.theserverside.com/feature/Comparing-MySQL-and- Postgres-90-Replication))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wonderful, this is also posted on an '.xxx' domain so it is categorised as adult material by my company's proxy. Gee thanks.

From the comments here though I'm not missing anything.

<comment><USER9> With dickey no less!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aside from the lovely Link Bait article, imagine my surprise at seeing a '.xxx' domain on HN's front-page.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hm, the first .xxx domain I've seen on HN and it's not even off-topic (although a little flamebaity).

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how posts like this make it to the front page. This is clearly a opinionated and poorly researched article that gives no evidence for any of its claims, except that a few features this user wants are included in PostgreSQL. There is still plenty of space PostgreSQL has to make up before it is better then MySQL in every way. The knowledge gap alone is enough to keep MySQL around.

<comment><USER7> where does postgres need to catch up? and what knowledge gap?

<comment><USER12> The knowledge gap is how much industry knowledge there is about how MySQL preforms in large scale applications, and the amount of people who can help you tune it. Because MySQL has such a large deployment base there is a whole industry around performance tuning and its easyt to find an engineer who has experience using it. Even if they were technically equal which they aren't that one aspect alone would tip the scales to MySQL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was actually discussing this today:

> Schema-less data, array columns, queueing, full-text searching, geo-spatial > indexing, it's insane what Postgres can do.

Ok for arrays and geo. Maybe for integrated search. But where is the line between bloat and useful features? Do they really need queueing in the database itself, or schema-less parts? Each part is something that needs maintenance, possible bugfixes and caring about when you update any internal part. Just checking for regressions and keeping them up to date with internal interface changes is going to take some time.

See a similar issue which came up in the mysql -> drizzle move. How can we judge what is slowing the project down and what is going to make it into production somewhere?

<comment><USER14> And where will it stop? Will it have a built in email client next?

While it may seem nice and convenient to have all these different features in one nice package, I'm struggling to see what that's such a good idea in the long run.

The thing with the separation of concerns means you use software that does one thing and does it _well_. Maybe this comes with a greater maintenance cost, I don't know, but I think I'd feel safer with that, because of the maintenance reasons you list.

<comment><USER15> Many Postgres features and packages can be enabled / disabled via configure, and the engine built, if you want a "leaner" deploy.

All RDBMS engines have a variety of features that are not necessary in all deployments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> MySQL support is fantastic - they offer optimization along with troubleshooting - and respond immediately. Also, they are relatively cheap as far as support goes.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have nothing against Postgres, I use it daily in many, many projects, but this article is ridiculous. How did this make the front page?

</comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting that people are upvoting this submission, yet the comments are almost all calling it flamebait.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wait, one box? What are clusters then?

</comment><comment><USER21> did this post just disappear from hn? I cant find it on the front page anymore and neither on the second, third, or new... something to do with the xxx tld?

</comment><comment><USER22> Nothing like exaggeration in headlines taken to the extreme.

MySQL is fine. Even if you accepted the premise that Postgres had become the better piece of software, MySQL has a massive installed user base and every opportunity to catch up and improve.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. And now that Oracle and MariahDB are competing, we're actually seeing a lot of progress on getting new versions and features out the door.

A great example of this is MariahDB just provided a module to handle geospatial data in the database as well.

<comment><USER24> MariaDB

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article's arguments aren't that convincing. Geospatial indexing? That's an application-specific function that shouldn't be bloating a database engine. If anything, the grocery list of crap mentioned by this article makes me DOUBT Postgres's focus on being an efficient database.

The other problem is that every host offers MySQL. Not so with Postgres.

<comment><USER25> > That's an application-specific function that shouldn't be bloating a > database engine.

GIS most certainly belongs in the database. You don't want to load gigabytes of geo data as points in memory and build and filter geometries in whatever your application is, anymore than you want to load any non-trivial dataset in- memory and do your filtering in your application language.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, that's why they're supported in PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, DB2, MSSQL, even SQLite... Multi-dimensional data isn't restricted to the world of GIS, and B-Trees are not up to the task.</comment></comment></comment>


Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ezeYJUz-84

<comment><USER2> This really demonstrates the power of crowd-sourcing! An awesome project.</comment>


China Announces Punishments for Intellectual-Property Theft - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-04/china-announces-new-punishments-for-intellectual-property-theft <comment><USER2> Is there still a rule that foreing companies can operate in China only if they are joint ventures with Chinese partners?

If so then the Chinese partners can get to know all the foreign IP.

I'm sure there will be show punishments under the new law, but through the joint ventures China can still get all the foreign tech knowledge it wants.

<comment><USER3> Yes, China doesn't need to steal much of anything, because in order to manufacture in China you need to hand over your IP to your Chinese partner company. Your Chinese partner company has another partner, the Chinese Government, so in effect when you manufacture in China you need to share your IP with the Chinese government, and they share the information you gave them with any Chinese company that could benefit.

Passing all the laws won't matter, because western companies are just handing their IP to the Chinese government.

<comment><USER4> The nature of "laws" are also different in China versus a rule-based society like the USA (heck even Europe is less rule-based than the US).

Even if China nominally had a law against IP theft, on the ground in it can be very different. They could (and do as the stories below show) ask companies to "voluntarily share their methods" and when they don',t, towns can delay permits, throw up selective barriers, and put in all sorts of disadvantages that are not officially codified.

The west would be smart to wait to see how easy it _really_ is to do business in China without giving over IP before giving China credit.

China has been playing the "we passed a new law/speech" game to buy time for a long time, but the walk is far from following the talk. I hope China is serious, but only time will tell, not the law.

<comment><USER5> Another interesting one is financial services in China. It's been closed to outside companies, but China said they would let non-Chinese companies in. Except they put a barrier that the company must have $15 billion in assets. Plus, no company has even been approved to operate there yet (as of the last reporting I saw).

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-investment-banks- fa...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-investment-banks-face-new- hurdle-in-china-1528811470)

non-paywall: [https://outline.com/UdR3KA](https://outline.com/UdR3KA)

<comment><USER6> UBS got an approval for buying back their stocks up to 51%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the world economy worked on real goods property had good understanding. services and intellectual property are challenging because ideas are ephemeral yet persist, and we have only social constructs to constrain them.

"I have the cake you don't unless you pay me" is very distinct from "You are not allowed to sing happy birthday without paying me"

One is an absolute. The cake _is_ and moves. The other is an idea. You get rent from me expressing an Idea. Do I have to pay if I hum it inside my head? Do I have to promise not to tell anyone in written form? What if I change more than 90% of the notes but keep one theme?

I know this is a reductionist example, but IPR is like this: it has the terrible quality which goes to Patent process or patents over mathematics or physics. If you discover a specific dopant applied for a specific period of time in a specific way to silicon increases yield by 10%, Once the world knows this, why are you paid for the IPR licence time? If its to profit on the investment for research, remember that a huge amount of research is paid out of tax, not by investment returns. What if the counter parties invent a minor twist, or a related IPR moment? Yes.. people trade IPR rights, and collect IPR rights into agencies like the MP3 assciation.

This is a huge cancer on society. Its like CFDs. Its leveraging money moments out of thought.

International trade in real goods demands cheap. IPR demands rent which is "not cheap" -So the US demands for IPR rents on goods made in china, is like cutting your nose to spite your face: If you drive China to pay IPR taxes, you will drive china to seek IPR inside itself to avoid the taxes and charge YOU to copy them.

Better to have no IPR taxes than enforce payment.

<comment><USER8> I feel like your (and most) anti-intellectual property arguments are built on terrible strawman, so let's go through your terrible strawman.

>One is an absolute. The cake is and moves. The other is an idea. You get rent from me expressing an Idea. Do I have to pay if I hum it inside my head?

Obviously not, and to suggest that intellectual property laws would require rent payments for thinking about a song is so odious and unfair that the speaker must be assumed to be acting outside of the realm of honest discourse.

>Do I have to promise not to tell anyone in written form?

? How is your concept of intellectual property so divorced from reality? In what country does one make a promise not to hum a song to a rights holder in written form? This beggars belief that you are anything other than some uninformed radical.

>What if I change more than 90% of the notes but keep one theme?

As with all of intellectual property, unless you are attempting to commercialize your idea, you aren't going to be seriously targeted for using someone's intellectual property.

I struggle to treat this post as anything but the uninformed ramblings of a true radical. I mean, could you at least pretend to have a real world understanding of intellectual property when you create your examples?

Here's a question for you: Have you ever created anything in your life with value that could be protected by intellectual property laws (copyright, trademark, patent, etc)? Have you ever created anything of value and given it away? Or are these ruminations about intellectual property purely hypothetical?

<comment><USER9> Are you sure you're on the right track? The least you can do is not make the same mistake that you're accusing other of.

> How is your concept of intellectual property so divorced from reality? In > what country does one make a promise not to hum a song to a rights holder in > written form? This beggars belief that you are anything other than some > uninformed radical.

Fallacy: 1) Ad Hominem

> As with all of intellectual property, unless you are attempting to > commercialize your idea, you aren't going to be seriously targeted for using > someone's intellectual property.

Fallacy: Appeal to probability

> I struggle to treat this post as anything but the uninformed ramblings of a > true radical. I mean, could you at least pretend to have a real world > understanding of intellectual property when you create your examples?

Fallacy: Ad Hominem

> Here's a question for you: Have you ever created anything in your life with > value that could be protected by intellectual property laws (copyright, > trademark, patent, etc)? Have you ever created anything of value and given > it away? Or are these ruminations about intellectual property purely > hypothetical?

Fallacy: Ad Hominem

You could have ended your post by pointing out the fallacies, but Internet has taught you to go a step further (Look at me doing the same thing)

<comment><USER8> Fallacy: Fallacy fallacy.

The worst kind of munchkin is the one that thinks A) a fallacious argument is a wrong one B) that reducing arguments to fallacies is a beneficial way to communicate and C) who misuses fallacies as a tool to avoid arguing merits.

For shame. Utterly, you provided the worst response possible. Meta, petty, inherently fallacious and ultimately pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Patent violation is already a commerce code offence

2\. Same for trademark violation

3\. Same for media products reproduction rights

The only thing that this changes is that anybody indicted is automatically distanced from the state system, something you can consider a privilege actually...

I knew an expat chemist here who had hard time declining very assertive solicitations for investments into her company from all kinds of state run funds, including ones ran by Norinco and PLAF out of all things. Her product was a variable viscosity fluid that was said to have a world record for vibration dissipation.

So vexatious they were, she had to hire a lawyer to find good excuses for not taking their money, without losing any of perks, and access to government tenders.

In the end, she went on taking money and facilities access from the infamous "plan 3315," and now has to spend more time hauling legal papers than actually running her factory.

<comment><USER11> What is plan 3315?

<comment><USER10> A borderline bribe like incentive program for foreign scientists, and businessmen to set up shops in second tier cities in China, a part of this initiative [http://www.1000plan.org/](http://www.1000plan.org/)

Effectively free 3 million bucks for a pretty business plan and reputation for as long as you are a foreigner. For this very reason people call it out for throwing money away, and questioning why they can't spend that much on China's own talent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm 100% as interested in Market Access as I am with IP theft. I'm sure there are small and large companies with IP concerns but overwhelmingly, this is a large companies game since they are the ones doing really heavy R&D lifting on new materials and technologies. For startups, genuine market access to China would be such a fantastic opportunity.

<comment><USER13> As a real world example, the fashion industry in China is hopelessly awash with fakes and copies. There's very little enforcement of that kind of intellectual property, and also such high barriers to entry for say small/medium European fashion brands that they have no options. Chinese counterfeiters make money hand over fist ripping off US/EU designers, often working with the same factories producing the legitimate products for export.

When a small/medium EU clothing company can setup their own Taobao store easily and cheaply, sell online without overwhelming competition from counterfeiters, repatriate their earnings without significant issues, then perhaps we can consider the playing field levelled somewhat.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like the Chinese are only selling defective products that westerners won't accept.

<comment><USER13> That's not correct.

Especially with low-tech products like clothing, you can easily buy fakes that have equivalent (or better) quality than originals at 1/5th of the US/EU price. You're not paying expensive EU/US staff wages, company taxes, export costs, duties, design fees, branding and marketing costs. The base cost of a $120 pair of NIKE shoes is around $10 - it's easy to find counterfeit Nike that cost $20 with great quality.

<comment><USER15> > Especially with low-tech products like clothing, you can easily buy fakes > that have equivalent (or better) quality than originals at 1/5th of the > US/EU price.

As a consumer I 100% approve of this practice, go Chinese clothes manufacturers! And I can use the $110 that I saved by purchasing a product/service from an industry that doesn't rely on rent-seeking (IP is mostly rent-seeking nowadays).

<comment><USER13> I kind of agree.

Western consumers are so removed from clothing production that they've lost sight of how vast the gulf is between real and perceived value. Paying 10x or 20x the manufacturing cost for what is essentially a commodity item with zero technology or innovation is insane.

That said, brand and design do have some value. There's a reason why Chinese consumers and counterfeiters have insane appetite for western brands, but western consumers would struggle to name a single Chinese clothing company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> digital property should not work under exclusive principles (unlike physical property which has to).

to force exclusionary constrains upon digital property means we choose to abandon one of the key advantages of digital information.

it means we favor owning things over being free.

<comment><USER17> Why not? There is more merit to exclusive ownership of digital property than physical property. My entitlement to my yard is pretty comical—that land was there a billion years before I was born and will be there a billion years after I'm dead. But Captain Marvel? That's a thing that only exists in the universe due to the labor of certain humans. Why shouldn't they own it?

<comment><USER18> A person can enforce ownership of their physical property by themselves. Intellectual property enforcement requires the massive power of the state.

One might argue that we should prefer a world in which that sort of massive power is used sparingly.

<comment><USER19> "A person can enforce ownership of their physical property by themselves"

Except in reality, you don't. The state very strongly enforces your property rights that's a good chunk of why the police exist, and most people do not own guns.

The OP argument is not unreasonable.

To wit: in Canada, there is actually no enshrined right to own property. The far left party opted to keep it out of the new constitution written in the 1980's so Trudeau Sr. was forced to keep it out if we were to have a new constitution at all. So it's an intellectual concept.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure if I completely agree with "Except in reality, you don't."

In some sense I enforce ownership of my house just by living here. Someone is here most of the time. The lights are on. There is activity. That keeps others out.

If I just abandoned the place, eventually someone might poke their head in and see if there was anything to take. Sure, that would be illegal, but the cops aren't going to post a guard for me under most circumstances.

You actually see this happen in downtrodden neighborhoods where whole blocks get abandoned. In theory that property is still owned by someone, but without anyone actually there, eventually houses get stripped of valuable goods and in some cases squatters move in.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory) is an academic theory of this point of view.

Another good example is house sitters. When traveling for extended periods of time, people will let trusted 3rd parties stay in their house for free. Why? Enforcement of property ownership.

<comment><USER19> If there were no state, your 'occupation' of the residence would be meaningless, guys with guns would take it from you.

It's feudal based on hard power in one way or another.

The way it's set up now is the cops enforce a common set of rules we agree upon.

You don't have the power to enforce your property rights. Nobody really does.

<comment><USER18> Again, I don't think that's really true historically. Even in pre-state societies or in present day societies with failed or weak states people still have homes that they live in consistently from day to day.

Sure, sometimes the dudes with guns show up and force them out, but that isn't a constant occurrence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> China also just scheduled fentanyl as a controlled substance. This is after China promised the Obama administration they'd curb the supply of the drug.

The NYTimes said that tens of thousands of Americans have died from Chinese- sourced fentanyl.

I don't understand how American startups can take money from China, or how Google and others can work with them. They're in a soft war with us, have a 100 year plan yet we're all so naive.

<comment><USER21> Re: the soft war, I think perhaps the biggest threat is the disinformation campaigns being run by various worldwide entities, including the Chinese.

This is one of the best summaries I've seen about democratic governments as they contrast to 'soft' totatalitarian countries like Russia and China. This is why we all want to live in democracies.

[https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/contrasting-chinas- russias...](https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/contrasting-chinas-russias- influence-operations/)

 _The operational differences, for all their practical implications, may be less important than the simple recognition that Beijing and Moscow both approach influence operations and active measures as a normal way of doing business. The United States approaches covert action as something distinct from the routine business of foreign policy, requiring special authorities and oversight or legal arguments over whether Title 10 or Title 50 applies. This is simply not the case for the contemporary Chinese or Russian states._ They still bear the hallmarks of their totalitarian and Leninist pasts.*

I was going to comment on The Epoch Times and China Daily (two English language papers that are tools to run influence operations), but let's leave that one for another day and just recognize that we need real, honest, truth- seeking media to have a democracy, and democracies need to figure out how to deal with our new media environment that is penetrated by disinformation.

<comment><USER22> It's very recent that there's even a fiction of oversight for US covert actions. Look at the history of Latin America.

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" \-- still true 2400 years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a bit confused, as the Bloomberg article _hints_ at this, but then quickly moves on: is this related to the US tariffs / "Trade War" situation?

<comment><USER24> The US and China agreed to a temporary ceasefire in escalating their retaliatory tariffs, a day later they make this announcement.

Seems a bit too timely to be a coincidence, no?

<comment><USER19> It's absolutely not a coincidence as IP theft is a primary demand of the US side at this time. The other being the overall imbalance.

Ironically, the bigger one is not arbitrary theft of IP, it's the requirement of many actors to willingly give up their IP when going into China and the de- facto closed market given all of the challenges foreign entities have to face.

Some arbitrary IP theft of XMen films and fashion labels could be tolerable, as could a permanent trade imbalance as America still wins huge surpluses even in an imbalanced exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really? How about this: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-maneuvers-to-snag- top-sec...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-maneuvers-to-snag-top-secret- boeing-satellite-technology-1543943490)

<comment><USER26> Yeah I don't think Xi is really going to tell the PLA that they have to stop their corporate espionage/stealing American fighter plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you are curious about what is actually announced, here is the original document: [http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201812/W020181204527760656065.pd...](http://www.ndrc.gov.cn/gzdt/201812/W020181204527760656065.pdf)

<comment><USER28> Thanks, very interesting.

It appears that there are no direct financial penalties, only indirectly through restrictions on government subsidies and issuing stock, as well as increased scrutiny in general and especially regarding patent applications, all mediated via the social credit system, including the much-discussed travel restrictions.

At least that's my take based on my middling understanding of Chinese.

<comment><USER27> This is mostly pertaining to administrative cases, which can be quickly resolved. I am surprised there is actually such a thing in China. These are not court cases so they don't have the same power. It seems here they are trying to enhance the power of administrative resolutions through the credit system.

You are entitled to whatever financial penalty you can get from the courts if you go through the court system, but court cases will take longer. In the US patent cases, which are highly technical in nature, can take a very long time to resolve, the upside being that very large damages could be awarded. In China it seems they aim for smaller awards (mainly injunctive relief) and quicker resolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What about when the Chinese country itself violates the IP rules? They can't just punish themselves. So ironic, they will punish a few on the cover, but they will continue their old practice of steeling under the covers.

<comment><USER27> Chinese trademarks, patents and copyrights are monopolies granted by the Chinese government (note, not the US government) to rights owners and have power only within China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Until I read about actual punishments being handed out, I'm skeptical that China will actually enforce rules on intellectual property theft.

<comment><USER31> To be fair, China _is_ a signatory to all of the major copyright treaties of the past 60+ years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_agreements#Table_of_parties)

<comment><USER32> _To be fair, China is a signatory to all of the major copyright treaties of the past 60+ years._

And I clicked on "I Accept" on hundreds of EULAs. That doesn't mean I'm going to abide by the terms I "agreed" to.

Because of its manufacturing sector, China can sign onto whatever it wants and still not enforce the rules. What are the other signatories going to do? Make iPhones in Brussels?

<comment><USER33> Samsung makes its phones in Vietnam just fine. I think Apple should follow if it can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What good is any IP law(s) if we know they won't be enforced?

The idea that China is going stop their IP theft is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER35> The china-ip stuff is curious, and the conclusions (if this does conclude) are likely to be impactful for a generation.

Why would a country want to make laws that creates a type of property which they don't have as much of?

The US & Europe had been framing it as a necessary system, which China needs as much as they do. At some point, the frame changed to more of a moralistic one. This has been convincing (in the west) largely because China had no declared position. They unenthusiastically nod along but avoid enforcement.

Now, we have a more trumpish dealmaking frame. This implies that ip laws are not good for China, and that it'll take carrots or sticks to get agreement.

Me... I don't think up as it is is anywhere near optimal, from either a moral or economic dynamism perspective. Curious to see how this all works out.

<comment><USER36> > Why would a country want to make laws that creates a type of property which > they don't have as much of?

Because, as you say yourself, it hopes to create that kind of property?

<comment><USER35> Well.. they definitely hope to create intellectual output. I'm not sure they need to wrap it around an IP system inspired by the western one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Of all the issues with China, this is the one I least support a "solution" to. Adding to the arsenal of pretexts the Chinese government can selectively hold over its subject's heads.

</comment><comment><USER38> I read the article, but I still can't work out what it's talking about. What does "Intellectual-Property Theft" mean? Are we talking about trade secrets, copyrights, or what? (Surely they can't mean patents?) Are the writers stupid, or are they deliberately trying to confuse the readers?

</comment><comment><USER39> Isn't IP governed by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization)

<comment><USER40> It is governed by World Intellectual Property Organization, which is a UN body.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> hmm. China gonna play the IP game. Watch more patent trolls coming out of China.

</comment><comment><USER42> I didn't know you could just skip this bullet point, get away with it.

Makes me wonder why we ever did it. After all, "Intellectual Property" is just a way to siphon money from my country while making our lives miserable. It's not like we ever got anything useful in the return.

</comment><comment><USER43> Does that mean they'll revise their song pick for the official 2022 Olympic Games?[0]

[0][https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/world/asia/to-some- song-o...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/world/asia/to-some-song-of- beijing-games-is-suspiciously-similar-to-a-disney-ballad.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> LOL, Trump is Xi's 365-day Christmas present.</comment>


Ask HN: Planning to start a company in the Valley. Not an American. Visas - <AUTHOR>

I am planning to start a company in the Valley. I am not an American citizen and my company does not have funding yet. What kind of visa's can I apply and your advice. Please don''t suggest another country. <comment><USER2> I'm not a lawyer, but this is practically impossible without funding. Also, it matters what country you're from, so you should mention that.</comment>


Handbook of Analog Computation [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.analogmuseum.org/library/handbook_of_analog_computation.pdf <comment><USER2> The first computer I ever owned was an analog computer from Edmund Scientific. It was fundamentally an electronic slide rule. It had a meter that swung from a negative value to a positive value. The operator adjusted some potentiometers so that the meter was nulled. The output was read from the numbers pointed to by the knobs on the pots. At least that is the way I remember it working. I don't recall how exactly the equation was entered, but I think there were some pots for that too.

As far as building your own analog computer, look at op amps. They're called that because they perform mathematical operations, such as summing, multiplying, and integration. Of course they do the inverse operations as well.

<comment><USER3> With two op amps you can build a neural network. (Or at least a single perceptron)

[https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_perceptron_ci...](https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/the_perceptron_circuit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for finding this ; I'm really grateful . I've been looking for a decent book on the topic .

For those still tinkering with analog computers, could you recommend a setup for a beginner? Something that'd let me build real things that isn't crazy expensive (and isn't just a simulator). Is there something like a RPi for analog computing?

<comment><USER5> So one of the neat things about Analog computers is that you get a lot of kick out of "simple" circuit designs. All you need to reproduce everything in the handbook is a bread board, a power supply, and an oscilloscope for output. You can get the individual components from Ada Fruit, Digikey, Mauser, and more. Depending on where you live you can even pick them up locally. Fry's and Microcenter being the two biggest chains that still stock opamps and the like.

If you don't even want to hassle with all of that, then you can look into something like the Elenco electronic playground for $50 which has most of what you need mounted and then you just jumper, ala the old analog computers.

If you wanted to get really advanced, you would want to go to something like the guys at [https://www.xmicrowave.com/](https://www.xmicrowave.com/) make, but that gets awfully spendy on a hobby budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to see an FPGA, but for analog circuits.

<comment><USER7> Like an FPAA?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field- programmable_analog_arra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field- programmable_analog_array)

<comment><USER8> I remember reading about the Anadigm FPAAs, but I don't recall finding anyone who sold them.

The Cypress pSOC series is fairly similar (programmable analog blocks mated to a Cortex-M microcontroller core) and easier to find on sale. I'd argue that it's also more useful in modern mixed-signal designs.</comment></comment></comment>