Extreme event attribution is an expanding subfield of climate science - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/ <comment><USER2> I used to do research on climate change, specifically on combining land, sea, and air models together and getting them to run on a massive cluster. It was very important to the other researches that the models produce the 'right' predictions which at the time was runaway global warming. When the models didn't show this it was presumed that the models were wrong so hyper- parameters were tuned to try to torture the models to produce the 'right' result. When even that didn't work they went so far as future pollute the data. Disillusioned with academia I left to work in industry.

My question is this; How qualified and experienced do I need to be in order to be able to legitimately and completely distrust the climate change 'experts'? Because I feel like I've earned that right.

<comment><USER3> I think in order to make the claim that climate change isn't happening, you need to be able to explain how a massive change in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will not result in warming.

There is fundamental data that does not depend on climate models that tells us we're in danger. Atmosphere composition in one of them. Ocean ph is another.

If you have specific criticisms against how climate models are being run, then the place for that debate is within the scientific community, with scientific arguments. Apparently you have decided that is not for you, though.

<comment><USER2> I make no claim that climate change isn't happening. Being between the modeler and the results meant it was my job to explain the result to the modeler. So criticizing climate change models within the scientific community was my job for over a year and a half.

<comment><USER4> > _criticizing climate change models within the scientific community was my > job for over a year and a half_

So you had a long and glorious career spanning more than 18 months, that makes you feel entitled to criticize those who studied the field for decades and are actually making a living therein.

<comment><USER2> Yes; but it seems your answer to my question is that I must also have several decades of experience.

<comment><USER4> My answer is - you need to actually understand the thing you're criticizing, not just feel like you do. Another prerequisite is a lack of agenda or bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Today, scientists still generally agree that it's impossible to attribute > any individual weather phenomenon solely to climate change

Seems the actual science is the direct opposite of the headline once you read through the article.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it seemed they buried the lede, kind of disingenuous journalism.

<comment><USER7> It's a bit redundant to say "disingenuous journalism" though, you could just say "journalism".

<comment><USER8> Oh fuck, got 'em!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The whole science of event attribution developed so that we can provide > scientifically robust answers to these questions. If we the experts don't do > this, then there will be people who are not qualified who will go and fill > in the gaps.

I don't think this will accomplish what these scientists hope. People fill gaps of _trust_ more than gaps of _fact_. No amount of evidence or attribution is going to address that problem.

<comment><USER10> Agree. I think the butterfly effect is informally understood by the masses; I think most people will assume they have no control over specifc events. Pointing to a dry river bed and saying climate change is going to undermine the credibility of the scientists, whether or not the scientist is correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article about assessing how much climate change actually increases the probability of extreme weather events. Unfortunately, the headline is clickbait that is repeatedly contradicted by the article itself.

<comment><USER12> It doesn't seem that way to me. The article even cites peer reviewed published papers where this exact thing is done, blaming a specific part or whole of a storm on climate change.

> Two separate studies published in December both found that climate change > had influenced Harvey's record-breaking rainfall (Climatewire, Dec. 14, > 2017).

I don't see anywhere in the article that even remotely comes close to contradicting the headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a bit surprised that Scientific American is running chatty articles reprinted' from 'climatewire', an E&E website. [https://www.eenews.net/eep/learn_more/](https://www.eenews.net/eep/learn_more/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can they predict individual extreme events, or does this only work retroactively?

</comment><comment><USER15> They seem to have gone from saying "We can't attribute event X solely to climate change, but X is more likely due to climate change" to saying "X is more likely due to climate change".</comment>


Gothamist and DNA Info Shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://assets.dnainfo.com/message.html <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the writers/editors unionized a week earlier.</comment>


How MemSQL Distributes Data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.memsql.com/how-memsql-distributes-data/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if MemSQL has improved in ACID compliance (especially full durability performance) in the nearly 2 years since Domas previously[0] dissected it?

MemSQL sounds too good to be true sometimes, but I want to believe. Just wish it was open source.

[0] [http://dom.as/2012/06/26/memsql-rage/](http://dom.as/2012/06/26/memsql- rage/) (hn discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4162488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4162488) )</comment>


How to disable Turbolinks in Rails 4 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flightswithfriends.com/post/53943440505/how-to-disable-turbolinks-in-rails-4

<comment><USER2> Cool, I was going to look into this later</comment>


Female editors growing scarce at Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/05/16/female-editors-growing-scarce-at-wikipedia/

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia is a mostly toxic environment. You might be able to survive as a gnome, just going around tweaking only obvious spelling errors and typos and weird punctuation. (Some of those corrections are going to be rolled-back by some over-eager 14 year old.) And you might get a few templates calling you a vandal.

Any greater level of interaction needs people prepared to spend considerable amounts of time wading through bizarre WP:SPAGETTI.</comment>


Intel invested $740 million to buy 18% of Cloudera - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-intel-cloudera-idUSBREA2U0ME20140331 <comment><USER2> I like that Cloudera's identity crisis is coming to an end. It used to be "here's a boatload of processing power, you can do anything with it...go crazy". Now they're aligning themselves in the data warehousing space where hadoop/hdfs is undoubtedly the most cost effective solution. I can't say the same for other hadoop vendors...namely, hortonworks seems to be all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cloudera has some of the best talent in distributed systems in the valley. Nice to see enterprise tech company grabbing one of the largest private financing round.

</comment><comment><USER4> Big money investment, but big money to be made as well.</comment>


Apple 'Safe Deposit Box' Patent Revealed Ahead of Mac OS X Lion - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-safe-deposit-box-patent-revealed-ahead-of-mac-os-x-lion/

<comment><USER2> This is a really interesting way to sell cloud-based storage. My parents use Dropbox for synchronisation of files on multiple computers, but they don't really understand how it acts as a backup system too. Pitching cloud storage as a safety deposit box clearly spells out the benefit to people.

On a related note, Mac OS X can already create password-protected encrypted disk images with a few clicks in Disk Utility. These are great for creating a "safety deposit box" yourself on an existing system.

<comment><USER3> > but they don't really understand how it acts as a backup system too.

Maybe your parents are just more sophisticated than you and know the difference between redundancy and backups.

<comment><USER4> You're playing semantics. Fundamentally all "backups" are just storage redundancy.

<comment><USER5> The difference is isolation. If I accidentally rm a file on a RAID, which is redundant, but not a backup, it's gone for good. Backups protect you by providing a distinct interface to >= 2 copies of a piece of data, this provides greater protection against malice, mistakes, and hardware failures.

<comment><USER6> As you say, RAID (specifically RAID level 1) is redundancy.

Time Machine is a form of generational/chronological backup.

Apple has stated that Time Machine is not archival. I wonder is this new patent is referring to an extension of TM, to the cloud, to provide something as close to archival as can be achieved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prior art?

2009 - [http://www.randomwire.com/storing-sensitive-data-in-the- clou...](http://www.randomwire.com/storing-sensitive-data-in-the-cloud)

2008 - [http://firmit.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/truecrypt-virtual- enc...](http://firmit.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/truecrypt-virtual-encrypted/)

<comment><USER8> Stop that, it's very silly: <http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript- tridgell-patents/>

<comment><USER7> Care to elaborate in your own words why you think so?

I will be quite peeved if something I have been doing for years with combinations of tools like Dropbox and Truecrypt becomes more difficult or costly to me _or my customers_ due to a patent like this one.

<comment><USER9> Basically, it comes down to: the claims in patents are interpreted very narrowly.

If your device/method doesn't _exactly_ match the claim elements of the independent claim(s) in Apple's patent - even one little difference in implementation is enough - then your device/method is not infringing. Don't worry, be happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm just happy they properly called it a "Safe deposit box."

It annoys the crap out of me when people call it a "Safety deposit box"

</comment><comment><USER11> How does this differ from the iDisk system? Just asking, I'm relatively new to Macs and I see that in Finder under Devices but have never used it. Also, how does iDisk differ from DropBox?

<comment><USER12> IIRC, iDisk was just an easy way to mount the storage on your .Mac account (or whatever they are calling it nowadays). There was no auto-sync, so it was basically a network mounted filesystem (I doubt the system's backend was distributed, so I'm not going to call it a 'cloud-based' mounted filesystem).

<comment><USER13> Actually, there's a full sync option in MobileMe preferences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> so they've patented a password-protected network filesystem?

how did they miss the prior art on THAT one?

<comment><USER15> If you read the post, it doesn't appear that they've patented anything like that.

Just because something is used in an invention doesn't mean that component is now part of the patent; for example if somebody uses a gear in their patented design, it's OK for others to use gears.

<comment><USER16> Could you please elaborate on what you see as being patented then?

I agree a patent on a gear does not allow others to use the same gear, but said gear would need to have a uniquely defining quality which differentiates it from the other gears already in existence.

<comment><USER15> I'm not going to go trawling through patents (I'm superstitious), but based on only the figures in the linked article, there's at least a password protected file-system _and_ the interface for accessing it. And going on the text, there's going to be something about the security implementation as well that's in the patent.

This sounds very similar to DropBox, but this is just a high-level description. It's extremely unlikely that they could describe their system in sufficient detail without distinguishing it from DropBox in some way.

There's a tendency to hear the title of a patent and think that it covers all systems that could possibly be described by that particular title. This is not the case! Also, there's a tendency to hear about a patent and think that because your system does something similar, it would be infringing against a patent, but that also is not necessarily the case. The patent system can be abused horribly, but not every instance of a patent is an instance of abuse, and each patent should be evaluated on its own merits rather than the abuses of others.

<comment><USER17> > Also, there's a tendency to hear about a patent and think that because your > system does something similar, it would be infringing against a patent, but > that also is not necessarily the case.

Right. You can often dodge patent claims by doing just one little thing in a different way. When you see a very specific claim, it means the patent lawyer was forced to write it that way by the examiner. A patent application starts out as generic as possible and becomes increasingly specific in response to push-back.

Of course, non-infringement is no guarantee against getting dragged into a costly legal battle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What could possibly go wrong.

<comment><USER19> \--Mike Rowe</comment></comment>


Why Outsourcing Your IT to Poland Will Ruin Your Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-outsourcing-your-poland-ruin-life-steve-sydenham/ <comment><USER2> Terrible title - its sarcastic. Poland is (apparently) a great place to outsource.

<comment><USER3> I'd guess it was all ironic (?)

quite hard to follow when his main argument is not reversed, but the rest is...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best tool for technical web crawler data (entire internet) - <AUTHOR> I am looking for tool or search engine for technical web crawler results.  I want to know what sites are using certain products and/or plugins.  I have seen nerdydata.com but I am looking for other options. <comment><USER3> We are using publicwww for ad scraping (finding which ad network a website uses). It works well!

Our product is very simple:

a) Scrap ads b) Display ads c) Sell subscription to customers.

Advertisers pay to spy on competitors' ad, surprisingly it's quite easy to build if you know how to scrap and implement a search on top of it.

Scraping costs $10 per customer and we sell it to customers for $159 per month.

</comment><comment><USER4> Besides nerdydata there's also the similar publicwww.com for custom searches.

Then there's the usual suspects with predefined technology definitions (builtwith, similartech, datanyze).

Last but not least I'm also building such a product and will be launching next month.

I would love to discuss your needs and see if we can accommodate them - <USER2> can reach out to me at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER5> I have tried publicwww but over 80% of the results were either duplicates domains, dead links, or didn't contain my search term.

I'm glad I only wasted $49 and didn't opt for the annual license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://builtwith.com/](https://builtwith.com/) is in the same space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Getting security warnings for the site on all browsers, guessing something is wrong right now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> they don't advertise it well, but nerdydata's custom reports had some excellent results... way more than their regular search website shows.

They were also able to customize our search and extract specific data from the page. pretty advanced stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds promising, can they run a custom report across their entire index? I'm trying to get a count of competing products to gauge market size and interest.

<comment><USER5> They gave us the option of either running a report on their entire index, OR if we had a list of domains to search explicitly (which we didn't have).

Our use case was different, though, we wanted to find websites using a javascript library, and then run a javascript function on all of those sites to extract account information and specific html patterns.

But yes, their larger custom reports index did the trick, would recommend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to know, thank you. Was the pricing reasonable?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vegas casino develops technique for ablation of the amygdala - <AUTHOR> http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2010/02/vegas-casino-develops-technique-for.html <comment><USER2> Misleading headline, since the "Vegas Casino" part is just speculative fiction. Nonetheless, the backing research is an interesting case of neurology.</comment>


San Francisco Tenants Break Leases at Alarming Rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesfnews.com/san-francisco-tenants-break-leases-at-alarming-rates/57573 <comment><USER2> > The survey revealed that 16 percent of owners reported residents broke their > leases or unexpectedly gave a 30-Day Notice to Vacate. > A total of 315 > landlords responded to the survey, owning or managing 10,377 residential > apartments citywide...

So, 50 landlords (~16% of 315) reported that they had at least one tenant unexpectedly leave early? Over what time period? How many tenants in total? This may or may not be an interesting story - we can't tell.

<comment><USER3> So it could be as few as 50/10377 = 0.5% of tenants broke their lease. This is a useless survey unless they asked the landlords how many of their tenants broke their lease.

<comment><USER4> As typical of sensationalist media these days looking to get clicks.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately not every survey will meet the high standards of internet commenters looking for blood

<comment><USER6> I understand why you might feel this way, but I don't think the parent and grandparent comments are necessarily "looking for blood." They bring up valid concerns.

Disclosure: I haven't read the linked article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 16% is not alarming to me given the situation and how ridiculous real estate is in SF. I expected a higher number than that.

<comment><USER8> It's not even 16% of rentals; it's 16% of the surveyed owners who, on average, rent more than 30 rental units each.

<comment><USER9> So it could be that of those owners they had one or two tenants break a lease? This would be a much lower number of actual tenants breaking their lease but we do not know with the data provided.

<comment><USER8> Right. All the provided numbers tell us is that out of about 10 000 renters at least 50 and no more than 9750 broke their lease. We really need to know where in this range the real numbers are and where we'd expect them to be in a normal year.

Before somebody complains about my numbers, I did round values to make the math simpler. The real values aren't that far off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Chronicle had an article citing the same statistics (but with a little more investigation): [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tenants- brea...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tenants-break-leases- in-startling-numbers-15347851.php)

</comment><comment><USER11> > _San Francisco Tenants Break Leases At Alarming Rates_

> _The survey revealed that 16 percent of owners reported residents broke > their leases or unexpectedly gave a 30-Day Notice to Vacate._

An unexpected 30-day notice is how my Bay Area lease terminated gracefully. Like, it was required that I do that, by the contract written by my landlord. But I don't consider graceful, agreed upon move-outs as "breaking" a lease, which to me implies someone trying to get out of the contract.

But also… this would be hardly surprising? My rent was going up 10% YoY when I left, and it was clear that Bay Area politics were never going to fix the rampant housing problems. With all the layoffs I've read about as a result of COVID-19, I bet some people are moving out! (I moved prior to all this craziness.)

One of my co-workers even told me that he had every intention of protecting "his" piece of the pie, as much as possible, by letting as little as possible get built as he could as a voter. It was just amazing to me how so many people thought they had the right to tell _other_ people what they could not do with "their" land. Zoning is one thing, but the Bay Area is a whole different thing.

<comment><USER12> There is typically a term to a lease, so maybe you were just month to month.

<comment><USER11> Yes and no — but my point is that _any_ normal termination would have resulted in the 30-days notice. Yes, under a year-long or worse lease, you'd have to wait until the end of the lease period, but you'd still be serving such a notice.

(And in fact, we were on a year-long lease, and first transitioned it to a month-to-month for the purposes of being able to eventually serve that notice.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Glad to be one of them. We'll see if I make it back to the good ole Bay Area.

<comment><USER14> Did you move out of bay area completely, or to a place more affordable. Am in cupertino and been thinking should I move or not?

<comment><USER13> I'm originally from the Midwest, so I moved back with my parents for a bit of time. Luckily, I'm a massive minimalist so it was easy for me to just pack up and drive across the country without any issues.

I'd like to come back, but my company has consider allowing me to stay here. If it's with the same pay, it would be a no-brainer. But I do love/will miss the Bay Area. I'll probably be back when I'm a bit more financially stable.

<comment><USER15> > But I do love/will miss the Bay Area. I'll probably be back

I was going to ask, what is an ideal place for you? Like let's say cities lose their allure because clusters of event venues won't exist and nobody has the capacity to meet new people even if watering holes did implement distancing, since everyone is distanced.

As someone that didn't retreat to my parents house and has a new favela in my SF neighborhood amidst all sorts of chaos, I've been drawing a blank for the last 4 months

<comment><USER13> >what is an ideal place for you?

If I knew, I'd be there :D Unfortunately, I have no idea. I like my family and the cost of living around where I live (Midwest), I love the hustle and bustle of the Northeast, and I like the outdoors and political vibe of the West Coast. Even lived in Germany for a bit in college and loved that.

Open to suggestions, haha

<comment><USER16> London! I moved to SF from London, you get bit of everything! :)

<comment><USER17> Tell me more. I'm also in the Midwest US. Still early in my career. I'd consider London but the cost of living scares me. Also the whole Brexit thing.

<comment><USER16> Don't worry much about Brexit, I was quite worried about it myself and I lost the chance to buy a house at a cheaper price. Brexit is turning out to be quite positive for the UK, and the media claims that the companies will move out is backfiring and they are moving into the UK now.

I have lived in SF / Boston / London / Portland, and I think London has the bits of all. Comparing to the west coast, London has equal or better food culture, similar political vibe but much more diverse yet localized within the city, the hustle and bustle of living in a true city, the architectural beauty and most importantly quite nicely located with accessible sites of natural beauty within the UK and Europe.

I think the only thing that is negative about London vs SF is the weather :-/ Also, it's not a very friendly place to move at the start of your career, quite closed for newbies and an old boys club so that's a caveat.

<comment><USER18> OK, so the only part I'll respond to is the Brexit thing.

Firstly, Brexit has still not happened in any real sense (there's a transition period till the end of the year).

Secondly, the UK government appear to want a minimal trade relationship with the EU, which will hit services trade pretty hard (and the UK exports lots of services).

The likelihood is that many large companies will need to move staff/assets to the EU to retain their licenses.

For me, specifically (as I'm a data scientist) this probably means that data products out of the UK are going to be tricky to sell.

I would expect that there will be a drop in London property prices, but a larger drop in jobs.

Don't get me wrong, London is a great city, but I (personally) would stay away from moving there till at least next year, as the implications around Brexit and trade should be much clearer by then.

<comment><USER16> I don't even have any counter arguments to make, you can speculate as much as you want, the home prices were suppose to drop drastically and I was waiting for it. They went up after the withdrawal agreement was signed :-/

I was under impression that whatever you just mentioned would have happened by now, but Nissan and Unilever are now moving to UK and all the speculations are going down the drain.

I have come to a conclusion that all the anti-brexit hysteria has been priced in, and indecisiveness is proving more costly as time goes by!

<comment><USER18> Totally. I'm in a similar position (wanting to buy a house, but concerned at the insane prices), so I totally get you. Maybe coronavirus will accomplish it. Something something market, irrational, solvent.

So, the Unilever thing is a stock move, that really only occurred because the shareholders in the City didn't like it (being removed from the FTSE would have been very bad for their share price).

My understanding is that Nissan (and all the car-makers) rely on frictionless trade in goods, which probably isn't going to happen. I believe that they will probably invest in the UK for the domestic market, but we'll see.

Again, nothing has practically changed in terms of trade, and will not until January 1st of next year. We'll see I suppose.

<comment><USER16> Well, that means UK does have a pretty amazing leverage to keep jobs in the country. I am one of the least politically aware person, but I have come to a conclusion that Brexit isn't going to be as good as it is being claimed by people who have voted for it. It's also not going to be as bad as people who voted against it claim to be.

As an outsider, for something as zero-sum as buying a home where supply is low, cost of waiting and indecision can be pretty high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I mean it makes total sense. If the prices go down then the math is super simple. If people are leaving its _very_ likely they're paying cheaper rent.

If anything 16% of their poll seems totally reasonable given the market & circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER20> You couldn't get evicted, but your sf bills continues to accrue while you may not have been working. Imagine the stress of people whose jobs didn't come back to have 3 months of debt pile up like that

</comment><comment><USER21> I enjoy looking at Zillow data and everything in the range I am looking at is racing back to 2018 prices, mainly driven by foreclosures.

I thought about investing, but it seems that mortgage lenders now expect a 40% down deposit on the property.

<comment><USER22> For investment property or primary residence? I didn't have to put down nearly that much for my residence in the east bay.

<comment><USER21> Investment property. When I bought my residence, the down payment was 20%. These current numbers come from a check on the Zillow advertised mortgage lenders. The 40% down in the simulation tool seems to be because lenders won't take more than 700k in debt (>1M total cost).

<comment><USER23> A lot of investors stopped buying jumbo loans. FHA though is still buying conforming loans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The biggest group of tenants breaking leases in San Francisco are Generation > Z workers, those between the ages of 18 to 25 years old

Since when did people born in 1995 counted as Gen-Z?

<comment><USER25> That's somewhere on the border. But really, this is more a matter of blaming the youngest generation for every problem that besets the older ones. Gen X are a bunch of nihilistic latch key kids, Millennials destroyed every industry but online retail and avocado farming, and now we can blame gen-z for breaking lease agreements while scrolling through their tik-toks. Of all the statistical screw ups in this article, getting the age range of gen-z off by a few years seems mild.

<comment><USER26> Well, they're also less likely to have much savings, more likely to have a service job that doesn't currently exist, and more likely to still have the option to go to stay with the folks. I would expect young folks to be much more likely to break a lease than older folks.

I do agree that generational nonsense has been pretty rich lately.

      -- Nihilist raised by the tee-vee

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So far it seems this has not yet affected housing sales much more than the typical seasonal: [https://www.movoto.com/san-francisco-ca/market- trends/](https://www.movoto.com/san-francisco-ca/market-trends/)

Look at the 5 year chart. it basically shows inventories are still roughly the same place they were at this time the last 5 years.

<comment><USER21> This is the first time SF is down YoY for the past decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In a few months we'll be hearing complaints about how tech people came and drove local housing to insane levels.

</comment><comment><USER29> alarming to whom?

<comment><USER30> I'm guessing alarming to slumlords, property maintainers and the like.</comment></comment>


Fake insurance exchange site put up by (California) Assembly Republican Caucus - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/112931539494181042672/posts/L4QiJHYX88N

<comment><AUTHOR> Curated:

Crooks and Liars apparently broke this:

[http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/california-assembly-gop- ast...](http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/california-assembly-gop-astroturfs)

 _California Republicans are desperate and shameless. In the past two weeks, GOP Assembly members have sent mailings out on what appears to be the state 's dime to their constituents about health insurance. Only, they don't direct those people to CoveredCA.com to sign up. Instead, they send them to their own astroturf version at the URL CoveringHealthCareCA.com._

HuffPo:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/california- republic...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/california-republicans- obamacare-website_n_4378631.html?utm_hp_ref=politics)

 _Republicans in the California State Assembly are directing voters to a website purporting to be a "resource guide" for the state's new health care exchange. However, the GOP-backed guide to "helping you navigate federal health care changes" paints the Affordable Care Act in a largely negative light._

 _The site, Coveringhealthcareca.com, features different sections for insured individuals, uninsured individuals and employers, as well as for seniors and young adults. Each section offers details on what the new law means for each group. However, those details are often drawn from Republican talking points on the law 's drawbacks._

Article also notes the site was created in August but has been the subject of recent mailers to constituents.

Wonkette offers its own spin:

[http://wonkette.com/535557/hero-california-republicans-do- th...](http://wonkette.com/535557/hero-california-republicans-do-their-part- for-constituents-with-fake-obamacare-site)

 _Hey, this is a funny trick! Crooks and Liars lets us know that Republican members of the California Assembly have been sending out informational mailers (PDF link) directing people to a website that will answer all their questions about the new healthcare law. Isn't that nice of them? The mailer directs them to CoveringHealthCareCA.com, which looks like a super-official health insurance site, but is actually run by the Assembly's Republican Caucus, and provides decidedly slanted "resources" about the dystopian future of healthcare._</comment>


The age of stream of consciousness and insanity - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-age-of-stream-of-consciousness--and-insanity/2016/08/12/9388be82-60b4-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html?utm_term=.1452093c4570 <comment><USER2> Day in, day out: Internet

Articles lament the fall

in attention -- Inattention!

Hang it, let's go to the mall.

<comment><USER3> This newfangled tool

writing, makes the youth forget

their epic poems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems this article ends before it gets to the main argument.

<comment><USER5> The article doesn't appear to /make/ an argument - it just mentions the author's concerns about a problem which may or not exist, citing no evidence for anything mentioned.

At best it may be considered a rather poor call to ponder this (tired) issue?

(It mentions a book by an author with neither credentials not evidence and neuroscientists... backing up a point almost but not quite opposite to the book and the post itself)

<comment><USER6> Ironic that an article criticising streams of consciousness, is in fact, another stream of consciousness...

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say it was criticizing streams of consciousness. I would say it was criticizing how our streams of consciousness are becoming more prone to jumping from topic to topic. I think the exact intention of the article is to show, by jumping from topic to topic, how jumping from topic to topic is so common. We are meant to read the article like we are reading a description of a morning ritual not quite exactly the same as our own, but similar enough that it feels like our own.

The author seems to be trying to make two points in this: The internet is impacting how much we jump around, and that's not a good thing. I don't buy either of those. I think we have always been prone to jumping around. I think the internet is just making us more aware of it. We lament the loss of long- reading, but the reality is that reading is a relatively modern thing, for the common man, and even in the years leading up to the invention of the internet, being a 'reader' was not the default. I don't at all think that our attention spans are getting shorter.

I think the author's much stronger (but unmade) point is that we are rewarded by the internet for our short attention spans. If we jump from article to article, changing topics and thoughts all the time, we find more content we like. In addition, something just feels right about being able to get bored with an article or topic and immediately jump to the next thing. I think the thing to be cautious (or at least self-critical of) is this apparent fear of boredom that the internet rewards. For one thing, if you cannot embrace being bored with a topic, you're not likely to ever develop a deep understanding of it. When something is new, we do not feel boredom, but new does not last long enough for deep learning. But for another thing, it encourages us to create sounding boards, where we only expose ourselves to things we find to be in line with our personal preferences and beliefs, or things we find to be entertaining. I don't think that's healthy. For my own sake, I find that when I am not exposed to things I might not choose to expose myself to, I have to make an effort to think like someone else might. When I am able to see things I disagree with, I can often very clearly see how someone might come to disagree with me. I also feel like it stifles my creativity, if I am only exposing myself to content that I find entertaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where is the editor when you need them?

<comment><USER9> Reading buzzfeed.

<comment><USER8> Two words, so accurate and so painful. :(</comment></comment></comment>


Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person's mistake - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/punish <comment><USER3> This being HN, let's talk about software.

I have seen people very wrong-headedly trying to apply rules to all employees because of one misbehaving person, under the misguided notion that this is somehow "fair". For example, a long time ago there was a person in the admin group that was basically a slacker - came in late, left early and didn't work very hard. Management got really annoyed by this and made a "Everybody in by 9am OR ELSE, no exceptions" rule. Well you can imagine how that went down will all us geeks who were slaving 14 hours a day till the witching hour to fix problems. They managed to piss off the most productive people in the building, instead of standing up to one person and saying "you will be in by 9am, because that is when your manager needs you, and if you're not, you will be fired".

So, unless you are managing an organisation that is so large, and you trust your middle management so little, that you can not address problems on a case- by-case basis, then stay away from sweeping rules. I'm with the OP on this one.

<comment><USER4> In one of my early post-college jobs I landed at a small startup. We had something like 6 employees at the time. As my wife was still in PhD school, I was commuting a pretty good distance. So I figured: "I'll just start every day at home, make the drive after rush hour and leave for home before rush hour hits." I was essentially in the office for about 5 hours a day.

Lasted about a week before the MBA in the building pulled me aside and told me that wasn't going to work. The reason: the customer support guy also lived a long way out and he thought it wasn't fair that I was doing this.

Of course, one of the very reasons I was drawn to programming in the first place was the flexibility it came with as a job. I could be productive from almost anywhere... and why shouldn't I be? From my perspective, if he didn't like it, well he should think about a career change.

Now this was early 2002, which some might remember was a terrible time for actually finding jobs... so I reluctantly gave in. My commute went from roughly 30 minutes each way to 1-2 hours. I was miserable. That all changed after about a year as the company grew and I gradually slipped back into a better driving schedule.

It's still something that sticks with me today. Now that I own the company, I promote a results oriented environment that gives everyone the flexibility to come and go as they please. Sure we sometimes have to get everyone together for meetings, but it's hardly been an issue so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does the author live in San Fransisco? Because I see this phenomenon _a lot_ in SF vs other places I've visited. Could have something to do with the abundance of homelessness in that city but the restrooms esp. seem to be locked down like Ft. Knox. For a city with such a liberal reputation they sure act like a bunch of A holes in that respect.

<comment><USER6> If SF weren't such a liberal city, it would have far fewer homeless. Part of the problem is all the services that San Francisco provides to people down on their luck. It makes the city a good place to live if you have nowhere to live. But some shop owners have lost their patience, and I don't blame them. I think I'd lose my patience too, after having to hose human feces off of the sidewalk outside my store several mornings in a row. In some parts of the city (like the Haight, anywhere near GG Park), it's gotten pretty bad.

<comment><USER5> If there were more public bathrooms there would probably be a lot less shit on the streets.

<comment><USER7> Wait, a grown adult chooses to _take a shit on the sidewalk_ and you want to blame someone else for this behavior?

My _cat_ has enough self respect to hold his feces if we accidentally close the door to the laundry room for a while.

<comment><USER5> Do you think if they choose to crap in the woods in GG park that would be any better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> the other side of this is that you need to craft your services and policies so that you are not attractive to troublemakers. For example, at one time I had a 'first month free' policy. Good god. I think maybe 1 customer in 5 was legitimate, and my 95th percentile got absolutely destroyed (and this was back when I was paying sucker rates for bandwidth.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I run a marketplace ( <http://doleaf.com> ) and this is something we try to get across to our sellers. Some of them have really draconian return policies, and maybe they have good reason. But, to the buyers, all kinds of "NO NO NO NO" all over the page is really a turn off.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is kind of an aside, but if you get the time sometime, I'd love to see a blog post of how things are going with DoLeaf. I remember the posting about your beta awhile back, and it's good to see how much progress you've made since then.

<comment><USER9> Ok, the post is up: [http://blog.aisleten.com/2010/02/04/update-on-doleaf- progres...](http://blog.aisleten.com/2010/02/04/update-on-doleaf-progress)

I also posted an item here on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100662> Upvotes would be appreciated

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once I took a mini vacation up to a natural hot spring resort. I'd heard it was a relaxed, hippie-ish, communal living place. When we arrived there were just signs absolutely everywhere, in big letters at face level on all doors. Where to take your shoes off, where to be quiet, where to put your food in the kitchen, how to use the communal food shelves, where you had to wear clothes, where to line up for dinner.

None of the things were unreasonable. Some seemed a little unnecessarily precise, but if it had been a more crowded weekend could have been more critical. Most were intuitive. But it made me uncomfortable. I'd expected to be able to settle in and find my own place there, but I just felt in the way due to all the signs. And anything that wasn't explicitly allowed by a sign I wasn't sure about.

Also, I got a massage there. And when it was over the guy just stormed out without saying anything. I found out later that it's a style for ending massages, not saying anything to ruin the buzz of the massage experience. But I was very startled by it and thought I'd done something wrong. They should have had a sign about that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Then again, sometimes, a few lonely rain drops can be the harbinger of a monsoon. It's worth having balance in this as in all things. Don't just shrug things off if it can go from an ignorable nuisance to a major disaster - <USER2> don't react emotionally to a perfectly rational problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> Making changes to addressing problems only when they occur is part of agile development. The problem here is that the change is an extreme one, that generalizes from one instance to all. But how do you tell how much you should generalize?

A starting point is raw statistics: if you have 1000 customers, and 1 has this problem, should you fix it? Then, account for consequences: how serious is that one problem (what is its cost to you, to the person, to the community)? Finally, what are the knock-on effects, looking at the big overall picture: will addressing this problem improve your business overall, or undermine it? (sometimes, that 1 in a 1000 problem is a good excuse to fix something, or a signal to grow in that direction).

Then, you can think about the best way to address the problem. Nasty prohibitive signs probably don't help; even nice prohibitive signs probably don't help either. Sometimes, you can reorganize how you do things so that the problem cannot occur (e.g. when training animals to not do something, you can train them to _do_ something that is incompatible with the undesired action; e.g. floppy disks are shaped so that they cannot be inserted in the wrong way).

The owner of a prominent software respository site told me that no matter what you write on forms - or how you highlight it - people will simply not read it.

BTW: Sometimes the sign has underlining and exclamation marks added in a different colour, apparently upon second and third infractions. Exasperation marks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Like with so many things in life, it helps to be the type of person who can take a step back and reflect objectively, rather than reflexively reacting to everything. It seems that far too many lack this ability, or at least haven't learned it.

Offtopic: It's a small world. I went to the same little school as Derek, albeit much later. Now I know why we could only drink water at lunch.

</comment><comment><USER14> If he'd ever worked in a cafe or coffee shop that didn't have those rules, he'd want them plastered up on the wall.

First of all, you get the pissy customers who come in to take every one of life's problems out on someone who can't retaliate for fear of losing their job. Secondly, you get the customers who blatantly try to steal; they'll order ABC at $2.79 but when it's being made, they'll say they ordered DEF at $4.79 and that they're making the order wrong. The time to speak up isn't when you've paid and it's half-way made, it's when you visibly see them enter it wrong, however these people know it wasn't entered wrong.

From time to time, you'll occasionally get a variant of type 1, who'll come into the store and order their coffee wrong (ex. they want a black coffee, but they'll order 'coffee, no cream, no sugar', which means you'll get coffee one cream, one sugar, because a black coffee is a black coffee and isn't said any differently anywhere in the anglosphere, don't be different), they'll then proceed to swear at the staff in front of a line of customers. As a customer, I've had to tell these people to leave before and I've seen several others who've had to do it; it's flat out being a bad person and when these people have shirts and ties and company logo's plastered on their vehicles, they deserve to be fired because I'll never use their company. I expect more out of someone in a business suit, and I frequently see worse language and behaviour than anyone else.

I know for a fact that if I ran my own cafe/coffee shop, I'd have those exact rules. I wouldn't have them plastered on the wall, but they'd sure as hell be enforced on any jackasses who don't know how to behave in public. Life has rules and boundaries, and far too many people don't understand this. I was taught this in childhood, I assume everyone else was, but mature fully grown adults don't seem to grasp this.

I've seen this behaviour in convenience stores and supermarkets, in the lobbies of companies and in high-end restaurants, and all of their responses are: please leave the premises, and in the case of the swearing psycho's they've had the police called on them. I've heard even more stories about this going on. So why a small diner can't enforce the same rules is well beyond me. I've seen at dentist offices that they'll kick out the people chatting or texting away on their blackberries for no other reason than it's annoying to both staff and the others waiting.

There's an established etiquette in the world, just like there's an established etiquette on HN and anywhere. I don't go into a full-out swearing tirade against PG for some perceived wrong caused by myself, no one else does either. Why people believe they don't have to follow the rules is beyond me, and I believe these people should be punished to the full extent the law allows because the law is there to punish those that don't follow societally established rules and boundaries, AKA societal etiquette.

If I try to rip you off, I expect you to deny me service. If I swear at you endlessly, I expect you to deny me service. If I'm misusing your property, I expect you to deny me service.

I'm sorry, to me these are a given and don't need to be up on a wall. For way too many people, it's not a given.

<comment><USER15> I'm not a native English speaker and have never lived in the USA, so I'm having a hard time understanding this:

 _(ex. they want a black coffee, but they'll order 'coffee, no cream, no sugar', which means you'll get coffee one cream, one sugar, because a black coffee is a black coffee and isn't said any differently anywhere in the anglosphere, don't be different)_

Are you saying that "coffee, no cream, no sugar" will be understood as "two coffees: one without cream, one without sugar"? That seems... unexpected. I can easily imagine myself making that mistake.

<comment><USER14> Everyone who wants a black coffee says "Black Coffee" or "Coffee, Black", the word 'black' is the keyword here for how you get your coffee. When a worker hears "Coffee, no cream, no sugar" what they're actually hearing is 'Coffee' 'Cream' and 'Sugar', the no isn't a keyword to them and you'll get a coffee with one cream and one sugar just because you said the words. Without those words, you'd have gotten what you wanted.

When you can say in 2 words exactly what you want, you shouldn't be using 5.

<comment><USER16> > _When you can say in 2 words exactly what you want, you shouldn't be using > 5._

Right, because human beings should strive to be as efficient as possible and throw anything that isn't as efficient as possible. Love? Too inefficient! Socializing? Not getting enough work done! 5 words instead of 2? I'm so embarrassed that that seppuku is the only option!

> _When a worker hears "Coffee, no cream, no sugar" what they're actually > hearing is 'Coffee' 'Cream' and 'Sugar',_

So you're saying that the workers aren't paying any attention to what the customer is _actually_ saying, and that it's definitely the customer's fault for not knowing the 'secret code' of the coffeeshop?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tell that to the Marines.

<comment><USER18> I think most customers don't expect a diner to be a boot camp :)</comment></comment>


Lessons From a Coffee Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekatsea.com/lessons-from-a-coffee-entrepreneur

<comment><USER2> > To fix the conversion rates, John moved the "cash only" sign inside, and on > top of that started accepting checks, foreign currency, and even the > I.O.U's.

In my mind, this is the highlight of the article. If you carry out your business in a friendly and unique way you can win customers _and_ do things that are very difficult to pull off otherwise.

<comment><USER3> I miss NYC so much; SF is just such a disappointment as a city.

My bodega 2 doors down in the upper east side was a full deli with fresh chicken, turkey, and pork everyday; $6 huge sandwiches made fresh; coffee; and they were open 24 hours a day. Plus they took credit -- once the people at the register recognized you, you could could run a tab up to a couple hundred dollars and pay on the first of the month. It was wonderful to go downstairs with just the keys in my pocket and have someone who remembered what I wanted for breakfast, that I like my eggs fried (unlike SF where they normally microwave in a plastic bowl), and that I take coffee with just a hint of cream and no sugar. Plus, from their perspective, I paid the tab every month in cash so no fees. I've never found anything like this in SF.

I mean, Andy at Que Tal recognizes me, but it's not the same :(

<comment><USER4> Eggs cooked in a microwave...? That's sacrilege. This is how you cook eggs: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_B3QNu_Ks>

(As a side note, any decent sour cream sold in the US has roughly the same consistency and flavor as creme fraiche.)

<comment><AUTHOR> "... then give it to him in bed! for breakfast :) " - it's amazing how a conversation started on lessons leads into a delicious breakfast. That egg looks sooo good!

<comment><USER4> I make those all the time, and they are fantastic, especially with a bit of fresh-chopped bacon and a bit of Cotswald cheese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An important side lesson here is not to take common industry practices at face value. (In this case, it was the conventional wisdom that 'All coffee shops are expected to have baked goods, and they sell baked goods at a loss').

In any business, big or small, tech or otherwise, there are hundreds of strategic and tactical levers we can pull on a daily basis. Many of these levers we don't even realize exist, because we're so used to thinking of them as fixed in place.

<comment><USER6> > An important side lesson here is not to take common industry practices at > face value.

What do you mean?

He still sound donuts and sold them at a small loss.

<comment><USER5> I'm going off of this line in the article: "With the bread, cookies and donuts, John was now operating with virtually no loss on the baked goods."

Seems to me like a pretty significant turnaround from what his situation had been prior to the switch on sourcing methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "accepting...I.O.U.'s"

One of the coffee shops I frequent also accepts IOUs, plus they do one other thing: you pay as you leave, not when you get your coffee. Now, this has two benefits:

First, means that the barista has to keep track of things...they have to actually have a relationship and interaction with the customer. That's very positive.

Second, it means that I often go get a second cup, or a pastry, because I haven't closed out my bill yet.

<comment><USER8> one consequence of labour being so much cheaper here in india is that even some of the large chain coffee shops have waiters and a pay-as-you-leave policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice post that reminds us that customer development techniques are not new to the tech community, and we can learn a lot from watching traditional brick and mortar stores use these same techniques to enhance their business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, isn't that great! We read all these popular books on how to make startups better, while sometimes all we need to do is open our eyes and watch others.

<comment><USER10> Some of the most memorable business advice I've gotten is from a restaurant owner.

He told me stories about how he's had to declare bankruptcy twice (he's not proud of it and tried to avoid it, but ultimately had little choice); how he's had partners who nearly ruined the business; how he's had to deal with changes in accounting practices; how he's had to deal with "local issues" (such as police officers, nearby merchants, etc); how he's had to manage relatively uneducated employees to build them into an efficient team, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no doubt. We, in tech community, take a lot of things for granted. It's easy to sit at home, in underwear, and write code. Yes, the code might be hard, but it is not the same experience as the one would get at a kitchen table, chopping potato all day. Props to all the hardworking folks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have bought these donuts before, and definitely did not care that they came from Fred Meyer (I remember him mentioning it, slightly apologetically).

</comment><comment><USER12> Good article, but the most interesting part of the story (for me) was casually summarized in one sentence. What amazes me is that he decided to start his first business at the age of 61 - wow! Major kudos to this guy for finally deciding to take a leap at an age when others are merely contemplating if their savings will be enough to fund retirement - that takes serious balls.

Sure, John made some great changes and saved his business, but that's what good entrepreneurs do - adapt and move on. He certainly deserves the credit for that, no doubt.

</comment><comment><USER13> His deck is also the best place to work in the Summer in Seattle IMHO.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. If you visit Seattle on a sunny day this is where you need to set up work for the day. I think I'll head over right now, actually.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you do, let John know that he's becoming a local superstar!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Being a cash-only business is an annoying disservice to your customers. It's a sign that you're not interested in the value of convenience. It's a regressive attitude to lean on cash, and oftentimes a sign that you're not interested in keeping honest books.

If you're not willing to pay what is almost universally accepted as an operating cost in modern society, you're setting yourself up to be left in the dust, and quickly. People are about to start paying for everyday transactions using their phones! If you have a problem with payment processors biting into your margins, then pass the buck onto your customers (even as a credit card usage fee), but never take away a payment option.

<comment><USER16> Credit card usage fees are a good way to a) make your customers mad and b) be blacklisted by your CC processor (possibly sued).

Nearly every processor agreement stipulates that this is a no-no.

<comment><USER17> Then how do universities and state licensing locations get to charge 5% fees on all credit transactions? Do they have separate deals?

<comment><USER18> it's funny, I mean, many of my suppliers of bandwidth and rackspace accept credit cards. No fee, usually.

I'm amused at this thread because I woke up this evening to a bill from a provider that I recently did an especially good job negotiating with, and the guy wants a 3% payment processor fee on top of the negotiated amount.

(I'm going to leave an envelope with a cheque at the co-lo for him; gotta go anyhow.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a typo: "Steady" not "stead" under Lesson 1.

EDIT: Actually, this piece has quite a few spelling errors and typos in it. This needs a once-over by an editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> I absolutely agree (the Editor) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good story about the power of experimenting an making decisions quickly.

</comment><comment><USER21> My lesson as a coffee entrepreneur: hire cute asian waitresses with big boobs (working exclusively on tips) and have them wear nothing but pasties [http://www.ocregister.com/articles/says-126730-nguyen- coffee...](http://www.ocregister.com/articles/says-126730-nguyen-coffee.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I like to have an IOU iphone app.

<comment><USER23> Ycombinator, get busy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Might work, but most likely wouldn't. IOU isn't about the transaction, it's about the human connection between the buyer and the seller. People don't trust technology, they trust people. my 2c.

<comment><USER24> an IOU app that integrates with Facebook then?

<comment><USER25> Facebook makes a shitty web of trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like his business is dying as he cuts parts away. If he could get the right amount of pastries ordered, why would he not make money? You sell half, so order half. It just sounds like he wasn't paying much attention when he wasn't in financial trouble.

Sounds like a pretty reactionary guy. I might agree that credit companies exploit small businesses, but a bakery too? Everyone is out to get this guy.

I just hope he doesn't get his own ATM in his business instead of taking credit cards.

<comment><USER2> It is probably more subtle than that. You have to have a surplus of goods so there is selection. There needs to be enough pastries on display so that people will be able to find something they want.

And when money was flowing, he could afford to sell pastries at a loss to keep his customers happy. When he couldn't afford it anymore he was forced to change. Perfectly normal. What is out of the ordinary is how he reexamined his assumptions and created a better solution -- instead of hamhandedly cutting pastries altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Seattle tech community rocks!

</comment><comment><USER28> Are we sure these are lessons we want to take? Forcing a user to pay with currency (let alone foreign) makes accounting harder, and renders their shop useless to compete with other shops that do have card readers for a very large percentage of people. Then he moved the cash only sign inside instead of realizing that customers want to pay with their cards and adapting to his customers' needs. Lastly, he decided on taking the easy, low-quality route with his baked goods. Is that really future proof? I don't think he's acquiring any new customers by reselling boxed donuts - and his margins are very low. Why is he getting into the competitive baked goods market in the first place? Why not partner with a local bakery that produces high quality food stuffs as a barter?

<comment><USER29> 1\. He only loses to other shops in the case where customers dan't or won't pay with cash (this is a subset, and probably a minority, of customers). In return he saves money on a computer kiosk and the merchant fees on his transactions.

2\. If he does not take plastic, then people who only pay with plastic are not his customers. Their needs are consequently irrelevant.

3\. the $.25 donut is a loss-leader to sell the $4 cup of coffee. Or you could look at it as a bonus of sorts. Compare: "Buy a $4.25 cup of coffee" with "Buy a $4.25 cup of coffee, get a free donut."

<comment><USER28> For 1, I guess we need to know what % of consumers use credit cards/would prefer to use credit cards vs. cash only. With 600m CCs in circulation in the US, I do not think it's fair to say that customers who pay with credit/debit cards is a minority. For 2, like I said, by moving the sign inside, he may get a customer once who pays with cash, but who knows if they will return to pay with cash a second time knowing that they don't accept a CC? 3rd, the donut being a loss leader is a well taken point - depends what his target market is though. My point in raising these concerns is just that we shouldn't look at these lessons blindly, they need real economic analysis and probably some financial data to understand how well they are working vs. other options the owner could have taken.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to John, the customers always returned. This coffee shop is not located in the center of downtown, but rather sits nicely next to the ship canal in Ballard. The people who come through are very often locals and they value their ethics and reputations, thus return to pay back. A buddy of mine, who lives 30 minutes away, once forgot his wallet and had to pay $2.50 with the IOU. He returned a week later and payed back. This approach would never work in Manhattan, but Seattle folks are much friendlier and value small businesses over large chains.

In terms of baked goods, they weren't low quality, they were just home baked. John used to work with a local bakery, but no one particularly cared to get their slightly above average quality.

<comment><USER30> Poster above claims Manhattan takes IOUs but SF doesn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you rather be an alpha developer or an enterprise developer? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think it's the wrong question. Sure, I'd love to work on the hot new app that everybody has in their pocket and can't live without until next week.

But more than that, I want to work with as many smart people and as few assholes as possible. I've found both groups in startups and enterprise. I also want to make good money, and I want to feel supported in my career development.

The rest, as they say, are implementation details.

</comment><comment><USER3> Context: This is the exact question posed and addressed two years ago at [http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/11/12/alpha-vs-enterprise- deve...](http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/11/12/alpha-vs-enterprise-developers/) . Likely elsewhere too.

FWIW, apparently I'm neither.</comment>


Should I Py or Should I Fortran? - <AUTHOR> https://milancurcic.com/should-i-py-or-should-i-fortran/ <comment><USER2> Single threaded, NumPy offers basically the same syntax and speed as Fortran when it comes to vector operations. Therefore, the slides boil down to "CoArrays being the Fortran killer application".

I don't feel this is the whole truth. You can (and many people do) write a modern Fortran MPI-CoArray application for HPC and it can be slim, compile and run fast. No big ecosystem, like a small C application. The same is most likely not true if you include Python in your toolchain and then use some FFI to call C or Fortran in performance critical sections. As the author, you might be able to hide the ugliness (such as Numpy does it), but it can be a show stopper for maintainability and future generations working with the code. That's probably why still so many new HPC codes are pure Fortran/C codebases and Julia or Python remains the language for postprocessing data on workstations.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I spoke about Python and Fortran to an association of chemical engineers a few nights ago. Some folks here may find the slides interesting.

<comment><USER3> Your modern Fortran book looks pretty good.

I'm always sad that the power systems industry has mostly moved from Fortran to C++ as the Fortran is much easier to read and doesn't make overzealous use of OO principles.

I use a lot of Python for process automation and data analysis. If I had to put numerical code in production it would probably be in either Fortran or Julia. My problems with Fortran usually boil down to libraries for certain things like database access. I did a little googling and there is some ODBC support, but it doesn't seem to be very good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I agree -- many general purpose domains are lacking Fortran libraries. Regarding DB access, Arjen Markus has an interface to SQLite, but I'm not aware of anything else.

As almost everything out there has a C API, getting it compatible with Fortran is a matter of doing the grunt work and writing the wrappers around the C functions. To me, the lack of such Fortran libraries just shows there hasn't been much need for it.

<comment><USER4> Anything that can access C, can also access Fortran via iso_fortran_env module in Fortran (>2003).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe at one time fortran had the most mature libraries for simulations but is that still true?</comment>


Can an $11,111 coffee pot turn out a better cup of joe? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/1/3432980/blossom-one-limited-coffee-maker-11111 <comment><USER2> As someone owning 12...no, wait, the 13th one just came today...coffee makers, I've been trying out ones (not mine) with 3-4 digit price tags at a nearby store. The pricy automatic ones all are good/ok, but have a distinct tone to the taste: more a flavor of forced sort-of espresso dropped into hot water.

Get a $30 AeroPress, a burr grinder, and a thermometer (get that water right around 200°F, _not_ boiling). Use fresh roasted beans, grind immediately before brewing. Best way I've found so far, from 2-3 dozen different brewers (though I'm hopeful this vacuum brewer will prove superior, give me a few days).</comment>


Is there a thing called as a Designer Co-founder? - <AUTHOR> http://www.isingh.info/blog/2011/12/13/is-there-a-thing-called-as-a-designer-co-founder/ <comment><USER2> It's because there's not enough work when the startup is first building their project to fill up a pure designer's time, and if one of your cofounders is sitting idle while you're trying to build a company, you have a serious problem. Same reason there are very few tech startups with legal cofounders, or accountant cofounders, or techwriter cofounders.

You do get a fair number of startups with designer/frontend-engineer cofounders (37signals?) or designer/business cofounders (Apple?). But a startup founder needs to wear many hats. If you define your specialty narrowly, you won't be able to do everything that needs to be done to get a business off the ground.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but just as an engineer rises up to wearing many hats, why cant designers? If they are ready for the plunge, they can dabble around in more places, than just design. Plus like I said if the entire app is user centric/facing, a designer (with some frontend) is very valuable. Being a designer cofounder, I imagine a designer who is ready to do more, and willing to bend/broaden him/her self.

<comment><USER2> They can, but if they do, they're usually not called a "designer" anymore. Usually they're at least a "business cofounder", if not a "visionary".

Steve Jobs is arguably one of the best designers of this generation. He's almost never called a designer. He's called "the genius visionary behind Apple Computer".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well an engineer doing everything is still an engineering founder, so why not a designer doing more than designing be called so?

I think the question is why do fewer designers take the plunge as a founder.

<comment><USER3> Because engineers build things. And can come up with a simple design themselves, even though it might be a really bad design. We've all grown up interacting with user interfaces. But designers haven't grown up playing with code, and hence, its a relatively harder/non-traditional concept for them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: rustorm – A simple ORM for rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ivanceras/rustorm

<comment><USER2> I love your library's name! :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it wasn't that hard to come up with</comment></comment>


Open source MySQL data transfer/replication tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/actiontech/dtle <comment><USER2> What does it do that the standard tools don't? Docs appear to be in a language that I can't read.

<comment><AUTHOR> English document will coming soon.</comment></comment>


Facebook confirms it's building augmented reality glasses - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/24/facebook-ar-headset/ <comment><USER2> Facebook announcements seem less exciting these days... I just noticed that (entirely subjective of course). They probably need some serious rebranding, or only use Oculus brand and disassociate it from Facebook.</comment>


Show HN: Ratemydorm.com - <AUTHOR> https://ratemydorm.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, this past month I built the website RateMyDorm.com - <USER2> RateMyProfessors but for dorms. You can read reviews from other students and filter through dorms based on rating, amenities, or class year. When I was a freshmen at Boston U, I wondered why there was no resource to read dorm reviews. Thanks to quarantine, I finally got around developing it and I'm hoping this can grow to a platform that will be helpful to college students everywhere. If you can help contribute, please check out the site and rate a dorm you've lived in! Thanks.

<comment><USER3> > When I was a freshmen at Boston U, I wondered why there was no resource to > read dorm reviews.

Back in the day, this resource was called the school newspaper and its annual special section on the housing lottery. Oh, and asking your friends.

And if you're a pre-frosh, you got a randomly selected room - you learn about your paper-thin walls, hot radiators, and too-small sinks at the same time as your fellow neighbors -- it's part of the experience.

<comment><USER4> Part of the explosion in college costs has been the development of student housing. It's insane how nice some college housing is for undergrad.

When I started at a state school in 2003 we had dorms built in the 60's that resembled the architecture of the Soviet Union and came equipped with elevators that literally stopped mid floor that you'd crawl out of.

When I finished they were tearing those down as they opened glass and steel modern high rises.

<comment><USER5> Stony Brook University?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any validation that the user is actually from the selected college? It seems I can write a review about a random dorm just by selecting it. What about using the student's .edu email address to validate the submission? Just a validation code in the email should be enough. Good luck on the launch though!

</comment><comment><USER7> In an alternative universe, this is how Airbnb would've started.

It's a pretty good website though. Are students in the US going back to school during the summer? Here (Tunisia), we're going back next week.

<comment><USER8> Yes you could also start a book of faces this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks really nice and congrats on the launch! I would probably add a social login or some barrier for anonymous submissions since it will probably collect spam submissions. I noticed you have to approve every submission but it probably won't scale very well if it gets more popular.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks pretty good and super handy. You can actually rule this space with SEO itself.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks cool man!

Slightly related, parody website I made: ratemyroommate.io</comment>


Command languages as game user interfaces - <AUTHOR> https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2014-12-08-command-languages-as-game-ui/ <comment><USER2> I've been designing games, mostly as a hobby but a little bit professionally, for about 30 years. And I love devising text/command interfaces for games. textual representations of the game state. Its a useful design constraint and challenge. it helps me as a designer focus more on making a game fun and interesting. as a bonus it can minimize clutter and unnecessary/accidental complexity. I bias to making game prototypes whenever I can with textual world representations and a command/response messaging-style protocol for playing and interacting with the game. With limited "free" time and a growing need to prioritize, the more bang for my buck I can get, results-wise, the better.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a question in the middle of that post that's easy to miss. Maybe people here have some insight on it, so I'll ask it again :-)

Are there any other digital board game conversions based on command languages? I'd love to know of any other examples than the few listed in that post. (I'm specifically interested in board games, since for those the game design is generally already fixed. For a native computer game the implementation details like this and the game design go hand in hand).

<comment><USER4> Many abstract strategy board games like Go, Chess, and Octi have simple command line implementations. Some clients use log replay to be able to watch the game develop and learn from it.

A number of relatively simple board games were implemented within MUDs/MUSHs/MOOs/etc. It's been ages since I played those, so I don't know if there were any good examples of complex board games implemented within them.

Interactive fiction, while not a board game as such, used command parsers and some systems used log replay (possibly for saving/restoring?).

And of course the old PBeM and prior to that PBM games, (many of which were similar to board games) used command languages. Galaxy PBeM comes to mind, but it did use stored state rather than log replay.</comment></comment>


Networkr is a Tinder-style networking app for LinkedIn contacts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/19/networkr/ http://www.LetsLunch.com mobile app is next! <comment><USER2> Brian from Weave here. We're the other app mentioned in the earlier techcrunch article and in the comments: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/01/brian-ma- weave/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/01/brian-ma-weave/)

Glad to see other entrepreneurs innovating in the space.

@syed123 - looking forward to trying LetsLunch mobile.

@JimmaDaRustia - we're on both iOS and Android if you wanna give us a shot.

<comment><USER3> Hwdy,

Just curious if you can answer this... I worked at the original Decide.com in 1999 before the down-turn...

How much did you acquire that domain name for when you launched your version of decide.com?

<comment><USER2> Haha, funny. A lot, but it was worth it. $175k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried and liked the iOS P2P app getLoopd.com. I suggested to a friend who is an event organizer, he and agreed to try it at one of his mixers. He encouraged us to keep our iPhones in our pockets while we talked with each other. And, between moving around the room, I selected who I wanted to connect with and they got back pretty fast. I think everyone had the same experience. Made some good connections for my business. From reading about the Tinder-like matching apps, I think getLoopd is a totally different beast - it doesn't roam anonymously. It uses Bluetooth so best when you talking with someone who is a few feet away.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the idea I had a year ago had some value: [https://twitter.com/garietyxxx/status/357238902349758465](https://twitter.com/garietyxxx/status/357238902349758465)

<comment><USER6> Ahhh gotta love that never-ending list of apps to build.

<comment><USER5> I know, this one's buried in the list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love this, especially if they get an Android app!

<comment><USER8> Hi JimmaDaRustla, check out Stratworking: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.meetupslid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.meetupslides.stratworking)

This uses minimal permissions as compared to Networkr and is much more forgiving on your battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We just released Stratworking last night! We leverage bluetooth to find people around you. This strategy makes the most sense if you are in a setting where the density of people is high (networking events, conferences, etc).

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.meetupslid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.meetupslides.stratworking)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.LetsLunch.com](http://www.LetsLunch.com) mobile app is next!

<comment><USER9> Nice service. Just what I've been looking for. Not a big fan of the design though. It's also somewhat laggy (edit: and now it's down). Looks like you've gotten good traction already. Have you described somewhere growth hacks that you used to get to this point?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes a redesign, better UX and mobile app work is going on in our laboratory :-) I will write a blogpost soon on growth hacks. Wrote some of psychological aspects of running startups on my blog [http://SyedShuttari.com](http://SyedShuttari.com)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get listed on producthunt.com? - <AUTHOR>

I've tried submitting my startup but didn't manage to appear anywhere. Are there special rules to follow? I cannot manage to find useful information regarding submitting to Product Hunt. <comment><USER2> Hi, alediaferia. First off, I understand this might be frustrating. Over the past several months, traffic and activity has increased significantly. We're receiving well over 200 submissions every day and while some of these products end up on the homepage (posted or promoted by curators/moderators), the current design won't accommodate several hundreds of posts.

That said, we're exploring changes with respect to submissions, to scale the community. It may be a while before we introduce significant changes here as this is a significant change, but please know that we're working on making Product Hunt more transparent and inclusive.

<comment><USER3> i hope you consider doing a complete revamp of your site because it sucks...

if you don't click on the main link of a listing, just right, you end up opening the side menu;

in order to post a comment you have to subscribe to twitter... no thanks; if you really want to grow your user community, be more respectful to their needs/wants and idiosyncracies. we're living in a post edward snowden world and some of us just aren't comfortable with chauffeured access anymore, no matter how convenient it is;

you have to wade through a lot of half-baked apps before you get to real products -- so a better way to filter and curate the listings to get bona fide products and services would be helpful;

and get rid of the date-based segments. i have yet to figure out what purpose that serves because it seems like listings are being added after-the-fact. i find that even though i visit the site on a daily basis, the next time i visit, i am constantly having to go back and look at the previous one or two days to see what has been added. whereas if your site was more like hacker news, with lots of churn going on, at least there is no way to really know what you might have missed. so you are less dissatisfied. i know i probably miss some of the best stuff showing up on hacker news but i have no way of knowing, so it feels less burdensome. with the way your site is set up, i always have the perception -- right or wrong -- that i missed something so i need to go back and pick up where i left off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pander to those in charge at Product Hunt ([http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/2ea4ji/how_long_is...](http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/2ea4ji/how_long_is_the_wait_on_product_hunt/cjxps03)), then spam people on Twitter asking them to upvote your submission ([https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=product%20hunt%20upv...](https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=product%20hunt%20upvote&src=typd))

I am not being facetious. That is how you get featured on PH and I'm not happy about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well they could at least be clearer about this. So it's all up to them if your startup gets featured. Good to know. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with negative self talk? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a Software Engineer and I often want to work on side projects and cool ideas I have, and I'll often get started but then at some point I start the negative talk - 'you're not good enough to do this', 'you don't know what you're doing', 'this isn't good  practice', 'this won't work' etc.<p>I was wondering how others deal with this negative talk and self doubt. I try to shut it down when it starts up but I can never truly shake it. <comment><USER2> If it is a long-term problem, there are therapies you can try. The standard- issue therapy I have encountered is CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) which you can do by yourself. It is not, however, an in-depth, psychodynamic therapy in the psychoanalytic tradition, so you won't be unearthing profound insights into your personality. The focus is on specific symptoms and quick results. In spite of those limitations it might be worth trying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have this problem to a very bad degree and I deal with it through brute force. I recently broke my elbow and was put briefly on hydrocodone and it had a side effect of serving as a "miracle" anti depressant. I finished my first node.js app while on it which I had put off for months because I hit a "you're never going to figure this out" road block. The fluency by which I was working while on the hydrocodone was like night and day and couldn't believe that life could be that "in the moment" and fluent. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders and everything just 'connected'.But of course it was a drug and I couldn't stay on it. I haven't found a way to deal with these issues so I'm curious about the responses to this thread.

<comment><USER4> hydrocodone sounds amazing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are not your code, even though a lot of people will try and convince you otherwise, EVEN YOU!

Just write shit that makes you happy, side projects are about exploring and having fun.

Often times the negative Nancy voice is right when he is talking to me. I often don't know what I am doing, I write horrible stuff all the time that does not work!

Realize this though, you are in control. Whenever those thoughts appear you actually have a choice, listen to them or say no.

By listening to them you will never get anywhere, you will constantly second guess yourself and tweak minor details that can be changed easily at a later time. Your free time is limited, you have to cut corners to see significant progress. Once you realize that everything is a compromise, it gets easier.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pre-empt negativity by using positive words/sounds/images from stories of other people who have achieved comparable goals, facing comparable challenges. Thoughts follow action, so take a positive action, any action, instead of trying to fight negative thoughts.

An example interview, [http://mixergy.com/interviews/slicehost-how-a-goal- setting-b...](http://mixergy.com/interviews/slicehost-how-a-goal-setting- bootstrapper-launch-sold-his-business-with-matt-tanase/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Just remember that some of the most successful and influential people like Steve Jobs, Linus Torwards started their projects without enough qualifications and without knowing what they are doing. They just wanted to create something and went for it.

I suggest reading listening personal history of the these tech pioneers

</comment><comment><USER8> Imagine if those negative words were coming from someone else.

Imagine how hard you would fight to prove them all wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> Quite related, this article about Imposter Syndrome has been passing around the past couple days: [http://valbonneconsulting.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/the- impos...](http://valbonneconsulting.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/the-imposter- syndrome-in-software-development/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is excellent for this kind of thinking.

It is supposed to be a short focussed course - 8 hours for mild to moderate depression, for example.</comment>


Learn C Programming with Open-Source Books - <AUTHOR> https://www.ossblog.org/learn-c-programming-with-9-excellent-open-source-books/ <comment><USER2> One of the greatest non-free books, IMO, is _21st Century C_ and I cannot recommend it enough.

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033677.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033677.do)

<comment><USER3> Working my way through it now, in my efforts to re-learn C. Besides the treatment of modern standard C, I like that it treats the C development and distribution environment as a first class subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I always not see people recommending is what small open source projects I can study or do while or after reading these books. Like for web development, people try to implement a small todo, blogging software. For someone coming from higher level languages like Python, Ruby, studying low level library is very tough to grasp. Having small but a proper project in itself will be helpful. I have heard praises about Redis and SQLite, but for beginners, they are quite big.

So any suggestions?

<comment><USER5> A personal preference of mine is to write a simple http server with GET and a few error codes implemented. It usually covers networking, file IO, exceptions in some cases, multi-threading, string parsing, etc. If it feels like too much then you can always start off with a smaller subset of features.

<comment><USER6> Threads? That is not for beginners.However, your idea is great last summer I was told to code such in an interview that with a hook to Lisp. I learnt so much even though I failed the interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great applauses for not recommending the "indisputable classic" from K&R. The latter is really an introductory text that presents the features of the language in a chaotic manner and introduces some very nasty 1970s styles of coding.

<comment><USER8> Is there a list of this very nasty 1970s styles of coding somewhere? Is it mainly that it is outdated and doesn't describe the lastest C standards?

<comment><USER7> It is bad not only because it predates C99, but also because virtually any example consists of a couple of global variables/fixed-size arrays, a couple of badly named functions which operate on the globals and use some very "descriptive" names of the local variables. This book was born in an era when the modern understanding of "good code" was barely honored at all.

<comment><USER9> "Relying too heavily on external variables is fraught with peril since it leads to programs whose data connections are not at all obvious" \- k&r, ch. 1

Who are these Kernighan and Ritchie guys? They obviously just don't understand "good code", terrible book!

<comment><USER7> Take, for example, the declaration parsing example and honestly tell me that this isn't crappy code by any modern standard:

        enum { NAME, PARENS, BRACKETS };
        void dcl(void);
        void dirdcl(void);
        int gettoken(void);
        int tokentype;
        char token[MAXTOKEN];
        char name[MAXTOKEN];
        char datatype[MAXTOKEN]; /* data type = char, int, etc. */
        char out[1000];

        main()  /* convert declaration to words */
        {
            while (gettoken() != EOF) {   /* 1st token on line */
                strcpy(datatype, token);  /* is the datatype */
                out[0] = '\0';
                dcl();       /* parse rest of line */
                if (tokentype != '\n')
                    printf("syntax error\n");
                printf("%s: %s %s\n", name, out, datatype);
            }
            return 0;
        }

<comment><USER10> Pg 124 from 2nd edition where this code is pulled (emphasis mine):

" _[T]he programs are intended to be illustrative_ , not bullet-proof, there are significant restrictions on dcl."

In context this code illustrates the points they're trying to convey about complicated declarations quite well and is a precursor to understanding typedef later in the book.

Also, you left the nice inline comments off the variable declaration block.

<comment><USER6> I would like to see where typedef could have been used?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another great one ; [http://icube- icps.unistra.fr/img_with.php/d/db/ModernC.pdf](http://icube- icps.unistra.fr/img_with.php/d/db/ModernC.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Scrolling randomly through the document my eyes almost popped when I saw [Level 3, Chapter 16: Performance]:

      A pointer to a collection of objects of unknown number. These functions
      should use the VLA notation:

          void func(size_t n, double a[n]);

I had no idea this was possible. Do compilers actually do anything with this information or is it just informative?

 _EDIT_ : I didn't get a warning out of gcc

      #include <stddef.h>

      int last(size_t n, int a[n]) {
        return a[n-1];
      }

      int main() {
        int a[] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4};
        size_t siz = sizeof(a) / sizeof(a[0]);
        return last(siz+1, a);
      }

Compile:

      $ cc --version
      cc (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3) 4.8.4
      Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
      This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
      warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

      $ cc -Wall -Wextra -std=c11 staticarr.c -o staticarr && ./staticarr ; echo $?
      254

clang 3.8 warns about differing things:

      $ clang-3.8 -Weverything -std=c11 staticarr.c -o staticarr && ./staticarr ; echo $?
      staticarr.c:3:25: warning: variable length array used [-Wvla]
      int last(size_t n, int a[n]) {
                              ^
      staticarr.c:3:5: warning: no previous prototype for function 'last' [-Wmissing-prototypes]
      int last(size_t n, int a[n]) {
          ^
      2 warnings generated.

Still, it's a neat idea from a documentation point of view, and GNU-like compilers seem to accept it.

A bit before is more explanation of on the arr[static ?] notation. I was aware of this and usually prefer to use (Clang/GCC) function annotations to indicate NULL-ness of pointers and such, but I see the advantage in some situations. I don't agree with everything in the document, but it contains a lot of cool things.

<comment><USER13> VLAs were added in C99, but not universally adopted (particularly by embedded systems compilers, for obvious reasons), and then made optional in C11.

<comment><USER14> I don't see an obvious reason - that's all information that's available on compile-time, there should be no additional run-time cost - or what are you implying?

<comment><USER15> VLA allows for run-time size determination, not compile time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The [http://c-faq.com/](http://c-faq.com/) is a very good resource too.

</comment><comment><USER17> All gems!

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there some recommended book on

</comment><comment><USER19> Not a story that interests me, but this is a wonderful blog! I'm definitely following this.

<comment><USER20> Maybe I am not seeing the same articles as you.

\- 5 best open source board games to play online.

\- 9 ASCII games you'll want to play again.

\- 3 open source python shells.

So basically just a blog that creates lists. We see this a bit too often on YouTube. I am not sure we need more boingboing/BuzzFeed style of blog spam..</comment></comment>


Elasticsearch For Beginners: Indexing your Gmail Inbox - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oliver006/elasticsearch-gmail <comment><USER2> This is a great "get to know ES" project use case for elasticsearch! Frees you a bit from having to use Google search while also teaching you how to use queries / aggregations. Awesome work. Will give this a shot later.

Thanks for putting this together.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the Thunderbird guys could use it because the search remains the worst part of using Thunderbird after all these years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth noting that if you like the idea of indexing your mail, there's also Notmuch. It's a dedicated email search and indexing tool and is very nice when paired with something like OfflineIMAP to sync messages.

[https://notmuchmail.org](https://notmuchmail.org)

<comment><USER5> Ohhh, this is exactly what I want, minus emacs.

<comment><USER4> Not sure if you're saying you want emacs or don't, but...

* You want emacs - [https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch-emacs/](https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch-emacs/)

* You don't want emacs - [https://github.com/pazz/alot](https://github.com/pazz/alot) (I use this one, it's very nice)

Also Mutt - [https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch- mutt/](https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch-mutt/)

<comment><USER6> How does it compare to mu / mu4e?

\- [http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/](http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/)

\- [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/mu4e](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/mu4e)

<comment><USER4> Similar concept and similar speed, but notmuch is a little more actively developed. I also find the notmuch command line interface a bit easier and the various tools built on top of it to be better. Alot, the terminal UI I mentioned in the parent comment, is almost exactly what I want in a mail program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > First, go here and download your Gmail mailbox…

> The downloaded archive is in the mbox format

So really, these instructions are for indexing any mbox-formatted mailbox.

<comment><USER8> Also, any new emails you received since exporting your mailbox will not be available.

<comment><USER3> I mean, isn't this obvious if you're fetching a file representing your inbox?

<comment><USER8> Yes. I'm just adding to Cyberdog's comment that it's not immediately obvious from the title of the article that the instructions are for indexing a static file.

The title makes it sound like it's instructions to setup up an alternative API to Gmail search. I was thinking something like Algolia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is that [http://ohardt.us/download-gmail- mailbox](http://ohardt.us/download-gmail-mailbox) URL where you're supposed to download your email ? Looks fishy, though the hostname doesn't even resolve so not sure what's going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can download from [https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Prerequisites: Set up Elasticsearch

More like first get yourself a host with at least 16gigs of RAM first.

</comment><comment><USER11> this is like using a jackhammer to nail in a pin isn't it? what's the benefit other than a faster search?

<comment><USER12> It's a teaching tool. The benefit is to show someone how to use ES for a real- word thing.

With that said, I suspect given tuning based on your search patterns and usage - you could get more accurate search results when you control the indices, stop words, etc.</comment></comment>