A Spectre is Haunting Unicode - <AUTHOR> https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html <comment><USER2> So, since we have them and they're not going away, we should invent a meaning for them. Obviously, one of them will have the meaning "ghost character". Other than that, meanings like "mistake that would have been simple to correct if it had been caught quickly, but now it is too late", or "something that slips through the cracks of bureaucracy", or "mistake that does not cause an actual problem, but seems wrong".

<comment><USER3> I say just leave them alone so drunk teenagers can get them tattooed and get laughed at by native Japanese speakers.

<comment><USER4> They could be given sarcastic Unicode names like MEANINGLESS KANJI-STYLE TATTOO #1 to #12.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It somewhat reminds me of this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_method#Early_Cangjie_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_method#Early_Cangjie_system)

 _A particular "feature" of this early system is that if you send random lowercase words to the character generator, it will attempt to construct Chinese characters according to the Cangjie decomposition rules, sometimes causing strange, unknown characters to appear._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mingzhu_xiaoziku1.PNG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mingzhu_xiaoziku1.PNG)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is utterly wonderful - brought to mind the film Brazil's fly in a typewriter.

I'm now going to have to go down the rabbit hole of each of these ghost kanji. Good times.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if some interested Japanese ever got together to simply find new sensible meanings and words to retroactively apply to these ghost kanji. As a sort of creative pass-time.

<comment><USER8> The article links to the Nico Nico Douga Wiki (a wiki for creative works), in which each of the 12 characters is imagined to be the name of a Japanese youkai (a type of spirit/demon/monster): [http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5%AD%...](http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E5%B9%BD%E9%9C%8A%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97) (Japanese). It's also quite a neat coincidence that there are exactly 12 remaining unattested characters (down from ~60 before the thorough investigation), because 12 is a rather auspicious number in East Asian tradition.

For example, 妛 (山 mountain atop 女 female) is imagined to mean a yama-uba (traditional "mountain witch" youkai) who lives at the foot of the mountain (as befitting the "女" position in the character).

There's a good tradition of reusing old or outdated characters in new contexts. For example, in Chinese, the archaic character 囧, meaning "window" (modern term 窗) has been resurrected to mean "embarrassed" or "awkward" due to its pictorial resemblance to a facial expression.

<comment><USER9> There also happens to be exactly 12 standard ideograph characters that were erroneously encoded in the Unihan compatibility character block (i.e. 﨎﨏﨑﨓﨔﨟﨡﨣﨤﨧﨨﨩).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Obciouly not exactly the same, but this article reminded me of the scroll lock key. Many people seem to have forgotten its original purpose: When PC Magazine asked an executive of keyboard manufacturer Key Tronic about the key's purpose, he replied "I don't know, but we put it on ours, too"

<comment><USER11> Wikipedia remembers: "The Scroll Lock key was meant to lock all scrolling techniques, and is a vestige of the original IBM PC keyboard. In the original design, Scroll Lock was intended to modify the behavior of the arrow keys. When the Scroll Lock mode was on, the arrow keys would scroll the contents of a text window instead of moving the cursor. In this usage, Scroll Lock is a toggling lock key like Num Lock or Caps Lock, which have a state that persists after the key is released."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll_lock#Window_scrolling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll_lock#Window_scrolling)

<comment><USER12> It still works that way too in a real vtty. Hit scroll lock to scroll through the text buffer at the terminal in a text-only session with the up and down arrows on BSD. Very handy.

<comment><USER13> My modern keyboard even still contains little arrow glyphs on the number pad keys to correspond with them.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that for num-lock? (or when num-lock is off?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fixating effect of digitalization is scary.

New characters were introduced by accident, and although they're useless, they're probably not going anywhere. But what about the inverse? Will character sets still be able to change and grow new characters now that they're standardized like this?

<comment><USER7> Character sets in general will certainly continue to grow — look no further than the ever-expanding emoji set. Unicode is designed to be able to incorporate new characters.

Whether the CJKV¹ set will grow is another matter entirely. I expect that there will be a couple more extensions for characters found in historical sources; the goal of the Unicode standard is — roughly speaking — to be able to digitize any and all existing texts, after all.

But for actual _new_ characters to be added they would first have to become popular enough to warrant inclusion. Neither Chinese nor Japanese is a language that produces new Chinese characters like they did historically. The barrier to get a character excepted beyond a fringe group is quite high — in any language — and there really is no strong need to create new characters.

1: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese (the latter two historically used Chinese characters as well)

<comment><USER16> Emojis are mistake and added too soon. We end up with standard that is full of short lived symbols from 2000-2025 that were once in a fashion and new generations of people will abandon them for something else when the culture changes.

Adding new stuff (excluding old languages) to Unicode should have a delay, at least 20-25 years from proposal to the standard (roughly a generation).

In the meantime it's possible to insert emoji into text as :), smiley, -smiley-, smiley.jpg, ::smiley:: or whatever you want and the system you use is free to change it into a picture.

<comment><USER17> Weren't emojis added because Japanese phones had them, since a long, long time (before smartphones), and the main pursuit of unicode is to be able to represent all written characters? The first emojis would be close to the 20 year lapse now, and they are the most used.

<comment><USER18> 1999, so yeah, the first set of almost 200 emoji are nearly 20 years old. And yes, they were added first in Japan and didn't become a western fad until after the iphone added them (not claiming the iphone was the catalyst, but the timing was about the same).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of the famous mistake of "referer" being spelled with only 1 'r' in the HTTP standard.

<comment><USER20> As a kid that tinkered with programming/computers before I learned English, this has stuck as something I always misspell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If they're in Unicode, it should be possible to register ghost characters as a ghost domain name, right?

<comment><USER22> I don't see why not. Hell, it's probably possible to register a domain name for characters that aren't even defined in Unicode yet.

<comment><USER21> So you could take a chance registering some not-yet-defined code point, and possibly end up with the next poop emoji as your e-mail address!

Worst lottery ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Google Translate Chinese text-to-speech for that core set of ghost kanji is also spooky. [https://translate.google.com/#zh- CN/en/%E5%A6%9B%E6%8C%A7%E6...](https://translate.google.com/#zh- CN/en/%E5%A6%9B%E6%8C%A7%E6%9A%83%E6%A4%A6%E6%A7%9E%E8%9F%90%E8%A2%AE%E9%96%A0%E9%A7%B2%E5%A2%B8%E5%A3%A5%E5%BD%81)

</comment><comment><USER24> Like DNA coding mistakes

</comment><comment><USER25> Any reason why these charcters cannot be revoked if nobody uses them?

<comment><USER26> How do you prove a unicode character is unused? Look at every database field in the entire world? Every book someone has ever typed on a computer and printed? See what fonts include them or don't?

You can't define what an unused character looks like once it's in the standard... even less if it's already available on almost every modern computer.

People have already used these "ghost characters" when describing them, as jokes in their online handles, etc... This article and now this comment include "妛" which is one such character.

Furthermore, how would you even remove them? Tell all font authors "unicode point X now shouldn't be included in your font"... why would they ever bother to remove something from a font?

And what would be the benefit? Unicode offers enough codepoints that there's plenty of space left over for whatever garbage you wish to include, like new emojis and super-astral-aether-planar characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Basically "NaN"s in character form :) - fascinating read!

</comment><comment><USER28> > In the end only one character had neither a clear source nor any historical > precedent: 彁. The most likely explanation is that it was created as a > misreading of the 彊 character, but no specific indcident was uncovered.

I think I've uncovered a new English word, "indcident." I wonder what it means and how it is pronounced?</comment>


AS HN: If I Write Code With My Brother Is That Brogramming? - <AUTHOR>

So thinking about watching the detroit tigers play baseball tonight on the patio with my brother while were grilling and writing code....<p>is this Brogramming? <comment><USER2> And the code y'all write: The Bro Code

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't expect any responses and a bunch of down votes... this made it worth the 30 seconds of doing a stupid Ask HN</comment></comment>


DevOps Topologies - <AUTHOR> https://web.devopstopologies.com/ <comment><USER2> DevOps is just a buzzword. Implementing it wrong is the deafult and only possibility.

For real it means that the devs and ops collaborate. Leaving aside that we don't need a term for that, it cannot be a strategy. It's something that evolves in years between decent people. You cannot hire devops. You cannot train devops. There is no such thing.

<comment><USER3> There was a podcast or a book?can't rember, but they talked about the high performer teams and they had one thing in common : the devops mentality, work together, solve together (swarming) deeply together, learn and move on etc etc etc. Not Tools or processes..

<comment><USER4> Sure for a small individual team or org. But getting this to scale isn't feasible. As companies grow they tend to hire based on specific skill sets. Thats when you start seeing the split into either dev or ops, which brings us back to the need for a small high performing with devops mentality...the devops team.

<comment><USER5> Why not hire "devops" skill into each team instead of creating a silo?

Massive reason behind devops is to get Dev teams to take more ownership of ops so they improve their Dev practises, I don't see a dedicated team being able to improve the code base in the same way.

<comment><USER4> There are many ways to implement "devops", this is one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the book is a great read

<comment><USER7> Are you referring to Team Topologies?</comment></comment>


Calipers: The Fastest Way to Measure Image Dimensions in Node - <AUTHOR> https://lob.com/blog/introducing-calipers-the-fastest-way-to-measure-images-and-pdfs-in-node/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I missed something on the methodology, but I have a question regarding justification of designing a complete new tool.

The article mentions "ImageMagick is slow because it does a lot more than just extract image size". So we implemented a complete new solution.

How about: "We added to ImageMagick a new command to just extract image size". So we published a small patch to Imagemagick, and got it done much faster than creating a complete new tool. On top of that, reusing tested Imagemagick data structure would probably reduce a lot maintenance cost.

Maybe I did not see some subtleties ?

<comment><USER3> The overhead of shell calls in Node was a big reason why we avoided trying to patch ImageMagick or other command line program.

<comment><USER4> How bad is it when you call info ImageMagick's library via FFI?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> inspired by [https://github.com/netroy/image- size](https://github.com/netroy/image-size)

which has sync and async methods, supports more image types, but doesnt let you measure pdfs (which requires an external lib here).</comment>


Speed vs. Quality: A Tech Shop Conundrum - <AUTHOR> http://coderlifestyle.com/software-development-speed-vs-quality-a-tech-shop-conundrum/

<comment><USER2> This omits the third element: cost.

"Fast, cheap, good, pick any two."

Though speed of startups vs. established firms has merits. Note that the latter has more to lose, and the former frequently fail completely.</comment>


Google fires employee who leaked memo on raises - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/10/google-fires-employee-who-leaked-raise-memo_n_781941.html

<comment><USER2> I work at Google, and I am _really happy_ that someone got punished for leaking this memo. A firing like this increases accountability and shows that loyalty and keeping confidentiality mean something. When it is done fairly and with cause, firing an employee can make a huge positive difference in an organization. The best situation is where a problem employee who was lowering the morale of others is fired.

<comment><USER3> You sound really naive and honestly it might do _you_ good to get fired so you learn a simple life lesson: Google is a company that only exists to make money. That's its sole purpose. It's not your friend, it's not your family. You don't work their because they enjoy your company. You work there because the right people assume that you provide more value than your salary costs (i.e. they make a profit on their exchange with you). You need to grow past this "loyalty" nonsense.

It's true that I wouldn't personally go releasing information like this, but that's because I can make more money if I'm known as someone who doesn't air company laundry, not because of some misplaced and immature sense of "loyalty".

Ironically, the leak probably _helped_ Google as some good talent out there never gave them a second look because they have a reputation of not being competitive with their salaries. They make billions so there is no valid excuse for paying less than places who only make hundreds of millions.

<comment><USER2> This is clearly flame bait / troll comment, but I would like to make a comment to rebut the central point, namely that personal relationships somehow "do not matter" or are purely exploitative at organizations.

First, I've found that one's work experience is dependent to a huge degree on the direct manager. If your manager is an asshole, you will hate your job. If you don't get along with your manager, you will dislike your job. If your manager does not care about you, you will dislike your job. If you work at an enlightened organization, you may be able to raise the issue up the chain with your manger's manager and apply for a transfer. Otherwise it is best to find another job.

That was the practical angle. Here is the theoretical one: if you call "social capital" the propensity of employees to form relationships, care about each other, and be loyal to each other, then the argument put forth is that low social capital corporations will somehow be better adapted than high social capital ones and will push them out of existence Darwin-like. This simply hasn't happened - Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are all examples of places that by and large treat their employees fairly. I've heard that Oracle is more "cut throat" but I don't really know what that means in practice and have never worked there. Oracle does, however, seem to suffer from Ellison's weirdness. Just as there is a market in employee salaries there is also a market in corporate culture - a company that is not nice is not going to attract top talent. I have never heard that Oracle has attracted a substantial number of top-notch engineers.

On a personal level, it is always advantageous to be friendly, nice, respectful, and take everything in stride because it wins you friends and lets you do things like get other companies to hire you, a process which increases your market value as an employee. It is also completely free.

Keep in mind that this is specific to large tech companies - other sectors like Finance and Sales are going to obey their own cultural trends which may be more selfish and greedy. The start-up sector tends to attract and encourage a rather different breed, but the conditions are also completely different from a traditional corporate environment, so different personality characteristics will be adaptive.

<comment><USER3> >This is clearly flame bait / troll comment

I'm not trying to troll you, I'm trying to get you to take off your rose- colored glasses to save you from some real heart break down the road. Believe me.

>namely that personal relationships somehow "do not matter" or are purely exploitative at organizations.

Relationships can matter up to a point, but if your company took a hit in the market and has to shed 30% of its human resources your relationship _is not going to matter_. It can't, the company is trying to survive. And this goes double for a public company, it's basically _illegal_ for them to value your friendship over their bottom line.

>First, I've found that one's work experience is dependent to a huge degree on the direct manager.

Fair enough.

>This simply hasn't happened - Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are all examples of places that by and large treat their employees fairly.

The question is vastly more complex than that. For one thing, the aggressiveness of a company is going to depend on the market their in. You'll have the worst experience in retail because they have such tight margins.

For another thing, how do you figure they treat their employees "fairly"? "Fair" is a difficult thing to pin down, but if we look at some knowns: Google makes billions in _profit_. Google pays under market rate for developers because "but you'll be working at Google! GOOGLE!". Now if you could provide some citation that shows that Google employees end up making more money at their next company _on average_ because of this situation then I would find it less unfair/exploitative, but I doubt you can.

>a company that is not nice is not going to attract top talent.

Not to nit pick, but the last company I worked at thoroughly debunked this idea. The devs were very high end and the management was horrendously bad but it was a hedge fund paying nearly double market rate in total compensation (i.e. most of the money came in bonuses which could be as much as double your salary).

>On a personal level, it is always advantageous to be friendly, nice, respectful, and take everything in stride because it wins you friends and lets you do things like get other companies to hire you, a process which increases your market value as an employee.

Of course. I've liked most everyone I've ever worked with, and I think most people I've worked with have liked me. I form friendship, etc. I just know what my relationship with the company is. As long as I'm good value, they'll keep me around. I view them the same way. I like the people but if I find a better deal [1], well, it's nothing personal, just business.

>The start-up sector tends to attract and encourage a rather different breed, but the conditions are also completely different from a traditional corporate environment, so different personality characteristics will be adaptive.

This site gives the impression that the start up culture is much more greedy. Most people appear to create a startup to get rich. Fair enough, but they also seem to want employees who will pull insane hours and cost nearly nothing. All this for an idea that probably wont pan out and even if it did, what kind of equity would they get for so much effort? If the startup tanks it doesn't even look that good on a resume.

[1] And by better deal, I mean overall. Making twice as much money but doing boring monotonous and stressful work wouldn't be a good long term trade off for me. I currently make enough that I don't have to make those kinds of sacrifices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, I'd fire an employee who leaks a memo out. Not for doing it. But for being stupid enough to get caught.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, the fact that they _didn't_ hide their tracks indicates that they most likely aware completely unaware that they might be causing any harm to the company.

A lapse in judgement, maybe -- but if so, the appropriate response would be a private reprimand, not a bullet to the head.

Especially considering that no conceivable harm has come to Google as a result of this leaking, and that it's impossible to keep news like this secret in the Valley, anyway.

<comment><USER5> The memo says: CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES) right at the top.

When an employee starts working at google they go to orientation where they get briefed on a lot of things about the company, fill out HR paperwork etc. One of the documents they get and one of the discussions they have is how you don't release confidential information of the companies or its clients.

I don't see how it's possible to go through employee orientation and not know that releasing a document that says "INTERNAL ONLY" would be a terminable offense.

<comment><USER6> That may be true, but strategically, the information in the memo was good press for Google, and the firing of the employee for leaking it is bad press for Google.

<comment><USER5> If I believe the media that this leaked memo might bring attention from the DoJ back onto Google over the anti poaching agreements then the leak and it's contents are bad news.

If I'm trusting Google with my data then the termination of the employee for violating their code of conduct could absolutely be viewed as good news.

Any of this being good or bad is completely dependent your view point and how it might affect you. If I'm a shareholder I'm glad the employee is gone and not necessarily happy that the DoJ might take a closer look at the company or estimated billion dollars this will cost each year. If I'm a potential Google employee I'm probably a little bit wary about the termination and glad that they are paying more competitive salaries but potentially disappointed that future bonuses will be reduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Silicon Valley owes much of its existence to people sharing information between companies: at the Homebrew Computer Club, at Hackers, at First Tuesdays, at user groups, on tours, at parties, in lectures. Some of that sharing was officially sanctioned, and some of it was not. It's a special part of its culture, and I think accounts for much of its innovation. Apple has always been an exception.

Google grew up in the shadow of much bigger, better-funded competitors: Microsoft, then later Yahoo. I speculate, without having asked anybody, that this accounts for the culture of fanatical secrecy, outstripping even that of Apple, that has enveloped the company since its early days, and which I think now is a permanent part of Google's culture, even though the bigger, better- funded competitors are now the underdogs, unable to execute.

This firing is a symptom of that tradition of secrecy.

I fear that the next half-century of the Valley will be poisoned by this, because Google is today's Fairchild, Mountain View's Microsoft. Every new startup will be backed by Googlers or Xooglers, founded by Xooglers, or at least advised by [GX]ooglers. So this poisonous culture of secrecy, which kills innovation, will fill the Valley like a vile miasma, along with the many wonderful things that come from Google experience.

<comment><USER8> This may all be true, but the particular example we are discussing does not support your point. I don't see how whether or not another company knows who received raises has an rats ass to do with innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google is going to fire the employee who leaked the firing.

<comment><USER10> ... all in a determined effort to increase employee morale.

<comment><USER11> Sometimes, to raise morale, you just have to fire all the unhappy people.

<comment><USER6> That strategy works best when the firings cause previously happy people to become unhappy.

<comment><USER12> I never thought of Dwarf Fortress as management training before, though I probably should have.

<http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Tantrum>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is Google using some subtle permutation on every version of the email sent out?

All it would take would be swapping "--" for "...", "ie"/"i.e."/"eg"/"e.g." You should probably compare your local copy of an email with someone else before leaking it!

<comment><USER14> I doubt there are 23,300 possible permutations. Moreover, I doubt a Googler wouldn't think of this classic before leaking his e-mail. Any other theory? Perhaps no one was fired and it's just link bait?

<comment><USER15> Assuming a worst case of two possibilities for each difference, that comes out as ceil(log_2(23300)) = 15 differences necessary. You could easily get that by swapping out words for synonyms (especially if you use more than two synonyms per difference).

<comment><USER16> Don't forget unicode homoglyphs, as well.

And even if a journalist trimmed whitespace when formatting for publication, they might not have if forwarding back to a Google rep 'for comment'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Talk about carrots on a stick.

What underscores the utter ruthlessness of Google's actions is that it's impossible to imagine that the leaker meant any harm at all coming to Google from their what they did. If anything, they were probably nothing if not deeply proud of Google in that moment; and giddily euphoric -- and thought it could only _help_ Google for the world at large to know of its generosity to its employees.

Had they only known.

<comment><USER17> It's hard to imagine what harm would be caused by waiting a day to leak the memo, except for the missed opportunity for the leaker to be the hero. The timing would indicate the leaker's motive was not "hey, our PR department keeps sitting on this awesome news."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good thing Google took a hard stance on data protectionism! Wait, where have I heard about data protectionism again?

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/facebook-slaps-google- openn...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/facebook-slaps-google-openness- doesnt-mean-being-open-when-its-convenient/)

</comment><comment><USER19> So was there really an ad smack in the middle of the email?

<comment><USER20> Didn't they just redo the AdSense interface? Maybe you can bid for ads on internal memos now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Or maybe they announced that they dis it just to keep people from doing it in the future.

Not like someone is going to stand up and say that they weren't caught (or at least not till they leave their jobs.)

</comment><comment><USER22> He probably used his Gmail account ...

</comment><comment><USER23> So, to summarize: Google managed to appear more intimidating to any and all its competitors (by giving everyone a 10% raise) and fuck up its public image, all in two days.

Zuckerberg must be laughing his ass off right now.

<comment><USER24> You think Facebook wouldn't fire an employee who leaked confidential internal company information?

<comment><USER23> No, but it's irrelevant anyway. Google should've fired the guy (gal?) anyway, but it's publicized as well. That, in anybody's eyes, shows a greater lack of professionalism and company adherence to confidentiality than leaking a (positive!) memo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hmm..If only Yahoo had followed (or would follow) such a procedure!

[there used to be confidential VP-only meetings and information and that would also somehow end up on blogs..imagine that].

</comment><comment><USER26> I just don't understand why they would care that this information leaked. It's not like they could possibly keep it a secret that every single Googler got a 10% raise at the same time.

<comment><USER27> Sets a bad precedent, that it's okay just to forward any confidential memos on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know if the leaker got paid for revealing this memo? If so, I have little sympathy...

</comment><comment><USER29> Way to destroy the goodwill you just spent millions of dollars on.

</comment><comment><USER30> wait a sec... Is it really a 10% raise? "we're moving a portion of your bonus into your base salary"

<comment><USER31> The bonus to base salary is an additional change. The 10% raise is discussed in the previous paragraph, and then the bonus change is in the next paragraph, starting with "There's more."

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do no evil.

</comment><comment><USER33> Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.

</comment><comment><USER34> If they didn't take action, then "CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES)" would turn into a joke. Now people might listen - or at least leak more carefully.

<comment><USER35> A somewhat classier, less-heavy-handed approach would have been to simply not give that employee a raise.

<comment><USER36> Would that have made the headlines? If not, it wouldn't have the same effect.

<comment><USER37> It would have made the headlines if a google rep gave boingboing or IO9 a brief interview saying "we are not evil, but no one messes with the google."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Russian rocket engine explosion; radiation spikes - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-blast-rocket-radiation/two-dead-in-russian-rocket-engine-explosion-radiation-spikes-shipping-shut-idUSKCN1UY1D5 <comment><USER2> Its impossible to conclude anything without the quantitative info, except that either: -journalists arent doing their jobs by tracking down the only relevant detail -the information is being suppressed

</comment><comment><USER3> What has radiation got to do with a rocket explosion? Were they testing an NTR or something?

<comment><USER4> There are a few theories floating around, discussed here: [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29326/what-we-know- abo...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29326/what-we-know-about-a- reported-radiation-leak-in-russia-after-a-missile-engine-exploded)</comment></comment>


ReadWriteWeb: Why Google Continuously Releases New Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/readwriteweb-why-google-continuously-releases-new-apps/ <comment><USER2> Please link to the rww article instead of to your blog which links to the rww article.</comment>


Can you use FreeBSD for a Developer Machine in 2020? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/freebsd/freebsd-developer-2020/ <comment><USER2> Installed FreeBSD few months ago and GPU was making wierd buzzing noises just like every other distro I tried on Linux (even when the fan was not spinning). When I was booting Windows or Ubuntu noises were disappearing like magic. It was a joke, I was about to make a YouTube video. Tried everything, it was a driver problem obviously. Point is I dropped it because of this and I really wanted to switch my workstation to BSD :(</comment>


A reddit image viewer I hacked together over the weekend - <AUTHOR> http://reddit-slider.herokuapp.com So, I was annoyed with clicking back and forth between reddit and things like imgur and quickmeme, so I hacked this together in about a day.<p>Its built on a couple of php scripts on a free heroku instance, backed by a mecachier cache (also free) and still maintaining reasonable response times despite increasing traffic. <comment><AUTHOR> The entire app is built on a Heroku static php stack, with a memcache backing.

Despite ~20 users per minute, and free hosting tier it's still running reasonably quick</comment>


New Parallella Boards - <AUTHOR> http://www.parallella.org/2014/07/14/new-parallella-product-offerings/ <comment><USER2> Well, this post has perfect timing for my ends. :-) [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sys/4567451353.html](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sys/4567451353.html)

I backed the original Kickstarter, have a bunch of Parallellas, and due to a cash crunch have to liquidate a bunch of them. Above is the link to my Craigslist ad.

These have equivalent specs to what Adapteva is calling the "embedded" version, but they come with the older, smaller heat sink and thus will still need an external fan.

Note that I'm both selling below Adapteva's list price and that the version I'm selling is marked "out of stock" on Adapteva's site. :-)

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, how hard is it to program them? Do you need to be proficient with C? or as long as you can understand OpenMPI and such you are good to go?

How do you program the FPGA? I' asking this because I have a heavy OO background and even when C is not entirely strange to me, I'm not sure if it's as easy as to make a weekend project with that or not so much.

Your thoughts on this? Did you chain together more than one?

Thanks for your comments!

<comment><USER2> Right now you basically need to either use C or OpenCL. (I'm not familiar with OpenPI and Google doesn't pull up anything that seems relevant to this conversation.) If you're not proficient in C, I would recommend the OpenCL route.

The crew at Erlang Solutions is working on running Erlang on the Epiphany chip, but I haven't seen any visible progress from them.

I can't tell you anything about programming the FPGA. You don't need to directly mess with the FPGA to use the Epiphany. From what I've seen, the jump from C to VHDL is even bigger than the jump from OO to C, so probably not a weekend project. Also, there's no FOSS toolchain for programming the FPGA--you have to use Xilinx's tools, about which I've heard mixed reviews.

I bought the cluster with the intention of, well, building a cluster, but to date haven't actually tried that--Real Life got in the way of doing that. I do have all the hardware sitting here to connect them over plain old Ethernet.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, it was my bad. I meant to say OpenMPI :P

Thanks for the comments! it certainly gives me some idea of what it would be.

<comment><USER2> Okay, OpenMPI will help you with clustering multiple Parallella units to work on the same task. AFAIK it won't run on the Epiphany itself, so you have to look elsewhere for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fact that price goes down as the application goes from server to desktop to embedded is very telling, in several ways.

One way is the commoditization of computing: actual computer power is now a commodity, with very low prices and standardized interfaces. Ethernet is the new pallet, and servers are trucks.

On the other extreme, the embedded landscape demands catering for each application, demanding a lot of GPIOs, specific hardware and hand work. It gets expensive.

Of course, the Parallella just shows this in such a nice way because it evens the (massive) computing power in all offerings, that differ only in interface. Actual consumer products will try to balance this, but it still tells us a history.

<comment><USER5>
         The fact that price goes down as the application goes
         from server to desktop to embedded is very telling, in
         several ways.

The fact that you've fallen for a very simple marketing trick? The name "server", "desktop", and "embedded" are marketing terms. They're all the same CPU. The main difference is the number of GPIO pins between the board numbers.

Basic marketing trick. Always name your products as "good, better, and best" in some form. Unfortunately, it feels slimy to me, and I don't like it.

That said, I do like the idea of the Epiphany chip they're offering. But based on cost and performance alone, its clear that a $120 AMD R7 260x graphics card will be superior to what they offer here. (With its 14 compute units at 1.1 GHz, can do 896 SIMD integer or single-precision floating point operations per clock). R7 260x also has Windows / Linux drivers and OpenCL support included...

Epiphany is doing a disservice to themselves if they are trying to compete against "desktop" and "server" computers. Their niche is in their performance / watt. GPUs, with their 5GHz+ GDDR5 RAM, ~GHz clock speed, and super-parallel architectures will continue to dominate supercomputing at the ~100W to ~500W levels.

Epiphany IV is a supercomputer design at ~2W. Anything more is settled by the current laptop market. (AMD Kabini hits 150 GFLOPs at ~25W for only ~$60 CPU on a $30 motherboard)

<comment><USER6> IO also costs money, often more than the actual circuitry.

They certainly have some margin, and it's probably bigger at the embbebed version, but it's not only a marketing trick.

<comment><USER5> I agree... its not "only" a marketing trick. The Epiphany IV looks like a unique computer architecture that I'd be excited to play around with (if I ever got the time...).

But I think its a bit of a stretch to call their "Desktop" offering suitable for "A Personal Computer", especially when the Zynq Z7020 is the core CPU of it. The performance offered is solidly in the "embedded" realm, and barely will be more powerful than your cell phone. (1GB of RAM is weaker than most people's cell phones...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how long it's going to take until someone is going to port OpenCL natively to Fortran. Lots of Fortran programmers in HPC and they currently can only use NVIDIA GPUs and Intel MIC. ARM platforms could be interesting in the long run. I hope either AMD or Cray take the plunge. If that happens, I'd be happy to integrate Parallela with my parallel computing preprocessor framework[1].

[1] [https://github.com/muellermichel/Hybrid- Fortran](https://github.com/muellermichel/Hybrid-Fortran)

</comment><comment><USER8> Parallella went through a lot of production issues. Happy to see them having momentum now they fulfilled their KS deliveries.

</comment><comment><USER9> So glad these folks haven't died. If I can get one it will be a nice complement to the Zedboard.

Still need to get the bugs worked out of my Xilinx on Ubuntu setup though. Annoys me to have to run Windows in a VM to use the toolchain.

<comment><USER10> For what it's worth, I haven't had any trouble on RHEL (which is recommended).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is a 64-core model in sight at all?

<comment><USER12> In sight? Yes. Shipping to more than the original Kickstarter Backers? Probably not.</comment></comment>


Wealthfront: A Bit About Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wealthfront.com/bit-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> "But, given what we know today and the data available to us, it could also be worth half. "

And it would still be up 900% from last year. This falls in the same category as the other article "CRYPTO COIN WEAKENS" after Bitcoin dropped 0.5%.

It might be a bubble, but you're still writing about it.

<comment><USER3> Given what we know today, it could also be worth a billionth, but you're missing the point. They're saying that it should not be a part of their investment strategy today, which would mean buying Bitcoins today — the previous price of a Bitcoin does not matter at all in that context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> you live on an island in the 1700s and the first foreigners land there, you use seashells and they use gold coins. what happens to the value of your sea shells over the next 50 years?</comment>


Ask HN: What is your ideal code coverage in terms of percentage? - <AUTHOR> Do you think it should be a 100%? 50%? 75%?<p>Share what you think and why! <comment><USER2> To me, it's less about a specific number and more about ensuring all core logic is covered. You can hit your coverage goals by by testing getters/setters for example, but that doesn't mean that your coverage is effective.

Having core business logic covered will give you the confidence in fixing, refactoring, updating those key pieces of the application.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anecdotally speaking, by the time you've tested the prevalent happy paths and unhappy paths, you will have covered roughly 70% of your code. So a code base having less than 70% coverage would be a "smell" to me in terms of adequate testing. The remaining code will be tested as-needed using _Maintenance Driven Development_ \- see [https://taylodl.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/maintenance- driven-...](https://taylodl.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/maintenance-driven- development/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Depends on the type of code and what it is. e.g. an embedded device should likely have better code coverage than say a CRUD application on the web. Even on an embedded device though, it is typically less than 100%, unless the device is safety critical.

Personally in order of most to least code coverage as my own general rule: Safety critical code, embedded device, mobile application, desktop application than web application. Not because web isn't important, but it is far easier and cost effective to address issues.

I'd say the code coverage percentage (if you will) goes hand in hand with a few factors, criticality of the code, sophistication of the team and the business risk of errors (even from a marketing perspective).

I've worked on safety critical devices that should have had 100% code coverage that didn't, and worked on web based marketing apps where 100% code coverage was mandated because we lost money and customer confidence if any piece failed.

Personally I have seen a pattern with the more senior the team makeup, it seems like the less total code coverage but the testing is more thorough and targeted. I honestly think this goes more based on trust within the team then just pure time behind the keyboard. I have also seen it bite teams too, so not sure it is the "smart" choice.</comment>


How Fast Should I Expect New Programmers to Start Producing? - <AUTHOR> Have a couple new employees, virtual office type setup; angel funded.  We typically start with bugs and then roll forward to minor features.  Most coding in GO with Angular on the front end.<p>Whats a reasonable timeframe to expect solid code contributions?  These employees have 3-8 years of experience. <comment><USER2> I depends on a lot of factors:

\- How complex is your codebase? Is it a pretty standard CRUD app, or does it have extra components like machine learning or complex image rendering? Does it need to interact with services outside your company?

\- Is your code easy to read, or a mess? Are there unit tests?

\- Is there documentation about the system architecture and functionality (or people who can spend time providing a system overview), or do the new developers have to figure it all out on their own?

\- How much specific domain knowledge would developers need to pick up to work on the application? E.g., would they need to know all about banking or HIPAA regulations to be able to write code that won't break laws?

Depending on the answers to these questions, the answer could be anywhere from days to months.

</comment><comment><USER3> This question cannot be answered easily. It depends on so many details... Are the original authors still there to guide new employees? Is the overall design clear and simple?

Experience doesn't need to be an indicator for productivity. Also often you can find programmers who seem not productive at all, but without their contribution the whole project might fail.

The best thing to do is to set your milestones, and put trust in the people you hired. Then check your progress regulary. Talk and listen to your employees. Be trustworthy yourself.

You don't want to know how much code a new hire can put out in a month. It doesn't matter. You want to know weather you reach your business goals. So communication, trust and transparency will improve every contribution of your engineers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, that's something _you_ should be able to guess at, from how long it took your previous "new" programmers. From my experience, this mostly depends on the complexity of existing code - I've seen code that could be reasonably extended in a few weeks, but also monstrosities that took months to understand and start contributing.</comment>


Bash on Balls: an MVC web framework for Bash, powered by netcat - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/jayferd/balls <comment><AUTHOR> It basically pipes a fifo into netcat, and pipes the output of netcat to an HTTP parsing script, which calls router and model "methods" (which use Bash's built-in "namespacing") which runs the Bash templating language esh and pipes the the HTTP response back into the fifo.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have nothing but praise for this piece of insanity. I love bash and truly enjoy watch it being taken beyond is intended use cases.

<comment><USER3> Ha! Yeah, it's totally not done yet, but yes, certainly intended as a piece of insanity. With all seriousness, of course. The model layer still needs a good deal of work, and I think it might be fun to write up some tutorials or something :)

<comment><USER4> So, I guess I need to finish writing the blog for BoB in BoB now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just looked over the source. This package is unkempt and extremely hairy in some places. I'd advise using Occam's razor over the whole thing, or at least running trim and tidy on the main parts.

<comment><USER6> A swing and a miss.

<comment><USER7> I thought it was good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wrote a CGI webserver and microframework in bash awhile ago too: <https://github.com/tlrobinson/wwwoosh/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Similar netcat trick, more Sinatra-y router. Way smaller, just one file. No templating language like esh, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a great name.

<comment><USER10> "Bash with Balls" might've been better.

<comment><USER11> Then it loses the Ruby on Rails reference.

<comment><USER10> Why is that important?

<comment><USER12> It's funny on multiple levels. Physically abusing testicles and the Ruby on Rails reference being the two obvious ones.

If you change the name as you suggest, then it's significantly less funny. Funny is an important component of fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> But _can it scale?_

<comment> a-priori Sure, if you have big enough Balls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Similar to <http://werc.cat-v.org/>

</comment><comment><USER15> So how can we use that? Is there any tutorial or examples?

<comment><USER16> I think it's best watched from a far.

<comment><USER17> Reminds me of an old SNL skit:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Fun_Ball#Warnings>

Do not taunt Bash on Balls. Bash on Balls may stick to certain types of skin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what would sed's framework should be called? Sed on Sails?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do it!

who wants to take up Awk on Awnings?

<comment><USER19> GNU awk has some decent built-in networking functionality.

So: _gawk on goats_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow.

Shell is my favorite programming language these days. For systems programming there's really no way to get terser or more accurate programs with a scripting language. Once they work, my shell scripts are essentially side effect free.

That said, I use it for true pipelines. An MVC framework sounds insane. But I already learned some new Bash tricks from reading the code so keep up the madness!

</comment><comment><USER21> I prefer <http://www.coboloncogs.org/>

<comment><USER22> Don't forget DOS on Dope:

<http://dod.codeplex.com/>

This one is a real MVC framework with scaffolding, written almost exclusively in batch scripts (IIRC they had to cheat a bit for the server code). All user code is also batch files.

The site contains a few gems, like:

 _In DoD we embrace the NoSQL movement and jump straight to the data-store of the future: a CSV file._

or

 _Does it scale?

So far I haven't run into any performance problems. Whenever I've opened up a DoD website to several users, my hard drive tends to get wiped long before I discover performance issues._

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of nanoblogger: <http://nanoblogger.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER24> Very original. I could have never thought that bash could be put to such use.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sounds painful to use.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is why I visit HN. Great hack!

</comment><comment><USER27> Think I found true love ...

</comment><comment><USER28> assert(can != should)</comment>


House panel demands briefing from DoJ concerning prosecution of Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/29/house-panel-demands-briefing-from-department-of-justice-concerning-aaron-swartz-prosecution/ <comment><USER2> Great that they're probing the reasons for going after him--including whether his advocacy background was a factor, and why the superseding indictment--when they upped the felony count from 4 to 13 a year after the first indictment-- was necessary.</comment>


The Tulip Fever Was Exaggerated - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/?no-ist <comment><USER2> This article had a big discussion when it came out a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15308824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15308824).

</comment><comment><USER3> For the record, there was a speculative bubble around tulips that crashed suddenly and sharply. From the article:

 _merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, and they paid incredibly high prices for some bulbs. And when a number of buyers announced they couldn't pay the high price previously agreed upon, the market did fall apart and cause a small crisis_

The article is more about how many of the anecdotal and narrative myths around it that weren't true.

<comment><USER4> Then I hope the mods change the title to something like "Much of what you hear about Tulip Fever is exaggerated".

<comment><USER2> Sure, done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I _think_ the point of posting this article is to argue that bitcoin isn't a bubble? Not sure. I say that bc in every bubble/bitcoin thread people jump in and make this point.

<comment><USER6> I believe you are probably correct, and it is a tendency I really do not understand. People seem to be so profoundly invested _emotionally_ in the specific success of bitcoin (as opposed to the broader technology of blockchain cryptocurrency) that they're out on the prowl to shout down anybody who threatens to pop their perceptive bubble. It's as if they're making a concerted effort to exclude any dissident opinion in the implicit belief that removing the dissenters will somehow ensure the success of the whole enterprise. I myself am hoping (as a macroeconomist and as somebody that preserves his objectivity by having no long or short position whatsoever in any cryptocurrency) that bitcoin will soon fail not because I have anything against those who designed it or who adopted it early but because as a fixed- quantity asset it is inherently noxious as a currency (which is why the world moved off the gold standard and bimetallism and representative currency progressively to begin with) and that it will be revealed to be what it is: an effective implementation of a new idea (blockchain) that solves a major computer science problem (the Byzantine Generals Problem) but was macroeconomically naive. Successors will be more pliant for the criteria of modern money.

<comment><USER7> It 'solves' the computer science BGP only by reframing it as a decision science problem and iteravely testing a particular hypothesis about the supremacy of personal enrichment over all other incentives in a giant, uncontrolled public gambling experiment.

<comment><USER6> All points granted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Somewhat related: a friend and I created a service that sends your friends pictures of tulips when the crypto markets crash.

It started off as a joke over dinner, but now it's a fully functional product. More info here: sendcryotopeopletulips.com

<comment><USER9> I will create a service which sends you pictures of dollars each time Bitcoin hits a new high.</comment></comment>


Andrew Chen: How Web 2.0 startups should think about the Lifetime Value of their audiences - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2008/05/ltv-calculation.html

<comment><USER2> Andrew, we get that you're trying to promote yourself. Really we do. Your name is in your URL. It's prefixed to all your story submissions. Showing some restraint you only used part of it for your username.

But really, it's getting to be a big turn off. It wreaks of a kitschy trick. Would you try, from now on, to let your work speak for itself? People, especially your intended audience, aren't stupid. If your work is good, they'll know it is yours and you'll earn their respect.</comment>


Which Sign Up and Login Options Are Optimal for Cryptocurrency Exchange? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/espayexchangespace/which-sign-up-login-options-are-optimal-for-a-white-label-cryptocurrency-exchange-89c813626780 <comment><USER2> 400, 402, 404 are all good choices</comment>


Erlang Inventors Talk Language Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/armstrong-virding-erlang-future

<comment><USER2> the infoq page layout is annoying (there is a button for a full page transcript) and I didn't see much (if anything) about the future of Erlang but there is some very interesting discussion there

 _Q: There are a lot of ideas about implementing several languages on top of the same VM. So the JVM has started for Java and it has Java inside like and all the bytecode is Java like and then people try to implement other languages or whatever, even Erlang but also various languages like Scala and Ruby and other things. Is it a good idea?

Joe Armstrong: No, it's a silly idea.

...

Because the virtual machine is good at nothing. I mean it's equally bad for all languages, slightly better for Java than other machines, if you look at the JVM instructions set and the .Net instructions set, you can't detect integer overflows and other things. If you look at JErlang because we do exact arithmetic you have to detect the overflows into big numbers if you want. So you have to do the multiplication twice with higher precision and compare and see you got an overflow, because you can't get a hold of the overflow flag which is in the instructions set. So something like the low level virtual machine is much better. Forget this stuff it was a mistake. It will be a historical parenthesis.

Robert Virding: I don't think so actually. ...It might survive Java

...

Joe Armstrong: But the good thing about the JVM is the brilliant implementation. But I don't think the abstraction things are very good. You have to distinguish them... _

<comment><USER3> I came here to write about how I hate the infoQ page layout too. The content on infoQ is really great, but I really dislike the page enough that sometimes I skip the content. If the webdevs are reading it, a more basic intuitive layout would be nice.</comment></comment>


Kickstarter set to launch in Japan, where hardware startups are finding it hard - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/kickstarter-japan-hardware-startup-struggles <comment><USER2> This is still one of the most fascinating writeups of Japanese business culture I have read, from fellow HNer patio11:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in- japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the read, it was informative and a little scary (especially the obligations of the employee to his/her employer).

This is rather tangentially related, but is there any information on how to get a job in Japan as someone from a Western country, either to teach English, or as a programmer? I imagine this is a popular question though answers to it I think are scarce.

<comment><USER4> Any native english speaker with a Bachelor's degree and a pulse can get a gig as an English language assistant. Many starry eyed young people who go down that route find themselves very frustrated/bitter at their situation after a while; I'd do careful research about it to make sure that's something you're seriously interested in doing. Blogs, YouTube videos, etc. about this are easy to find. Note that this is very, very different from being an actually English teacher, which would require local accreditations etc.

As a programmer, get on LinkedIn, find recruiters for Japanese startups/companies you're interested in, and start sending messages. Speaking conversational Japanese (and being able to prove it, e.g. by having a JLPT certification) and being already in the country (e.g. through a working holiday visa) will improve your odds manyfold. This is also a good resource: [https://jobs.gaijinpot.com](https://jobs.gaijinpot.com)

Doing a graduate degree in Japan might also be worth it, depending on your circumstances - it gives you a few years to see how you actually like being in Japan, letting you leave easily after completion of your degree with something to show for it; it will make getting a local job dramatically easier if you want to stay in Japan longer; and it will give you a few years to build up your Japanese etc.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your advice, it's something I'm entertaining the possibility of doing, I haven't committed to anything yet, so I'll take a look at past experiences of other people. Actually getting in and applying seems to be an issue, because as far as I can tell working holiday visas require a certain amount of money in the first place. Do you know if it is possible to job hunt (apply, not work) and get a visa sponsorship while on a holiday? Or is that disallowed?

And do you know how for example a TEFL might help with the process, if at all, and if there is any path available to increase one's position to become an actual English teacher?

Again, thanks for the advice.

<comment><USER5> You definitely don't need TEFL to find a teaching job easily in Japan but it would give you more options. I taught in language schools, a junior high, and did corporate classes as well. It's also quite easy to get hired from abroad, and getting a job while on working holiday/travel visa is a bit of a grey area, although I know plenty of people who have done it.

If I can suggest, from experience, skipping the initial 'just teaching English' thing and apply for undergraduate/graduate school here and teach on the side. I made more money from scholarships (very easy to get) and teaching than I'm making now as a salary man.

<comment><USER3> Thank you. As much as I would like to take your advice about undergraduate/graduate school, I'm not sure how I would fare as I am already an undergraduate, and my knowledge of Japanese isn't that great (it's been on the backburner for a very long time, usually I haven't paid attention to it) and I'm not sure how I'd fare doing a course in Japan; I don't think I would like to be studying the subject I do (ECE) much more beyond graduate level, though I guess I'll see about that. If it's not too much to ask, what are Japanese university fees and ease of entry like?

Do you have any advice or ideas where to look if I want to go into a career teaching English in Japan, if such a thing isn't too laughable? :)

Edit: one of my biggest concerns is whether I can apply from abroad, as getting into Japan in the first place is an issue.

<comment><USER5> For jobs teaching English (it's not really a career choice unless you end up getting a proper teaching degree or happen into something special) check out www.gaijinpot.com it's, despite the name, one of the most credible sources for English teaching jobs. For universities, public universities in Japan are incredibly cheap when compared to universities in the US. Tuition for the university I went to was less than 5,000usd/yr (a tenth of what I paid in the us/year for undergrad) and there are scholarships a plenty. Check out the MEXT scholarship or JASSO. I ended up getting both which paid for my living expenses as well as school. Like I said, working part time on top of that I was living very comfortably. So, going to school will grant you a very affordable apartment, gym membership, very good intensive Japanese lessons, an education, friends, the chance to work up to 28 hours a week, and if you get a scholarship, spending money, on top of the education of your choice.

Search for the G30 program. There are a bunch of public universities here that participate in G30, which is made for foreign students, in English and it's very well funded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, now our friends in Japan can be scammed and disappointed by nonexistent fly-by-night vaporware Kickstarters just like we in America have been for some time now.

<comment><USER7> I have joined many kickstarters. I received all of the rewards promised to me, some with a lot of delay but no kickstarter I joined was ever cancelled.

People approach kickstarter with the wrong mindset. It is not an alibaba/aliexpress/taobao market where you can buy interesting things. When you're joining a campaign, you're investing on makers, helping them develop an idea. You are not buying stuff, ideas might not pan out, you're in essence an investor.

If you approach it like an investor and analyze each campaign with cold eyes, looking if the team behind it can actually deliver the goods, if it is worth the risk of investing and if you actually have a personal investment in the idea as in "I want this product to exist", then you will not be frustrated, even when things don't pan out.

I am somewhat tired of people approaching kickstarter with the idea of "I am buying stuff and they turn out to be vapor". This is not understanding what kickstarter is.

<comment><USER8> > This is not understanding what kickstarter is.

It's a more universal problem than that. The concept of a stock market was originally supposed to be very similar to Kickstarter, but with dividends rather than rewards. But average Joes were convinced that _the stock market itself_ was a kind of store to buy future products in (with hucksters there to help them toward that conclusion), and tons of people lost their life-savings.

To avoid this, we have divided investors into "accredited" (usually, people whose job is investing) and "unaccredited" (the regular Joes); and companies into "private" (companies that actually _need_ investment to become viable) and "public" (companies that would do just as well without anyone's help); and then we don't let the _unaccredited_ investors invest in the _private_ companies. Which was, y'know, the whole original point: to let people help companies get off the ground, in exchange for potential reward if the company _does_ get off the ground.</comment></comment></comment>


McAfee Interviewed in Secret Location - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/12/01/mcafee-interviewed/

<comment><USER2> Maybe they'll let him share a cell with Reiser and they can figure out how to scan a filesystem for viruses more quickly.

<comment><USER3> Only if Kip and Nicole Macy get to be the landlord.

<comment><USER4> Whatever happened to Kip Macy?

<comment><USER3> Ran off to Europe (the fucking morons at SFPD didn't correctly register a State block on international travel or passport issuance, and only confiscated the old ones; Kip just went to the passport agency and got new ones!)

I think Italy, and presumably since it's not that serious a crime, there's been no serious attempt at extradition.

They are good until around 2020 on the current passports (unless they get lost, heh) -- presumably they can make enough money and otherwise build enough identity to either remain resident in Europe indefinitely, or get an alternate passport for travel.

<comment><USER5> Yep, he lives in Florence: <https://plus.google.com/110811825461544096333/posts>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He was also interviewed by Joe Rogan this week

<http://youtu.be/5GmwSgCfn38?t=18m46s>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.whoismcafee.com/>

<comment><USER8> With the latest news on his hown blog: * Breaking: John captured? Date: December 1, 2012 at 6:57 pm We have received an unconfirmed report that John McAfee has been captured at the border of Belize and Mexico. _

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favourite line was one from my girlfriend - "Maybe you shouldn't have taken his anti-virus software off my laptop .... he seems pretty badass."

<comment><USER6> Girls love criminals.

Criminals in jail get so many love letters from girls.

<comment><USER10> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic>

<comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia>

> Unlike most other paraphilias, hybristophilia occurs almost exclusively in > women.

It's not just my own observation, it's a belief widely held in society.

<comment><USER10> technically, hybristophilia is a paraphilia, and paraphilias are by definition atypical. really interesting though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If he's not a suspect and has nothing to fear, why are they so desperate to find him?

<comment><USER4> This comes up a lot in stories about fugitives. Depending on the jurisdiction, it may not be possible to label someone a "suspect" absent either smoking gun evidence or a formal interview. Take stories about the legal status of people implicated in crimes with a grain of salt, at least until you're sure of the technical meanings of the terms being used in that jurisdiction are.

<comment><USER11> Oh sure, but the tone of the two people on CNN made it seem like he was crazy for not wanting to turn himself in. I highly suspect that if/when he ever gets in custody, he won't be out of it for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> McAffe is not sane. Have you read about how he injected bath salts into his system? Wow!

Looks like too many bath salts have really screwed him up and made him paranoid, as well prompted a murder.

<comment><USER13> I don't get it - is it somehow different from someone that shoots heroin or something?

<comment><USER12> Well here in the states there were two different dudes who under the influence of bath salts cannibalized their victims.

With heroin you don't care about anything but getting your next fix and you will do anything that's quick to get that fix.

<comment><USER6> Incorrect, no bath salts were found in the Miami attackers body [1]. The second story in Louisiana hasn't yet proven to be bath salts and he only bit a part of the guys face in an attack - he want cannabalising.

Secondly, very little is known about bath salts (mephedrone, MDPV).

In fact it's been shown to be less addictive than cocaine.

> "In a survey of UK users who had previously taken cocaine, most users found > it produced a better-quality and longer-lasting high, was less addictive and > carried the same risk as using cocaine.[2]"

So if cocaine is more addictive, why isn't it equally considered dangerous?

This type of misinformation is caused by the media and propagated by people who have a) never done the drug and b) spent little time researching it, such as yourself.

[1] [http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/bath-salts-marijuana- fac...](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/bath-salts-marijuana-face-eating- killer-miami-cannibal-143149305.html)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephedrone#Intended_effects>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He seems like a like cool dude. I hope he's innocent.</comment>


[Navel Gazing Startup Post] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/navel-gazing/ <comment><USER2> "Founders put a lot of weight in Shark Tank, and invest too much in getting there and performing."

I'm not in Silicon Valley and when I see things like this I wonder if that's a good thing. The fact that any of the things in this are things is a whole lot of "WUT?"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's how I feel reading your comment. What are you trying to say?

<comment><USER2> I just see a lot of... well... the post's title was honest and accurate. I see a lot of "scene" navel gazing the strikes me as just bizarre and defocusing. If I were in the Valley I'd worry that the "scene" would be overwhelming and distracting to the point that I'd run the risk of spending a lot of time pursuing vanity metrics and things that only matter within that scene.

The long term risk here is startups building around the startup scene and therefore becoming dependent upon the startup ecosystem itself. This kind of circularity and economic incest made the dot.com crash a lot worse than it might have been and it could happen again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the chatter is easy to suck you in. The underlying issues do matter though: where should you spend your time? what is the most effective way to market your startup?

Cuban, Sacca, and PG didn't get where they are by tweeting. Sacca sort of did considering how his late stage twitter funds launched him to a new level.

Inside baseball isn't baseball. Agreed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin dropping alongside global stock markets, discrediting safe haven theory - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/bitcoin-plunges-below-6000-alongside-global-stock-markets.html <comment><USER2> The case of bitcoin being safe haven is probably only apply in the long term. It's quite obvious the price is heavily speculated now.

As we speak market sees extreme volatility and we have a bit of green positive [https://www.coingecko.com/en](https://www.coingecko.com/en) Do not imagine it lasting again due to sheer speculation and negative sentiment.

Once it cools off, bitcoin will probably test it's attribute as safe haven again only when the stocks and bond market gets hit in isolation. Even now we do not see increase in gold price yet

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin is too easily replaced to be a long term store of value. It relies purely on public sentiment. Whereas things like precious metals at least have utility and no easy substitutes.

<comment><USER4> > Bitcoin is too easily replaced to be a long term store of value. It relies > purely on public sentiment. Whereas things like precious metals at least > have utility and no easy substitutes.

But bitcoin has utility, in case of hyperinflation, capital controls, asset protection etc.

Imagine if you are a Chinese billionaire who wants to move some of his wealth out of China, you buy bitcoin for Yuan in China, sell a futures contract to someone to cover yourself from the price fluctuation, and there you go.

Why is that not a legitimate use of bitcoin?

<comment><USER5> > But bitcoin has utility, in case of hyperinflation, capital controls, asset > protection etc.

It really doesn't, and in a blatantly obvious way. All it has is propaganda pushed by those who are personally invested in doing the pumping as part of a pump-and-dump scheme.

<comment><USER4> So your argument is "no it ain't"? I don't really understand your argument.

Are you doubting the part that people are using it for fleeing capital controls in China or for asset protection or how they were using it during Venezuala crises?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> CNBC has routinely harped on cryptocurrency, namely Bitcoin. Their tweets end up being retweeted into my stream, and they always seem to have a stance against. This article is no different. However, Bitcoin has been on a downslope for entirely different reasons than the stock market.

Edit: Particularly CNBC's Fast Money twitter: @CNBCFastMoney</comment>


YC's Summer Reading - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/yc-summer-reading/ <comment><USER2> I've not read the book version but "How Buildings Learn" is one of my favorite things ever (a great case-study for looking outside of software for lessons that can apply to well...software).

Stewart Brand (of Longnow fame) produced a really lovely 6 part series for BBC in the late 90's and they are on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/user/brandst/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/brandst/videos) \-- highly recommended (Warning: there is a very loud and obnoxious beeping during the first 10 seconds or so)

A look at "the evolution of buildings and how buildings adapt to changing requirements over long periods" \-- replace buildings with software and you've probably got a best-seller from Pragmatic Programmers!

<comment><USER3> Please let me disagree. It is a beautiful book, but really boring and repetitive. Never finished it. I'll resume it for you all: "Buildings change over time to adapt for their owners livestyle."

The really good part is the author bashing renowned architects that build prize winning buildings that leak.

<comment><USER4> > I'll resume it for you all: "Buildings change over time to adapt for their > owners livestyle."

An important concept in the book is "shearing layers" [1]: different parts of a building change at different rates due to differential pressures. E.g. walls change faster than foundations.

Its a few years since I last read it, but fwiw I found the book insightful and not at all boring. Each to their own though.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really surprised to see Ready Player One on there. It relied way too heavily on the 80's nostalgia, to prop up the shallow story telling. But even that got old, it was like hanging around with someone that talks entirely in movie quotes, while fun at the right times, gets stale fast. You didn't care about the character, because there was nothing for him to really lose.

<comment><USER6> It's fun, but if you want dystopian capitalist world with a parallel vr universe, snow crash has more surprising ideas. (And better writing)

Although it's a bit violent and has some... interesting mechanisms (as I was told: it gets weird)

Also, the nostalgia comes baked in because it was written in the 90s. Still super relevant though

<comment><USER5> I thought SnowCrash was horrendous, with terrible writing. Most overrated book I've read to date, by far.

<comment><USER6> Have you read RP1? If you haven't and that's your impression of Snow Crash: Don't.

<comment><USER5> Look at the parent of this thread, I started it to show my disdain for that book.

<comment><USER6> Ah right. Any recent books you're enjoying?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would add "Lords of Finance" to the list: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001QIGZEK](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001QIGZEK)

The book, which won a Pulitzer in 2010, describes the financial crises and global economic depression that followed the Great Crash of 1929 -- relevant to the current (post-2008-crisis) state of affairs.

Normally, books on these topics are dull and dreary. This one is surprisingly interesting and fun, in part because it shows how colorful personalities, prevailing wisdom, and political realities influenced events.

PS. The first chapter is available for free at the New York Times: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/books/chapters/chapter- lor...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/books/chapters/chapter-lords-of- fianance.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> So glad "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees" is here – one of my favorite books and the reason I became an artist ... and then stopped being an artist.

One of my most referenced parts of the book describes an entire year Irwin spent in Ibiza (IIRC) alone and not speaking to anyone in his late 20s. The insight he gathered that year really determined the rest of the career and enabled him to step outside of the zeitgeist of the time (abstract expressionism) into something totally different.

If you're in LA, you can see a garden he designed at the Getty Center. If you're in New York, you can visit DIA Beacon, which he also designed (or non- designed really). And if you ever get a chance to see his artwork, I highly recommend it.

Such restraint, such slowness.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just curious, what's everybody's pace around here? It took me about a month to casually get through "Ready Player One" (great book BTW), and that was for a book club. It seems like a lot of the people I respect get through about a book a week. Either they're lying or have such good focus to avoid distractions other than books. Maybe I could put down the HN for a bit.

<comment><USER10> I write a lot while reading. Sort of like having a conversation with the author.

I read less books this way, but the knowledge in the books become much more internalized. I tend to implement them much faster too. And aren't we reading, in part, to better our lives (short-term pleasure or long-term changes)?

Of course, I read fiction just for the pleasure as well (like Ready Player One).

This method of reading also sharpened my bullshit detector. If I am not writing a lot, this indicates lack of insights. Either a bad book or a bad time for that book. So either way, a bad book for me.

<comment><USER11> I'd be very curious to hear more about this. I've flirted on and off with note-taking on books for all the same reasons you mention, but I invariably feel guilty about progressing too slowly. In a weird way, I think this a quintessentially American affliction - like our obsession with throughput and productivity washes into our real lives as well. I'm just wondering what you do to fight that instinct. Specifically, I think the two things that get me are : (1) feeling bad about not reading enough and (2) worrying about being ultimately disappointed with a book and having wasted my time taking notes.

<comment><USER10> I feel much smarter after reading more slowly. When someone asks me, "What are you reading?" I feel much more confident in answering that question.

And the knowledge is less flimsy as well; I become a master, not a slave, of the material. I do not place the source material on a pedestal. I take what I need, and discard the garbage.

I can also cook the material much better. I am able to merge ideas from the book with my previous interests. The products from mental fusing turn out to be solid business ideas and mental models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The Magicians_ is a lovely book; I actually interviewed Grossman when the first one came out, in 2010: [https://jakeseliger.com/2010/10/14/an-interview- with-lev-gro...](https://jakeseliger.com/2010/10/14/an-interview-with-lev- grossman-author-of-the-magicians-and-codex-part-i). If you like it, try Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ trilogy too.

 _Leviathan Wakes_ disappoints: its plot and political economy are interesting but on a sentence-by-sentence level one wishes for more. If you haven't read it yet try Peter Watts, _Blindsight_.

<comment><USER13> Pullman is another one for the Christians, I suppose. If you are not religious, it seems unlikely to me that you would enjoy it (I didn't).

<comment><USER14> I'm an atheist _and_ a big fan of both _His Dark Materials_ and _Narnia_. Why wouldn't an atheist enjoy religious art? That's _millennia_ of human creativity you're throwing on the fire.

<comment><USER13> I enjoyed Narnia, but found His Dark Materials unbearable. It's been a while since I read it, though, don't remember the specifics. The soul mate with animal spirit thing just seemed Christian to me - stunned that it is supposed to be an atheist book, as another comment mentioned.

So I am not opposed to religious art. A bit tired of the "chosen one" theme in fantasy, but other than that, I tend to just view it as an expression of human yearning.

<comment><USER15> It's pretty clearly atheist, and has been criticised by religious groups for that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman#Perspective_on_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman#Perspective_on_religion)

<comment><USER13> Maybe I didn't read far enough, didn't think a book about souls could be atheist.

<comment><USER15> The book includes religion. That's what world building is. That doesn't mean it's pro religion, anymore than it's pro armour-clad polar bears.

In the books the church is pretty oppressive.

<comment><USER13> But it's different things to include religion, which is just stuff people believe, and actual souls. Religion is just a belief. Churches are just companies.

But I admit, in that sense any fantasy novel containing magic might be "religious" in some sense. The soul thing just seemed rather Christian to me.

I am an atheist and not that well versed in Christianity, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm in the middle of Chaos Monkeys, and am enjoying the author's excellent prose, while walking through the sausage factory of startups. There's also some interesting YC insights, as the author's startup went through it.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune- Failure...](https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune- Failure/dp/0062458191/)

<comment><USER17> I finished this recently and liked it as well. My "policy" is to read every technology company related memoir or corporate history that I can get my hands on, and I found this one more interesting than most as a narrative.

<comment><USER18> I also like these. just read the facebook and twitter ones. which did you also find and like?

<comment><USER17> posted a list on sibling comment

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I reread _Cryptonomicon_ (the last Stephenson book to really draw me in enough to make me read it, although he frontloads a lot of the complexity, so maybe if I push through the opening to Anathem just one more time...)

For those of you who read RP1 already, I would reccomend _You_ , by Austin Grossman, which takes the concept of a treasure hunt through computing and gaming history in a radically different direction, one that is more realistic (although it still takes some bizare leaps of logic and outright wrong turns), as you follow a new developer at a games company that his friends started many years ago, desparately trying to track down an ancient, game-breaking bug, before the company closes its doors for good.

It's flawed, but has a stronger character focus than RP1, and I think I liked it better, on the whole.

<comment><USER5> I have a first printing hardcover Cryptonomicon sitting in front of me, that I haven't cracked opened yet. Bought it prior to reading Snowcrash, which I thought was the most overrated drivel that I've ever come across. Awesome beginning, that turned into ancient religious programming nonsense. I'm afraid to even begin that monster, if the writing is anything like that.

<comment><USER19> Stephenson REALLY likes showing his work. He also likes to use myth as metaphor. So Cryptonomicon is full of Crypto, WWII and modern, philosophy, math, and computing, and involves a startup, treasure hunts, at least one conspiracy, a metaphor involving greek mythology, reflections on long-term relationships, sorta-kinda mocking liberal arts academia, and a full on erotic novella about furniture and stocking fetishes, which sets up a major plotpoint (yes, really).

If these things don't sound appeling to you, steer clear. You may just not like Stephenson. But if you're intrigued by some of the things I mentioned, give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At some point this summer I highly suggest reading the nutrition facts on back of a cold beer, preferably on the beach. Not everything you read needs to be about technology development or enlightenment.

</comment><comment><USER21> I notice that "The Intelligent Investor", by Benj. Graham, is on the list. This is the light version of his "Securities Analysis", which is all about value investing. It's how Warren Buffett did it in the early years.

<comment><USER22> Ive read it a few times and keep getting to the chapter in the annotated version where the author of the annotations basically says that unless you really want to put the work in stick with index trackers. I then reread bogleheads, and WB's recent shareholder letters and decided i'll stick with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just finished "Ready Player One" yesterday. Fun read! Would recommend.

<comment><USER24> Spielberg is directing an RP1 movie, slated to come out in 2018! Hopefully they knock it out of the park and its a great inspiration for the VR industry.

<comment><USER25> It'll just be another threadbare cultural touchstone to kowtow at in order to win mainstream "geek cred".

 _Snowcrash_ is what shaped the future.

<comment><USER21> A _Snow Crash_ movie was in the works at one time, but didn't happen. Maybe if VR catches on this time...

Recommended: "The Shockwave Rider", by John Brunner. Published in 1975, and way, way ahead of its time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Or get a break from work and this world and read some Scottish SciFi !!

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

<comment><USER27> I read up to Excession and stopped. At the pace I was going, there was going to be a year of Culture, then nothing new from it forever. It's such a shame that Banks died but damn, did he leave a mark.

If anyone is in the same position, I can recommend the Second Apocalypse series[1]. I find it feels like you put Tolkien and Banks in a pot, inverted some tropes, and let simmer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Scott_Bakker#The_Second_Apo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Scott_Bakker#The_Second_Apocalypse)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> +1 for _The Beginning of Infinity_ , awesome book that really gets to the heart of scientific thinking and process.

On a different note, I am just finishing up _Snowflower and the Secret Fan_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Flower_and_the_Secret_Fan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Flower_and_the_Secret_Fan)). Not only a well written story about the life story of two Chinese women around the turn of the century but also taught me some interesting customs about women's lives in pre-Revolution China, e.g. being _lao tong_ s ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laotong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laotong)).

<comment><USER29> The beginning of infinity is a good book by I actually found his previous book "The fabric of reality" better, in terms of what scientific thinking really is. Specifically, how important criticism is in weeding out theories that are likely to be inviable before you even start to experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I just finished reading [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief), and it was amazing. Best sci-fi book I've read since Neuromancer.

<comment><USER31> I read the three books last year, it really was good, left some strong impressions.

IMO: the beginning introduces some hard to get concepts, expecting the reader to stop and really try to understand.

PS/EDIT: I think Ars Technica is going to do or has done an interview of the author yesterday or today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My favorite of the summer is [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon) and the second half of the book [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8488830-freedom](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8488830-freedom) Great series, very timely since its about Augmented Reality, AI, games, ... "I accept the Deamon"

</comment><comment><USER33> I finished the expanse series in about a week- it's a fantastic sci-fi, but it's really not for people who go in expecting action. Most of the series is space politics, as well as an annoying tendency to just vaguely hint at alien stuff, flip flopping between space magic and dumb ol' block.

That being said, I really liked it, and I would recommend it. Also, if they're not your thing, the first book is the only one with zombies.

</comment><comment><USER21> "End of Cycle"[1] is mentioned. Key points:

\- The easy hits in social and mobile have been done.

\- Investors are looking for the Next Big Thing, and to some extent throwing money at what's probably the wrong stuff.

\- Startups which involve making real physical stuff are a lot more complicated as businesses than pure compute-based startups.

[1] [http://blog.eladgil.com/2016/07/end-of- cycle.html](http://blog.eladgil.com/2016/07/end-of-cycle.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm consistently surprised to hear people saying positive things about "Ready Player One" \- to me it was one of the most hackneyed and silly books I've read in a long time. My review at the time of reading (originally for private consumption only):

Terrible modern sci-fi about easter egg MMO quest for game creator's fortune. Childish plot/dialog, cliches everywhere (e.g. 'L337 Hax0r Warezhouse'), absolutely atrocious, really simple puzzles. The only positive thing I can say about it is that I didn't give up on it immediately - although I was tempted, the main plot line was at least interesting enough that I wanted to hear the end. Unfortunately the ending itself was disappointing - the final puzzle was just a rehash of the first two. My main takeaways were: I hope the 'MMO-scifi' subgenre is finally dead, I should wait at least 10 years for more recent sci- fi to go through quality assurance, and that it seems like based on this, anyone with a half-baked idea and enough pop-culture-nerd knowledge to sprinkle throughout 300 or so pages should be able to write a best-seller. Meanwhile, the politics/worldview it espouses is basically boingboing distilled - big corporation bad, internet is free, knowledge is free, american culture and society is dead, cyber-elite should run world, pop-media is simultaneously in control of world and source of inspiration and true creativity.

<comment><USER35> I really enjoyed it myself. It was a big nostalgia fest. I wonder -- are you significantly older or younger than the audience that would've spent time enjoying these games?

<comment><USER36> I spent time on some of it. I'm only 35 so perhaps a bit young; or maybe I didn't spend enough time in arcades.

I found it heavy handed. Just dumping tons of references all over the place. Felt like he printed out a list of games and stuff and just made sure to check each one off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I found an alternate link to _Hadrian 's Wall_ that includes a kindle version (thus a preview sample) etc: [https://www.amazon.com/Hadrians-Penguin-History- Brian-Dobson...](https://www.amazon.com/Hadrians-Penguin-History-Brian-Dobson- ebook/dp/B004LLIH4A/)

[edit: although I see it has a lot of illustrations so kindle format maybe non-ideal.]

</comment><comment><USER37> I read tegmark' about a year ago. Very insightful for a cosmology noob like me (e.g. Lots of stuff on inflation theory, origin of Carbon (i didn't know),etc.). Clearly believes in the 'many worlds' hypothesis which may be hard to take, but is nonetheless an insightful view on how weird reality actually is from one of mit's great scientists.

</comment><comment><USER38> The title implies this is a list of books that YC somehow institutionally recommends (like their "how to pitch" articles). When I first looked at it that way it seemed strangely uneven in terms of quality. When I realized this was actually "some personal recommendations from our staff and partners" it became a perfectly reasonable collection :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Has anyone read 'Dream Machine' by Mitchel Waldrop.

[https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution- Co...](https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution- Computing/dp/014200135X)

I have heard Patrick collision talking about this book quite a few times.

</comment><comment><USER40> > While my experience doesn't always jibe with the ideas in the book

Care to elaborate, @emmett?

<comment><USER41> I don't think my anecdotal evidence is particularly stronger than the author's. My point is just to take it all with the knowledge that what worked at google in an experiment there won't necessarily work for you in the same way. The world is complex and these things are contingent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Glad to see so many great female authors represented ... Oh... Wait

<comment><USER13> If you have good books to recommend, do.

<comment><USER43> Not the OP but I'd highly recommend "Zoo City" by Lauren Beukes. Brilliantly written, gritty, bonkers-but pulsating plot set in a grimy version of Johannesburg. Loved it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Right now, Amazon tells me that customers who viewed a-given-book-on-this-list also viewed other books on this list. Is that the effect of being on this list? Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER45> You guys should include more tech books too.

</comment><comment><USER46> Any recommendations on investment books?

<comment><USER47> I am sure you noticed Grahams's _The Intelligent Investor_ on the list.

Warren Buffet often cites it as his favorite book on investing stating, "picking up that book was one of the luckiest moments of my life". I recall he decided to read it at least 10 times before making another trade, but I can't find the source. Human nature doesn't change, so that book is still relevant.

Otherwise the "Warren Buffet Way" is a modern take on the same theories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great! Bill Gates started to be a tech mogul that recommends books. Now it looks like everyone that want to become a tech mogul must share reading recommendations. I liked this trend.

<comment><USER48> Pretty sure reading recommendations pre-date Bill Gates...

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm getting a 404?

edit: has been fixed.

<comment><USER50> me too

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Sorry about that!</comment></comment></comment>


Why Anonymous is doing almost nothing to stop World War III - <AUTHOR> https://www.anonyme.com/View/afa326ad-b3db-4b4d-8dd7-30e5d89903d5

<comment><USER2> I think most of the important figures in "Anonymous", the "activists", the ones "leading the fight", and planing operations, have been caught by FBI/NSA thanks to NSA's mass surveillance system that can get into everything.

Then FBI told them to "cooperate or else", so now the former Anonymous is dismantled, and yes probably recreated by the NSA and its allies to create operations under its name.</comment>


America: The Grim Truth - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25166.htm

<comment><USER2> This Bad Religion song is going to need a lot of editing if they expect it to get radio airplay.</comment>


Tracking a Gmail hacker's IP - <AUTHOR>

My girlfriend told me someone with this IP: Mobile - (NY) 126.96.36.199 has been going into her Gmail. It's definitely not her, because she only logs into the wireless at home and we are definitely not based in New York. How do we track this person down? I did a whois search and AT&T came up. <comment><USER2> As this address is associated with a mobile, I would not rely on the New York location. Several reasons for this. First, it could be where the person is at that given time. Second, many mobile companies route through centralized locations, meaning that the IP is only being assigned from New York, and the person could actually be in North Carolina or somewhere else.

With that said, the domain is registered to mycingular.net meaning it is an AT&T domain. The easiest way to track it down is to call/email the following:

Administrative Contact: AT&T Services, Inc. Domain Administrator 240 N Meridian St. Room 280 Indianapolis, IN 46204 US Phone: +1.3172652859 Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

       Technical Contact:
          Cingular Wireless II, LLC
          DNS Administration
          12550 Cingular Way Data Center
          Alpharetta, GA 30004
          US
          Phone: +1.8889003674
          Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Your best bet is geoIP: <http://www.geoiptool.com/en/?IP=18.104.22.168>

If you really want to track the person down, you may not to change the gmail password, then monitor the account for further intrusions. Note that a smart intruder will also be watching that page.

In case you have a keylogger, or have been phished, you may want to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. Also, if your gmail account is linked to your paypal or other sensitive accounts, you would have to change your passwords on those services as well. Also, secure your wifi.</comment>