Herbal, dietary supplements cause one-fifth of liver injuries - <AUTHOR> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-10-herbal-dietary-supplements-one-fifth-hepatotoxicity.html?utm_content=bufferf683a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Can anyone with access to the article see how much the 20% reduces to when you ignore anabolic steroids? Those aren't really herbal supplements, as most people think of them.

<comment><USER3> About one-third of the injuries were due to anabolic steroids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hard to take an article seriously when they conflate "anabolic steroids" with "supplements" in such a casual fashion. Like, really, it's incredibly poor word choice.

How do I know? Because I've taken plenty of legal-at-the-time testosterone precursors, aka prohormones. If that's what the article is trying to talk about, they did a terrible job. Anabolic steroids are illegal in the US for recreational purposes, err, without a prescription.

</comment><comment><USER5> Without more details this "information" is worthless. Are people taking too much on purpose, out of ignorance; are they taking the recommended dosage and getting liver damage; what percentage of damage is caused by what supplements, etc.

<comment><USER6> this comment sums up what is wrong with the unregulated supplement industry... "recommended dosage" of what? You can sweep the dust off your floor put it in a pill and sell it as an "immunity booster".

<comment><USER6> Here is what my comment is based on. (I should have included this with my comment... I deserved the downvotes for not)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-it-comes- to-s...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-it-comes-to- supplements-whats-really-in-the-bottle/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How did this get past all the safety testing? Oh wait.. thats right.. It says "supplements" which means its not regulated so that testing is required. Enjoy the liver injuries!

<comment><USER7> Maybe we should promote homeopathy more, because at the very least that's only distilled water that doesn't do anything. Would be pretty funny to see a government supply of free homeopathic medicines. I imagine the placebo effect would have a very real impact in reducing medical expenses nation-wide.

<comment><USER8> To get the placebo effect to work you just need sugar pills .So tic tacs would work in this case.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but then you have issues with diabetics or children/infants who could choke on the tic tac (which has a lot more sugar than the label leads you to believe).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mathematics makes strong case that "snoopy2" can be just fine as a password - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/mathematics-makes-strong-case-that-snoopy2-can-be-just-fine-as-a-password/ <comment><USER2> This article isn't very clear to me but I think it's suggesting that people use something like "googlemail-snoopy2" as a password rather than just snoopy2.

Any hacker or security researcher would say that a alphanumeric password under ~10 characters is not wise.

You don't know what kind of hashing websites are using, and rainbow tables exist for the common types.

IMO, the title of this article is irresponsible. A short common password is not a good idea, if mathematicians suggest otherwise then they are wrong.

Combining the login process with 2-way auth might be a different story though. I guess technically a password isn't even needed with 2-way auth, but it's good to have.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's what it's saying at all. To me, it reads as though it's basically saying "one person can't remember really secure passwords for every site, so use good passwords for important sites, and bad passwords for unimportant sites".

It actually talks about choosing how secure to make a password based on importance _and_ "the probability a given account password will be compromised", but I don't really see how users are going to evaluate the latter.</comment></comment>


Google Really Advanced Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/js/reallyadvanced.html <comment><USER2> As funny as this is, it's sad that Google doesn't offer something that actually searches for the stuff you enter and doesn't try to guess your intentions or randomly jump to "Did you really mean [...], dumbass?". Kinda like it did several years ago. Heavy use of + used to do that but the new "" replacement is more of a crapshoot.

<comment><USER3> There is a "verbatim" option, under the "more search tools" menu on the bottom left of the search results.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. Right you are!

[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=g_verb&answer=1734130)

Seems to be a few months old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly it's not real and you still can't get google to search for the query you enter.

<comment><USER5> All you need to do is put quotes around the phrase. Or if you want pages that must contain all the words in any order, place quotes around each word. Or just use Verbatim Search: [http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=g_verb&answer=1734130)

<comment><USER4> I was pleased to learn Verbatim Search no longer requires you to spend several clicks per query to use it, but sad that you cannot set it as a permanent preference.

<comment><USER6> A minimized form of a search query with verbatim enabled:

[http://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=britney+speers](http://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=britney+speers)

Edit the search engine definition string in your browser to something like that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why don't they start by allowing you to search for substrings in email?

<comment><USER8> What do you mean, send your query off by email? Or search actual mails? How would they get them? Do you mean google mail?

<comment><USER9> In Gmail you can search your own mail but whole words only. Searching for PROPEL will not bring up an email containing the word PROPELLER for example.

<comment><USER10> The reason you can only search for whole words is that it's straightforward to build an inverted index for whole words, but it takes dramatically more storage to make an index to search for arbitrary substrings, since there are exponentially many substrings of each string, most of which you would never want to search for.

<comment><USER9> My old desktop-based email reader could do it though. I definitely feel like I lost something here. Even just a KEYWORD* search would be an improvement, and that does not require a bigger index.

<comment><USER11> Most likely it was just doing an unindexed search over the whole thing. This works, but requires a significant amount of resources - both CPU time and IOPS - for people with large amounts of email. It's also slow unless you have only a small amount of email or it's all in memory already. So it's not really feasible for a free, shared service that offers multiple gigabytes of storage space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This page had me really excited up until the "only show pages that will be updated in the [next 24 hours, next week, next month]" option :(

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish this was real.

<comment><USER14> How much would you pay to run a custom query against all of Google's index? Sounds interesting. Also, funny, Google spends a bit on creativity and get a large return with publicity every April 1st.

<comment><USER15> I would love to see them compete with Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Together with the 8 bit maps, I had quite a chuckle. I really love this page, and I'm a little sad it doesn't function; I guess I won't be seeing any websites with Polka midis.

Great April Fools, Google!

</comment><comment><USER17> Did anyone catch the, "download our rank code so you can run Google at home", link? I didn't realize this April Fools day until I saw that...

</comment><comment><USER18> April fools day aside, this may show why Y-combinator is interested in finding teams working on search startups. The joke is funny because this is what people often want.

</comment><comment><USER19> They wouldn't allow search this advanced because they fear SEO's would come up with technique to abuse it to their advantage. Otherwise it'd probably been out already.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the recursive "Linked [from|to] pages that..." option.

</comment><comment><USER21> There's one april fools trick on Google Analytics too; you'll find a small note icon which will play your analytics graph as notes for piano or sitar.

</comment><comment><USER22> If this is true I will be taking my news in tautology form from now on. THIS JUST IN--SCIENTISTS EITHER DID OR DID NOT CONFIRM TODAY THAT PLUTO HAS REGAINED PLANETARY STATUS! WE GO LIVE NOW TO THE MOON WITH MICHAEL JORDAN FOR MORE ON THIS--WAIT--I'M GETTING UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT WE MAY ACTUALLY BE TAKING YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE AT DIFFERENT TIME WITH ANOTHER HOST ABOUT AN UNRELATED TOPIC--WAIT--WAIT--I CAN NOW CONFIRM THAT IT MIGHT ALSO BE ONE OF LITERALLY INFINITE POSSIBILITIES, SO STAY TUNED!

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like every little 4 man team of engineers at Google is making their own April Fools joke. I like it :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it really advanced or really primitive?

</comment><comment><USER25> true in subjective sense.

<comment><USER22> Imagine the sensational headline potential for content that is true in the tautological sense, e.g.

"BREAKING NEWS: SCIENTISTS EITHER DID OR DID NOT CONFIRM TODAY THAT PLUTO HAS REGAINED PLANETARY STATUS!"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep up with project dependency updates? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say you're working on a Rails project with an AngularJS front end. You use a gemfile to manage your Rails gem dependencies and you use Bower to manage your AngularJS dependencies.<p>How do you keep up to date with all the new releases for all of your dependencies? Is there a way to monitor releases of plugins/gems/dependencies so you  can be notified when you need to update for bug fixes or feature/performance improvements? <comment><USER2> I built [http://hubnotify.com](http://hubnotify.com) for this exact purpose. Currently it works with GitHub, but I have a roadmap of BitBucket and package managers (npm, packagist, rubygems, etc) as well. It's a free service, hope it helps you.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://gemnasium.com/](https://gemnasium.com/) works wonders</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Facebook Stock back up again after advertisers leave? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Possibly because the market sees the hit to the share price as overdone.

This from the FT [1]:

> Analysts have been quick to note that the impact of the boycott on > Facebook's annual revenues — which topped $70bn last year — is likely to be > negligible, since three-quarters of its advertising earnings come not from > the deep-pocketed brands leading the campaign but from small and medium- > sized companies.

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/2970cf91-dcf7-4424-bdc9-b6d92ad72...](https://www.ft.com/content/2970cf91-dcf7-4424-bdc9-b6d92ad72d67)

Syndicated, non-paywall version:

[https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/news/2020/07/01/facebook-...](https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/news/2020/07/01/facebook- advertising-boycott-response.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah thanks for that

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did they really leave? I.e. did they spend all that ad money elsewhere? Or are they just pretending?

<comment><USER4> that was my thought, they could be just buying through another company.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty new to this so pardon me for asking, does this mean that FB can sell ad spots through interim companies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have massive unemployment. A disease with no end. Massive deficits. Massive Debt. Yet we are at an all time high. Trying to predict stock prices is hard. In general the markets will go up, but trying to predict day to day prices is hard.

</comment><comment><USER6> Likely because of an overall rebalance due to COVID. When other sectors are hit, tech is resilient overall (at least for now). So rebalance stock portfolio towards tech. Facebook is getting the benefit of that as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not really an answer but I'm curious to see why you think those incidents should have affected the stock price of FB?

I mean I wouldn't expect the average long-term investor to be bothered by something like that.</comment>


O'Reilly Graph Algorithms Book Available Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-oreilly-graph-algorithms-book-now-available-300837224.html <comment><USER2> link to the ebook: [https://neo4j.com/graph-algorithms- book/?utm_source=twitter&...](https://neo4j.com/graph-algorithms- book/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Paid+Social&utm_campaign=NA+-+Postlaunch+-+Algo+-+Book)

<comment><USER3> Which is free for a limited period of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks, welcome addition to my bookshelf, I guess :)</comment>


Ask HN: I want to build software on top of existing websites, where is the line? - <AUTHOR> It's a tricky area as evidenced by cease & desist letters from craig's list among other things. For example, if I want to make something that helps people do some additional processing on the information already available to them is that okay?
Take CL's TOU:
"USE. You agree not to use or provide software (except for general purpose web browsers and email clients, or software expressly licensed by us) or services that interact or interoperate with CL, e.g. for downloading, uploading, posting, flagging, emailing, search, or mobile use. Robots, spiders, scripts, scrapers, crawlers, etc. are prohibited, as are misleading, unsolicited, unlawful, and/or spam postings/email. You agree not to collect users' personal and/or contact information ("PI")."
Say I make an app that helps people organize the craigslist postings they are considering responding to. It sounds like my users would be users by violating the TOU. <comment><USER2> I would advise you to be careful. It is always dangerous to build your business on someone else's. It is very easy for them to pull the rug out from under you!

<comment><USER3> Except when that business is in making plugins for popular software. At least, many people seem to base their businesses on making plugins. In fact, even making apps for a particular platform or operating system has this problem. The real question to ask is the likelihood of that foundation being lost on short notice. In this case, since the User Terms forbids building upon the platform, to do so would clearly be a bad idea without getting specific permission (possibly by offering a commission).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can always contact the site owners and see what they are OK with. If you are uncomfortable doing that, you should probably do something else.</comment>


CloudFlare CEO: 'Insane' NSA gag order is costing U.S. tech firms customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/12/cloudflare-ceo-says-insane-nsa-gag-order-is-costing-u-s-tech-firms-customers/

<comment><USER2> _" [CloudFlare] is getting 50 to 100 calls per day from customers demanding more answers about the firm's involvement with the U.S. National Security Agency, Prince says. But that's information the company can't give out, he explains, and the inability to say anything about government requests is seriously hurting his business. "We get calls regularly that say, 'CloudFlare must be working with the NSA,' which we're not," Prince said. "_

If CloudFlare isn't working with the NSA in some way _(even by force /legal requirement)_ then I'm not clear why Matthew says he can't say anymore.

I'm not under any NSA gagging order nor have I been assisting the NSA which is why I can say as much as I want, because thus I'm not under a gagging order either.

<comment><USER3> How do we know that that's true? If you were under a gag order, you'd have to say that, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So "think of the children" trumps "think of the Secret Police"?</comment>


Show HN: Investy.com - Portfolio Analyzation Tool - <AUTHOR>

Investy is a portfolio analyzation tool that allows individual or professional investors to breakdown a stock portfolio and see financial data across the aggregated investments. Investors can model hypothetical portfolios, leverage diversification and allocation data as well as compare their portfolio against professionals such as Warren Buffett and others.<p>http://www.investy.com <comment><USER2> I like the idea, but my vanilla fidelity.com account (i.e., as opposed to the pro active trader account they also offer) already has similar portfolio tools built-in.

Your tools might be better, but it's going to be hard to convince me to sign up and pay for yours when I get something similar for free.

Also, since you're not letting me trade out of that account directly (though it might be a feature you're planning to add eventually), that adds more friction, and makes it even less likely that I would consider paying for your service.

I hope that wasn't too harsh, but I'm just looking at it solely from a customer's perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not too harsh at all, I appreciate the feedback. The integration with external brokerage accounts is definitely something in the backlog. Not the ability to actively trade, but certainly the integration to remove the friction between two services.

<comment><USER2> In the interim, you might want to have a prominent series of buttons on each analysis page which says:

      Trade Now [Fidelity.com] [TD Ameritrade] [E-Trade.com] (etc.)

i.e., something that has the look-and-feel of the addthis.com widget on blog posts, but each of the icons goes to a different online broker.

That makes it easier for me to act on the recommendations; while I'd still need to go to my other account and login, the what-to-do-next part is clear.

If you get decent traction with that, then you can call one or more of these brokers and say "Have you noticed how much traffic I'm sending you?" as the basis of doing a more direct deal with them.

BTW, another thing that would make it much more appealing is being able to quantify the returns.

I.e., instead of "Compare with professionals like Warren Buffett" could you support a claim like: "Make Warren Buffett's Portfolio Your Own and See Returns of 35% or more" ?

If you can really show me how to do something like that with specifics, then I'd consider a trial membership at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My 0.02: Screenshots, Screenshots, Screenshots :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, thanks for the feedback. Everything on the feature page is a live shot. There's also the live demo available that will show you exactly what it looks and feels like. I'll look into adding more static content though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Founder here.

The pitch behind this is that the current landscape of investment tools isn't fitting the bill for what I needed to effectively invest. Google/Yahoo Finance are great resources for seeing statistics of a single stock, but they weren't really built to show aggregate data across an entire portfolio. The aim of this product is to give a point in time snapshot of a portfolio in order to bridge that gap.

This initial release is just a small subset of what is planned for the product. There's a ton of exciting things planned for the next release, which will really catapult it forward in terms of usefulness.

Would love to get your feedback HN! Positive or negative, it will all be helpful!

<comment><USER4> If you get some traction we'd love to help you take the visuals to the next level. We just finished a project that enables us to import data(like portfolios) from 3rd party sources.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the offer, I'll keep that in mind :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does this do that my online broker can't already do for my real portfolio? Or even an invetopedia portfolio?

<comment><AUTHOR> Calculation of PE ratios, book values, dividend yields -- across your entire portfolio ratio than an individual investment. Also, ability to compare your portfolio to popular investors using data mined directly from the SEC.

Online brokerages will typically stop at the performance data or maybe allocation and not give you any fundamental breakdown of your investments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is "Advanced Data"? You're charging an extra $20 a month for it, but I can't find anywhere that tells me what it actually is and why I'd want to pay extra for it.

</comment><comment><USER7> How many investors only invest in stocks? I personally have more in ETF's and mutual funds than single stocks. How about the bond portion? It seems weird to apply tons of analysis to only a portion of someone's investments.

Also, since it seems on the surface to be like Morningstar's portfolio x-rays, you should have a good answer for how it is different.

Oh, and "analyzation" isn't a word, is it? How about, "portfolio analysis tool".

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback, thank you. I agree that portfolios are much more diverse than simply stocks. The tools supports ETF's and mutual funds, it just doesn't break them down into the individual securities -- which is coming. Right now they get analyzed as a whole security. Bonds are slated for the future, so thanks for emphasizing the importance of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> the demo needs to say click here for instant demo ... I thought try it now was a signup.

Once in the demo (dashboard, performance , etc ...) there is too much visual space and not enough concentrated content. The data is important but delivered in this manner makes me think there is not much value here. Also the demo would be better suited if it let me sign up (no CC) and I could add up to 3 stocks to try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, thanks for the suggestions. The text on the button has been changed, hopefully it's more clear now. Great suggestion about being able to try out a limited number of stocks, I'm adding that to the to-do list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> First off, congrats on the build, and I think the concept is great. I've used Morningstar in the past and am wondering how your product is different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Great question, I'm assuming you're referring to their Instant X-Ray product? If so, the direction is this is different in that it's heading towards personalization and scenario based recommendations. I know it's not there yet but the ability to compare portfolios was kind of the first step in that direction, but it will be getting much more personalized down the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> High fees. The cheapest plan would be $348/year or 3.5% of a $10,000 portfolio. It would have to make that much back to be cost effective. I would emphasize that no subscription is necessary, maybe by changing the wording to "$29 for 30 days"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for putting that in perspective. We're working on pricing based on your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Clickable:

<http://www.investy.com>

<comment><USER11> Here is my quick 0.02:

You might want to re-think at least the home page colour scheme a bit, that green is not what I'd consider _very_ suited to the target market. Make it a bit more businesslike, may be? But then, of course, it is just my opinion. :)

<comment><USER12> The bulleted list is pretty hard to read too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys, appreciate the feedback. I'll be exploring some alternative color schemes.

<comment><USER13> I'd like to see a bit more about the geography thing. If I own funds with multiple holdings geographically, does it chart all those out? It's kind of scant on details and if I had to provide a credit card to try it I probably wouldn't.

Also, it's difficult to tell which plans offer what services. You don't have a 1:1 mapping of things on the features to plans page. I can guess performance and diversification, but what's "Advanced Data" and "reports"? I don't want to guess. Feature chart perhaps? Or maybe just a better mapping. Or on the feature page you can say "Available in Premier + Professional".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the excellent feedback! To answer your first question, the geography works at a fund level at the moment. The ability to break down that mutual fund or ETF into individual securities and their corresponding locations is in the works and will surface in the next release. Great suggestion/request.

The description of the plans and how they're described is definitely going to be reworked as that's a common theme in the feedback being received. I like your suggestion about mapping feature sets to the plans, apologies for that not being clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, do you work in this industry? What is your proposed marketing plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a software engineer full time. Investing is done outside of that, but it's almost a second full time job. At this point the idea is to market to individual investors and financial advisors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do you have permission to use those stock exchange logos? Doing it that way makes it look like they're customers of yours, which is probably illegal without their permission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. That's getting reworked to make it clear those are the supported exchanges, not that they're customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great idea. You might want to hire a designer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Alternative designs are definitely going to be explored, that seems to be a consensus.</comment></comment>


CERN moving to open source under MAlt initiative - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/13/cern-microsoft-alternatives-project-open-source-software/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166070)</comment>


At Work, Expertise Is Falling Out of Favor - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/ <comment><USER2> Curious article. Even before its publication, the US Navy has discovered the reverse of what the article claims -- that a tiny crew of generalists like the crew of the USS Gabrielle Giffords DOESN'T work and probably never will.

In peace time, these minimalist crew complements are fragile to injury and breakdown making them exceedingly vulnerable. But in war, when support from base or repair craft will often _not_ be forthcoming, the crew's lack of knowledge about ship systems will make them unable to do even basic repairs, much less quickly jury rig a fix, as is often essential in war for survival. In peace, this staffing model has not only failed, but in war will, will exacerbate to catastrophe.

Yet this article not only suggests the promise of such an approach as a new model for war (and the tale definitely is interesting), but it disregards the serious problems with its implementation to date and then takes the next step, claiming that the value of expertise _outside_ this narrow (failed) example domain is also moribund. Whhhaaaaaaat?

In anything, the lessons in the article imply the opposite -- that expertise is alive and well, and given the rising levels of sophistication in the world of technology, will almost certainly require ever more specialization and expertise -- _especially_ in a US Navy that doesn't want to scuttle its ships every time an on-board system blows a fuse.</comment>


Leap Motion Game  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cEnbahFm-E Leap Motion is making an effort to get some serious gamers. Video looks cool. If you have a Leap you should try it <comment><AUTHOR> I tried this game and it was surprisingly good.

</comment><comment><USER2> There are many Leap Motion games.

What makes this one stand out?</comment>


Code koans for C? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6892080/code-koans-for-c

<comment><USER2> Do you want us the SO question? Doesn't seem to have valuable answers

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering why there were not any C koans. Interestingly most of the original "koans" were about Unix and Lisp. Kind of makes sense to have code koans for them too.</comment></comment>


How to Avoid Irreparably Destroying Your Reputation Before You Even Have One - <AUTHOR> http://blogdesignguy.com/how-to-avoid-irreparably-destroying-your-reputation-before-you-even-have-one/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of why Color flopped. When people hear you've raised a titanic sum of money prelaunch, especially from a VC firm like Sequoia, the expectations for your product are exponentially higher than if you raise a decent A round from angels and small VC firms. Color was a base hit when everyone expected a grand slam. From that moment on, they face an overwhelmingly tough task convincing people their first impressions were wrong.

<comment><USER3> Same with Cuil. I think by this point it's safe to say this isn't the best way to market your new service.

<comment><USER4> But these guys have webcam, chat, games, classifieds and ... much more! :-)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, and using their chat is as simple as signing in via Facebook!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From their Twitter stream:

> The most epic website launch of all time... The Facebook Competitor may > reign supreme,,,, uh oh Zuckerberg

",,,,"? Why do people struggle with their language so much? I mean, all you need to do is get a sentence right, and I'm guessing they'd seen an ellipsis before.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's ironic that you can like "Social Pog - The greatest social network of all time" on Facebook. [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Pog-The-greatest- social...](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Pog-The-greatest-social- network-of-all-time/101365109924435)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's ironic that the site is now struggling because of all the traffic it's getting ;)

And guess what, they're using Facebook Connect <https://twitter.com/#!/kevinrose/statuses/80809855933353984>

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess there's another lesson here - don't let anyone you don't know do promotional work on your behalf. "Anthony" apparently let someone do some promotional efforts for socialpog thinking "what harm can it do?" and then found out it can do a lot of harm. He probably _spent money_ with for that promotional effort too, which makes this all the more tragic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can relate to Anthony. He seems like a nice guy who fell in love with an idea and let blind ambition get the best of him. When I was new to online entrepreneurship, I did things just as stupid, but they (thankfully) got far less attention.

Hopefully he learns from this and pushes forward with new and better projects.

<comment><USER9> Thanks JD.

I appreciate your understanding and support.

I have learned a lesson that most won't. Aspirations grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a pile of poop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> everything is dead. the digg link is dead. the site <http://www.socialpog.com> is giving an error. the linked video is dead.

at the bottom of the page (the blog design guy link) the site owner appears, apologising. it seems like comments are from about 6 hours ago.

<comment><USER5> It comes up for me - half the time. The other half is a 500 error.

Also, their homepage is a screen requiring me to login. What? Why? I don't know anything about you, SocialPog - how about a page that explains _what you are_ before asking me to invest.

Also, why is this required? <http://i.imgur.com/avHf3.png> And what happened here? <http://i.imgur.com/Ou3Uv.png> And why do I have to sign in _using someone else's system_ to chat? <http://i.imgur.com/td9zr.png>

<comment><USER9> @pavel_lishin Excellent points, thanks for your constructive criticism.

I'll touch on the chat a little. Good idea or not, I'll let you guys be the judge. The chat feature was to connect everyone site wide. Then would be defined to location and friends if needed....Problem was integration. Without signing in through facebook/twitter it allowed users to create fake names which couldn't be allowed for obvious reasons. Plans to design new chat were in the works during this fiasco.

IDK, maybe future UI's for social networks will have this option. Personally I like this option, but understand it may be not for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never really understood why people lie about their site in order to gain users. I mean, you can't fool them for very long, so your opportunity for whatever you plan is has to be very quick.

The only thing I can think is that they expect to earn a lot of money real quick to help fund development... But I really can't see that working.

<comment><USER12> Well, I can see it as a phishing opportunity for user logins.

<comment><USER9> Phishing really? I have no intentions of going to Federal Prison. So I think phishing is absolutely out of any equation. However I know there are lot's of people who would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a reason why (to some extent) you should let users dictate your marketing for you. What I mean by that is to avoid touting yourself as this mega awesome site and just sort of go with the flow. Your users, if they exist, will take care of getting the word out. Doing things like this is cheap and not representative of a company that's interested in their own success. Also, the whole "Facebook" killer thing? Why has it become common practice for new social networks to have to "kill" their competitors? If they were truly intelligent, they'd develop some feature as the core of their service that Facebook lacks and then put that at the forefront. This, though, isn't helpful and doesn't draw any interest toward the product.

<comment><USER9> Thanks @rg

Couldn't agree with your comments more. Marketing and target audience was a bad idea from the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I run a web BBS, and we had to deal with my competitor spamming imageboards. It didn't do him much good (because he's finally gone), but he gained infamy because of the incident, thus ruining his real life and causing him much debt.

<comment><USER5> What's a web BBS? And can you elaborate more on what happened?

<comment> mkr-hn It's what a lot of people called web forums early on. UBB (old perl-based forum software) even put it in the software's name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey,

This is "Anthony". Lesson learned absolutely. Not a whole lot to say except for gigantic mistake on my part. Let this be a lesson to all new webmasters. Shortcuts as JD has written are bad ideas. Respect is earned, and I in know way deserve it.

The article JD wrote was absolutely amazing. While reading I was just shaking my head at my self.

</comment><comment><USER15> HUH! I never think in that way!</comment>


The New Adobe ColdFusion - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2016/02/the-all-new-adobe-coldfusion-is-here.html <comment><USER2> There's still a few institutions locked in by "it's working, why change it" and "it's too much code to rewrite".

I've used adobe cf10, and couldn't get cfbuilder to install on a mac, so no debugger, which is just terrible. I haven't used railo because our servers were configured for us. If you're still on CF10, you're going to have to do CFML occasionally because CFScript is not feature complete with CFML. I think this was fixed with CF11.

As for their sql support, I tried the ORM and it's nothing to write home about. The CFML sql support is slightly friendlier than php's prepared statements, but php's prepared statements enable reuse where as cfml's prepared statements are more copy/paste reuse.

The whole "tags look like html" looks terrible to me and seems like a bad idea. Occasionally you have to drop into java because Coldfusion CAN'T do something. (Try parsing a date from the Twitter API).

It should totally die.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is bringing back memories of Allaire HomeSite and my early days of HTML and PHP and CSS and Flash. ColdFusion is really still around?!

<comment><USER4> Drumbeat 2000

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow adobe is a stubborn company. They refuse to mercy-kill failed technologies that are long outdated.

</comment><comment><USER6> Excuse my ignorance, but is there still a sizable community building new coldfusion sites?

</comment><comment><USER7> Coldfusion is a triggering word for me. I wish this headline had a warning.

</comment><comment><USER8> I actually love Coldfusion as a product. I especially liked the SQL support build into CFML, makes it easy to build a webpage

</comment><comment><USER9> How does the new ColdFusion compare with open-source CFML engine such as Railo?</comment>


MacRuby 0.9 is released - <AUTHOR> http://www.macruby.org/blog/2011/02/24/macruby09.html

<comment><USER2> Release notes: [http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby- devel/2011-Feb...](http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby- devel/2011-February/007227.html)

Looks like lots of bug fixes and strong focus on stability.

A few resources for learning MacRuby:

* <http://peepcode.com/products/meet-macruby>

* <http://www.manning.com/lim/>

* <http://www.macruby.org/documentation/tutorial.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope MacRuby finds its way into Lion. I used it a few revisions ago and it was quite solid.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it will be included. It does not need to be included. You can build a self contained .app using macruby_deploy.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's been persistent rumors that MacRuby will replace Objective-C as the Blessed Holy Language of Apple.

<comment><USER5> Haha, that's ridiculous. I've never heard such rumors but if I had they would be up there with 2Pac releasing a new album.

<comment><USER6> It is highly likely that 2pac will have another album out (that guy works hard!)

There is very little chance of this happening, although I hope I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there any headway on MacRuby on iOS since September? <http://iflipbits.com/post/1101983568/macruby-soon-on-ios>

</comment><comment><USER8> complete release notes:

[http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby- devel/2011-Feb...](http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby- devel/2011-February/007227.html)</comment>


Fennel – Lisp in Lua - <AUTHOR> https://fennel-lang.org <comment><USER2> A Hacker News regular, technomancy (the same guy behind the Atreus keyboard), has contributed a great deal to the Fennel language. [https://builds.sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel- lang.org](https://builds.sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel-lang.org)

I'd like to see him visit this thread.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=technomancy](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=technomancy)

<comment><USER3> Not to mention lein for Clojure. He only posts here a few times a year which might be how he manages to be so prolific.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, that's whats probably holding me back.

\s .... but not really. I need to figure out a way to tone down my mind wandering off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A nice summary of what Fennel's about here: [http://jakob.space/blog/thoughts- on-lisps.html#org4d7f824](http://jakob.space/blog/thoughts-on- lisps.html#org4d7f824)

<comment><USER6> It's kinda weird that the only mention of Clojure is

> Clojure's license makes it a complete non starter for me, sorry. Live free > or die.

when at first glance fennel looks a lot like clojure e.g. `fn`, square brackets, {} for maps / table literals.

<comment><USER7> > when at first glance fennel looks a lot like clojure e.g. `fn`, square > brackets, {} for maps / table literals.

Aren't those mostly inherited from lua and present in a lot of different languages invented before and after clojure?

<comment><USER6> Lua defines functions with the `function` keywords, and as most other C-style languages uses parenthesis to wrap the function parameters, not brackets.

It does use `{}` for table literals but requires the `=` and `,` separators, where fennel (and clojure) uses no internal separator at all: a map literal is a pair of braces around a _plist_ ([https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Pr...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Property- Lists.html#Property-Lists\)\[0\]).

Historically, lisp have used something around "define" to define functions (e.g. define, defun), parenthesis as essentially the only grouping, and would use macros or special-forms rather than complex literals.

Clojure is the first lisp I know of (so I may well have missed a predecessor which inspired it) which largely diverged from that.

[0] clojure allows commas but ignores them entirely, I don't know whether fennel allows them as well

<comment><USER8> If we think Clojure is a 'diverging Lisp', then there are other diverging Lisps with different syntax like MDL, Logo, Dylan, even JavaScript. Some Scheme code uses angular brackets.

Historically core Lisp has left other grouping character or syntax to sublanguages or new data types. There are many examples for that. This is usually done via reader macros, which open up the s-expression reader to the programmer.

This is a Joshua rule:

        (defrule grandfather-determiner (:backward)
          ;; there are 3 ways to find your grandfather
          IF [or [is-genetic-grandfather-of ?gramps ?kid]
          [is-grandfather-thru-step-parent ?gramps ?kid]
          [is-step-grandfather-of ?gramps ?kid]]
          THEN [is-grandfather-of ?gramps ?kid])

Many internal or external domain specific languages for Lisp use special syntax and defining forms, since their authors either believed that it's easier to use in general or that it was necessary for 'end users' of their systems. Early examples were maths systems like Macsyma, which were programmable, but addressed mathematicians as audience. Logo, which was Lisp for kids. One of the first theorem provers had the first ML as the programming language interface for its users.

Historically Lisp 2 was supposed to get rid of simple s-expressions on the surface. There was a different syntax defined for it.

<comment><USER6> I was mostly talking about diverging in the way Fennel had.

> Historically core Lisp has left other grouping character or syntax to > sublanguages or new data types.

Sure, but Clojure uses other grouping characters for the main dialect itself, and Fennel uses very similar deviations from the "Lisp baseline", hence my wondering about the inspiration.

<comment><USER8> Square brackets have been used in some Scheme for a long time. There are also Scheme books which use them in code.

<comment><USER6> Used them to define the formal parameters of a function? Because that's what I'm referring to. Fennel uses

        (fn [param*] expr*)

for function definition, which is also how it is spelled in Clojure.

<comment><USER8> One can use them everywhere instead of parentheses.

<comment><USER9> The difference for Clojure would largely be that other delimiters are sugar for the various data types, so you make maps with {}, vectors with [], sets with #{}, etc.

<comment><USER8> it then mixes syntax and data type issues. For example arguments are then vectors, probably to have [] as syntax. Though in Lisp one would keep argument lists: there is no technical need to make them vectors.

<comment><USER9> I wasn't making a value judgement in the statement, just nothing that in Clojure the other delimiters aren't just alternative ways to enclose forms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be noted that 0.6.0 came out 3 days ago, with a few improvements:

[https://fennel-lang.org/v0.6.0/](https://fennel-lang.org/v0.6.0/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Lumen – Lisp in Lua and JavaScript: [https://github.com/sctb/lumen](https://github.com/sctb/lumen)

Scott Bell wrote a lot of that. I was fascinated by the self-hosting technique. The whole repo is so small that you can almost dismiss it as some kind of academic toy, if you don't realize it's a full-featured production- grade lisp.

(Not to take anything away from Fennel! The more lisp, the better.)

<comment><USER12> I knew about Fennel, but did not know about Lumen. Thanks for the pointer!

edit: Looking at the git history is very educational for how to bootstrap a self hosting system like this. Fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's an example web app hello-world in Fennel, parsing requests and responding with HTML rendered from the S expressions: [https://gist.github.com/turbo/4388c9ad19028560053951a25b3b45...](https://gist.github.com/turbo/4388c9ad19028560053951a25b3b45d1)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for posting this. I took a look at Fennel a few months ago and although they list 2 web frameworks on the front page, there's little documentation (that may have changed since then) about how to interface with other Lua projects. I kept running into things I couldn't figure out when working with the existing Lua ecosystem and projects.

<comment><USER15> I've been using it quite successfully in a large OpenResty project.

While you're right that there aren't any docs on working with any of the 3rd party projects listed in the homepage - I found that it was pretty straight forward to use as a drop in Lua replacement by examining the compiled Lua from the online REPL. I was surprised how clean the Lua output is. There is really no magic here. I believe one of the project goals is to stay as close to Lua semantics as possible. Basically just lisp flavored Lua.

In my project I just use the compiled .fnl files as I would any of other .lua file.

Is something specific you're getting stuck with? I'd be happy to try to point you in the right direction.

It's really nice! I encourage you to give it another try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are some projects that people are using that use Lua? Why use it over something like python for scripting?

<comment><USER6> Lua is way more common for game scripting than Python. One of the few major games which used Python I can think of was Civ IV, and Civ V switched to Lua.

Lua is smaller, easier to embed interface / interact with (e.g. it's way less ceremony to expose a native function to Lua than to Python), and tends to be faster, especially when jumping back and forth between the engine and the scripting. Embedding / scripting (within a larger program) is the original use-case of Lua, not so Python.

I believe it's also much easier to secure / sandbox (remove bits you don't want script writers to have access to) as well, the stdlib is smaller and I think it has less interactions between modules.

Python embedding / scripting tends to be more common for software where the securing / restriction aspect is smaller but flexibility & larger embeds are necessary e.g. 3D, CAD and other "production pipeline" software tends to be scripted with Python.

<comment><USER17> > _I believe [Lua is] also much easier to secure / sandbox [than Python]_

Yes. C code that embeds the Lua VM has total control over which functions are exposed to the Lua code. It's possible to create a VM that, for example, has no access to the filesystem.

AFAIK it's not possible to do that if you embed Python. Dangerous functions like `open` are always available and sandboxing facilities have to try and prevent untrusted code from getting a reference to them. Unfortunately, there are numerous ways to work around these restrictions and obtain access to dangerous functions, e.g. via `__builtins__`.

Another reason running untrusted Lua code is considered fairly safe is that the VM is well-engineered and has a history of very few bugs [0]. However, the latest 5.4.0 release seems to have more bugs than older releases.

It might still possible for untrusted Lua code to use 100% CPU and hang a program, or to read data from the embedding process using a Spectre-style attack (although even that's unlikely because the Lua VM is an interpreter rather than a JIT compiler). However, it's quite possible to secure an embedded Lua VM to prevent it from doing things like accessing arbitrary files.

[0] [https://www.lua.org/bugs.html](https://www.lua.org/bugs.html)

<comment><USER18> > the Lua VM is an interpreter rather than a JIT compiler

There's also luajit, but I don't know how common it is vs "just Lua". My impression was that luajit was used pretty often though.

<comment><USER19> LuaJIT is stuck in version 2.1.0, while Lua is at version 5.4.

<comment><USER6> These versions have nothing to do with one another. LuaJIT 2.1.0 implements Lua 5.1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This and a recent feature addition to neovim (passing lua closures to vimscript functions [1]) should make a good substitute for elisp to configure neovim.

[1] [https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/12507](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/12507)

<comment><USER21> I don't see it mentioned but there is a neovim plugin called conjure [1] that is written in fennel. This is a general purpose REPL client that works for Clojure (I use it daily for Clojure and ClojureScript) but also for fennel itself. So you can have a really nice neovim plugin dev experience using this tool. Conjure works with fennel out of the box, but if you want to go deeper you may be interested in another plugin called aniseed [2] which provides interesting facilities for the fennel language and that is used internally by conjure.

Disclaimer: I am not the author of those tools, just a random Clojure dev.

[1] [https://github.com/Olical/conjure](https://github.com/Olical/conjure)

[2] [https://github.com/Olical/aniseed](https://github.com/Olical/aniseed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If curious, see previous discussion from 2018

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016168)

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting project. I had never heard of a lisp flavour for lua before. Looks very elegant.

It reminds me of hy, for python. [1] [1] [https://github.com/hylang/hy](https://github.com/hylang/hy)

<comment><USER5> I haven't spent any time with Fennel, but it seems more promising to me.

I couldn't get comfortable with Hy. It drops so many lispy things, such as let statements and persistent data structures, in order to stay close to the Python substrate. (You can get both from libraries, but at the cost of easy interop with Python packages, which kind of defeats the whole point of being on the Python platform in the first place.) It ultimately came out feeling less like I was working with a lisp, and more like I was working with an s-expression syntax for Python.

OTOH, if you think that Python, while otherwise great, is really suffering for lack of defmacro, Hy absolutely succeeds in getting you Python with defmacro.

<comment><USER10> I ended up dropping Hy very soon after they dropped let. Had an entire blog engine written in it: [https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy](https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy)

...but I wanted Hy to be LISP, not a thin veneer over Python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really wish Lua were popular for small-scale utility scripting instead of Python and JS. Because Lua is way snappier: even with language translation, plenty of Fennel scripts will run under Python's startup time. Likewise, Lua seems like a great fit for small mobile apps and automation (dunno about threading though, but I seem to have read that Lua can do threads with a _library_ ).

My primary woe with Lua is the absence of 'null'. You can't preserve structure of deserialized tables if there are nil values in them, so you can't really build API middleware and such, without extra effort for that (so you'd also not be able to use functional libraries like Penlight in your middleware).

<comment><USER25> Lua will never be more popular without a proper standard library.

Leaving everything up to the user so that you have to manually implement (or hunt the web for) even the most basic features is mega annoying. How many millions of people need to rewrite string.startswith?

The whole "sequence iteration stops at the first internal hole and therefore the # operator doesn't do what you think it should" gotcha is extremely user hostile.

Metatables are cool and all, but holy crap are they confusing for Lua newbies. Having an integrated class system would go a long way.

<comment><USER17> > _Lua will never be more popular without a proper standard library._

How would you add a large standard library without compromising Lua's main purpose - to be a lightweight, embeddable language?

<comment><USER25> It would still be lightweight and embeddable with common sense pure Lua functionality like classes and major utility methods like string.startswith/string.endswith/string.trim/string.split/table.deepcopy. You don't have to integrate a multiprocessing web server for different operating systems.

Instead you're left with bullshit community essays like [http://lua- users.org/wiki/SplitJoin](http://lua-users.org/wiki/SplitJoin) which shows pages and pages of different user attempts for one extremely common function, many of which explicitly do not work!

Lua has its strengths, but faffing about refusing to just standardize the right way to do things is super user-hostile.

<comment><USER26> Lua, by design, favors "mechanisms not policy"[1]. It's not a failing it meant to empower users. There are plenty of mature utility libraries that serve for batteries if you like that.

[1] - [http://lua-users.org/wiki/MechanismNotPolicy](http://lua- users.org/wiki/MechanismNotPolicy)

<comment><USER25> > _It 's not a failing it meant to empower users._

Freedom to implement bespoke solutions is great if what you want to spend your time on is implementing bespoke solutions. Freedom from needing to implement bespoke solutions is better for everyone.

Even non-programmers can understand what common simple operations are for and when they might be useful. Saying that one needs to know how to implement or find them as well, especially when a bunch of extremely learned participants in lua-users can repeatedly fail to implement working versions, is literally the opposite of empowering.

<comment><USER26> The examples you're listing, I don't use those very often at all. If I did it's much easier to just grab a lib, then to carry all my tools with me for every script. Even the libraries that _are_ included can be cast aside if you want a slim build. Not every language does or _should_ strive to cater to those looking for quick hacking or rapid prototyping. I like that Lua is slim and loads fast. I understand your perspective though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wrote my simple Hammerspoon config in Fennel and am really happy with it.

[https://github.com/slumos/dot.hammerspoon](https://github.com/slumos/dot.hammerspoon)

</comment><comment><USER28> A lot of the questions in this thread are answered here: [https://fennel- lang.org/rationale](https://fennel-lang.org/rationale)

</comment><comment><USER29> The reason I used Lua was its "accessibility" \-- so end users can script -- and not necessarily for the beauty and elegance of the language. It was also very easy to integrate into a C++ project.

</comment><comment><USER30> AFAIK, for his author, Fennel is legacy. Nowadays he seems to contribute only to Janet ([https://janet-lang.org](https://janet-lang.org)).

<comment><USER28> It's still under very active development by technomancy and others, with a friendly community and lively IRC channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> In the realm of Lua Lisps, there is also Urn: [https://urn- lang.com/](https://urn-lang.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Why do you need all of those brackets?</comment>


Fedora 33 Making Progress with Their Btrfs-by-Default on the Desktop - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-33-Btrfs-Progress-Report <comment><USER2> This is an unqualifiedly good thing. Btrfs is today is a very solid, modern and featureful filesystem and deserving of wider adoption. People are rightfully somewhat hesitant to switch to new filesystems---it's the subsystem in which a bug can probably cause more grief for the end-user than any other ---so to get wider adoption we need distributions to take the lead.

I myself switched to btrfs on my laptop some time ago primarily for much the same reasons that Fedora cites as their motivation... because I found that I always ended up with my free disk space on the wrong partitions! With btrfs you don't need partitions anymore... with its subvolumes you can even have multiple OSes on the same filesystem! And once I had btrfs's simplicity of making snapshots I found myself using that feature to significant advantage as well; taking a snapshot gives one a nice peace of mind before doing anything that might be dangerous! (In adddition to be a better way of making backups). There are other benefits, and having btrfs in wider use on workstations should give a boost to its further development.</comment>


Ask HN: What is common practice for Shipping and Billing addresses? - <AUTHOR>

What is common practice for e-commerce websites, concerning a difference in Shipping and Billing addresses?  Pretty straight forward question.
Is there any laws to consider?
To make a long back story relatively short, I had placed an order wirth an online retailer for some collectables.  I noticed about a week after having received the confirmation e-mail, I recieved another e-mail notifying me that there was an issue with the order.  I login and see that the order status has been changed from "processing" to "contact us," so I e-mail and ask about the status change.  They e-mailed me asking to provide full first and last name for the shipping address (I typically only use initials for the name field or give no name at all, out of privacy concerns) and confirm that it is the same address as the billing address.  Further the e-mail stated that the company needed to know the reason for the differing addresses.  Then, not 3 hours later, another e-mailed arrived from the company stating that the order had been canceled, because they could not contact me via phone or e-mail.
I have ordered countless items from other online retailers in similar fashion and never encountered this problem (btw, my billing address is almost always different from shipping address, because I use my parents address as my permanent address (i e billing address), while I am away at school ~9 months out of the year).  I am just generally bewildered by the whole ordeal and I am frankly unsure what the normal procedure for online retailers is.
Please leave a comment if you can offer any insight into this.
Thank you, <comment><USER2> I'm not an e-commerce expert, but if you are paying with a credit card, merchants usually require that the billing address be the same address as the one on file with the creditor.

<comment><USER3> I believe this is correct. If the billing address you provide doesn't match up to what your creditor has on file, the creditor won't authorize the transaction.</comment></comment>


NASA Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth for 2nd Time in a Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-camera-shows-moon-crossing-face-of-earth-for-2nd-time-in-a-year <comment> Fry-kun Awesome shots! Because of the particular angles & distances, it looks like the moon is almost grinding against us! Of course, that's just an optical illusion; the actual distance & proportions are more like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy)#/me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_\(astronomy\)#/media/File:Earth- Moon.png)

<comment><USER2> The moon is about 1/4 as far away from earth as the camera is. The camera always sees the sunny side of the earth - neat trick! [http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/](http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope people don't flag this because of its admittedly millennial-sounding headline...I'm not a huge astronomy geek but was surprised at this particular juxtaposition of two familiar entities. It almost looked Photoshopped. I was also surprised that this kind of visual arrangement is unusual enough to warrant an article, but that's because I'm clueless to where our satellites are usually positioned in relation to the Earth and moon.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist, but this looks photoshopped. The clouds are not moving and the moon is not rotating at all :

[http://imgur.com/prywsJq](http://imgur.com/prywsJq)

<comment><USER5> The clouds absolutely are moving.

<comment><USER4> Yes maybe and the distance between the Earth and the Moon could explain why we don't see the Moon rotation :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy)#/me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_\(astronomy\)#/media/File:Earth- Moon.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now it's official: no evil cooperation operates on the backside of the moon.

<comment> david-given Don't be silly! Evil corporations don't have farside moon bases!

No, this proves that there aren't any _space nazis_ on the far side of the moon.

<comment><USER7> FALSE: Everyone knows that the Nazi's aren't on the moon that was just a diversion, they are in the hollow earth...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a quick dumb question : where are the satellites and the stars ?

<comment><USER8> "Since Earth is extremely bright in the darkness of space, EPIC has to take very short exposure images (20-100 milliseconds). The much fainter stars are not visible in the background as a result of the short exposure times." \- [http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/DSCOVR/](http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/DSCOVR/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks ! It makes sense. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's another cool one here showing a solar eclipse.

[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87675&eocn...](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87675&eocn=home&eoci=iotd_image)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's called "mooning", not "photobombing"

</comment><comment><USER11> The history of the DSCOVR satellite is pretty interesting. Was pushed for by Al Gore in the 90's -- unofficially known at the time as GoreSat -- but was ultimately killed by the Bush administration. Obama's administration resurrected the project, and now we have an amazing view of earth for science, discovery, and some pretty neat pictures.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observato...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory)

</comment><comment><USER12> A few days ago, in a moment of 6-degrees of youtube, I came across a flat earth video. Out of curisoity to see what their beef was, I watched one. It was interesting. One of the claims was that _all_ of the earth images we have are not actual photos or pictures per se, but rather, artists renditions (I think they used a different term which I don't recall at the moment). Apparently, this point was admitted to by NASA too. And they had pictures of earth from space (taken and distributed by NASA) over the years where continent sizes change drastically on the same circle. One of them even had "sex" spelled in the clouds.

Watching this, it too looks like an artist rendition. Notice how the moon moves in a straight line. And while the earth rotates around, the moon doesn't. That is fine as we see only the same side/face of the moon but remember: this is taken from far far away so, at that distance and angle, you should be able to pick up a change in the moon's rotation as well. Here, we don't.

Interesting indeed.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know the moon has a low albedo (reflectivity) but it's easy to forget until you see it compared to the earth like this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are there full size static images somewhere? I want to look at the photos but the gif isn't doing it for me

<comment><USER15> [http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi- bin/details.cgi?aid=11971](http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi- bin/details.cgi?aid=11971)

<comment><USER16> This link is actually the first time this happened last August, not the second event referred to in the subject article.

This page has static images of the current event: [http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries/lunar_transit_2016/](http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries/lunar_transit_2016/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've never given it much thought but the first thing that hit me is that the moon really is just a big 'ol rock up in the sky. These images have changed the way I view the moon. Pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks like the NASA satellite got mooned

<comment><USER19> aaghhhhh

<comment><USER19> Really, -4? Man, HN sucks

<comment><USER20> What value did your comment add?

<comment><USER19> I value my comment at $5.25. How much do you value your comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If I understand correctly, satellite is directly between sun and earth (at lagrange point L1?), and somewhere at the time of the shooting there was an solar eclipse seen somewhere in Australia

Edit: nevermind, "The satellite is orbiting the Sun-Earth L1 point in a six- month period, with a spacecraft-Earth-Sun angle varying from 4 to 15 degrees", so it's not directly between.

<comment><USER22> Yes, it's at the L1 point: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Lagrange...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Lagrange_points_simple.svg)

No idea about the eclipse, though. There is none listed in NASA's eclipse portal for July: [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2016.html](http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2016.html)

<comment><USER23> Objects at Lagrange points L1 (between), L2 (small-body side), and L3 (large- body side), either have to continually spend propellant to keep station or use a Lissajous halo orbit around the point.

In space, the choice to use more fuel or less fuel requires little consideration. So this satellite essentially scribes an elliptical ring around the sun as viewed from Earth. If the Moon passed between the satellite and the Earth, the Moon would appear from Earth to be 4-15 degrees away from the Sun, which would just be an ordinary new moon, not an eclipsing new moon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is that black triangle in the lower right of the image? And why is it moving?

EDIT: Okay, never mind, I just realized these images were taken over the course of several hours, so the triangle must be a movie-composition artifact, caused by the camera not being fixed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yeah, well - I think the moon is pretty good natured after astronauts walked on its face.

Proof: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eM1hv9ileaA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eM1hv9ileaA)

</comment><comment><USER26> wow, I didn't realize we had satellites up that high.

<comment><USER2> It's actually orbiting the Earth and the Sun at the same angular rate. It will make one orbit around the Earth per year. Normally, things that have smaller orbits around the Sun move faster than the Earth. But if you start the satellite's orbit near the Earth, the Earth's gravity will pull it back and slow it down a bit. If you're very careful, you can get them to balance out so the satellite orbits the Sun in one year instead of going faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How far away from earth is this satellite? Further away from the moon?

<comment><USER28> Yes. In the article, it states the satelite is 1 million miles from Earth. That's a bit more than 4 times the distance Earth-moon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Original source at NASA (which, as usual, phys.org does not link to, they even ripped the short movie from youtube)

[http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-camera- shows-m...](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-camera-shows-moon- crossing-face-of-earth-for-2nd-time-in-a-year)

<comment><USER30> yeah, phys.org as a source always make me slightly suspicious, clocking in at about the level of a university press release in terms of trustworthyness.

NASA's own press release at least specifies how unusual this event is, and the answer is "a bit less unusual than new years"

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's no moon!</comment>


Do Porn Watchers Have Smaller Brain? - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/human/life/do-porn-watchers-have-smaller-brains-140529.htm

<comment><USER2> This study was discussed at YC: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7815988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7815988)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize your stuff? - <AUTHOR> So, I'm having an issue right now that is accruing rapidly. I have a lot of documents, images, pdfs, videos, code snippets, files, etc, etc that I have tried to organize by category into directories. Well, I quickly find myself with dozens of directories and then it's getting difficult and taking lots of brain power to think about which directory to put things when downloaded. How should I handle this? <comment><USER2> There are said to be two types of people - pilers and filers. I've always been a filer, but have found that as my interests spread, and my work has increasingly been to create connections, I don't know where to file things.

So for my paperwork I have a single "pile". Each document gets a unique reference number, it gets filed in alphanumeric order, and I keep a file with the number and every keyword I can think of that might be relevant. When I want something I do a keyword search on the file and that pops out all the related documents references, along with the other keywords so I can decide if it's actually relevant.

I'm doing a similar thing with texts, snippets, photos, PDFs, etc. I put everything in a wiki, migrate things freely, but retain with everything a reference number, and in an index file, a list of reference numbers with their keywords. To start with it felt like an effort, but it has paid off time and time again. Things tend to migrate to meet up with their friends, but the index means things are easy to find.

Search is fast, but having things migrate and cluster creates the opportunity for coincidences and serendipity to play a role.

Embrace, adapt, enhance, and do what works for you.

And have backups. Multiple backups. And test your restore process regularly.

<comment><AUTHOR> This process seems well thought out and worth adapting. Few things:

So, what does your file structure in your home look like?

Are you now basically dumping everything into this wiki and you reference files by a number system?

<comment><USER2> > _what does your file structure in your home look like?_

If you mean physical files, such as letters, books, and paper documentation, I have a filing cabinet and things are simply stored by giving them a reference number, and then filed in that order. Then in a reference index in the wiki I put a single line with the reference number followed by all the tags I might want to use to find that document. I use _everything_ I can think of here, because it costs effectively nothing to have as many tags as I choose.

If you mean files on a computer then I don't know what you might mean by "in your home." I store snippets, _etc._ , in pages in a wiki, and each item is either obviously already searchable, or has some tags associated with it as a comment of some description. Large files such as PDFs, raw radar data files, downloads of book drafts, _etc._ , are given a sensible name and assigned a reference number. Where they are stored in the computer's filing system depends on a whim, but usually they go in a structure xx/zz/yy/filename where the xx:yy:zz are the initial six characters of the reference number. Then again, it's indexed, one line containing the reference number, filename, and tags. It doesn't matter if it moves because I can always find it by filename with a "locate" search (if I'm running locate) or just by a _find_ command.

> _Are you now basically dumping everything into this wiki and you reference > files by a number system?_

Pretty much, yes. I find that having a routine stops me from having to think about how and where I put things. I just follow the routine blindly, and it's flexible eough that I can find things when I want them. More, the fact that things can be moved about, taking their reference with them, means things end up clustering without very much extra effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Everything is added to 'the system' as one of the following entity types:

\- Area (area of focus /context)

\- Contact

\- Group (e.g. an organisation or group of people)

\- Message

\- Target (a 'task')

\- Event (something that was undertaken, to move a target towards completion)

\- Item (tangible or intangible)

\- Reference (a piece of information)

\- Location

\- Template (something repeatable to provide repeatable structure or considerations to another entity type)

\- Argument (an argument, reasoning, statement, claim etc).

\- Resolution (a resolution to be made / an agreement that is met / a contract, committment or promise)

\- Statistic

\- Rule (triggers and automation for the above entities - e.g. 'apply template x to create target y every thurs @ 9am')

All of the entity types can have many-many relationships with any other entity.

Therefore, for example: I could look up a target in my system called 'Deploy helpdesk module' \- I can see when the due date is, what the hold date is ("hide this entity until X"), what the notes are, what the status is etc.

\- I can see all of the 'sub-targets' \- I.e. there is an unlimited nesting of tasks.

\- I can see that it is linked to my 'Service Delivery' area, which is a child of my 'Business' area.

\- I can see that I have added 2 completed events to it (showing what I have done so far)

\- I can see what relevant locations are linked to it (and why).

\- I can see what groups are linked to it (in this case, the primary 'Group' is the client that I am developing the module for)

\- I can see what relevant items (e.g. tools) are linked to the target. For example, relevant online platforms (and credentials) are an example of an item.

\- I can see all references attached to the target (For example, my personal considerations list / best practices for helpdesk modules, or perhaps ITIL reference information pertinent to Service Operations.)

\- I can see all relevant Resolutions (in this case, it is the agreement I have made with my client to develop and deploy the helpdesk module)

\- etc.

I believe that the above is more accurately representative of 'correct' entity theory than any software currently provides. I am currently using a complex spreadsheet. I have courted most productivity/task/project/time platforms.

The closest application ever available (that I am aware of) to this functionality was IQTELL (defunct) - And only as it was heavily customizable.

I have therefore resorted to developing my own application - I hired a remote team to assist me. It's for my own personal use, but I am considering opening up to other users in the future.

In my opinion, Todoist and other productivity platforms (either corporate or personal) are vastly immature, and tend to completely miss most functionality/scope/correct entity theory - We simply have so far to go here. I wish this space was 10 years more advanced than it is.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is everyone using for DNS these days? Route 53? - <AUTHOR>

Something so commonplace, you almost never think about it. <comment><USER2> I have been doing research on DNS for my project. And below are some of my findings / Opinions.

I am not going to paid a large sums of money on DNS. And that rules out some of the options like Dyn.

You want a 3rd Party DNS mainly because of HA and Speed. Route53 and OnApp hosting's DNS do really well, but they are slow in some areas.

DNSMadeEasy was the best i could find, it doesn't have any PoPs in Asia areas, but other then that it is pretty much the fastest DNS services in US and EU. And it is surprisingly cheap as well for the low to Mid traffic. Expensive at the Higher End compared to Route53 but i guess it wouldn't matter much when you reach that sort of traffic.

I would actually love to use CloudFlare, you get free DNS + analytics. For Personal site i think it is great. For anything business related i still have doubts. They have expanded quite lot of areas over the last 6 months. But last times i looked its speed aren't great compared to OnApp or Route53. Its downtime is also higher.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've used <http://afraid.org> for my tiny sites for almost a decade. Josh runs a solid service and its uptime has been something I've been willing to pay for. That being said, I've never run a moneymaking site or anything with > 2500 hits/day on it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally use Route 53. It is the same price as a lot of the competition but a lot more flexible/powerful.

That being said however you need to understand DNS at least moderately to be able to understand what is presented in Route 53, it doesn't "baby" you at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been using Cloudflare. It's nice to have something cached for free during downtime.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use dnsimple

<http://dnsimple.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> I use <https://dns.he.net/> .

Simple and supports all kinds of records.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been happy with <http://zerigo.com> for the past couple years.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've heard great things about Point (<https://pointhq.com/>)

</comment><comment><USER10> I use Route53 for my personal stuff and have started to use Cloudflare for client sites, since it's free.

<comment><USER4> Call me paranoid but I've always struggled with free services that almost seem too good to be true.

Cloudflare offers a good service, there is little debate surrounding that, but how long can they keep on giving it away for?

<comment><USER10> I know what you mean. They got something like $22m in funding so they might be good for a while, though I don't think they're making any profit yet.

If I suggest cloudflare to a client then I make it clear that they'll probably have to upgrade at some point, same goes for services like heroku.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use easydns.com -- not sure if it's still the case, but I think at one point ycombinator used it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Rackspace offers a free DNS service, and luckily the new interface is quite usable.

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://dnsmadeeasy.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> dynect and route53 (ansillary domains) at $dayjob

dnsmadeeasy for personal projects and such.</comment>


PUBG to take Fortnight to court – it's Battle Legale - <AUTHOR> http://www.shacknews.com/article/105133/pubg-corp-files-lawsuit-against-epic-games-for-fortnite-battle-royale-concept <comment><USER2> Good luck with that! PUBG is just an FFA FPS, nothing new at all here

<comment><USER3> I don't know enough about Korean law to suggest whether or not this case has a credible chance. I honestly hope it doesn't.

I do know enough about the history of games to take issue with `PUBG is just an FFA FPS, nothing new at all here` comment.

Making the playable area shrink in size to make "last man standing" gameplay work with a reasonably large open world map is a brilliant feature. It's a real upgrade to other methods I've seen to add predictably to the length of match outcomes. Way better than just showing a hud icon to where everyone is after a certain length of time.

Counterstrike ruleset matches on battlefield sized levels are glacially awful without something like that. Every other game I've seen up til' these to attempt that formula does so with kind of a "meh." and it never ends up being the best mode.

The "Battle Royale" genre admits in its name that those mechanics were inspired from the movie "Battle Royale". Despite that, I can't think of any other game that applied this technique quite so well. Maybe there was a Tribes 2 game mode that experimented with something similar? So... do they deserve exclusivity? I don't think so..

For now though, I at least have to applaud PlayerUnknown for the innovation. Kinda sorry your good idea got turned into somebody else's money printer. :/</comment></comment>


What Living with an Eye Patch in a Big City Taught Me - <AUTHOR> http://cancer.nautil.us/article/203/what-living-with-an-eye-patch-in-a-big-city-taught-me <comment><USER3> I'm surprised that the author didn't mention the several times a year random strangers will yell "Yarr!" out of the window of a passing car, as they do at me. Even if that doesn't happen to her, this condition must be harder for a woman than it has been for me, so she has my sympathy.

I'm always willing to "show" children that there isn't an eye under the patch, if they want. The same goes for adults who seem childlike enough. (Don't laugh, there are lots of these people around.) Those who are merely dull enough to require immediate satisfaction of their idle curiosities about the deeply personal circumstances of others, never get the truth. We should all practice extemporaneous lying, and this may be the most valuable aspect of monocularity to me. It's easy to say "knife fight", although it takes a bit more effort to sell that. Instead, maybe someone might be more ready to hear about an embarrassing incident involving office furniture repair?

</comment><comment><USER4> What a beautifully written, honest, and wonderfully human story. The author makes an impossibly awful situation -- losing your eye at 12 -- the best she can, and notes the sometimes positive side of the unfortunate circumstances. I admired her and feel inspired by her.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can see arguments either way to ask about it or not. I always have an internal debate with myself when I see such things like an eye patch or other non-typical characteristics that stand out. Should I ask? Would it be rude?

Most of the time I get stuck in a do-loop and the person is gone before I have a chance to make a decision. That's probably a good thing, looking at it from a cost/benefit analysis there is no way anyone should ask such a thing. But I also don't want to pretend this obvious thing doesn't exist because it's an elephant in the room! What if the said person expects me to comment on it? What if the person thinks that other people avoid them due to this non-typical characteristic? I certainly don't want to contribute to that either! I have no idea how to approach these things...

My main goal is to treat them like anyone else and I saw someone with a broken leg I'd ask. I forget the comedian but they cover the topic of handicapped people feeling left out because they don't get commented on, they want to feel equal. I think it might have been Carlos Mencia (yeah, yeah, I know, dude steals jokes) but the point stands - if we want to treat people equal aren't we obligated to ask?

<comment><USER6> _don 't want to pretend this obvious thing doesn't exist_

You mean like their shoes, the shirt they're wearing, that kind of thing? Because the eye patch is only unusual to _you_ , the person with the eye patch puts it on every morning. Hell, they might have patches in different colors.

You can ask, but keep in mind that asking only benefits _you_. Because I'm sure the person wearing the patch has long ago gotten their fill of answering that question, and doing so is no longer of benefit to them.

So to speak personally, I don't ask. It's obvious that there is some malfunction in one of their eyes, I don't need to ask because that's all I need to know. Asking for more detail, well, I just met the person. Why would I think I can now delve into their personal details just because they're wearing an eye patch? More so, I don't ask because I'll betcha they are sick...and...tired of answering to random strangers who, truth be told, don't give a shit about the person and just want an answer to their curiosity.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense, my default is not to ask about it. I've seen very few people with eye patches in my life and I never asked.

It kind of relates to what one of my friends recently observed and experienced, someone asked them what race they are. She's light skinned but black. The person asking went through a few different combinations latino, white-black mix, etc and finally asked black and she got really angry. From my 3rd person perspective, I don't think the intent was to cause an issue but to relate to my friend. It's unfortunate because I don't see a maleficent intent, an unintended negative experience. This event is a small example of what I see on a overall change in society. Now everyone is walking around on pins and needles, afraid to make a social interaction for fear of making someone angry. Further isolation. Less tolerant to mistakes. I don't see this as a good thing. Boring. Uncreative. Polished. Unable to express an idea or question for fear of offending someone.

<comment><USER7> I'm just brown enough to get constantly asked where I'm from or what race I am. I seriously don't care. This is who I am and if it can be a conversation starter, so be it.

<comment><USER5> That's the way I was looking at it. I think a lot of it comes from people not being comfortable with silence so they'll just mention something they notice. When it's silent we are stuck with our own thoughts, some don't really like that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When my grandfather first came to this country, he recounts how he was once yelled at by a woman on the subway in NYC for offering his seat, as he used to do in Russia. I'd say there is no perfect approach that works for everyone all the time.

<comment><USER9> On a visit to the big city when I was a teenager, I held open a door at the entrance to an office building for a woman in her early 20s, as I had been taught to do by my very traditional parents. She shrieked at me that she could do it herself. I have been an anti-feminist since that moment.

<comment><USER10> If I decided to hate every class of people based on a single interaction with a random individual who may or may not even represent that class I'd hate everyone ever.

Sounds like you never really liked feminism in the first place and found an excuse to justify it later.

<comment><USER9> I don't hate anyone. I just don't support feminism because it creates bad manners and double standards. How is that hate?

Further, at the time this happened, I didn't even know what feminism was. I was around 16 years old. It was 1978 or so. After it happened, I did some investigating and discovered what might cause such a reaction. For me, it was plain that it was a philosophy based on false premises and as such worthy of rejection. I don't go about preaching my position, but I also certainly never even silently consent to the approbation of a false idea.

Here's the real kicker: tell me what feminism is, then we'll see if we agree it's a good thing or a bad thing. (Of course, the debate on what feminism is will never reach a conclusion, so we're unlikely to get to the second part.)

<comment><USER11> You ever consider that maybe the woman who yelled at you was just having a bad day, or was just an asshole? You know, assholes come in all flavors. Name a group of people, and I guarantee you you'll find some assholes in that group, and you'll also find people who might occasionally act like assholes because they're having a bad day, or for some other reason that has nothing to do with you and nothing to do with the group they're part of.

<comment><USER9> I don't remember the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of "I'm perfectly capable of opening the door myself. I don't need a man to do it for me." So yes, she was an asshole, obviously, for picking on 16-year-old country bumpkin me who was just trying to be polite, but it was also because of her ideology. And I'm sure every day she was bad for her. How could it not be when she was walking around looking for the myriad ways that men were trying to belittle her somehow? I have of course run into similar people since that time, and have observed that they are universally unhappy. But maybe that's just in my presence, when my mere existence oppresses them; quite possibly when no one like me is around, they have bright eyes full of laughter and joy. But I doubt it.

<comment><USER12> Her problem is her problem.

I would also probably have held the door open, as I was taught that was the polite thing to do.

And she probably would have yelled at me the same way she did at you.

But as the old, fat, white American guy in the room, I wouldn't let her problem in this area change me for the worse or otherwise bother me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Now, it seems I can't hail a cab without the driver remembering that he's > driven me before and recalling my preferred route to the office.

She has the IRL cookie today that the rest of us will soon have as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> _This week alone, two complete strangers have asked me outright, "What happened to your eye?" This happens to me all the time..._

I'm glad she's found peace with this sort of thing, but it's a shame that it happens this often. It just seems obvious that blurting that out as the first thing you say to someone is rude.

<comment><USER15> Interestingly a deaf friend posted on Fb today that this is a difference with the deaf community (as the post author sees it), that asking about someone's personal status is seen as a good thing, it's showing an interest in them.

I have a beard, kids will ask me "why do you have a beard?", I like it - <USER2> shows they're curious, I like to encourage enquiry. The parents will try to shush them, apologising for the intrusion, which TBH I find weird.

I can imagine it gets boring answering the same question over-again, but it's not harmful really. The author clearly has a good approach to life.

<comment><USER16> As a anecdote, I have some very interesting and impossible to miss scarring on my arms. I don't hide it, and it is definitely something I know people are curious about. Yet pretty much no one I have interacted with in the last 7 years since moving to a new city knows why, because no one asks.

People I sit with and talk to from 9 to 5 every day, not a word. You notice people glance, you notice some cashiers hesitate, yet just three or four people from memory have asked and it is always an abrupt and outright "so what's up with that?"

I am thankful because it really doesn't affect my life or personal image and so that mentality reflected by others behavior lets me feel justified in that outlook. But there are definitely days where I wonder if people don't ask out of courtesy or because they just don't care either way, and if I am feeling a bit lonley that can be a negative thing rather than a positive.

Mostly though, I just appreciate that people treat me the same as if I didn't have them, whether they have asked what happened or not.

<comment><USER17> What makes you think the scarring is very interesting?

<comment><USER16> It's a mix of bright purple/red/blue and in high contrast to the rest of my skin tone. By interesting I mean it stands out and is not something you see every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is interesting to me how small things really matter. Put a patch on your arm about the size of an eye patch and "so what". Eyes are special. I think it causes most people to do something they don't do that often, which is contemplate losing their own eye. I sympathize with the author, it is hard to know why someone may be interested in talking with you, etc. And, giving myself a little philosophical licence, it does not matter in the long run, we all have our dysfunctional bits, she just has to wear hers on the outside. Her issue in particular is one I imagine most people process and get on with relatively quickly.

<comment><USER19> >Put a patch on your arm about the size of an eye patch and "so what".

Well, not so fast; that rather depends on what's _on_ the patch... I'm sure I don't need to list examples!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Beautifully written and thought provoking. It's interesting how easily strangers can ask such personal questions. I wonder how different the interactions would have been if instead of the eye patch, the author wore a pair of trendy non-prescription glasses with a clear left and a dark right lens.

</comment><comment><USER21> I knew a guy with an eye patch, and politeness prevented me from asking how that happened. Now I know that one of the causes is cancer .. but it is a bit surprising that I only learned that after this article.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if people in similar situations wear patches as they do with clothes, considering fashion and all. It would be incredible to see people with custom patches for different ocassions, a great way to reaffirm their struggle IMHO.</comment>


Getting cool, interactive, dynamic apps on your WordPress blog using Processing - <AUTHOR> http://efavdb.com/processing-and-processing-js-tips-and-tricks/

<comment><AUTHOR> We spent some time figuring out how to get Processing apps onto our WordPress blog and thought it would be useful for others to see how it is done. Processing is a very accessible language for learning how to make cool, dynamic, interactive applications and our tutorial will allow you to quickly place yours on your blog for all to see.

Feedback, questions, or comments are greatly appreciated.</comment>


BillFront gives app developers and publishers faster access to their revenues - <AUTHOR> http://billfront.com

<comment><USER2> This looks good, but it can't be a Show HN until there's something that anybody can try out. You're welcome to post it as a Show HN then.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Understanding software that was made because previous ones didn't work? - <AUTHOR> I understand that I might not be stating the question correctly, so here are a few examples. Consider Docker, it was created to reduce the efforts of CI, CD over previous solutions, but for someone who is just starting to do deployment, how would he understand those issues and decide if that is really required. Or consider MongoDB (NoSQL), which was created to tackles the large-scale  SQL indexing issues, but for someone who hadn't seen them, what should they choose. Or React (Shadow DOM). Or Kafka/Heron. All these new technologies are required for a good job profile, so learning them is certainly important for a developer. But without an understanding the issues that people had previously, how can one fully grasp the motivation for creating these technologies. <comment><USER2> It's a very good question. You have asked a genuine question but I think it can be a great rhetorical question. I feel like developers nowadays blindly learn these "new technologies" just for the sake of learning new technologies, even though they will probably never build anything that really need these technologies. Maybe you get some street cred for knowing more but if I were you I would rather spend my time and energy actually "building" and experimenting things than just learning some esoteric technology that you probably don't even need.

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but I can't help but think it's pathetic how developers tend to think they're competent at what they do just because they know how to use the latest popular build tool, deploy tool, and some new framework that you probably will go out of fashion in a few years. (I'm not even exaggerating. Coffeescript used to be the "it" language but not anymore, people used to rave about grunt, then moved on to gulp, then webpack. Probably next year it will be something else. Same goes for Backbone => Angular => React hype cycle, you get the point.)

Just to share my two cents, you mentioned knowing these "React", "Kafka", and "Heron" will get you a better job, but that is far from truth. Let's say a company is hiring a frontend developer. Chances are they won't hire just because you know React. It is assumed that good developers can just pick up any new technology and learn quickly so just knowing some trendy technology won't make or break anything. They will probably test you to see if you have fundamental "vanilla javascript" capability.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its kind of hard to understand if you haven't experienced it. On some projects you might see the previous and latter generations and compare side by side the apparent changes and improvements.

For those who did revamps, they knew their value of the original and believed they could improve upon it. Unless you have some personal investment in the concept, I don't think you can improve on it too much beyond cosmetic and mechanical improvements.

So my suggestion if the problem is interesting enough for you, part of your work is to get experience and own the problem and strive for a solution. It may not the the project that gets you going but the implementation being in need of your skills, etc.</comment>