IT job satisfaction plummets to all-time low - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9143194/Surveys_IT_job_satisfaction_plummets_to_all_time_low?taxonomyName=Careers&taxonomyId=10 <comment><USER2> This isn't surprising. Big companies see that their employees can't easily leave so they take advantage of it. Of course when the economy picks up people are going to leave, but this will be happening to lots of companies so they'll have plenty of available talent to replace their losses.

The company I'm at made a huge profit last year. Half as much as the year before, but still a massive profit. In my year end meeting the manager who gave me my embarrassingly awful bonus check told me "we're lucky to be getting anything with the year we've had"!! Of course the CEO didn't get hurt much. It was pretty interesting. I never see anyone in the office after 5pm since that day...

<comment><USER3> Are employees really trapped? I changed jobs this year, and my company (a large, household-name-type-place) is continuing to hire a lot of developers. I think the team I'm on was about 2 people a year ago, now it's 10+.

Maybe people right out of college are having trouble finding jobs, but I think anyone with actual programming experience is in high demand right now. (Just like always...)

<comment><USER4> IT != programming

Programmers are in a very different boat, job-wise, especially programmers with some experience. Recessions don't hit us as hard.

<comment><USER5> Do you think the article considers programmers as IT workers? I think so. It's in the quote:

 _The folks at Apple Computer, I'm guessing right now, are feeling very purposeful at work_

Sure Apple has an IT department, but I'll bet that quote isn't talking about Apple's internal systems that its IT department maintains. I've recently learned the hard way, that IT does not really mean programming as those who frequent HN think of it.

Programmers in IT, spend much of their time writing the necessary glue code that gets 2 or more other systems talking. Usually, at least one of those systems is a poorly-documented piece of vendorware. If your IT programming job includes the web, then add to that making things work in IE6. It's hell on earth.

<comment><USER3> Dunno. I have to deal with poorly-documented vendorware (and Windows, from time to time) and I have had to make websites that work in IE6. I would not count either as "hell on earth". It's just stuff that needs to be done, and people will pay a lot of money to have it done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure I buy it, but Scott Adams has an interesting theory that could explain this at:

<http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/job_satisfaction/>

Essentially, he argues that when jobs are plentiful cognitive dissonance forces you to believe your job is a good one, otherwise you'd get off your butt and seek a better one. When times are tough, you are more free to believe that you are unhappy at your job since the economy gets you off the hook for doing anything about it.

(Of course, I'm pretty sure that in bust times jobs are objectively worse than in boom times--more work, less pay or hope for advancement, greater uncertainty and stress, etc. so I'm not sure a cognitive dissonance theory is needed.)

(Edit: fixing typo)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how much of that also has to do with people that simply chose the wrong line of work? Back when I was in school it was coming towards the peak of the dot com bubble and I know there were tons of new students in CS that were there just to make money.

In the long run they are now finding out that money wasn't enough to make them happy since they don't really enjoy programming and are thus unsatisfied...

</comment><comment><USER8> Now I can pretend this isn't a personal problem!

Honestly though, at my day job, IT work has shifted from setting up new systems and replacing bad ones, to making bad ones work, and telling people what they have isn't so bad. (This goes for workstations, servers, etc.) I'm all for being economical but I'm seeing a lot more of "penny wise, pound foolish" lately.

New projects are also dead, even ones that wouldn't cost much money (if any). It seems that nobody wants to feel the cost of change even if it means finally replacing horrid excel based work flows. My satisfaction has gone way down. Thankfully I'm not in charge here.

Lately I spend my work days "coding" half on day job stuff and half on my startup MacSupport.com. On busy days I can't wait to get out of work so I can work on work that feels important to me. I'm one of the last people who still has a separate full time job. I can't wait for the next few months, when hopefully I'll be able to make the leap and switch carers.

</comment><comment><USER9> I can imagine what the situation might be like at the company from which I was made redundant six months ago, and it probably is fairly unpleasant with whatever IT staff remain trying to support and maintain complicated systems that they have little knowledge or expertise on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Probably related to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032875> (Tim Bray's "Doing it Wrong" screed on enterprise software)

(ps edw519 I was waiting for you to chime in on that thread)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey joshwa, somehow I never even noticed that thread yesterday. Why? Because I was up to my earlobes implementing a business intelligence/data warehouse system in a very large SOX-compliant enterprise :-).

For current requirements, this solution is excellent. It is third party software, installed on top of an existing ERP system, that enables the users to extract whatever data they need and build their own reports without submitting a ticket to IT. Everyone loves the prototypes and is dreaming about the possibilities.

So instead of beating up on enterprise life, let me just share a little bit of yesterday, one typical enterprise day:

\- A 3rd party build just stopped at 98% complete with no error message.

\- Another build crashed with error messages I had never seen, so I had to open another ticket with our vendor

\- We ran out of disk space on a volume we didn't know the software was using.

\- I had to add additional data cleaning functions to remove heretofore unknown control characters in the enterprise data.

\- I inadvertantly named 44 files with the vendor's own naming convention, so now no one can tell whose files are whose. We had to reset our standards and rebuild.

\- Although this vendor has hundreds of installs, oddly, none of them are SOX compliant. The controls, audits, and duplication of data needed will more than double the resource requirements. Worse, I'll have to do an implementation that no one has ever done before with this software :-)

\- Today we start writing our own tools to handle the SOX compliance and satisfy the auditors. Some fun.

I can go on and on. You get the idea. And I haven't even touched upon the usual enterprise culprits: the meetings, the politics, and the lack of project management. It kinda sucks to have to do triple work to get the same thing done.

So whose fault is all of this? No one's. That's just the way it is. Every time I think of a better way to get things done in a large enterprise, someone has 5 good reasons why they are the way they are. It's wasted energy fighting that.

As I've mentioned in previous posts (one example: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760704>), I think the long term solution will be to eat away at the soft underbelly of the enterprise one bite at a time, with small apps, nimble software, and cloud computing that augments but doesn't replace (yet) current systems.

I continue to ponder YC's RFS #6...

[EDIT: I continue to ponder "Ideas We'd Like To Fund: Enterprise Software" whichever number that was :-)]

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I think about that enterprise software RFS as well. I'm working on a data warehouse for a bioinformatics research center right now, so we are somewhat playing in the same place.

Can you share what third party software you're using? I'm looking at some of the BI platforms now and comparing that with a ruby/sinatra backend hooked up to a decent jquery based web frontend developed in-house. And, I'm using this experience to decide if I can come up with something that would be worth submitting to YC's next round. It would start with the users building their own reports without needing IT, but there is some other stuff more on the backend with data mining and correlation that I think would be the real win.

Oh, seeing joshwa response, I might fall into the hungry hacker category myself.

<comment><USER12> I've been looking into it a lot as well. It really depends what your BI is supposed to handle. Is it analytics with very wide but very flat tables that you don't join much (or at all)? Is it complex queries joining many tables together to respond to ad-hoc queries?

I recently needed to support the first case and found that one of the best cost/performance solutions for us was infobright given that a lot of our existing base and reporting can stay as-is since we used heavily partitioned mysql myisam tables but it was getting slow (and crashy) and even slower every day.

In the near future I plan on supporting the second case because I'm getting a little tired of having to write up new reports myself. I've automated pretty much all the frontend stuff so that generating new reports is mainly a question of plugging in the proper sql queries and massaging the resulting data appropriately (which may be why I find it so boring) and it'll only take me a day or two to write new reports on a new part of the business but I'd much rather pass that off to marketing and teach them how to do it themselves.

For the second case, what I think is very promising and will be prototyping very soon is a combination of LucidDB and the Pentaho BI Suite. (Check out a demo here, it's pretty impressive: <http://demo.pentaho.com/pentaho/> )

Truly complex predictive reports I'll still have to handle myself but those are interesting because they at least require problem solving. The rote historical analysis reports I'd prefer handing off for good and the other departments would love to handle it themselves since they wouldn't always have to wait until I had time to get them their data.

<comment><USER11> Believe it or not, Pentaho is what we have in place right now. For the ETL backend, I think it is a really nice tool. Flexible, intuitive, and measures up well to Informatica and other $$$ tools.

But the reporting model, with the designer/xaction dev/publish quirkiness just bugs me. I find myself editing the XML definition files when I want to change stuff rather than firing up the tools. The documentation is a little lacking as well, but I have demanding standards there.

I also don't particularly care for how business models show up in the GUI for user-driven report building. To be fair, that is probably somewhat related to a poor model without proper dimensional design put in place. First pass efforts (before my time here) basically copied the operational system schemas into the data warehouse (shudder).

<comment><USER12> What database did you plug Pentaho into? Like I said earlier I was thinking of using LucidDB but according to this benchmark: [http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/01/07/star- schema-b...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/01/07/star-schema- bechmark-infobright-infinidb-and-luciddb/) it seems InfiniDB might be a better candidate.

<comment><USER11> Caught this question only after a few days, sorry for the delay. We actually are using Oracle (we have a site license).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Helping my aunt download pics from her phone to Vista almost ruined my Christmas. IT work has got to be hell.

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree, I've worked as a help desk person and a developer and I personally enjoy development type work. A lot of satisfaction comes from working at the right company too. I've worked at many companies and I finally found one I enjoy working at. The company I work for is within Fortune's top 100 companies to work for: [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2009/fu...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2009/full_list/). I'd suggest going through the list and trying to find one of those companies. If you can't find one, make sure you do your home work during the interview process. I believe Joel on Software has a good article about what to look for when considering a new employer.

Finally, happiness is a choice. Go into your job each day telling yourself that no matter what happens you're going to find something positive. It's a lot of hard work to be happy.

</comment><comment><USER15> This isn't too surprising. IT salaries have not even come close to keeping up with inflation. It's even worse in the cities. In the Silicon Valley your average engineer making $100k whose wife makes $40k and has 2-3 kids can't afford to buy a home. Especially considering the 9% sales tax and the 9.3% state income tax.

Combine that with expectations to commute 10-14 hours a week, and put in 60 hour weeks. Why should they be happy?

Throw in there the decimated banking system making it impossible to get a loan, and the American dream has been replaced with corporate wage slavery.

It's a messed up system we're in right now. But hey, at least banks are seeing record profits, and we've spent 1 TRILLION DOLLARS ON TWO WARS IN JUST A FEW YEARS.

Of course IT people are unhappy. Everybody is unhappy. Some executive at a large company whose compensation is 150x that engineer's meager salary wants him to work 60-70 hours per week?

Fuck that.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like people like this have made their own lives unhappy.

I ran the numbers, and $140k/year is more than enough money for a family of 5 (even including the taxes you pay to that evil warmongering government). You can comfortably spend $2000/month on your house/apartment, which gets you a nice size space even in major cities. (This assumes $6000/month after taxes; a 50% tax rate. You get to save $1000 and spend $1000 on non-essentials, and still have $2000 for food and bills with this plan.)

9% sales tax and 9.3% state income tax doesn't really matter. 9% sales tax doesn't affect essentials, like food. It just means that your new flat-screen TV is going to cost $1100 instead of $1000. Big deal. In exchange, you get a free school system, free roads, police / fire / etc. Taxes are a fact of life when living in a developed society. Lop the 9.3% off your salary and forget that money was ever even yours -- it's an employer's expense, not your expense.

Anyone making this amount of money can have a large living space 10 minutes away from work, savings, and plenty of money to pay your bills. And $1000 to spend on whatever-you-want every month.

If this doesn't make you happy, I guess it's time to work harder, or something. Most people would consider this a very comfortable life, perhaps even "the American dream". But taxes, the government, and society in general is probably not keeping you down, as your post seems to imply.

<comment><USER15> Clearly you've never been to the bay area. Especially if you're working in San Francisco, then you're looking at living in the outer richmond or sunset if you want $2k to stretch out to enough space for a 5-person family. Expect to pay more like $3k on rent, or $5k on a mortgage. Anybody spending more than 25% of their net-income on housing is living beyond their means.

Add in $700/month in food, $300/month in insurance premiums, $1,000/month for a car (between car payments, gas, insurance, average of 10 parking tickets per year and $200/month for a garage parking spot). All of a sudden you're living paycheck to paycheck.

My point is, executives in that article are complaining that they are unable to coerce engineers into giving their companies an extra 50% of their time for free. I'm not saying it's poverty, but I fully understand how the life of a corporate wage-slave is stressful enough to induce unhappiness and an unwillingness to go the extra mile.

The past decade has been a loss for the economy. IPOs are gone in exchange for M&As which only benefit the founders and investors in any signifiant way. Yet startups still dangle football of IPO-induced wealth to hoodwink engineers into working themselves into an early grave in order for the founders to become marginally wealthy. And the big companies who would like us to work ourselves to death would gladly outsource our jobs if they could overcome the lack of talent and communications issues of workers abroad.

And in the end they're still renting, and not able build wealth of their own.

<comment><USER16> _Clearly you've never been to the bay area._

Apparently dating sucks, IT careers suck, housing sucks, transportation sucks, (... list continues ...) if you've been to the Bay Area.

I have an alternative explanation which is quite a bit shorter...

<comment><USER17> The weather is nice...

<comment><USER18> Its COLD in July.

<comment><USER15> Depends on the neighborhood. Some neighborhoods are always cold. SOMA is pretty sunny and consistent.

<comment><USER18> As someone who lives in LA your rationalization by neighborhood micro climate is falling on deaf ears haha

I have never been more consistently disappointed by weather than that of the bay area. Personally I'd rather have a snowy winter than be greeted with 58 degrees and overcast every single morning all year long, but maybe thats just me...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Slowloris HTTP DoS - <AUTHOR> http://ha.ckers.org/slowloris/

<comment><USER2> this is a very old idea back to our scripts over isdn ...

<comment><AUTHOR> only 4 years... not that old. Some of the effected web stacks are still in use today.</comment></comment>


Photos from inside North Korean Ryugyong Hotel - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.220524161341539.54916.152296118164344

<comment><USER2> Some interesting tidbits from wikipedia [1]:

 _Construction began in 1987 but was halted in 1992 [...] resumed in 2008 [to be completed this year]._

 _The unfinished building was not surpassed in height by any new hotel until the 2009 completion of the spire atop the Rose Tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates._

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you find this interesting, it will be worth your time to watch the series Vice did on their visit to North Korea. [http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide- to-travel/vice-guide-to-n...](http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to- travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3)

</comment><comment><USER4> Foursquare: 0 check-ins

</comment><comment><USER5> The travel site associated with this photo creeps me out...

</comment><comment><USER6> This got me reading up on buildings with 100+ floors.

It's interesting to note how the US basically just gave up in the early '70s: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_buildings_with_100_floo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_buildings_with_100_floors_or_more)

What happened in the early 1970s? It seems like that was the beginning of the decline of American power. Tall buildings construction seems symbolic of that.

<comment><USER7> It's the same thing as with aircraft carriers - today, smaller, more maneuverable ships (hence the focus on VTOL, as well) and drones are favored over the huge floating islands that are basically sitting ducks.

I think the reason for no more tall buildings is the lack of space in the big cities - nobody's going to build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere, after all :-)...

<comment><USER8> [http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/broad-sustainable- buildi...](http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building- instant-skyscraper/all/?pid=917&viewall=true)

edit: found the HN discussion. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4574100>

<comment><USER7> Oh God... not that I don't trust the Chinese (they do tend to overpromise, though), but I really hope that building doesn't come down at the first earthquake or fire.

Plus, building it in the middle of nowhere almost guarantees that it will become yet another abandoned property like the famous Chinese "ghost cities" and malls...

<comment><USER8> Well, the founder apparently was motivated by the whole Sichuan earthquake thing. Article says he wanted to figure out a way to cheaply and easily build tall buildings that were both environmentally friendly and earthquake safe. FWIW, the article says: _Broad's design has aced 9.0-magnitude earthquake tests._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Huh, Koryo Tours. I knew you could get to North Korea from China, but I didn't know there were dedicated tour companies!

<comment><USER10> You _have_ to use either Koryo or another government approved/run organisation for tourism inside the DPRK.

<http://wikitravel.org/en/North_Korea>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow. So it's mostly unfinished inside?

<comment><USER12> Most undoubtedly. Given my non-expert outsider cursory knowledge of North Korea, the hotel will likely never be finished and will remain for show. They'll probably finish the main lobby and a handful of rooms — just enough to give the impression of how grandiose it is. Keeping up appearances.

Also, consider what happens to concrete being exposed like that for two decades. The concrete isn't meant for decades of weather, it's meant to be enclosed. The concrete degrades and becomes unsafe. Same thing has happened with a lot of the Dubai skyscrapers whose construction was halted, and they were only exposed for a few years (so says a Dubai contractor friend).

<comment><USER13> Just some background info: The new contractor, Orascom [1], has been issued a licence to operate the North Korean 3G Network [2]. Orascom is both a telecommunications and a construction company.

I doubt that their plan is to use the hotel exclusively as a giant antenna, but it's not unlikely that finishing the facade was a political priority, while operating the hotel is not.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orascom_Group>

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel#Construction_res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel#Construction_resumes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry, but I cannot see any photos of inside the Hotel. Have they been taken down?

<comment><USER14> ahh, I can see one photo, a singular photo of the inside.</comment></comment>


New Game in Town – Ted Nelson Presenting Usable and Open Xanadocuments - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72M5kcnAL-4 <comment><AUTHOR> for a bit of context, this is the man who inspired the web, the web is such a beta your kids kids will be in hysterics when they learn what we thought we had... think programming a VHS circa 1988</comment>


Comcast will reportedly buy Time Warner Cable - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/12/5406936/comcast-will-reportedly-buy-time-warner-cable

<comment><USER2> That makes for a rather large "content and subscriber" stick to wave around.</comment>


Ask HN: An insurance to cover API changes? - <AUTHOR> Would you pay extra fees to cover risks of : - API changing their terms of services, strategy (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc...) - unnoticed API breaking changes
- hard technical failures, SLA not respected
To cover the cost of implementation, fix, migration to an competitor API, or business impacts.
All of this guaranteed by a 3rd-party well reknown insurer. <comment><USER2> I would. But I suspect that either your premiums will be so high for the risky sites (linkedin, facebook), that I could not afford it or I would clean up.</comment>


Obama "IP czar" wants felony charges for illegal Web streaming - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/obama-ip-czar-wants-felony-charges-for-illegal-web-streaming.ars <comment><USER3> How about felony charges for everyone who worked for a company that was involved with the financial meltdown?

I think you'd scrape up a whole lot more guilty people in that circumstance, rather than demonizing a bunch of glorified slingboxes.

<comment><USER4> The Obama admin will generally prosecute the enemies of whoever pays them the most. We live in a representative democracy, but the representation seems to be auctioned off.

<comment><USER5> The Obama admin has actually been better than every other administration about disclosing lobbyist visits, etc. See my link below. Note that no congressional offices or subcommittees have followed suit (and really, if you're spending lobbyist dollars and looking for results, swaying a subcommittee chair is so much easier than swaying the president, and might accomplish more).

I'd go as far as to say the problem is more "Washington in general and Congress in particular" than Obama. I mean, last week he was a socialist and now he's a plutocrat, too? The two philosophies are diametrically opposed, pick one.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. For example:

The Obama administration has already failed to respond to more FOIA requests than the Bush administration.

<http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=11758>

Obama Administration Aides meet with lobbyists off the White House grounds to avoid logging meetings:

<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50081.html>

More than 40 former lobbyists work in top positions in the administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the director of Central Intelligence.

[http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/former-lobbyists- seni...](http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/former-lobbyists-senior-obama- administration-positions)

<comment><USER5> On your links:

#1) Your first link makes absolutely no reference to the Bush administration. It supports my point, though, Obama created stricter guidelines instructing the agencies to fulfill _more_ FOIA requests. And the agencies are falling short for whatever bureaucratic reason, seemingly that they can't work through the pile fast enough. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that. Thanks for the link though, I didn't know Obama had done that. I approve.

#2) Some aides met with lobbyists off of white house ground to avoid logging the meetings? You mean to avoid the policy that Obama put in place and that had never existed before he was elected? Seems like he's working in the right direction, to me. Now we just need Congress to implement a similar rule.

#3) Yeah, again, not perfect just yet. Want to compare/contrast with the number of former lobbyists who worked in the Bush white house, on the McCain campaign, or on John Boehner's staff?

If you're reasoning backwards from "I've decided I don't like Obama", you can believe whatever you want.

But the guy's history and all of his public pronouncements since taking office have been on the side of openness, and consistently against the influence of lobbyists. He's actually created a bunch of initiatives for more openness, the lobbyist visit thing and the data.gov thing being two of them.

It's just plain disingenuous to claim that Obama is less in favor of openness than Dick Cheney.

EDIT: Wow. Not usually one to whine about the voting but the guy's links actually say the opposite of what he's claiming. And he's upvoted. Just goes to show, you can believe whatever you want and vote that way too.

<comment><USER7> > It's just plain disingenuous to claim that Obama is less in favor of > openness than Dick Cheney.

If you want to prosecute to Julian Assange, you are not for openness in Government. If you put Bradley Manning not in jail, but under the jail, and refuse to let even Congressmen like Denis Kucinich even visit Manning to witness first hand the conditions under which he is being held, you are not for openness in Government. <http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/03/12/rep-dennis- kucinich/> If you fire State Dept Spokesman P.J. Crowley because he makes an off the record comment at MIT about the deplorable treatment of Manning, you are not for more openness in government. <http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/>

I voted for Obama. In many ways he is a huge improvement over Bush, but let's be realistic, and face the facts.

Lastly, there was an article about whether Obama has lived up to his transparency pledge on NPR yesterday. [http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134540530/has-obama-lived- up-t...](http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134540530/has-obama-lived-up-to-his- pledge-on-transparency)

<comment><USER5> Well, he has a better record on openness than his predecessors and everyone else in both 2008 primaries with a couple exceptions (Kucinich and maybe Ron Paul).

I mean, he did get into office and immediately push a bunch of initiatives regarding openness. Maybe it didn't go as far as you or I would want but even slowing the descent is an improvement.

<comment><USER8> The guy has a long track record of _saying_ he's going to do something, and not doing it. Take his proclamation, upon entering office, that the detention center at Guantanamo would be closed within a year. It's still open. Take his statements back around 2004-2006 that we needed to decriminalize marijuana. It took two years of the same issue rising to the top of polls for the guy to even address it, and he brushed it off. Take his promise to fight for better healthcare -- except during the voting, I heard more from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid than I did from Obama. Or the whole "let's talk diplomatically to Iran".

<comment> brown9-2 Many of those things can't be done unilaterally. The president can't force something threw that Congress isn't interested in (medical marijuana, the Gitmo closing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that _any_ ip related 'crime' is deemed serious enough to be a felony disgusts me. Espinel is bought and paid for.

<comment><USER10> I don't want people to pirate my software, but I'd rather file sharers and individuals get away free than have a felony on their record or go to prison. Civil penalties are a good idea, possibly light criminal penalties, not a felony though, much less prison time.

Commercial piracy is a different matter, and I don't have a thoroughly- considered opinion on what the punishment for it should be.

<comment><USER11> The truly disturbing thing is that the felony charge can destroy peoples lives, and destroy peoples attempts to even run a normal life.

I couldn't work my job with most felony charges, because I'm in construction and I work on other people's property my employer can't have me on payroll unless I'm bondable. If I have a criminal conviction my job is in danger, but if it's for theft I'm gone and I'm either forced to work under the radar or find a new job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone wants to see who she's heard from on the matter, you can just visit:

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing- room/disclosures/visitor-...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing- room/disclosures/visitor-records)

and type "Espinel" into the search box on the little app.

My sample size of one visitor name typed into Google yielded an ATT exec.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thought Crime ?

The fact that a government is acting against its citizens in behalf of a minority, now that should be a crime.

<comment><USER13> Now that you mention it, US District Judge Gladys Kessler just ruled a few weeks ago that the federal government has the right to regulate "mental activity": [http://reason.com/blog/2011/02/23/dont-think-of-a-health- ins...](http://reason.com/blog/2011/02/23/dont-think-of-a-health-insuran)

<comment><USER14> That seems to be really badly taken out of context. From the one and only quote within the page you linked:

 _As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress's power...However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not "acting," especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality._

It doesn't look like he's saying that mental activity can be regulated by Congress, but rather the claim that deliberate choice _not_ to do something is "mental activity" rather than "physical activity," and thus cannot be regulated, is a meaningless semantic game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Espinel suggests the creation of public performance rights for music on the radio, which the US already has for satellite broadcasting and webcasting. But the broadcasting lobby has opposed the move ferociously, claiming that its unique exemption from payment is because radio has such promotional force for artists."

I'm actually a fan of this portion of it. It brings radio broadcasting in line with the harsh limits put on webcasting. I'd rather it be the opposite - <USER2> the limits on webcasting were brought in line with the (lack of) limits on radio broadcasting, but this is a good second best.

The broadcasting establishment claims that radio is a huge promotional force for artists; why isn't the opposite true of webcasting (a la Pandora)? It would seem the promotion of artists is /better/ in webcasting, because the webcaster can link the listener directly to where they might purchase the artist's work - unlike in radio, where you must wait for the DJ to (maybe, once in a blue moon) announce what just played, and then have to google it yourself.

<comment><USER16> Because radio creates monoculture and monoculture has less overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was "hope" for "change" from a regime that bullied citizens into supporting the government-blessed corporations. But this article shows (again) that our new regime still serves the entertainment industry (not to mention pharma companies).

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We won't get fooled again.

<comment><USER18> > We won't get fooled again.

Yeah, we will (unfortunately.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It appears that "streaming" infringing content is considered to be a public performance and thus exempt from felony prosecution while "reproducing" or "distributing" infringing content does. I honestly fail to see much of a difference between "streaming" and "distributing" so I am in favor of making the laws more consistent. Whether they should warrant felonies is a different discussion.

<comment><USER20> You could also make it consistent by making public performances felony charges. I feel an Emerson quote coming on very shortly involving hobgoblins...

Note, you do raise a good point, I'm just not sure that the consistency we want is in the direction that we're going in. Like you say, a separate discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something something "living Constitution" something something.

I don't think I'd be going out on a limb if I said when the founding fathers penned the Copyright Clause, their original understanding only contemplated civil action.

</comment><comment><USER22> A copyright infringement is a felony? Seriously?

<comment><USER23> It can be already, under the NET ("No Electronic Theft") Act, if memory serves. But the feds usually have better things to do than to prosecute people for that sort of thing.

Or at least they used to. It's clear that prosecuting infringers has become a priority recently. I expect more is to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps the US could put these felons in Guantanamo?

</comment><comment><USER25> How many malicious botnets are in operation in the US alone today? What resources are being brought to bear by the government in shutting them down?

Priorities.

</comment><comment><USER26> When everything is a felony, nothing is.</comment>


Show HN: UX Help – UX Support for early-stage startups (or your side projects) - <AUTHOR> http://www.uxhelp.me

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first time I've ever built an app. Also the first time I've ever written code (did some front-end 5 years ago, but nothing major). I built this as an experiment to fulfill my own need. I love helping out startups with whatever I can and I assumed there are others like me who'd like to do the same.

Feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks :)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle Kubernetes for testing? - <AUTHOR> I recently worked on integrating Kubernetes in a testing pipeline which included spinning up a cluster for each run. Doing this one either has to spin up an external cluster in the cloud which is slow and costly or create a local cluster. We went with the local option but that brought other drawbacks, such as trouble debugging as the cluster isn't persistent. How do you handle Kubernetes in your testing pipeline?<p>I've been experimenting with a service for quickly spinning up external clusters (within seconds) that can be kept running as long as needed, in an affordable way. I'm thinking this could also be used to set up staging environments, one for each PR for example. Is there any need for such a service? <comment><USER2> [DUPE] same post from yesterday

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22407336)

<comment><AUTHOR> Repost as it didn't gain any traction. Should be fine if I read the FAQ correctly!

<comment><USER2> Services and open source options for this exist already

<comment><AUTHOR> Any examples you could share? I'm familiar with kind, Minikube etc. but would really like something persistent and maybe even publicly accessible (for staging environments).

<comment><USER2> Telepresence.io is a tool for hybrid local against remote cluster

Garden.io is another I haven't looked much into

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't know about those two, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Strange Attractors: chaos patterns in Silverlight - <AUTHOR> http://www.eternal0.com/ Search for a pattern, then rotate it in 3d. <comment><AUTHOR> Make sure to click and rotate. The method is described in a book at <http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/sa.htm></comment>


GitHub was down - <AUTHOR> https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/j597fw8kv04c <comment><USER2> This is a nice reminder that you can have multiple remote repos and push/pull to all of them at the same time. For my side projects I usually use both github and google cloud source (I use gcp). If one is down the other is still available and then just resync when service is recovered.

<comment><USER3> Additionally, I have a machine on my local network that I push to (and that is backed up separately).

 _Really_ quick pushes, too :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know Github is down because I'm trying to update a kops cluster, but Github breaks it

        > kops update cluster
        error reading channel "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/kops/master/channels/stable": unexpected response code "500 Internal Server Error" for "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/kops/master/channels/stable": 500: Internal Server Error

<comment><USER5> See, I like the idea of K8S quite a lot. Enough that I decided to set up a cluster from scratch to figure out how everything ties together.

I've since grown to strongly dislike how much of the _entire_ ecosystem seems to depend on random unversioned Github gists or direct links into a raw file in a repo somewhere.

<comment><USER6> NPM is the same. You might think that all of the packages are stored on NPM servers. Mostly true, but still when you install some of them they'll download precompiled binaries or whatever directly from Github.

<comment><USER7> If you have IPv6, remove IPv4 to see how many tools break, because github does not have IPv6.

Composer is useless in a native IPv6 only servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is slowly becoming a weekly occurrence ever since Microsoft entered the picture...

[https://www.githubstatus.com/](https://www.githubstatus.com/)

<comment><USER9> I remember it being a weekly occurrence before Microsoft as well.

edit: though their historical data doesn't back it up. It's just a 2020 thing it seems; coincidentally picked up right near the middle of February which correlates way too closely with the beginning of COVID.

<comment><USER10> correlation != causation though.

<comment><USER11> The whole "correlation does not imply causation" thing is completely misunderstood.

The issue is with the meaning of the word "imply"; when used in the formal sense as it appears is Classical Logic, correlation does indeed not imply causation.

In common parlance however, "imply" is often used to mean "provides evidence for", and correlation can indeed provide (potentially strong) evidence for a hypothesised causal link; the problem lies in people reading "correlation does not imply causation", assuming the informal meaning of "imply", and then going on to reject any notion of causation which uses observed correlation as evidence.

Pretty much every empirical science uses notions of correlation (in its various formal statistical guises) to provide support for causation, indeed to reject such reasoning would be to invalidate huge swathes of mainstream accepted science; half the battle in these instances is _making the leap from correlation to causation_ in a manner which is considered scientifically sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From what I understood, they are having capacity issues with one of their MySQL masters or something. I've read that they are in process of sharding/resolving that but it takes time.

To GitHub SRE/oncall people: hang in there, you're awesome.

<comment><USER13> That's the picture you can get from their recent blogs:

* [https://github.blog/2020-03-26-february-service-disruptions-...](https://github.blog/2020-03-26-february-service-disruptions-post-incident-analysis/)

* [https://github.blog/2020-07-08-introducing-the-github-availa...](https://github.blog/2020-07-08-introducing-the-github-availability-report/#availability-report-for-may-and-june)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, our builds are failing for a couple of hours now, and we just use Github because one of the dependencies in NPM downloads a binary from a public repository. We're already forking what we can to our gitlab self-hosted server, but even a simple git clone or even browsing the website can lead to a HTTP 500 right now.

Lots of incidents lately, but it's becoming increasingly hard to get away from Github.

</comment><comment><USER15> I said this before many times and I'll say it again, consider self-hosting your projects on a solution like GitLab or Gitea to avoid this sort of situation. [0]

GNOME, Xfce, Redox, Wireguard, KDE and Haiku all have self-hosted on either cgit, Gitlab, Phabricator or Gitea.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676072)

<comment><USER16> How about a more low-tech solution? I don't want/need a full-blown web application like Gitlab, just need somethings than auto-syncs my public and private repos so that i can still access everything when Github is down.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER17> The lowest tech solution is to just wait until the outage is over. It's 100% free!

Seriously, though, any repo that I work on regularly will be cloned to my local dev environment, so it's not a hard blocker.

That said, a cron job on a cheap VPS would probably do the trick.

<comment><USER18> Moreover, GitHub will eventually get these outages under control. Or we'll all be driven to gitlab :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seriously, again!? I am growing seriously impatient with this. It's been downhill since Microsoft took over.

GitLab is starting to look good (or even Gitea self-hosted).

<comment><USER20> I might just self-host Gitea on my Pi today

<comment><USER19> I was going to warn you about SD card corruption, but then I realized even this is probably more reliable than GitHub at this point.

<comment><USER20> I personally haven't experienced any SD card corruption, even though I am running a Maria-DB instance, Home-Assistant instance and a Pi-Hole instance on a Pi Zero with a 32 gig SD Card ( 23 days uptime as of writing )

<comment><USER21> I've had 2 sd-cards go corrupt (read-only, any writes were lost). Had a mariadb instance running on it as well. It will hold for for some time, but eventually, the card will give up.

<comment><USER20> Oh no! What will you recommend as a long term solution? I have ordered a Pi 4, should I use an USB Flash Drive / HDD / SATA SSD?

<comment><USER22> Honestly throw the thing in a bin and use an old mini pc instead. Lenovo thinkcentre tiny. You can pick them up on eBay for about the same as a fully equipped pi.

Pi is 100% not suitable for 100% duty work. It's just a toy.

<comment><USER23> As someone who's been running a media server and home automation server on his Pi 24/7 for 3 years now, I beg to differ.

<comment><USER22> I've had 6 so far and all have had reliability issues or weirdness. Mostly related to SD corruption, crashing or power brown out. The power issue was not solved by running them off a proper keysight bench supply.

SD cards are quite frankly horrible boot media as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ITT: Lots of Github hate.

Dont forget that change in software is inherently risky and will result in bugs, etc. Id rather have a platform that is always looking to make things better and risking a bit of downtime, than a stale platform that we all know we depend on.

<comment><USER25> I think the issue here is that Github is considered a mature product and it just works.

So is there any actual pressure to move fast and break things?

<comment><USER26> Yeah it feels they're just being pushed to out-everything Gitlab, to kill a competitor, before relaxing and stagnating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Getting 500s all over the api, gl whoever is on call

</comment><comment><USER28> (copied over from other thread - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817794))

Github started doing availability reports. Last month's details in the blog post below with summary of the issue.

Stay tuned till next month for the current outage.

[https://github.blog/2020-07-08-introducing-the-github- availa...](https://github.blog/2020-07-08-introducing-the-github-availability- report/)

<comment><USER29> Here's the RSS feed of the blog

[https://github.blog/feed/](https://github.blog/feed/)

I am using [https://github.blog/category/engineering/feed/](https://github.blog/category/engineering/feed/) for engineering category

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What if we had a smart failover. Use GitHub and GitLab simultaneously. All issues, all comments, all PRs duplicated. If one goes down you use the other one in the time being with no interference at all. One can probably then build a frontend which magically does this failover for ci/CD etc. Isn't that's how much redundant this should be?

</comment><comment><USER31> I guess it's time Github realizes that they're not longer just relied upon for git, but for so much more.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cool thing about git is that it is distributed and there is no single point of failure ...

<comment><USER33> It is. We all have our own copy of the repository, and can still distribute changes using any of the other methods:

\- A different central server

\- Email

\- A shared on-filesystem copy, e.g. local network drive

\- HTTP or SSH between developer computers (put your repository somewhere where your NginX or Apache serves it, the other developer can "git remote add<USER32> [http://chvid.example.com/repository"](http://chvid.example.com/repository")).

<comment><USER34> Do you really think the average developer using git has any idea about how it can be used decentralized?

<comment><USER35> IMO, more people need to ask themselves how their tools work and why they exist and find the answers to those questions

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who would really rely on a single, external, free, no-guarantees service and not have redundancy to tolerate some hours of downtime?

Make github a mirror (at least source-wise) and you can benefit from it's outreach without being held hostage. Am happy with that e.g. [https://notabug.org/mro/ShaarliOS/src/master/doap.rdf](https://notabug.org/mro/ShaarliOS/src/master/doap.rdf) Inspired by [https://indieweb.org/POSSE](https://indieweb.org/POSSE)

<comment><USER31> A lot of people pay for Github?

<comment><USER36> seemingly not enough :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yay this crashed our Jenkins instance as well.

<comment><USER37> Same mate

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hopefully it's just them reverting their latest UI changes

<comment><USER39> What's wrong with them? Maybe it's because I do not use project management features much, but I like new UI more.

<comment><USER40> My main dislikes are slow, lazy loading, and that you can't read the last commit messages without extra clicks of the "..." button. Even in pull requests I've seen new commits show up without the message (and clicking the expand button, it closed itself after a few seconds).

There have been some other annoyances/changes in behaviour that have bugged me too, but mostly stopped remembering them because am resigned to it now.

<comment><USER41> >you can't read the last commit messages without extra clicks of the "..." button

You can opt-in to this now. It is a preview functionality, i guess it will be GA in a couple of weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I just had to access my Github stars to find an old app I bookmarked. No dice. Otherwise I've moved all my current projects to Gitlab so Stars and contributing to other repos are my two most used features atm.

</comment><comment><USER43> Everything seems up now. Does anyone know if Github pages went down too?

</comment><comment><USER44> in my build pipeline, I query several different package hosts (npm, pypi, docker-hub etc) and Github/Gitlab. If any of them is unavailable, the build fails.

What's the best way to keep my own copy of the packages my software needs (and their dependencies), so that my build process is less fragile? Ideally, I'd only have to rely on those 3rd party platforms to download new versions or have them as a backup.

When relying on my own copy of required packages - can I expect much faster builds?

<comment><USER45> I've used Nexus for a while without any issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I still don't understand people who always mentions to Microsoft's acquisition. Until the official statement, it isn't Microsoft failure. Don't blame them.

<comment><USER47> It's not MS fault, of course, but since MS acquired GH, GH has been much more relaxed. New features are added all the time, clearly not ready for the spotlight. It gives you a different comfort knowing your daddy is there as a safety net.

<comment><USER48> But also they have a lot of new customers/users, so maybe the scale's the problem? I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This can be merged with [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817794)

</comment><comment><USER50> Another Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23817794)

</comment><comment><USER51> They're minutes away from dropping below two nines looking at _Issues, Pull Requests, Projects_. Other services look comparably unreliable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "We have identified the source of elevated errors and are working on recovery."

A day wrecker!

</comment><comment><USER52> Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!

</comment><comment><USER53> It is ironic that a version control system engineered to be distributed is now typically used in such a centralised way.

</comment><comment><USER54> Savage Unicorn, Github who knew.

</comment><comment><USER55> People are advocating hosting their own Git repos, but wouldn't those go down, too, and wreck the day even more?

Or, are you guys all devops geniuses better than those who work at GitHub?

<comment><USER56> But those wouldn't take most of the world's public git repos down all at once just because of a single issue. Single points of failure have a bad reputation for a reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Surely it can't be a coincidence that Github is down every other week after the Microsoft acquisition? Is Microsoft interfering too much? Or did the core technical expertise leave for other greener pastures in Microsoft or outside?

<comment><USER58> I believe GitHub's been adding new features much faster after the Microsoft acquisition. Moving faster can lead to breaking things more frequently.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you research a topic online? - <AUTHOR> Research doesn't have to be academia bounded. I'm referring to research in general where I have a specific concept, topic or area that I want to learn about and understand. How do you guys find and learn about something fast and effectively? <comment><USER2> It really depends on what the topic is. I always hit Google or DuckDuckGo first. Most of the time, I can find all of the information I need after a few tweaked searches. If not, the information I probably need is in a book, so I find a book. The great thing about nonfiction books is that the authors love to talk about other authors and their books. So there's more books I can read on the subject.

If it's tech related, or something hands-on (like cooking, gardening, auto repair, etc.) I like to just jump in head first and get my hands dirty as soon as possible, reading up on tips and techniques here and there as I go. Youtube is great for these. There's often a ten minute video with exactly the information I need.</comment>


FDA Approves Insulin Pump You Can Wear - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2013/09/28/fda-approves-artificial-pancreas-you-can-wear/ <comment><USER2> It should be noted that this appears to be a highly accurate insulin pump. That's a far cry from an artificial pancreas. If you have the death sentence known as "pancreatic cancer" you can't get your pancreas removed and have this take its place for example. Not saying it isn't important for diabetics, but let's not get carried away.

<comment><USER3> "appears to be a highly accurate insulin pump"

The article was a little vague on how well the control loop is closed, but it provided the impression that there was a feedback loop, as though a real engineer told the journalist there was a feedback loop and the article is the result of the liberal arts interpretive dance of the artists impersonation of the concept of a feedback loop trying to play to the masses who don't know what "feedback" is or Bode stability plots or whatever.

The creation of a feedback loop would make it much more of an "artificial pancreas" than a mere free-running pump or traditional injection.

<comment><USER4> I think JunkDNA's point was that the pancreas does a lot more than just regulate insulin.

<comment><USER5> What else does it do? (if you know... I'm curious)

<comment><USER6> Besides that, not anything significant (as far as we know).

[http://answers.webmd.com/answers/1195061/can-you-live- withou...](http://answers.webmd.com/answers/1195061/can-you-live-without-a- pancreas)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OK.. What is going on here:

This is an incremental improvement in Medtronic's continuous glucose monitoring system/insulin pump combination therapy that has been available for 5+ years already.

Medtronic is touting this as 'artificial pancreas technology' (not specifically an artificial pancreas) because it has a feature now in the US where the pump can turn off if your blood sugar drops below a certain patient set threshold. This has been available for years already outside the US.

This is most definitely not an artificial pancreas..

<comment><USER8> [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsWAYTooEarlyToCallThisInsuli...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsWAYTooEarlyToCallThisInsulinPumpAnArtificialPancreas.aspx)

It's WAY WAY too early for them to have said this.

<comment><USER7> I asked their twitter about it and got this: [https://twitter.com/thedamon/status/384420935685910529](https://twitter.com/thedamon/status/384420935685910529)

Still think 'artificial pancreas technology' is an overstatement. Though Singularity hub is also guilty of writing a ridiculous article esp with that headline.

Edit: great write-up, Scott!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is nonsense. They are totally overstating what they've done.

NOTE: I've been diabetic for 20 years and I wear both a CGM and a Medtronic Pump (the model before this new one).

I'm so mad about this I've written it up IN DETAIL: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsWAYTooEarlyToCallThisInsuli...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsWAYTooEarlyToCallThisInsulinPumpAnArtificialPancreas.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ugh.. Sensationalist headline of the day.

Article headline: we have an artificial pancreas

Article body: we do not have an artificial pancreas. we have a new pump with some incremental feature improvements over our last model.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the 90s I invested in MiniMed, and sales exploded. In the early 2000s they were acquired by Medtronic. This was the goal of MiniMed and I'm glad to see it come to fruition.

<comment><USER10> My spontaneous thought when I saw this was "what took them so long?" Your comment makes me wonder even more. How come this is such a difficult problem?

<comment><USER11> I was wondering the same thing - a simple feedback loop can't be that hard to achieve can it?

Put in some limits in case of sensor or pump error and maybe allow the user to boost sugar for activities, but otherwise this seems to me like a very very simple thing to do.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER12> There have been several efforts at developing a blood glucose sensor that could work on the skin rather than with an invasive probe. None of those went anywhere.

I assume this means that this is a very difficult task. Believe me as a Type II Diabetic that sticks their finger several times per day something that could detect your blood glucose without blood would be worth a LOT.

I can't imagine what it would be worth to someone with Type I.

<comment><USER8> It's complex because of LAG. Even a finger stick shows you your blood sugar _in the past._ When you take insulin it ALSO has a lag, as long as 30 to 90 minutes.

Managing Type 1 diabetes is like controlling the Mars Rover.

Source: Type 1 for 20 years on a pump and CGM

Details: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsWAYTooEarlyToCallThisInsuli...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsWAYTooEarlyToCallThisInsulinPumpAnArtificialPancreas.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My wife is a Type I diabetic and 15 + year Minimed pump wearer. She (and many other diabetics) don't like the fact that with the CGM you have to have two infusion sites (one for the monitor and one for the pump). Until they can figure out how to do this with one infusion site I suspect it will not be highly desirable by diabetics.

<comment><USER14> Ditto for my wife. She also does not like the 45 degree "bent" insertion approach because "it hurts more".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In addition to all the accurate assessments that this is very far from an artificial pancreas, I would like to point out that the glucose monitor being marketed by Minimed is a far cry behind even the best-in-class available from Dexcom ([http://www.dexcom.com/dexcom-g4-platinum](http://www.dexcom.com/dexcom-g4-platinum)), and not near accurate enough to allow for closing the loop. Notably, a number of the farthest advanced artificial pancreas research projects are moving away from Minimed products-- for example: [http://bionicpancreas.org](http://bionicpancreas.org)

<comment><USER8> I moved off of the Medtronic for the Dexcom G4 for this very reason. The difference between 30 minute lag and 5 minute lag is SO noticable. My A1c is now 5.5 and I attribute that to the Dexcom, 100%.

<comment><USER7> I must say I recently was testing the new Enlite medtronic sensors and found them far more accurate than the older ones whatever they were called (I gave up on those quickly). Can't compare directly to dexcom but that's good to know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Considering there are places where they will steal your purse which might be worth $3k. Imagine what the theft rate will be for artificial Organs that could be grabbed right off you.

No need to knock a person out and leave them in a hotel bathtub with their kidney's removed, you can just catch them on the subway.

<comment><USER3> Its a pity you got downvoted; discussion of the social issues relating to technology is one good definition of hard science fiction, which the world certainly has a lack of. Soft sci fi is that boring "search and replace" dreck applied to existing generes.

Another societal issue is militarized cops and the like beating people and ripping away their electronics, which we've been conditioned to feel is "normal", but its kinda queasy/gross to imagine cops physically ripping needles and stuff out of peoples bodies when they give a good ole american beatdown for jaywalking or driving while black or other similar criminal activities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is good news for diabetics, although I find it pretty depressing that something like a quarter of the US population needs something like this in the first place.

<comment><USER18> Before making sweeping statements about a disease you obviously don't understand please read up on the difference between type 1 and 2 diabetes, and what the causes and treatments are for both.

TL:DR - This pump would be used for type 1 diabetics. This type means your body does not produce insulin, so the treatment is to artificially inject it (via this device for example). It's not caused nor limiting to diet. Being unhealthy/overweight doesn't increase your chances of getting type 1. It's a genetic, juvinile onset disease.

Type II is the type you're most likely thinking of. The body becomes less sensitive to insulin, so you need to consume less carbs and generally eat healthier. This pump would not be used by type II diabetics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Off topic: this site is painful to use on mobile with Javascript off.

<comment><USER20> Also, the pictures don't load if I turn images off.

<comment><USER21> jrockway, you've really changed. You weren't always this cynical. What happened?

<comment><USER20> Pretty sure I've always been this cynical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Why can't we just fix one letter in the DNA and make diabetes not happen? Diabetes is stupid. All internal organ illnesses are stupid.

Still that's the best we can do atm. Still all those anti-GM people actively hurt our chances to get real treatments soon.

<comment><USER22> Because that's not how diabetes works

<comment> guard-of-terra Wikipedia tells us that diabetes type I is usually genetic.

If you're susceptible, you might get it, might not; if you aren't, you aren't. Guess what, no point of carrying bad genes around.

<comment><USER23> The genetics are complex and not yet understood.

(I am a diabetic who does genetics)

<comment> guard-of-terra Are you sure it's possible to understand them fully without actually doing some hacking? How would you be sure when you understand enough to start acting?

<comment><USER23> They do "hacking" etc in mouse models but it is expensive and time consuming. You might have about 700,000,000 genomic variants to choose from so we need to do other studies to try things.

For the time being one of the most effective means of studying a disease is to sequence a pedigree of individuals some of whom have the disease and analyze the inheritance patterns until you narrow it down to the point you can be sure.

You can also do studies where you just sequence a ton of people with and without the disease but those can be more problematic statistically because of the number of possible variants.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Remembering the LAN - <AUTHOR> https://crawshaw.io/blog/remembering-the-lan <comment><USER2> I fondly remember the days of using Borland Delphi, and then Embarcadero RAD Studio, to build fully-functional GUI applications in a matter of hours. As a teenager, no less.

You had great libraries like Jedi/JVCL and various data binding layers that would allow you to assemble highly complex UIs.

Of course, today's technology is so much better in so many regards (code quality, security, proper backend/frontend separation, UX, to name just a few), but I wonder if it'll ever be as easy as it felt back then.

<comment><USER3> Other than Java, .NET and mobile OS native stacks, I am not sure that today's technology is so much better in so many regards.

In fact in some areas I think we went backwards, doing 20 years circle to meet such tooling where they were at the early 2000's.

<comment><USER2> There's a lot that we take for granted nowadays, that either did not exist back then, or were expensive commercial products:

\- Ubiquitous transport layer encryption.

\- Secure memory-safe programming languages.

\- Structured data exchange formats that do not suck.

\- RPC that isn't SOAP, or DCOM.

\- Distributed consistent databases.

\- Proper sandboxing for applications.

\- Resolution-independent proportional UI.

\- A vibrant open source ecosystem used across the industry.

... and much more. Today's foundations are a lot more solid than they were back then, but I still miss the rapid prototyping. We even have an ok-ish Linux desktop!

Even the most powerful React tree views are much worse than what we had 15 years ago, and are much harder to use than dragging a component onto a form.

No nostalgia though, everything else sucked.

<comment><USER3> Given how modern OSes still insist in using C derived languages at their bottom layer, instead of the Pascal and Modulas from the 90's.

How those RPC alternatives keep re-inventing the validation schemas, performance optimization and code generation tooling of SOAP, CORBA and DCOM.

Sandboxing is mostly a mobile OS thing, with devs clamouring against it on their desktops.

Many give up on open source, make use of SaaS, or switch to commercial because people leech their work and they need to pay bills.

Linux desktop is 1% of world market and keeps being plagued with audio, 3D drivers and lack of hardware acceleration for video decoding in browsers.

I kind of disagree.

<comment><USER2> > _Given how modern OSes still insist in using C derived languages at their > bottom layer, instead of the Pascal and Modulas from the 90 's._

On the other hand, the bottom layer is exposed to very little untrusted input nowadays, and the upper layers are mostly either using memory-safe programming languages, or languages with C++ with a ton of effective exploit mitigations (we owe much of that to PaX and grsecurity).

The days of Java, ActiveX and Flash browser exploits are long gone. Windows browser exploits have become so rare and complex that they're worth $1M+.

Still not ideal, but a lot better than it ever was.

> _How those RPC alternatives keep re-inventing the validation schemas, > performance optimization and code generation tooling of SOAP, CORBA and > DCOM._

SOAP and DCOM were big balls of mud with myriad compatibility and security issues. CORBA was a designed-by-committee disaster.

It appears that we're finally close to getting this right with Protobufs, gRPC and Cuelang.

> _Sandboxing is mostly a mobile OS thing, with devs clamouring against it on > their desktops._

Desktop apps have mostly been replaced by web apps, which have excellent sandboxing and fine-grained permissions. The only native desktop apps I run nowadays are highly specialized (like an IDE). The days of having to download and run a zoo of random third party applications are mostly gone. ChromeOS exists.

> _Many give up on open source, make use of SaaS, or switch to commercial > because people leech their work and they need to pay bills._

This is true for end-user applications because yes, bills need to paid. Exceptions apply - well-funded open source projects like Krita and Blender have managed to not only keep up with commercial competition, but surpass them.

The rise of SaaS had the side effect of VC and corporate money funding a _ton_ of open source libraries and infrastructure tooling, released under permissive licenses.

> _Linux desktop is 1% of world market and keeps being plagued with audio, 3D > drivers and lack of hardware acceleration for video decoding in browsers._

Last time I checked, it was ~3.5% if you include ChromeOS.

As long as you're careful to buy compatible hardware, audio, 3D, and hardware accelerated video decoding works just fine nowadays. I've been using a Linux desktop for more than ten years and I haven't had to mess with any hardware issues for the past four.

With ChromeOS and Crostini, you get a macOS-like experience where everything just works with zero fiddling and compatibility issues.

<comment><USER3> Mitigations that are Linux only and hardly effective, hence why Android is now going to require hardware pointer validation on Android 11.

Protobufs, gRPC are only a thing if one is on Google land and even then quite primitive tooling, versus what those other protocols offered.

Desktop apps are quite alive, specially on enterprise and domains like lifesciences laboratory automation, medical monitoring devices and plenty of other areas where a browser just doesn't cut it.

Krita and Blender are lucky to have good sponsors, a drop in the ocean of FOSS.

ChromeOS hardly counts as Linux, specially since not all devices are Crostini capable, and yes Steam hardware survey puts it at ruffly 1%.

I gave up on hunting for Linux hardware ages ago, Apple and Microsoft OSes and related hardware keep me happy when doing graphics programming.

As you see, we have to agree to disagree.

<comment><USER2> > _Mitigations that are Linux only and hardly effective, hence why Android is > now going to require hardware pointer validation on Android 11._

What do you mean by Linux only? Modern mitigations are very effective at increasing cost of exploitation and the underlying concepts are platform- independent - Windows, macOS and iOS follow similar approaches with similar results. If anything, Linux (both the kernel, and various userlands) has been trailing behind.

Pointer authentication is just the logical next step, just like CPU features like SMEP and SMAP superseded software-only implementations like PaX KERNEXEC/UDEREF. And yes, even hardware pointer authentication can be bypassed if someone tries hard enough.

Without moving to a memory safe language, memory corruption exploits will always be possible (just more and more expensive), and I'd love to use an OS kernel written in Rust. It has been exhaustively proven that even the world's best engineering teams are incapable of consistently writing safe C/C++ code - any line of C code exposed to untrusted input is a liability.

But meanwhile, I'm happy that the industry is finally investing in mitigations that kill some classes of bugs, and raise the bar for others, rather than only hunting for and fixing individual bugs.

> _Protobufs, gRPC are only a thing if one is on Google land and even then > quite primitive tooling, versus what those other protocols offered._

The simplicity, even at the cost of expressivity, are one of the best parts of Protobuf and gRPC. The unbounded complexity and feature set of approaches like SOAP or CORBA is the reason why they've failed.

gRPC has seen a lot of adoption outside of the Google ecosystem.

We probably both agree that REST and JSON were a mistake.

> _Desktop apps are quite alive, specially on enterprise and domains like > lifesciences laboratory automation, medical monitoring devices and plenty of > other areas where a browser just doesn 't cut it._

Those are highly niche use cases, and the UI for many of these will eventually move to the web platform, too. Even my dentist's office, which used to run on an antique Win32 application, is now using a next-generation web application built by the same vendor, that supersedes the Windows application. Hosted on a local server, not the cloud.

Very few applications _actually_ need low level hardware access, and sandboxing won't be a concern for these since they're typically the only thing running on the machine that's worth protecting to begin with.

> _ChromeOS hardly counts as Linux, specially since not all devices are > Crostini capable, and yes Steam hardware survey puts it at ruffly 1%._

Why wouldn't it count as Linux? It runs on the Linux kernel and with a slightly exotic, but fully open source userland. You can modify it and run it on your device (at the expense of boot integrity protection). ChromeOS shares a lot of code with other Linux distributions (like ModemManager, CUPS, the new Chrome renderer, a lot of work on upstreaming kernel driver improvements...).

Any recent ChromeOS device supports Crostini. If it doesn't, it's for reasons like "the CPU has no VT-x support", "this is a 32bit ARM CPU" or a potato CPU.

Steam hardware survey data is not representative.

> _I gave up on hunting for Linux hardware ages ago, Apple and Microsoft OSes > and related hardware keep me happy when doing graphics programming._

Agreed - graphics programming, especially the high performance kind, is best done on Windows. The tooling is just so much better. But for the kind of work I do - security research and systems engineering - GNU/Linux is perfect and hardware support is great.

> _As you see, we have to agree to disagree._

Thank you for this pleasant and interesting discussion, even if we ended up disagreeing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm married to a girl named Lan. Half the time I type in her name, it gets autocorrected to LAN, like she's some sort of robot.

<comment><USER5> The way you said that reminds me of a Wes Anderson movie, somehow it's funny but endearing at the same time.

I used to rent my parking space to my neighbor Mrs. SEO (a less common Korean name I suppose).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anybody remember Hamachi?

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

[https://vpn.net](https://vpn.net)

Tailscale is very much a successor to Hamachi. Hamachi was already "the 90s as a world of mesh networks on top of today's internet." Ive run into some client side issues with Tailscale on Windows, but when it works, it works great.

BUT, this blog post is the worst part of SEO. If you're going to blog with lots of keywords to build up google cred, communicate useful things, not just a weird nostalgia. I didnt find the story particularly compelling.

Also, and probably more importantly, the message of 'as long as the perimeter is secure, security within the lan is just a nuisance' is kind of odd. I dont know if that part of the 90s is the part worth reviving. Endpoints should not be trusted by default. (That isnt necessarily tailscales job, but dont market/sell the product as a "its super easy to connect EVERYTHING, security be damned." That is irresponsible to people who want to build connectivity but dont know what they are getting into. If this is an Apple like 'it just works' dont underplay the dangers.)

<comment><USER7> Sorry you didn't like the article :) We posted another one this past weekend called "How Tailscale works" that this crowd seems to enjoy more, at least based on upvotes: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22644357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22644357)

And yes, we do think of ourselves as a "modern Hamachi." Hamachi was great! (I'm from Tailscale)

<comment><USER6> I thought that article last week was much more interesting.

/Techsupport side note. I have a Windows laptop, and for the life of it the client will not connect to the service. How do I troubleshoot this thing? Its almost too simple. Are there logs? [https://i.imgur.com/QRLkQl1.png](https://i.imgur.com/QRLkQl1.png)

/And is there any way to get to test the magic dns? Will there be better ways to set up relay nodes, and then SEE the design of the network? Can I set up a relay node on Windows, and only for specific IP addresses instead of entire subnets?

/On the topic of "security within the lan is just a nuisance" I do appreciate this being more of a unix philosophy like single tool than kitchen sink. I do think there would be a market for a companion piece of cloud software that acts as a firewall orchestrator between devices, surfaces logs, allows you to block or allow specific connections between specific devices, and to visualize the activity of the mesh. It would be beneficial to be able to super quickly design a "all the field ipads can get to the server, but not each other" type network, while at the same time giving pcs more LAN like access, or being able to designate "edge/guests/clients" that can only connect to "servers." The two types of networks shouldnt need to be mutually exclusive.

/On the topic of other markets and use cases, and maybe this isnt what Tailscale ever wants to be, I think there is a huge opportunity for a pure software client Wireguard SD-WAN a la Velocloud. If I have two ISPs plugged into my network, let me define BOTH gateways as acceptable places for traffic outflow, and build simultaneous tunnels out both. Maybe load balance traffic between them, watch for packet loss, congestion, jitter, and correct accordingly. That extra redundancy of being able to lose a link and keep the path would be extraordinary.

<comment><USER7> (I'm from Tailscale) A few people have reported a failure for the Windows service to start, usually related to registry lockdowns. You can try running "start /w tailscale-ipn.exe /server" in a "admin mode command prompt" window and paste the messages in an email to support@tailscale and we can try to decode them. You can also compile tailscaled from [https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale](https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale) with a Windows target and it'll run on Windows, which makes it easier to explore any bugs.

Magic DNS isn't available for testing yet, but coming soon!

Our network diagnostic logs are based on [https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190216](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190216) and we do intend to surface those eventually to end users or at least network admins. Just need to work out the right API and security model for that.

As for access controls between devices, Tailscale already supports that but our docs are currently too vague. If you're using Tailscale, visit [https://login.tailscale.com/admin/acls](https://login.tailscale.com/admin/acls) to explore. Security policies you edit in there are immediately enforced by all nodes right away, so you can give some users access only to central servers, etc.

<comment><USER6> ACL admin page is perfect! Thanks.

MonitorDefaultRoutes: iphlpapi.GetIpInterfaceEntry: Element not found.

subprocess exited: exit status 1

<comment><USER7> Do you have wireguard installed on the same machine, by any chance? We currently have a conflicting version of wintun that might create problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> DN42, anyone? It's a large private network built on top of VPNs. In addition to connecting hackerspaces, you can have your own AS, be LIR, creating entities in the RIPE database, and experiment with BGP.

> _Since dn42 is very similar to the Internet, it can be used as a hands-on > testing ground for new ideas, or simply to learn real networking stuff that > you probably can 't do on the Internet (BGP multihoming, transit). The > biggest advantage when compared to the Internet: if you break something in > the network, you won't have any big network operator yelling angrily at > you._

[https://wiki.dn42.us/Home](https://wiki.dn42.us/Home)

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember those days when availability of cheap PCs enabled average people to write SW to run their businesses. I'm not very nostalgic about those days though. What else I remember: expensive SW on stacks of floppies, lots of incompatible network HW and protocols, crashy early versions of Windows and MacOS. I did love OS/2 when it came out, though, maybe I was the only one...

I think this is the golden age right now, you can still experience coding on small systems like microcontrollers or you can go up to any kind of OS and HW at practically no cost.

<comment><USER10> PCs sure didn't seem particularly cheap "back then"; at least, not for my "back then". $2300 in 1993 money for a 486/dx33 is over $4100 in today's money. I just bought a brand new, loaded MacBook Air for $1600.

<comment><USER11> IMHO early cheap PCs were machines like the Commodore 64, Apple IIe, and the like.

You could do business on those machines, with some limitations. We had a word processor on the Commodore 64 that through some black magic even managed to have a spellchecker. The big downside was that our 9 pin dot matrix printer couldn't print descenders so characters like g j and y were pushed up a couple of points.

I'm sure there are people on this board who can tell you about industrial equipment controlled via a dongle hanging off of the cartridge port on a C=64.

<comment><USER9> One of our early automated tools on the inkjet cartridge assembly line was controlled by a hp calculator that had an expansion slot. I think the app that opened and closed valves and actuators was written in BASIC. The workmanship of those things was at least as good as some modern PLCs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think he's got a point in that there was a simplicity in the past that was useful, but the counterpoint is we now have way more "coding power". The cost of that is a learning cost: you need to know a bunch of things before you can make a modern app.

I can see why someone new to coding might find it a little daunting. Here's some things you need to know a bit about before you can write most things:

\- Networking. What's a subnet mask? How does routing work? What's special about 10/8 and 192.168/16?

\- Security models. What do the letters AAA mean? How do you use oauth? You're told not to roll your own, so here you have to learn someone else's lib. And you can't avoid it completely, every OS requires some kind of account system with privileges/restrictions given to different users.

\- Drawing stuff models. How does a web page render? What about an Android, iOS, or a Windows form? Annoyingly I did all these things at some point, and they're not quite the same. Vocabulary varies, for instance.

\- How do you use libs in whatever language you're looking at? Again, there's a whole load and they're all similar but different.

\- How does git work? You're not gonna avoid getting something from github or similar. So now you need to have an idea of how git works, and the use model represented by github/gitlab/bitbucket etc.

But once you know most of these things, you can get a lot farther than you could on some 1990s small business network. You can shove stuff in the cloud for scaling or resilience, you can keep dependencies clean with various container-type stuff, you can put media on CDN, and so on.

<comment><USER13> >But once you know most of these things, you can get a lot farther than you could on some 1990s small business network. You can shove stuff in the cloud for scaling or resilience, you can keep dependencies clean with various container-type stuff, you can put media on CDN, and so on.

If those advantages are not important to you, you still have to pay the cost in learning all that complexity. Partly its the complexity, and partly its the rate of change. Nothing you write stays working on the web for long. You have to constantly keep jumping through the hoops in this crazy web-circus. Its "standards based" (i.e. controlled by Google in some way or other), but backwards compatibility and keeping things working is way more important to me personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have fond memories of playing multiplayer Atari ST games on a "LAN" comprised of a bunch of MIDI (and occasionally RS232) cables.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> It left me so stoked to see IPX mentioned in the first paragraph...

And disappointed to not see it mentioned in any of the comments.

The native support in many DOS applications and ease of configuration was a dream. As a kid setting up LAN games he nailed it with the header "The childhood magic".

edit: Fixed spelling mistake

<comment><USER16> Agreed - IPX & Netware were way ahead of anyone else until years after MS released Active Directory. I actually started out working working with IBM using Token Ring and installing Magde NIC Cards.

These days with NFV/SDN/Etc the "Network" is more a spaghetti of virtual circuits. Try drawing a diagram of east-west pod traffic using VMWare NSX/vSANs in a hyperconverged ACI overlay environment and you will run out of ink !

<comment><USER17> Still sorta remember my startnet.bat from '94ish:

        lsl
        3c50{3,5,9}
        ipxodi
        netx

        rem Somthing about F: drive goes here
        rem Then login

There was no fiddling with network or node addresses. I think networks were somehow configured thru the Netware server, but can't remember.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand the point this piece is trying to make.

> Could a part-time programmer like my father write small-business software > today? Could he make it as safe and productive as our LAN was? Maybe. If he > was canny, and stuck to old-fashioned desktops of the 90s and physically > isolated the machines from the internet. But there is no chance you could > get the records onto a modern phone safely (or even legally under HIPPA) > with the hours my father gave the project.

Sure.

> We can have the LAN-like experience of the 90's back again, and we can add > the best parts of the 21st century internet. A safe small space of people we > trust, where we can program away from the prying eyes of the multi-billion- > person internet. Where the outright villainous will be kept at bay by good > identity services and good crypto.

> The broader concept of virtualizing networks has existed forever: the > Virtual Private Network. New protocols make VPNs better than before, > Wireguard is pioneering easy and efficient tunneling between peers. Marry > the VPN to identity, and make it work anywhere, and you can have a virtual > 90s-style LAN made up of all your 21st century devices. Let the internet be > the dumb pipe, let your endpoints determine who they will talk to based on > the person at the other end.

OK, but we have VPNs now. The problem with keeping your medical records on a modern computer isn't that your modern computer isn't connected to your other computers. The problem is that it is! It's connected to your other computers just like it's connected to everybody else's computers. Your simulated LAN is not safe in the way the old LAN was until -- _as the article already noted_ \-- you disconnect it from the internet so it's an actual LAN.

So Tailscale has diagnosed the problem and recognized the solution. And they propose... to do something different. It's not clear what. How does their proposed solution address what they say is the problem?

\-----

Side note:

> (or even legally under HIPPA)

The relevant regulation is actually named HIPAA. I've always pronounced this as "hee-pah", which would make sense given the spelling. But that is not normal usage. People in medical fields universally seem to pronounce it as if were spelled "hippa". It's interesting to see that circle back the other way.

There's something strange about the flow "I don't know how to pronounce this. I'll pronounce it as if it were a different word." -> "This spelling is inappropriate. I'll spell it like it's pronounced." You end up with a spelling and a pronunciation that are both completely unrelated to the word you're notionally using. Eventually people will start to ask "how does HIPPA stand for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act?".

It's like when people ask "what does wifi stand for?" and I have to tell them "high fidelity".

<comment><USER19> "hee-pah" ... Is English your native language? Or did you perhaps study another language extensively?

I ask because "hee" isn't a likely pronunciation for "hi" for me unless it's Japanese that I'm looking at. Certain other languages, such as Spanish, I think might also get the same pronunciation.

But in English, it's pretty rare. Pronunciation as in "hit" or "high" are a lot more likely.

And once you've decided that it's "hi" as in "hit", the rest of the pronunciation just follows as "hip-uh". And yes, trying to spell from pronunciation comes back as "hippa".

"Hee-pah" wouldn't come out as HIPAA, though. It'd be HEPA or something, but that's actually already used and is pronounced "heppa" as in "head".

In short, there's no real good way to pronounce a lot of acronyms that doesn't end up with some kind of pronunciation or spelling problem at some point. And people generally just go with what sprung to mind first.

<comment><USER18> > Certain other languages, such as Spanish, I think might also get the same > pronunciation.

Most languages, if they use Roman letters, use "i" to indicate the FLEECE vowel. (That is, the vowel used in the English word "fleece".) English is the odd man out for vowel pronunciation, due to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift) .

Spanish follows the ordinary pronunciation of "i". It doesn't for "h"; the letter "h" in Spanish is silent. So you wouldn't get "hee" from "hi", you'd get "ee". (Compare, say, the Spanish word hija, "daughter", best approximated by the English syllables "ee-hah".)

> Is English your native language? Or did you perhaps study another language > extensively?

Yes, English is my native language. However, the word "hipaa" is so obviously impossible as an English word that I consider it normal to use the pronunciation conventions for foreign words.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I thought of that bit about Spanish afterwords, but left it anyhow.

I can't speak for the rest of the world, but most Americans don't consider pronunciations in other languages, possibly because they generally don't know a second language anyhow. And since HIPAA (almost wrote HIPPA!) is a US thing, I don't see foreign pronunciation entering into it much.

I wish more people would learn a second language. It can be really enriching. The key, IMO, is to pick a language that you'll enjoy using somehow. For me, it was Japanese, because I enjoyed a lot of Japanese media as a teen, and continue to do so as an adult.

I'm seeing a lot more foreign content on Netflix lately, and Brazilian seems like it'd be a good choice for a second language, if you're into TV shows.

<comment><USER18> Viki has a lot of foreign (Asian) media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like the entire premise of this article is flawed. "Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web site is not fun." Maybe it's not fun for him, but I find both of those things fascinating and enjoyed learning them.

And with all of his talk about how it wouldn't be possible for someone to crap out medical records software like his father did: GOOD! Let's be real, that software was almost certainly crap and full of bugs. It's not the type of thing that an amateur should be writing on his lunch break.

It sounds to me like this guy wants to be able to make important software without actually learning to program for real.

<comment><USER21> > "Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web site is not > fun."

I think it's more that correctly implementing security is hard, and if you have no interest in exposing your application to the greater internet you shouldn't be shouldered with the burden of both gaining and maintaining an understanding of the state-of-the-art in web security.

> Let's be real, that software was almost certainly crap and full of bugs. > It's not the type of thing that an amateur should be writing on his lunch > break.

Nope; computer systems were simpler, and so they were easier to program correctly. There is tons of high quality hobbyist software from the 80s and 90s.

> It sounds to me like this guy wants to be able to make important software > without actually learning to program for real.

The author of that blog is one of the most skilled programmers I have known.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Slightly off topic, but my friends and I still host LAN parties. They are still amazing

<comment><USER23> Do you play the same games from 'back then' or are there some modern ones that work too?

<comment><USER24> Depends on how you define modern, but I've been at a lan party in which people played games such as Left4Dead 2, Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Url changed from [https://tailscale.com/blog/remembering-the- lan/](https://tailscale.com/blog/remembering-the-lan/), which points to this.

There was a small thread back in January: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22173983)

</comment><comment><USER26> Part of it was probably that older computers had a set form factor. You could recognize a C64 or an Amiga when you walked in the door. These days they all look the same.

On a different note I find myself pondering the similarities between the spread of malware now that everything is online 24/7, and the spread of illnesses in an era of cheap and fast air travel.</comment>


MIT launches student-produced educational video initiative - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/k-12-education-video-initiative-0425.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a K-12 Initiative - so a different target audience than MITx.</comment>


Apple Expands Subscription Service to Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-22/apple-lets-big-fish-games-offer-ipad-subscription-a-first-for-video-games.html

<comment><USER2> How long until you're unable to finish writing a paper because you forgot to renew your subscription to the Pages app?

<comment><USER3> lol</comment></comment>