PCSX2 1.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://pcsx2.net/244-pcsx2-1-0-released.html The best ps2 (PCSX2) emulator is out with new major version <comment><USER2> What always annoys me in emulation is how it always reacts so bad to slowdown. Was trying to get my Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on, but apparently my poor Core 2 Duo E6600 and GTX 275 couldn't handle it. I was getting 30fps - which would be fine in a regular game, but in an emulator actually means playing the game at half speed (full speed being 60fps). Including the music, which, well, that was interesting.

Still, I'm glad to see progress being made in emulation. I think it's extremely important that we will have access to gaming history for a long time to come, even after most of the hardware has died or simply can't be hooked up to modern TV systems.

Seems like the next big step will be Xbox 1 emulation, which no one has tackled yet. Anyone know why?

<comment><USER3> An interesting article demonstrating the performance dependency of emulation: [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes- power-o...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one- mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/)

<comment><USER4> IMO, post author is an idiot: Nesticle/Nesticle95 did not required patches to NES games, it was that most time-consuming parts were written in assembly (6202 CPU, PPU, and sound synthesis).

Also back in 1996, the Snes96 SNES emulator ran some games at almolst playable speed on 486-DX4 @100MHz (ones not requiring DSP nor "mode 7"), few years later NLKSNES was even faster, being even full frame rate (less accurate, though). IMO, a SNES emulator requiring 3GHz means brain-dead implementation, simple as that (even emulating per-line effects -HSYNC IRQ with palette changes-, custom chips DSP1/FX/FX2 or even a second 65816 found in some cartridges for doing RLE decompression, etc.).

<comment><USER5> > IMO, a SNES emulator requiring 3GHz means brain-dead implementation, simple > as that

No, it means _accurate_ implementation. That doesn't mean accurate gameplay (which many inaccurate emulators achieve), but proper accurate _emulation_. You should really, really read up on byuu's work; he's probably the best developer in emulation at this point.

<comment><USER4> Even for accurate SNES emulation implementation, 3GHz (on 3 way OooE CPU with massive SIMD capabilities -e.g. Core2Duo, Core iX, or modern AMD-), is crazy. BTW, my evaluation was based on his article, not on his reputation.

<comment><USER5> No, it's not crazy at all. There's a massive amount of synchronization that has to be done between, say, the CPU and PPU. It's not possible to even do per-pixel synchronization right now, which is why line-based sync is in use. Have you read the source? The implementation is brilliant, even if it is "slow".

<comment><USER4> Per-pixel synchronization makes sense on systems writing pixels directly to the CRT, like the case of Atari 2600, which has no framebuffer at all, and required accurate CPU timing for writing to the DAC (Atari 2600 TIA).

In case of the SNES, or any tile-based 8 and 16 bit console, IMO, the only accurate synchronization required is per-line (HSYNC) and per-frame (VSYNC), in most cases. If a SNES game, for perfect emulation, requires higher than per-line synchronization, it was not properly written (complex multiprocessors systems with CPUs, coprocessors, DMA, rely on interrupts for synchronization, although some per-cycle heterogeneous memory access thing was used as anti- copy protection, timer handling, etc.).

<comment><USER6> > If a SNES game, for perfect emulation, requires higher than per-line > synchronization, it was not properly written

That's the whole point. There are games that did crazy stuff, and don't work well on many emulators. Perfect emulation requires software simulation of these crazy exploitations of the hardware.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but 3GHz of a modern OooE CPU (with at least 3 instruction per clock, capable of massive SIMD)? Come on. Also, from desktop snapshot, in task manager it showed 4 CPUs, with 3 of them at almost 100% (!). It reminds me the comparison between Git and Monotone made by Linus Torvalds. I find no reason in the Earth for perfect SNES emulation with just _one_ core of a modern OooE CPU and 1-1.5GHz (with GPU assistance for stretch and filtering/postprocess), even written in C, with no SIMD assembly at all (SNES 65816 CPU was running at maximum speed of 3.58 MHz, being its coprocessors even slower).

<comment><USER7> > Also, from desktop snapshot, in task manager it showed 4 CPUs, with 3 of > them at almost 100%

The Ars Technica image guy made that screenshot. It wasn't from running my emulator, which is strictly single-core (for a whole host of reasons I won't get into.)

Your guess is as good as mine why he chose that screenshot, I didn't know about it until after the article was published.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the answer, byuu. Don't get me wrong, your emulator is great, and I apreciate very much your commitment with open source. I simply pointed about the Nesticle patches were not necessary for speeding up the emulation, and that 3GHz was overkill, in my opinion. I bet in the future it will be much faster, no mater if is optimized by yourself o by others (I understand that may be optimization is not your goal, my point is just that the 3GHz is not a requirement just because precission, but because of current implementation). Best regards, and please, excuse me for telling you "idiot" in a previous post, change it by "innacurate" (Nesticle thing) and "incomplete" (3GHz required not only because accuracy, but also because current implementation limitations).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting project, but is anyone else put out by whatever frame-destroying script-fu their webpage does? Your site shouldn't forcibly rip me out of my reader app, please.

</comment><comment><USER9> So let's say I have my copy of Burnout 3, possibly the best arcade racer on the PS2, sitting on the desk in front of me, and I just downloaded the Mac version of PCX2. What all currently stands between me and some classic Road Rage mode on my Mac?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically you just need to install (the "full isntaller" install the main plugin) and put your bios on bios folder and then you make an ISO of you own copy and that's it! Go to menu File Run ISO, done!

For sure, you can experiment changing video .... and so on!

<comment><USER9> Is there any specific kind of DVD drive I need to image the disc, or will the one in my MacBook Pro be able to read it?

<comment><USER10> Your Macbook should be fine, I'd probably use Disc Utility to dump the disc to an ISO if you have the space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These guys have been in development a long time. I remember playing on version 9.7 and 9.8 and it was really solid back then.

I wonder how long it will take before we see PS2 emulated on android devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is not that long! It relies mainly on cpu power (even though gpu counts as well)! Maybe the new multicore devices will be able to play it with low fps

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone what are good sites to find n get more info on roms and emulators

<comment><USER13> Rules 1 and 2 of emulation have always been, for good reason, "You do not ask about roms". Seriously. Dump them yourself if you own them, or use google-fu to find them elsewhere. Nobody here is going to help you find warez.

As far as emulator information, I've always been a fan of zophar.net or emulation64.com

<comment><USER14> I have fond memories of emulation/translation forums circa 00. Waiting for a complete translation of Tales Of Phantasia has been an exhilerating experience.

BTW, I designed the icons for the firt Mac port of PCSX(1) back in the days.

Those were good times.

(1) <http://pcsx.gpost.dk/>

<comment><USER13> Likewise.. the amount of time spent looking for various emulators (and yes, roms) is something I remember somewhat fondly from those days.

For me, the game to beat was Star Ocean on the SNES, came out 1/1/2003.. the last translation that DeJap ever did.

<comment><USER14> I discovered Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia at the same time, in 2001. TOP was finished but SO was not translated (or maybe only item names…) and I remember being so impatient that I printed a walkthrough and played about one third of it in Japanese in the summer of 2002. I wanted to play it so badly that it pushed me to register on many forums at that time.

And now I can't even remember my usernames or even the name of some of the the forums I joined.

Do you remember Silhouette? That's the first SNES emulator I've used, back in 1996 or 1997. A friend gave it to me along with 4 roms, including Chrono Trigger. I wasn't into Video Games before that…</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a fitness wristband that is hackable? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a wristband/watch/"thing on the arm" with GPS, heart monitor and pedometer(accel+gyro).
I looked at what is on the market, but sending my bio metrics to fitbit or garmin servers is not something I want to do.
Is there a fitness tracker band that is hackable in a sense that I can get the data out of it without proprietary software? I don't mind the firmware being closed source, as long as there is no LTE. I just want to sync and manage my data myself. <comment><USER3> Pretty much any Garmin device does exactly what you're looking for. All of the activity data on my fēnix 5 / VA HR is visible when I plug in via USB. The data is encoded in the FIT file format, which has a public SDK [1] (you do need to accept a license agreement to view it, though, if that matters). There are wrappers for most languages and if you want to just translate the data to CSV, there are pre-made tools to do that too.

I don't think you need to enable sync, so keeping the data local wouldn't be an issue. AFAIK, you should just be able to use the Garmin Connect software once to set up the watch, and that's it.

The great thing about the Garmin watches is that pretty much any fitness hardware that uses ANT+ will work with them. ANT+ is also an open protocol so you're not locked in with a specific manufacturer.

[1]: [https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit](https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit)

<comment><USER4> I am unwilling to accept an SDK's license in order to view my own data produced by my own hardware.

So, a couple years ago, I wrote a bash-wrapper [1] to Suto's perl FIT-parsing library [2]. With a quick search, I see that others may have extended Suto's work [3].

I'm pro-Garmin but can't understand hiding a measurement instrument's output format behind a closed-door license.

[1] [https://github.com/4kbt/ParseVivosmartHR](https://github.com/4kbt/ParseVivosmartHR)

[2] [http://pub.ks-and-ks.ne.jp/cycling/GarminFIT.shtml](http://pub.ks-and- ks.ne.jp/cycling/GarminFIT.shtml)

[3] [https://github.com/mrihtar/Garmin-FIT](https://github.com/mrihtar/Garmin- FIT)

<comment><USER5> Isn't SDK licensing pretty normal, outside of open source?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > outside of open source

Yes? By definition, if it's not open source, then you're looking at a proprietary license of some sort.

<comment><USER6> That's not by definition at all- a work can be open source with a "proprietary license of some sort", or closed source, with source that's liberally licensed- but never published.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h "Shared source"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a number of Chinese generic activity trackers containing the Nordic nrf52832 MCU and a GPS module which are easily hacked and would meet all your needs. Search for "nrf52832 gps bracelet" or "nordic gps bracelet" on Aliexpress, Banggood, ebay etc. For example: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/KINCO-OLED-GPS-Activity- Trac...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/KINCO-OLED-GPS-Activity-Tracker- Pedometer-Calorie-Burning-Heart-Rate-Sleep-Monitor-Smart-Wristband-Bracelet- for/32831527367.html) Components: Nordic nrf52832/ARM Cortex M4 MCU, Kionix KX023 accelerometer, Ublox GPS module, 200mAh battery, 0.96" OLED screen. This can be programmed using the Nordic SDK with Keil, ARM mbed, Sandeep's Arduino Core for nrf5X etc.

<comment><USER8> Might be easily hacked, but has anybody hacked them?

I contacted a few sellers on Aliexpress because I wanted to see how many I had to order to get them to give me the source code so I could make a value-added product from them but it was beyond what I was willing to invest.

<comment><USER7> I have hacked the MCU and accelerorometer. Haven't gotten around to the GPS yet, lots of projects and this isn't at the top of the list. Its just hardware, all the components are well known, you can just lookup datasheets and go from there. I can post microscope pics of the PCB if you like. What is the best way to post/link pics on HN?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you have an iPhone, an Apple Watch meets your description perfectly. It has GPS, heart monitor, and pedometer data, and stores it in your local HealthKit database, which you can easily read and write with your own Swift code running on an iPhone. You can also write apps for the watch directly, and there is a non-LTE model.

<comment><USER10> _> you can easily read and write with your own Swift code running on an iPhone_

... after easily paying your Apple Developer Subscription, that is.

<comment><USER11> No, there is no charge unless you start to put apps on the App Store.

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees- casual-i...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees-casual-ios- developers-of-membership-requirement.html)

<comment><USER12> The app will only run on your phone for 7 days[1] unless you pay Apple an annual fee, which is a non-starter if you want to write an app that you will actually use instead of merely test.

No such restrictions on Android, Windows, or other platforms. Moto Sport 360[2] looks like it will fit OP's requirements.

[1] [http://mybyways.com/blog/new-limitations-imposed-on-free- app...](http://mybyways.com/blog/new-limitations-imposed-on-free-apple- developer-account)

[2] [https://www.motorola.ca/products/moto-360-sport#Specificatio...](https://www.motorola.ca/products/moto-360-sport#Specifications)

<comment><USER13> > which is a non-starter if you want to write an app that you will actually > use instead of merely test.

You're assuming OP doesn't want to pay for a developer account. They didn't say that.

Also, OP said they wanted to get data out of the device. The Health app has an export function. So no, you don't need to pay to do what OP wants.

I would take an Apple Watch + paid developer account any day of the week over Android Wear.

<comment><USER12> > I would take an Apple Watch + paid developer account any day of the week > over Android Wear.

You've given no reason why. You're assuming OP is a mindless fanboy who will pay for something that has a free and more hackable alternative.

<comment><USER13> > You've given no reason why.

I don't have to. It's my opinion.

> You're assuming OP is a mindless fanboy who will pay for something that has > a free and more hackable alternative.

I'm sure that's your neckbeard interpretation. There's a reason the Apple Watch is the most popular smart watch by far. You probably think it's solely due to marketing. You would be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazfit Pace [1]

I just bought one for ~£80 from Gearbest and you can pull the GPX routes from it, and also add routes. You can access all of the files, by plugging a USB lead into the charging dock. It then appears as a USB drive that you can copy files to and from. I've designed my own watch face, as it's just XML and image files and taken GPX data. I'm not sure how or if you can get the heartrate or pedometer data but there is a community on XDA [2] around it so they might be able to help.

The thing that I'm most impressed by is the screen. It is a transreflective display which means that it is always on and just uses the latent light for you to be able to see it, much like a black and white LCD. It does have a backlight, but you only need to put this on when it is dark and you actually need to see the display - much like watches used to be.

1\. [https://us.amazfit.com/shop/pace?variant=25112](https://us.amazfit.com/shop/pace?variant=25112)

2\. [https://forum.xda-developers.com/smartwatch/amazfit](https://forum.xda- developers.com/smartwatch/amazfit)

<comment><USER15> No.

I bought it when Pebble went down. That thing was buggy forever after, half Chinese most of the time, only allowed sync to a random online service (strava?) and was just.. broken. The worst purchase ever.

The display sucks outside. The software is weird (swipe in random directions to find what you want), the companion app miserable.

Whatever you buy, this shouldn't be it.

A better Pebble would be appreciated ofc..

<comment><USER10> Strava is hardly "random", it's very popular in UK with cyclists and runners.

<comment><USER15> Random in so far as that I don't use it, don't want to sign up for it. A random cloud service and just ONE random cloud service.

When I got it, you couldn't even see your own data on your phone. HR? Steps? GPS? Stava or gone, poof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you are hardware inclined and can use something else for GPS, some of the inexpensive fitness bands from Asia contain Nordic nRF51 / nRF52 microcontrollers and are completely reprogrammable. Roger Clark's site has some good info including [http://www.rogerclark.net/arduino-on-the-id100hr- fitness-tra...](http://www.rogerclark.net/arduino-on-the-id100hr-fitness- tracker/) (I believe the watch pictured is actually an ID107HR, not an ID100HR) The ID107HR is nice because it opens with a few screws rather than cracking glue apart and it also exposes the programming pads. You can write Arduino code and interface with the heart rate sensor, accelerometer, OLED screen, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if I'm more inclined towards an easier solution like the Garmin for fitness tracking, this looks interesting for pure tinkering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few years back, I played around with TI's EZ430-Chronos: [http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos?DCMP=C...](http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos?DCMP=Chronos&HQS=Other+OT+chronoswiki) It's not sleek like modern fitness bands/watches but is hackable.

TI has more Smart Watch components and reference designs here: [http://www.ti.com/solution/smart-watch](http://www.ti.com/solution/smart- watch)

<comment><USER18> Chronos is cool, and definitely hacker-friendly, but it's not a proper fitness watch per se - it's just a demonstration TI made for their CC430 chips. Doesn't have much computational power or sensors onboard, but it features an 433/868/915 MHz radio (frequency depends on the model you pick) - and I mean _actual, hackable radio_ \- and it lasts forever on a coin cell.

I had lots of fun tinkering with it, but it's not really what the OP is looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How about something supported by Gadgetbridge[1]?

Or someone looks to be building their own Smartwatch[2]

[1] [https://gadgetbridge.org/](https://gadgetbridge.org/) [2] [https://github.com/no-go/UART- Smartwatch/blob/HEAD/README.md](https://github.com/no-go/UART- Smartwatch/blob/HEAD/README.md)

<comment><AUTHOR> That could be a solution, but I'm a bit wary of this kind of solution because the the support could be dropped any day if the manufacturer closes the device. Of course, I could keep an older firmware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you want to do a _lot_ of hacking, I was just looking at the Hexiwear: [http://www.hexiwear.com](http://www.hexiwear.com)

It's an ARM dev board with screen in a watch-like form factor. It has all the hardware you're looking for except GPS, but they sell a lot of add-on modules.

I say "a lot of hacking" because I imagine you'd have to write all the fitness tracking software yourself, unless you find something similar on [https://www.hackster.io/contests/Hexiwear](https://www.hackster.io/contests/Hexiwear)

</comment><comment><USER21> Samsung's latest generations of fitness wearables (e.g. Gear Fit 2) run the Tizen OS, which is a complete Linux stack. You can actually SSH into the wearable over wi-fi.

The development stack is kind of a mess, but if you know Linux, I would look at those.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. I had assumed Tizen was a greatly reduced Linux-inspired OS. Do you have a source for the ability to SSH?

Might it not be easier to have an Android app that grabs data from the watch using their API?

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40233692/how-to- integrat...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40233692/how-to-integrate- samsung-gear-steps-in-android-application/40529913#40529913)

<comment><USER21> _Do you have a source for the ability to SSH?_

I've used it myself on several models: Gear S2, Gear S3, Gear Fit 2.

Tizen is a full Linux. If I remember correctly, it even runs X for the GUI (although I think it's been replaced with Wayland in Tizen 3).

<comment><USER22> Ok cool.

But how is it that you are managing to connect via SSH? When connected over wifi, it seems that only port 53 is open on the Gear S3, and it doesn't accept SSH. And I don't know the user name nor password. And I don't see a way to open a terminal on the watch.

Googling doesn't seem to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't the Garmin watches still have USB access to the file system?

The old ones did, and even the newest Garmin Edge series cycling computers let you do this. They run (mostly) the same firmware as the (high-end) watches, so I'd be surprised if they don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be interesting to know. As long as the files are not obfuscated too much that could be a solution (I'd like to avoid having to reverse engineer a binary format).

<comment><USER24> Activities are stored in the FIT format, which is publicly documented and they have a rather easy to use sdk available for it as well[0]. Its fairly trivial to get other daily metrics out of the watch as well using Connect IQ, you can even write out to a plain text log file if you want.

[0]: [https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit/](https://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great. Filesystem access and open format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pebble. Someone installed linux on one and they're extraordinarily cheap to pick up now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at Pebble and I was surprised to see they were out of business.

<comment><USER25> Which, from your point of view, isn't a bad thing. It's no longer dependant on external servers, yet still enjoys a lot of support, is easy to code for, plus it's superb as smart watches go. Charging 3 times a month rather than every night means you can track your sleep with it effectively as well.

<comment><USER26> What is the battery life difference you mention? The lack of external servers or do you mean because it'll have linux on it now?

<comment><USER27> I understood the comment to be referring to other fancier smartwatches that are designed around ~daily charging.

<comment><USER26> Aaah, makes a lot of sense! Thank you for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm currently using a logitech keyboard and mouse that support their new feature 'flow' that allows your keyboard and mouse to switch which computer they are paired with when the mouse goes to the edge of the screen. Now it seems that to support this feature, they must have the ability for the computer to instruct the keyboard and mouse to switch to one of the other paired computers. I would very much like to have the capability of doing that in my own code, but it seems to only be available through the official logitech app (that rarely works for my setup).

I've got an ereader that requires me to plug in to transfer epubs that I've downloaded onto it. If it were hackable, I'd be able to run a wifi sync program on it and my experience would be _much_ better. It integrates with pocket, but I use pinboard.in and would like it to integrate with that instead. The default software doesn't give me a choice.

I've often wanted to purchase things based on their hackability - <USER2> routers, keyboard, mouse, sd cards, voip adapters, game controllers, cameras, e-readers, mobile phones, webcams....

But I often find it very difficult to find up to date information about what is user-hackable and what isn't. If this information were easier to find, it would affect my buying decisions more and would create more incentive for manufacturers to consider making their devices hackable.

<comment><USER29> Logitech flow looks interesting. From the 30 seconds I scanned the page about it, it seems the computers need to be on the same network. So this could be as "simple" as running tcp client on each machine. When the current active machine notices that the mouse left the edge of the current screen it disables the keyboard and mouse on current machine, sends a notification to the other computer and enables keyboard and mouse there. Custom USB drivers could likely handle disabling and enabling the keyboard and mouse just fine, but I've never written one, so maybe I'm wrong.

Edit: I was speaking more generically here. I doubt one could get the actual Logitech mouse and keyboard protocol and so couldn't implement an open source flow clone.

<comment><USER30> Synergy ([https://symless.com/synergy](https://symless.com/synergy)) does exactly this, cross platform, and really effectively.

You don't need to write your own using a Logitech driver - it works with any standard keyboard / mouse.

<comment><USER31> Synergy stopped working for me one day, and it seems all machines have to use the same version. And they pivoted from free to charging for money.

I guess Logitech is doing the same thing, but if they actually implemented it by unpairing the input devices from one receiver and pairing it to the other, that would be cool, it means I can turn off the unpaired computer, and input still works on the paired machine.

<comment><USER32> It's still open source. So you can compile it yourself, if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how practical it is to create "thing" with no exposed face, no wireless, no connectivity _. It 'd provide continual heart rate and respiration monitoring. A few dedicated buttons that just log when they're pressed - when parsing the data you can map that to whatever meaning you want. Offload csv files via USB, and do with it what you wish.

_ perhaps bluetooth so the would-be hacker could write a phone app to present data

<comment><USER34> I would by "thing" with nothing more than:

> A few dedicated buttons that just log when they're pressed - when parsing > the data you can map that to whatever meaning you want.

<comment><USER35> Would you mind sharing what would you use such a thing for? Counting events or timestamping them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Some people have hacked the fitbit's synching to save to your personal computer instead of to their servers. I haven't done it since I went with the FitBit Ionic, and it auto syncs. I do like how easy it is to make apps for it though.

Edit: Check out Shimmer:

[http://www.getshimmer.co/](http://www.getshimmer.co/)

Apparently syncs with different devices.

<comment><USER37> Are you sure? It looks like it does requests to the Fitbit servers.

I've done some reverse engineering myself at [https://github.com/mrquincle/fitbit- fatbat](https://github.com/mrquincle/fitbit-fatbat), which gets part of the data from the early devices. However, I'm not aware of anyone cracking the encryption and obtaining the rest of the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> These guys started from a kickstarter 3 or 4 years ago, and are still in business. I bought one but never had time to use it. [https://mbientlab.com/](https://mbientlab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Some time ago we've developed a nice hackable platform for geeks: [https://www.aidlab.com/developer](https://www.aidlab.com/developer) \- it's based on wearable called Aidlab. With our free SDK (that has Python, Unity, iOS and Android bindings), you are able to do with your data whatever you want.

<comment><USER40> Is it not a watch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm not sure if this really fulfills your "without proprietary software" criteria, but Polar recently announced that they've opened up their API for developers. I believe you do need to have a Polar Flow account though, so the API access works along the same lines as the Google API, i.e. using OAuth 2.0 authentication that connects to your Polar Flow account, which the watch syncs to via phone/wifi. So there's no LTE, but the watch does sync to the Polar Flow account in the cloud via phone/wifi. Their M600 watch is an Android Wear device though, so it might be possible to write an app for that to access the data directly, but I'm really not sure about that part.

[https://www.polar.com/en/developers](https://www.polar.com/en/developers)

</comment><comment><USER42> Why not just use ANT+ devices and get an ANT+ HR strap and use something like [Python ANT]([https://github.com/mvillalba/python- ant](https://github.com/mvillalba/python-ant))?

</comment><comment><USER43> If you can go without GPS maybe have a look at the MI Band 2.. afaik there is sone kind of third party app android that allows you to sync and export the data without the mi software..

<comment><USER44> Was going to say this; you may be referring to [https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge](https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge)

The devices have the advantage of being very cheap; I've bought two for £15 each. I'm kind of surprised there isn't an open project on them. The chip is Dialog Semi with the usual Cortex M0: [https://www.dialog- semiconductor.com/products/connectivity/b...](https://www.dialog- semiconductor.com/products/connectivity/bluetooth-low-energy/smartbond- da14580)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't use them myself (for now decided to stay low-tech with a simple Casio watch), but from my recent research it seems there exist usable open source software packages for TomTom watches.

[http://blog.studioblueplanet.net/?page_id=566](http://blog.studioblueplanet.net/?page_id=566)

[https://github.com/ryanbinns/ttwatch](https://github.com/ryanbinns/ttwatch)

</comment><comment><USER46> Oura Ring ([https://ouraring.com/](https://ouraring.com/)) has a solid cloud API.

However:

1\. No GPS 2\. Sleep and activity metrics are digested time slices, not raw measurements. 3\. Gen-1 only has night time HR, and gen-2 isn't out till April.

<comment><USER47> A "cloud API" is exactly the opposite of what the OP is looking for. Why can't we get data out of our devices without having to transmit it to their servers, or through black-box software?

I definitely expect better treatment of privacy from a young nordic company like Oura. The product looks pretty great, so I would be a hugely loyal customer if they fixed these privacy issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> On a related note, is there a wristband with a vibrating alarm clock that can set multiple alarm times and doesn't need a phone to trigger it?

I'd like to pre-program the wristband to wake me up in case my phone (my main alarm clock) turns off for some reason.

<comment><USER49> I found this on Reddit... [https://www.reddit.com/r/deaf/comments/28dvr8/vibrating_watc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/deaf/comments/28dvr8/vibrating_watch/)

Hope that helps!

<comment><USER48> Some good discussion, but I still didn't find a suitable product.

Someone recommended the Casio Pathfinder (doesn't need a phone!), but the Casio ProTrek WSD-F20 model that has multiple alarms costs $500. I could buy another phone for cheaper.

It seems like a good discussion group for another idea I had about vibrating wristbands linking to a GPS app to give directions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Pricey, but there's a project to get the data off of Suunto Ambit watches: [https://github.com/openambitproject/openambit](https://github.com/openambitproject/openambit)

</comment><comment><USER51> I have a Garmin Forerunner FR220. When plugged into a Windows 7 computer by the USB device, it shows up as a USB Mass Storage Device, initializing a "Garmin FR620 Flash USB Device", and connects as FAT formatted Flash storage.

Seeing 620 does cause me a bit of annoyance, as I know that my 220, which lacks a number of features of the 620, watch is physically identical just with the speed inhibitor turned off [1]. Makes me miss my TI 430 Chronos, but that didn't have GPS. The FR225 is the first version with the optical heart rate monitor, but I believe it and the current FR235 will behave similarly.

All the activity data is stored on the mass storage device in .FIT files. Here's an example file [2] which you can compare to my Strava upload at [3]. Use the tools at [4] to convert and edit it into GPX format, and the schema at [5] to tease out pedometer/heart rate data from this XML text. You'll probably end up using GPSBabel [6] to analyze it.

Garmin is probably the most common activity tracker for actually running, biking and so on. For just sleep tracking and resting heart rate tracking, or daily step counters, Fitbits that lack GPS are much more popular. But they don't allow manual export of data [7]:

> _Welcome to the Fitbit Family @JohnDiver! The stored data on your Fitbit > Flex can be taken out only via Bluetooth with an internet connection. It can > be synchronized with a computer or with a supported mobile device. Your > tracker stores at least 7 days of detailed minute-by-minute data. Summary > data (calories, distance, and steps) will be stored for 30 days. If you are > experiencing syncing issues, please take a look at the basic troubleshooting > steps._

> _If the above doesn 't help you please let us know what type of difficulties > are you having to transfer your data to your Dashboard? Looking forward to > your new comments!_

The new Garmins do have activity tracking features; I'd be interested to see if their data can be accessed as easily as the .FIT activity files.

[1]: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and- rubber-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber- duckies/)

[2]: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6sBu3XaQgUyTyAhO1Oz7jKL0hx...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6sBu3XaQgUyTyAhO1Oz7jKL0hxCkymH/view?usp=sharing)

[3]: [https://www.strava.com/activities/1287343609](https://www.strava.com/activities/1287343609)

[4]: [https://www.dcrainmaker.com/tools](https://www.dcrainmaker.com/tools)

[5]: [https://www8.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrackPointExtensionv2.xsd](https://www8.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrackPointExtensionv2.xsd)

[6]: [https://www.gpsbabel.org/](https://www.gpsbabel.org/)

[7]: [https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Flex/Retrieve-raw-data- from-...](https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Flex/Retrieve-raw-data-from-tracker- Access-steps-files-like-a-USB-device/td-p/737434)

</comment><comment><USER52> Is there a way to extract real time information from a Fitbit or similar fitness wristband? I'd love to push running data to a display I can see as I jog by.

<comment><USER53> Only Ionic. For other Fitbits you have to get data from the api later.

<comment><USER52> Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The was the "angel" on indiegogo - but they tanked before delivering any of the "perks" (product). I lost $249 there - still a bit sore!

<comment><USER55> FWIW, I switched my order to the stripped-down "angel" and did eventually receive it but it was non-working junk. Some sensors didn't work; others produced garbage for data. So disappointing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> motoactv fits the bill also.

I even hacked it's golf database to update for the Torrey Pines North redesign which occurred last year.

For the other data pulls, the xda folks did that.

Garmin may also work, depending your use case. I couldn't get golf working without their service, so I leave it unused. used some java library found online to parse their .fit files within an android app, so can get data on my phone without going through their servers.

</comment><comment><USER57> From a fitness & android perspective - android wear has very few devices with many of the useful sensors in one watch.

I have recently ordered a TIQwatch from the most recent kickstarter and hope between it, TaskerWear, etc, that it might be the first androidwear device that values both sensors and optimizing battery life. I know I should be able to get at the data in it how I want. Companies like Samsung have left AndroidWear.

The watch is reasonably priced compared to alternatives, and I hope may be the first smartwatch I end up keeping.

</comment><comment><USER58> Apple Watch fits your description.

</comment><comment><USER59> Anything is hackable.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, I hacked the rear view camera of my car to draw guide lines connected to the wheel position using a pi[1], but it took me tons of effort to reverse engineer the wiring system and CANBUS of my car, I learned a lot (CANBUS is a lot of fun:P), but I don't want that level of involvement here.

But I'd like something easier to work with, the "data accessible on the filesystem" of the Garmin seems to be the perfect balance between effort and "hackability".

[1]: [https://github.com/kuon/backup-camera](https://github.com/kuon/backup- camera)

<comment><USER60> Having worked extensively with CANBUS and other vehicle interfaces, I cannot remember ever using the word "fun" to describe that line of hacking... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> add music to your list and the options drop to zero. :)</comment>


Show HN: HtmlWasher – An HTML cleanup tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.htmlwasher.com/ <comment><USER2> The washer makes an XHR to /ajax/paste to do the 'washing'.

Seems like this could be done in JavaScript without an XHR, and not send your info to them.

However, [https://www.htmlwasher.com/privacy/](https://www.htmlwasher.com/privacy/):

"The Operator may collect the personal data, such as, without limitation, (i) name; (ii) age; (iii) sex; (iv) address; (v) homepage URL address; (vi) telephone number; (vii) email address; (viii) bank account number; as well as (ix) any information relating and relevant to the Services, including, without limitation, opening and administering the Account, or getting feedback for improving the Services."

" In the event that the Operator is involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, your personal data may be sold or transferred as part of that transaction."

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing that's just a copy/paste from somewhere else.

It does make me wonder what the owners of the top Google results for JSON and XML prettifiers do with that data. The amount of passwords and other private info that gets pasted into those is probably pretty high.

<comment><USER4> > I'm guessing that's just a copy/paste from somewhere else.

In then event of a sell off, the new owners won't be asking about the original "intent" of the creator. They will be looking at the contract for ways to make money. The fact that you are paying nothing for this product makes it doubly suspicious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pandoc can do this:

      cat tea-dance.html | pandoc --from=html --to=markdown | pandoc --from=markdown --to=html

I learned that from vimcasts.org: [http://vimcasts.org/episodes/using- external-filter-commands-...](http://vimcasts.org/episodes/using-external- filter-commands-to-reformat-html/)

</comment><comment><USER6> of this matter I really like [https://github.com/mozilla/bleach](https://github.com/mozilla/bleach) .

is your project any different aside from the "service oriented" nature? (also I don't see any usage method, if not from the browser)

<comment><USER7> Htmltidy is popular as well: [https://github.com/htacg/tidy- html5](https://github.com/htacg/tidy-html5)

Though, on second glance, it doesn't do what HtmlWasher is doing here...stripping out classes, etc. It just cleans it up, unmatched tags and so forth.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes - but this is not an online service - I wanted to build something handy you can use when you are stressed at the office need to reuse some other HTML doc quickly no time to install anything :-)

I also realized this tool/lib exists after doing Html Washer - I am considering to use their lib as an underlying lib for my project

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> from experience, I wouldn't recommend other than context-aware safe templating systems for html safety in this day and age.

to an even greater extent than templating systems, sanitization systems of this type need to be built by an expert and align perfectly with how browsers parse tags, which is no small feat.

to give more concrete examples, from a few minutes of testing:

<a href="javascript://%0Aalert`xss`">1 <\- xss on click

 <\- XSS in Opera Mobile, Opera 10, early versions of IE

 <\- csrf which affects nearly everything built without security knowhow

</comment><comment><USER9> This is brilliant!

I wrote an HTML file in Microsoft Word. Then uploaded that .html file which had 800 lines. HtmlWasher cleaned up all the file content, the endless meta tags, non sense IE style tags, etc.

<comment><USER10> >I wrote an HTML file in Microsoft Word

Explain yourself

<comment><USER11> My experience has been the company lawyer has written the contract in word, then it has to be exported to html and cleaned of all the cruft that gets saved with word docs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This would be really useful as a service. Send a glob of html to their endpoint, and return what this site does (the cleaned/washed html). As a service, it could be more efficient than doing 1 file at a time on their site. Or better yet, it would be awesome to open source the way this cleans the html. Regardless, awesome site. I could see the use for various scenarios.

<comment><USER13> The first one is a bad idea in terms of security (hijacking and xss), scalability and reliability (see what happened to MathJax CDN and npm left- pad).

<comment><USER14> the idea itself is not bad, but the actual implementation is challenging to be reliable and secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of a cleaner tool I wrote about 10+ years ago, a huge single God- class which would parse an HTML string, allowed me to do various transformations on the object tree, and rerendered the entire source code in correct and nicely indented XHTML. Back then I had unused server capacity, so I often used it to do compression of dynamically rendered pages from for example message boards. Also allowed me to place a badge bragging about my 100% W3C validator score, since the original software packages often did not produce such clean HTML. :p The code is actually still being run on every pageload for some old sites I never updated much since.

It has a tiny little webinterface a which remains online today on some underpowered server. Doesn't work well with anything except XHTML though. [http://htmlcleaner.blackholestudios.nl/](http://htmlcleaner.blackholestudios.nl/)

</comment><comment><USER16> If you're serious about HTML checking and cleanup consider using SGML and my (inofficial) HTML 5.1 DTD [1].

It doesn't do magic (like indentation or removing/simplifying CSS) if that's what you're after, but it gives you straightforward capabilities to filter out script elements, check/suppress event handler attributes and other places where JavaScript can occur maliciously in HTML, enforce presence of HTML elements, etc. Since it's entirely driven by an SGML DTD grammar for HTML it can be customized to death really (for context-dependent filtering, injection prevention, whatever).

[1]: [http://sgmljs.net/blog/blog1701.html](http://sgmljs.net/blog/blog1701.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> "Reduces a HTML document (or fragment) to basic HTML tags and attributes" \- meaning what exactly? What counts as a basic attribute?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that could be more specific (and I will make it probably configurable), currently it is: , ,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
, ,
, , , ,
,
,
, <ruby>, ,
,
, , , <title>,

<comment><USER18> It also converts e.g. b to strong.

<comment><USER19> That doesn't sound right.

By all means correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall learning that there's a semantic difference between b/strong (as well as i/em).

<comment><USER20> This probably isn't the same source that your'e thinking of, but here's a well-considered answer on SO to the question "Why are the  and  tags deprecated?".

[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/255588](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/255588)

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This should be a library or an API, otherwise I don't really see a use for this. Also seems overly aggressive, and there should be some options on what to keep. I see a need to remove JavaScript from HTML but keep events for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, yes why not make it customizable

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here is one in C, with flex-generated lexing, for back-end use:

[http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/hc/tree/](http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/hc/tree/)

I used this for allowing HTML in a mailing list e-mails to be incorporated into the web archive. (The archiver is a modified version of Lurker.)

P.S. "wl" stands for "whitelist": what elements are allowed to pass through, and of those, which attributes are allowed to pass through. The condensed "wl" config file is translated into compiled-in static tables by the wl.txr script. No run-time config.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :-)

<comment><USER22> I've noticed that it lacks any sort of licensing information. If you use it, let me know; I will slap a BSD two-clause on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is the use case for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> e.g. when you are migrating an old website to a new one - that was when I missed such tool in the past

<comment><USER7> I suppose it might also be useful for tools that generate very dirty html with tons of span elements. Word used to be that way, or ugh.."Frontpage".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't appear to use a spec-compliant HTML parser as the first step of the processing. Any tool of this nature created this day and age really should.

<comment><AUTHOR> you are right - I will rewrite it to use HTML Tidy lib or something like that and it will be compliant

<comment><USER24> Is HTML Tidy spec-compliant these days? It predates the spec. A cursory look at its GitHub repo doesn't convince me of it now being spec-compliant. E.g. lexer.c doesn't have indications of being based on the tokenization section of the spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> But.. why?

<comment><USER26> [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment></comment>


How can I motivate coworkers to write unit tests? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/how-can-i-motivate-coworkers-to-write-unit-tests/ <comment><USER2> Start breaking their code and not telling them.. Be the real life version of Netflix's Chaos Monkey

[http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released- in...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into- wild.html)

<comment><USER3> that would be more of randomly pulling cables from their PC/Laptop

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what about the opposite? co-workers who are so keen on writing unit tests, even for the most basic shit. IMHO, thats even mor e annoying</comment>


Ask HN: Relocating to SF - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I am relocating to SF next week. Super excited and to some degree nervous about the shift. I wanted to specifically ask the HN crowd this. What are some of the things I should not miss in SF? (I am not talking about the things one can search online food, art, locations etc.) From an HN perspective, are there any groups/meetups you would recommend. What must one do to understand the zeitgeist?
Appreciate your suggestions.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Watch a zoning adjustment board meeting and ask why we decide to enrich a bunch of aging hippies turned landlords who refuse to expand the opportunities available.

<comment><USER3> Well that didn't take long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To a certain extent you can search for everything online :) I found that when I moved here (2010) my coworkers would drag me out to all the tech events, so I got a good feel for all that just by hanging out with them. If you want tech immersion, hunt around for free "expo passes" to the big industry conferences and go talk to people and go to all the parties.

That said... the really interesting things about SF were the ones I stumbled into, mostly non-tech (although full of fellow tech people).

One obvious-but-not thing about SF is how its culture ties in with that of Burning Man. If you haven't been to Burning Man, make every effort to go next year. So much more of SF makes sense after you've been to the thing in the desert.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


StackExchange: Does not work on Netscape Navigator 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/326023 <comment><USER2> I thought its pretty hilarious. First I was worried I've been hacked (or SO has been hacked) then I realized they must start early with their April fool stuff. Liked the guestbook at the bottom!

Nostalgia FTW!

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the nostalgia hit folks. The Internet in the late 90's was truly awesome - Geocities, flaming text, marquees, Neopets and all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm a joy-kill, but, I really find the April Fool's tradition of ruining the internet for one day every year pretty unfortunate.

<comment><USER5> Well, at least for one day a year they are honest about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh wow. Right down to the stars dropping off the mouse. I thought I died and went to Web 1.0

</comment><comment><USER7> A little early for April fools.

<comment><USER8> It's currently 4:25am on April 1st in NZ and 2:25am in Sydney. I'd say they timed it to start pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Flag all April Fool's nonsense.

<comment><USER10> Flag all killjoys.</comment></comment>


In Huge Shock, Mitochondrial DNA Can Be Inherited from Fathers - <AUTHOR> https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/in-huge-shock-mitochondrial-dna-can-be-inherited-from-fathers/all/ <comment><USER3> Wasn't this first discovered in 2002? Unclear why it's currently taking up two top spots on HN, with headlines like "Plot Twist" and "Huge Shock".

<comment><USER4> Seconded. Let's leave that kind of headline to the tabloids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not well-versed in genetics, but isn't it just possible that this finding could be explained by casting some doubt on who the father actually is? If the mitochondrial DNA came from a father with a different mother, it could look like it came from a different father? that sort of thing.

<comment><USER6> If no mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the father, why should it matter who anyone's father is?

<comment><USER5> Ah! Now I get it. And its very hard to be confused about who the mother is...

<comment><USER7> > And its very hard to be confused about who the mother is...

...but not impossible: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's an article in the NEJM from 2002 reporting something similar [1] - <USER2> least to me as a layman. Since the linked PNAS paper is paywalled, can anyone comment on what's actually new with this announcement?

[1] _Paternal Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA_ [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020350](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020350)

<comment><USER9> In 2002 one person was found. Now they have 17 different people from three families and they were able to analyze the pattern of transmission across generations. This article explains better: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/plot-twist- mitochond...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/plot-twist- mitochondrial-dna-can-come-from-both-parents/)</comment></comment>


Why we need paid family leave in the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-need-paid-family-leave-in-the-u-s-2ef79811612e <comment><USER2> Should we really incentivize breeding?

<comment><USER3> To me, paid family leave is about equal opportunity across income and social class to have a child. Currently, the wealthy and those with more flexible jobs are better able to afford time off, which in my opinion is unwise.

<comment><USER4> If this were true, then the richest eould have the most children, but they don't. PFL should be up to the companies to decide on, and UBI should give people the freedom they need to raise a child.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Should I automate this task? (Time ROI Calculator) - <AUTHOR> https://mackross.net/blog/time-savings-calculator/ <comment><USER2> "I spend a lot of time on this task. I should write a program automating it!" [https://xkcd.com/1319/](https://xkcd.com/1319/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now I have to spend time deciding between this source or [https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Similar concept, but for meetings. [http://gotclocked.com/](http://gotclocked.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't work?</comment>


How Long Have I Got Left? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/opinion/sunday/how-long-have-i-got-left.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 <comment><USER2> A few years ago I got testicular cancer. The information about the disease came in pieces: first all I knew was that there was a lump; then came the ultrasound, the CT scan, then biopsy of the testicle, then a second surgery to sample lymph nodes to which the cancer might have spread. At every step I would obsessively query my doctors for conditional probabilities: given what we'd just found out, what were the chances of dying? Of relapse? Of chemo? Of sterility? I was always incredibly frustrated at how vague their responses would be - they'd say, e.g. "we don't like to give probabilities because you just never know what will happen!". And I would think, "That's exactly the point of a probability! Please just tell me a number!"

One doctor eventually showed me a paper on outcomes for the lymph node surgery I had, with a relapse rate curve going out five years so. I found this incredibly helpful for managing my emotions because it let me track my progress in a very precise way: every monthly checkup that would go by uneventfully, I knew exactly what my chance of relapse had dropped to. The goal was to get to zero. More importantly, having actual numbers gave me something on which I could focus my optimism. It's so much worse to hear "you might become sterile" than "there's a 5% chance of becoming sterile". With the 5% number in mind, I'd do things like imagine myself in a room full of 20 people and think "wow, it would be incredibly unlikely to be randomly chosen from this group". Having spent a lot of time in a cancer hospital now -- around people who were much worse off than I was -- I believe that almost everyone has incredible reserves of optimism. I think it's better when the hopeful possibility is concretely defined - it makes it easier to imagine a path forward while you're stuck waiting for more information.

Mine is obviously a completely different situation from the terminal cancer described by the author, where the question isn't, "when will I be free of this cancer", but rather "when will I die from it". Testicular cancer is very treatable, and I never faced a significant chance of death. I'm sure I would have been in a much different psychological state if I had.

Also, PSA: testicular cancer is REALLY common for young males (if you're male you have a 1 in 500 chance of getting it between 20 and 34). Given HN user demographics, there are almost certainly some of you reading this who've gotten it already, or who will. You can save yourself a ton of trouble if you do a self-examination every once in a while. That's actually how I found out, and is a big reason that I avoided chemotherapy.

<comment><USER3> > Given HN user demographics, there are almost certainly some of you reading > this who've gotten it already, or who will.

Just checked myself .. I may (hopefully not) have proven your statement. Will see doctor on Monday.

Thanks for the PSA

<comment><USER4> Good luck! I have had recurring epididymitis for the last 15 years or so, starting when I was around 19, and every time I wonder if it could be cancer, but it proves to be an infection that is treatable with antibiotics.

Well done booking the doctor visit straightaway. It took me weeks, and I was massively stressed the whole time.

<comment><USER3> How did you know it was epididymitis instead of a tumor?

The mass I have is right on top of the gland, but after an ultrasound it appears to be a tumor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > We never cite detailed statistics, and usually advise against Googling > survival numbers, assuming the average patient doesn't possess a nuanced > understanding of statistics

When I was at the receiving end of that talk, this attitude made me incredibly angry. They know exactly that we __will __look up those numbers, they are just too afraid to have a honest discussion with us. People make _very_ bad decisions because those numbers are discussed at forums, without the involvement of people who can interpret the statistical and medical significance of scientific studies.

<comment><USER6> And would you suggest doctors would take two to three extra hours with every patient to work them through a basic statistics class which still isn't sufficient to explain the concept?

<comment><USER5> Two to three extra hours is vastly exaggerated, and not that much time for someone who needs to know the chances of dying a horrible death. I might add that this is an objection based on _economic_ argumentation, which, while not invalid, is not the one given by doctors. They argue like the author of the article did: That they know better than you how you will react to this kind of information, and that they can manage your morale by taking certain freedoms with the truth.

I think that this is an unworthy and authoritarian approach which only leads to distrust: How can that guy say that I will _certainly_ survive when Wikipedia, Lymphoma.org and the fucking New England Journal of Medicine agree that there is a one in five chance of me biting the dust in the next few years?

<comment><USER7> I had some university classes with a doctor few years ago; he brought up the WHO definition of health:

"A state of complete physical, _mental, and social well-being_ and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." (emphasis mine)

He then told that questions like "should we tell the patient that he has two years left, and watch him and his family live the life of constant worry and sadness (and probably of a therapy that will add a year or so to the total lifespan, at the cost of being painful for the patient and very taxing to the family), or should we omit that information and let him live his life out in peace and happiness?" are part of an on-going ethical debate in medicine - because of the need to balance the "mental well-being" part with the "absence of disease".

Also, while telling the truth is a virtue, doing so knowing that people had, and will, predictably hurt themselves with it seems less so.

<comment><USER8> Sounds controlling. Who is the doctor to 'let him live his life' at all? The doctor is there to work on the disease. The life part belongs to the patient.

Maybe the issue discussed here is with the doctor entirely - what they think of themselves when seeing a patient respond to their expert opinion. So the patient cries, or panicks, or leaves their family? That is nothing to the doctor; not their business nor responsibility.

Its not irresponsible for the doctor to tell the facts, no matter how they lead. Because the impact on the patient is not their responsibility at all. Trying to make it so is wrong and selfish and manipulative.

<comment><USER7> > _Because the impact on the patient is not their responsibility at all._

That directly conflicts with the WHO definition of health. Which is exactly my point. Doctors nowdays are responsible for more than just the physical well- being, and they try to figure out how to handle these additional responsibilities in an optimal way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when."_

Within this passage lies the meaning of life.

<comment><USER10> The logical person inside of me wants to say that there is no meaning to life. But of course, that is not how I feel.

<comment><USER11> The Christian in me wants to say "hey guys, I know what you mean, I've felt the same way, and I found a reasonable answer." But my experience reminds me that kind of conversation is futile.

<comment><USER12> The Christian in you is a good and honorable person; the Hacker News commenter in you knows that such behavior is never rewarded here unless it happens to line up with the HN zeitgeist, which has little patience with any sort of received wisdom that doesn't agree with its own.

I find this really quite marvelous. Who could imagine such a batch of _soi- disant_ freethinkers, who all seem to feel the same need to carefully curate and circumscribe the thoughts they're willing to think?

<comment><USER13> Perhaps it won't be as marvelous to you when you consider that some of these freethinkers have spent years open-mindedly trying to integrate these systems into their lives. Years listening to testimonials, trying to find something to grasp onto. Yet still failed to find enough interest, passion, or problem that it solved in their lives.

I don't have to re-install Windows 8 on my laptop once a week to re-confirm the opinions I formed the previous week. To do so would be an irrational waste of time. Your audience is similarly rationally choosing not to re-evaluate until they see a new perspective on the religion or a way of addressing a fundamental flaw that keeps them from embracing religion.

And when they argue with you, have you considered that perhaps they're trying to push through a personal hangup they have that keeps them from embracing it themselves? That they are not trying to put you down, but instead to understand?

For some of us, we've already searched long and hard to no avail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "And then my health began to improve, thanks to a pill that targets a specific genetic mutation tied to my cancer."

Isn't tailoring drugs to specific mutations the next big revolution in medicine that we've been waiting for? Steve Jobs had his DNA sequenced to help fight his cancer.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/21/steve_jobs_had_his...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/21/steve_jobs_had_his_dna_sequenced_for_100k_to_fight_cancer)

<comment><USER15> Yes, I am friends with Dr. Mark Nelson at University of Arizona and he is doing a startup in that area. [http://pathology.arizona.edu/faculty/mark- nelson-phd](http://pathology.arizona.edu/faculty/mark-nelson-phd)

<comment><USER16> No offense, and it bothers me in almost any use, but the phrase "doing a startup" seems especially out of its depth in this context.

<comment><USER17> What's your preferred verb?

<comment><USER12> Why not just say "starting a business?" I've never seen what is so magically special about "startups" that they deserve to be regarded as inhabiting a separate, higher plane of their own, beyond and above ordinary entrepreneurship as the species has heretofore known it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a long time I've been pretty worried about my mortality. But ever since I became a Christian a couple years ago, I've been much more at peace about it. Not all the way (yet?), but much more than before. I highly recommend looking into Christianity to anyone else feeling that same fear.

<comment><USER18> I hate to break it to you, but religion is just a ruse to help people come to grips with their mortalities. It's extremely unlikely beyond belief that there is any notion of heaven or hell in this universe.

I don't want to start a religious war. I just don't want you to be let down when you're on your deathbed 30, 40, 50, 60 years from now.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for your sympathy. But I've done my homework. Jesus did actually rise from the dead. Research it and you'll come to the same conclusion. I don't have many books on it, but I'd probably start with Handbook of Catholic Apologetics[1] by Kreeft and Tacelli.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Catholic-Apologetics- Reasoned...](http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Catholic-Apologetics-Reasoned- Questions/dp/1586172794)

<comment><USER19> We did research it, but don't worry, your insults don't affect us much anymore.

<comment><USER11> My insults? I didn't insult anyone. Why do you think I did?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nicely written. Why is it that we only look for what is important to us when we realize that we don't have long to live? Don't people realize that this is true starting the day you're born?

<comment><USER21> Because there's a lot of "unimportant" stuff necessary to sustain the important stuff.

<comment> bjelkeman-again I think there is a lot true in that. It took me a good few years to get to the point of being able to focus on what is important for me. But, it do not think that the journey was wasted. Indeed it feels like everything/most what I have done up until now has put me in the position to do what is important, much more effectively and with some actual impact.

I learn slowly, so it took a while, but the journey is what was important in the end not the goal. So now I look at every step along the way and make sure it is both useful to my surrounding world, fun and gives me experience to do something bigger, better, funner for the next step. It probably sounds like a cliche, but it is nevertheless true for me.

<comment><USER22> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> one of the most clear, lucid and scientifically literate stories about existentialism I have heard in a long time. I bow my head to Paul Kalanithi, the author: [http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/images/paulk.jpg](http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlab/images/paulk.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER24> This part annoys me:

> Where was the study of nonsmoking 36-year-old neurosurgeons? Maybe my youth > and health mattered? Or maybe my disease was found so late, had spread so > far, and I was already so far gone that I was worse off than those 65-year- > old smokers.

You don't need a 'study', you just need a comprehensive database that includes patients' age, smoking status, body-mass index, health status, and other prognostic factors. Then run a query to find what percentage of similar patients are still alive after 5 years.

Just about every person who is diagnosed with cancer asks, "What are my chances?". (And the best treatment usually depends on an accurate answer). Wouldn't the benefit of compiling and maintaing a central database of all US cancer patients be worth the cost?

</comment><comment><USER25> I get so scared and sad when I read these articles. I always wonder "could it be prevented?", sure, you know you shouldn't smoke, you shouldn't be overweight and you should do at least 15 minutes of exercise every day, but does it really help? I bet a doctor would know better than anyone else how to live a healthy life, so this obviously begs the question: could cancer really be prevented?

<comment><USER26> According to the professionals of the field, there is little hope for ever preventing cancer. For a protein life that has sufficient complexity, cells have to divide/replicate to maintain the life of the protein machine, e.g a human body. Stuff can go wrong with the division/replication, it can be inaccurate in so many ways but what matters most is that the replicates can also replicate.

Some cells die before they attempt a single replication. This could be due to a disease attack, vulnerable imperfect replicate, plus plus. As long as those that get to replicate can make up the numbers for those that die early. Cells that are resilient and can replicate fast and frequent enough before they die tend to pass on forms of this attribute to their imperfect clones.

With time, many types of cells in the whole protein body get to attempt replications faster and faster. Pure natural selection at work -- a concrete example, smoking kills lung cells, so for the lung cells to maintain their numbers they have to replicate early enough in their life time and frequently.

Most environmental pressures seem to force the biology of the cells in this direction, which increases the likelihood of replication eager cells aka cancerous cells.

That is why at this moment in time, prevention seems bleak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand how everyone here was able to read this article - I browse to that link and get a message telling me it is locked behind a paywall, requiring my subscription before I can read it. Do all HN readers also subscribe to the NY Times?

<comment><USER28> You should get 10 free articles a month before the paywall appears. I'm guessing most HN readers haven't used up their quota yet.

<comment><USER29> How to read the article: Search for the article's title in Google (hint: select the title in the non-working NYT URL, dashes are fine), and the link from Google's (probably) top result to NYT will let you in, freely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm very curious: are there people who fear samsara? I sure do.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saṃsāra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saṃsāra)

</comment><comment><USER31> Alternative medicine is the only solution.

</comment><comment><USER32> For Christ's sake, is there no safe haven in this world for the unapologetic atheist? I thought that Hacker News might be the one safe zone where Jesus brainwashing is not regurgitated to the masses, but I guess not. News flash for everyone, death is inevitable, and people do not rise from the grave, whether they harbor sympathy for humans or not. Life's meaning, if there is one, is at this stage incomprehensible to human beings. If there is life beyond the grave, it definitely isn't life, and it definitely isn't what you think it is. How many more years must humanity be shackled to superstition and death fear before we fucking get over it and move on to the important work of getting off of this planet? For fucks sake...

<comment><USER33> > News flash for everyone, death is inevitable

As far as we know there is nothing in the laws of physics about death (or life). It's all about fields and particles. Or maybe strings or loops or something else, but vitalism ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism)) is over.

So death "is" inevitable only because we don't know how to prevent it.

> How many more years must humanity be shackled to superstition and death fear > before we fucking get over it and move on to the important work of getting > off of this planet?

I'm totally okay with space colonization but conquering death (with science, I mean) seems like a more pressing issue. After all, even if we already had space colonies people would still die.

<comment><USER32> People would still die indeed. But I think technologically our odds favor tackling the issue of colonization over death. If we remain here on this planet, death of the entire species is a certainty. That could happen a lot sooner than people think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was told that Japanese Doctors don't discuss mortality rates with their patients. I was told they don't even mention the word Cancer. If a patient has stomach cancer, the patient is given the best currently available treatment, and is told they have a bad case of heart burn--and told they will get better! The reasoning is they want to get every once of magic The Placebo Effect has to offer. I don't know if it's better to quote stats to a patient, or lie(hopeing the Placebo Effect will take over?).

Personally, I don't use the Internet for any health related concerns--It has always just made me feel worse, and is loaded with hysteria, and just horrid advice.

And yes, I know U.S. Doctors can't lie to their patients. I'm just relaying what I was told twenty years ago.

When I get sick--I'm not sure if I would want to the statistics of survival. I would live every day as my last. I would take any drugs the Pallitive care Physician offered though. My father benefitted greatly from the opiates the doctors prescribed before he died.

I hope the doctor makes a full recovery, and commend him on his honesty and openness. Sometimes I forget doctors will someday be patients.

Oh yea, to the Marin General counter person who asked me if I wanted to sign a Advanced Procedure Directive, before even saying hello--if you happen to read this--one day you will be on the other side of the counter.

Good night! I hope you all stay well and are happy!

</comment><comment><USER35> It's really difficult to read these types of stories and comments because it shows us that happy endings are not guaranteed for anyone by the universe.

We're just all flesh that's about to fail - sometime, eventually.

And that sometime comes sooner for some of us than latter.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get the most out of pair programming? - <AUTHOR> There are quite a few opinions out there about liking or disliking pair programming. I hope this thread doesn't turn into that.
I'm curious what approach you take to pair programming to make it work best for you.
Any thoughts or resources are welcome. <comment><USER2> Set and follow a schedule that offers/requires breaks and minimizes external interruptions.

Pair programming is substantially more enjoyable and brings everybody up to speed faster when they're co-located. All-remote pairing can introduce the problems associated with remote work.

Since only one in the pair can "drive", measure who's driving how much of the time. A senior dev should start with the majority of the time but should reach a point where the junior dev is doing the majority.</comment>


Large-scale HTTP and websocket routing with Hipache - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dotcloud.com/under-the-hood-dotcloud-http-routing-layer

<comment><USER2> I didn't see a lot about websocket routing.

I'm in a situation where I want to use secure websockets to lots of backend VMs. In fact, I want each user to get a fresh VM running a websockets server.

Can I reverse-proxy the secure websocket, terminating the SSL, and dynamically forward it along to various backends (VMs)? I would like to multiplex the secure websockets without putting the SSL cert inside each VM.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, node-http-proxy supports this built-in. You terminate the SSL at the proxy and then forward the request to whatever backends you want.

<comment><USER2> And you can dynamically add backends based on urls or subdomains?

That sounds great if it is true. Do you know how well it scales?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's what Hipache does. From the project homepage [1]: "Hipache is a distributed proxy designed to route high volumes of http and websocket traffic to unusually large numbers of virtual hosts, _in a highly dynamic topology where backends are added and removed several times per second_."

It also addresses your question on scaling: "It currently serves production traffic for tens of thousands of applications hosted on dotCloud. Hipache is based on the node-http-proxy library."

[1] <http://github.com/dotcloud/hipache>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's amusing to see that they've reinvented the "active health checks" wheel for their system, because HAProxy [1] does this out of the box.

Side-note/rant: I am always surprised that HAProxy doesn't get more attention on hackernews, because it is an incredibly powerful tool. IMO, it is definitely one of the biggest technical unsung heroes I'm presently aware of.

[1] <http://haproxy.1wt.eu>

<comment><AUTHOR> (dotCloud employee here)

We are very much aware of HAProxy, love it, and would have been very happy to use it. For the majority of use cases we would probably recommend it over Hipache, simply because it's more proven.

However, our particular use case involves a) a very large number of vhosts, and b) a highly dynamic topology where backends are added and removed very frequently. In this setup, instrumenting a cluster of HAProxy (or nginx) boxes basically means re-generating and reloading multi-megabyte configuration files across dozens of machines, several times per second. It's what we did before Hipache, and it was painful. Compared to that, implementing active health checks was a small price to pay.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for clarifying

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article. I'm wondering, so all apps route through a single collection of load balancers, or are they per-app? Seems to me like a possibility to cut down on config turnover requirements if you were still using a stock nginx config would be to give each app their own LB cluster and thus changes (if they are actually needed) would be minimal. You'd incur additional memory/cpu requirements for each I suppose which is a trade off and perhaps there's something else I'm missing with the environment that would keep this from working.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's both. We use a primary cluster which all apps share by default, and for customers which need more customization or resource isolation, we offer dedicated instances.

We don't deploy per-app instances for all our applications because at our scale - dotCloud has deployed hundreds of thousands of vhosts - the overhead would be huge compared to a single large cluster, and having to deploy and instrument so many nginx instances would make our system much more complex.

The majority of web apps are actually better off using a shared cluster: they get better reliability, better support, better peak performance and a cheaper price, in exchange for less customization and less guarantees of worst-case performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you've got any questions about the tech, we'll be happy to answer them here.

<comment><USER7> Does this mean Hipache is likely to be dead in a couple of years?

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you referring to by "this"?

<comment><USER7> What looks to be the next step which is nginx and lua based.

<comment><USER6> Pretty cool, huh? :-) You can follow (and contribute to!) that development in the open source project, just like you can with the Node version of hipache.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would agree with Arothfusz, think of it as a hint at a possible future version of Hipache. It might use Nginx/Lua as a runtime instead of Nodejs - but the redis-based architecture will be the same and there will be an upgrade path. It will still be Hipache.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stupid Apple Rejection of the Day - <AUTHOR> http://matt.coneybeare.me/stupid-apple-rejection-of-the-day/ <comment><USER3> Christ, dude, they're asking for a disclaimer in the description. There are true problems with the App Store review process, but this doesn't strike me as one. Add the line and get your app in the store.

<comment><USER4> Or just re-submit it another time and see what happens, try to negotiate, try to get an explanation why this requirement is not in the submission guidelines, whatever.

The people reviewing submitted apps are just that: people. They sometimes make mistakes just like you and me. If you're unlucky an overzealous reviewer looked at your app, or someone misinterpreted the guidelines. Could be anything. Or maybe Apple simply changed their guidelines and you have to comply, as an end-user I can see why Apple would want to include a warning about battery life for apps that do continuous GPS tracking. Big deal...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope this app is rejected.

> To fall in line with Apple's expectations that iOS 7 apps always stay up to > date in the multitasker, background GPS is necessary here so that I can keep > the multitasker preview up to date with current information on the closest > station.

This guy thinks it is a good idea to trash the user's battery so the app switcher screenshot is up to date. Is this guy serious?

<comment><USER6> Apple does encourage you to update your switcher screenshot especially in gaming. This could be a valid use, but it could kill the battery and the dev should warn users of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple has realized that by publishing strict rules, many developers will fight the explicit letter of the law while ignoring the spirit thereof. Ergo, general rules have been published but the reviewers have great leeway to determine that a submission has missed the obvious point (ex.: a battery- sucking background app _should_ at least inform a user that it will do so).

They're not going to explicitly declare exactly what is/isn't allowed to perfect clarity precisely because written language isn't perfectly clear when readers don't want it to be (ex.: USA's Bill Of Rights). Rather than get into ongoing fights over what exact wording should be, Apple understandably opts for a verbose but imperfect description of the point of their limitations, and hires gatekeepers to make sensible per-case decisions on whether an app adheres to the point of the rules. Wording of a rule may sensibly apply in one case but not another, based on culture & context. User experience does not decompose well into precise requirements.

If all it takes is a brief disclaimer in a description, and that disclaimer is a fair notification to the user of some behavior that reasonably isn't expected, then put it in and resubmit.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would rather see that disclaimer then download your app, install it, and wonder why my battery is dying so fast. That is a problem that I had on the Windows Phone. I downloaded a few apps and one of them was killing my battery so I had to go one by one disabling each app every day to figure out that the culprit was a GroupMe.

I'm surprised they also aren't rejecting you for the .99 cent In-App Purchase just to remove ads. They discouraged that practice at the last Tech Talk that I went to.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you choose to be a sharecropper you must accept the landlord's rules. As for myself I'm through with it and my future apps will be Mac/Windows/Linux desktop apps. Mobile has a lot of potential but I won't bow down to the gatekeepers any more.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sometimes legal litigation forces companies to take extra measures and describing the obvious is something that already was tested in court. You feel that's obvious because you understand the tech behind it but some users (maybe the less educated ones) don't understand this, and then they sue apple for shorter than published battery life. By forcing you to include this label in your terms it releases legal responsibility.

For absurdity in warning labels follow one of the most famous cases: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants)

<comment><USER3> That case wasn't as absurd as people think. From the article:

> Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the > company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's > coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from > scalding injuries for more than $500,000.

She got third-degree burns from coffee stored at an unsafe temperature. McDonalds had ample evidence that this was a problem.

<comment><USER7> Coffee snob here. Optimal brewing occurs at 195-205 degrees F, and is consumed soon after. Good coffee is served HOT, and people in general know this - <USER2> continue to demand it at the drive-thru, and continue to do stupid things with it. Heck, the very existence of the drive-thru is a much bigger problem: dwarfing the 700 complaints of coffee burns, eating while driving reportedly contributes to some 80% of all automotive accidents, more dangerous than the much-maligned texting while driving - yet there is no call to eliminate drive- thrus for obvious on-the-run consumption.

Yes, people get severe burns by placing properly brewed coffee between their legs while driving. This is well-known, and there is little to stop it short of people _not doing stupid things_.

<comment><USER10> "eating while driving reportedly contributes to some 80% of all automotive accidents, more dangerous than the much-maligned texting while driving"

Source?

<comment><USER7> Google is your friend. (I looked for the authoritative documentation you'd demand, but came a point I've got other things to do than preemptively do research for the skeptical. Suffice to say it's widely referenced, if a bit hard to pin down.)

ETA: I'd prefer research to snide retorts. I researched it to my satisfaction, you research it to yours; comparing the results would be much more enlightening than a put-down.

<comment><USER10> Lots of things that are widely referenced aren't actually backed by truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My battery is not your playground :)

</comment><comment><USER12> You're publishing to a closed system. Apple isn't exactly a paragon of openness and acceptance. What did you expect?

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't you know Apple doesn't allow complaining about their decisions? They are listening! IT KNOWS.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reasonable request is reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's like the Mafia, lot's of unwritten rules.

<comment><USER6> All of the rules are written down. It's just that developers don't read them.

<comment><USER15> The whole article is about how there was no rule written down. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a problem. He was following the rules to the point already.</comment></comment></comment>


Lenovo Denies Me Windows 7 SP1 Unless I Pay $170 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb2_o0omeXk So, I tried to install Windows 7 SP1 on my Lenovo G560, but the update says I need to update my Graphics Driver. Tried to do that, but Intel's update says I need to go through the vendor. When I went to Lenovo's support site, it didn't have the latest driver, so I called Lenovo. They said they I had to pay $120-$179 to get the update (!) even though there is an update for the driver from Intel and it's Lenovo's fault I cannot upgrade. My conversation is in this video (if I sound angry, it's because I am). Anyone know if there is anything else I can do? Is this standard practice? Am I overreacting? <comment><USER2> Answer here: [http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Windows-7-Discussion/Windows-7-S...](http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Windows-7-Discussion/Windows-7-SP-1-Now- Available/td-p/380341/page/6)</comment>


Where could I buy a SSL certificate? - <AUTHOR>

I need to have a valid SSL certificate, by valid I mean not self signed. Any opinions? <comment><USER2> SSL Certificate selection depends on which type of validation you need for your website.

If you wish to secure your website with HTTPS only, you need a "Domain Validated" SSL Certificate

If you wish to secure your website with HTTPS & Organization name in URL, you need a "Organization Validated" SSL Certificate.

If you wish to secure your website with HTTPS by displaying Green address bar along with Organization name, you nee an "Extended Validation" SSL Certificate.

Additionally if you wish to secure multiple domains you need a SAN certificate and for security of multiple sub-domains you need a wildcard Certificate.

At [http://www.cheapsslsecurity.com/](http://www.cheapsslsecurity.com/) you will find DV, OV, EV, SAN and Wildcard SSL Certificate at cheapest price with heavy discount.

CheapSSLSecurity is premium SSL partner of Comodo, Symantec, RapidSSL, Thawte & GeoTrust.

</comment><comment><USER3> StartSSL also provide free certificate : [https://www.startssl.com/](https://www.startssl.com/)

You might also want to use [http://www.cacert.org/](http://www.cacert.org/)

and don't forget [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/)

If you have budget and want to use for multiple sub domains you might want to buy wildcard certificate which can be used to secure *.domain.com.

Domain validated certificate is good for security. having a organization validated or extended validation certificate will not improve your security.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can get SSL Certificate from [https://comodosslstore.com/](https://comodosslstore.com/) Its offer different types of SSL like Domain validated, organization validated, extended validation ssl certificate at affordable. If you can have wildcard or multiple domain security with unlimited re-issue and unlimited server license. Try it...

</comment><comment><USER5> Get a free one from [https://buy.wosign.com/free/?lan=en](https://buy.wosign.com/free/?lan=en) (you have to first sign up, upper left and go to the link once signed in)</comment>


Entrepreneur nervous about Silicon Valley's future - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/therese-polettis-tech-tales-former/story.aspx?guid={759464D5-A036-47B9-9484-5A3315F95615}&dist=hplatest

<comment><USER2> The subtitle of the article is:

Technology entrepreneur Judy Estrin is worried about the future of technology and innovation in Silicon Valley AND THE REST OF THE COUNTRY (capitalization added for emphasis)

So it isn't a Silicon Valley specific issue; rather she is concerned about the general decline of math, science, and engineering in the US educational system.</comment>


Documents reveal NSA's extensive involvement in targeted killing program - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/documents-reveal-nsas-extensive-involvement-in-targeted-killing-program/2013/10/16/29775278-3674-11e3-8a0e%2D4e2cf80831fc_story.html

<comment><USER2> Well, I'd hope they'd use all available resources to make sure they were targeting the correct people.

<comment><USER3> Right, but two administrations claimed the NSA _was not_ involved.

The worrying comes in two parts: (1) pervasive, multi-administration lying. (2) The same NSA that's hoovering up all US telecom CDRs, is also using similar information for "targeted killings", which have included US citizens, and are done WITHOUT A TRIAL.

It doesn't take too much imagination to extend "all available resources" to some group in the USA (litters, folks who talk on cell phones while driving, sex addicts, marijuana-smoking jazz musicians, Roma, Down's Syndrome) and to "targeted kill" them without due process.</comment></comment>


Can Donald Trump Save Twitter? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/can-donald-trump-save-twitter <comment><USER2> I was just thinking that he could. Every time he tweets twitter gets mentioned. Maybe more people will join to talk about what he digs up and then twitter could get more ad-revenue.</comment>