Why it's not about self-driving - <AUTHOR> https://m.koszek.com/why-it-s-not-about-self-driving-c9c2a7117643#.xcikd7y30 <comment><USER2> The only thing I don't agree with is the car manufacturer in this post.

Look at all the examples cited for self driving cars in movies - what's the key similarity ? All the self driving cars looked the same.

If life mimics movies then it won't be Ford, BMW, Mercedes, etc... building self driving cars. It'll be Google, Apple, Tesla and maybe Microsoft building self driving cars and we get our choice of color and luxuries (think screen size and storage).

Google re-coupes costs via geolocation and selling advertisements for anything and everything you come in close proximity to; Apple re-coupes costs by selling at a premium / iCloud / iTunes integration. Tesla - premium and Microsoft... who knows hah :) XBox version 20 for the kids in the back buying game from the live store.

The traditional car manufacturers (what's left of them after this shift of the industry) share the last 5% of the pie for die hard petrol heads, families that live in rural parts of the country with poor road conditions / non- conducive to self driving cars and building engines for Nascar / Formula 1 / Formula E.</comment>


Mexico drug gangs up ante with high-tech tunnels - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/11/us-mexico-drugs-tunnels-idUSTRE7BA0D120111211 <comment><USER2> '"If it's the Sinaloa cartel, they have unlimited resources," Durst [assistant special agent in charge of ICE's San Diego office] said.'

That sums it up. The wrong-on-every-level US drug policy has resulted in the people the government opposes having 'unlimited resources'.</comment>


Git v2.12.0 - <AUTHOR> http://firstname.lastname@example.com/ <comment><USER2> Release notes:

[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/git/git.git/tree/Documentation/R...](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/git/git.git/tree/Documentation/RelNotes/2.12.0.txt)

<comment><USER3> That is a very readable changelog. I particularly like the use of "Command X learned Y" to skirt some potentially awkward phrasing.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, it's presented in a way that's totally unreadable on mobile.

<comment><USER5> Depends on your screen, I guess. The 80-column format fits my phone's screen quite nicely with a bit of zooming.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but then the font is too small then.

Phones aren't meant to render hard-wrapped fixed-fonts pages. In fact, web isn't meant for that, and the web is probably by far the first mean of consumption for this kind of release notes nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the point of this? I mean "alt-git" and "gitster"?</comment>


Los Angeles Drivers on the 405 Ask: Was $1.6B Worth It? - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/us/los-angeles-drivers-on-the-405-ask-was-1-6-billion-worth-it.html <comment><USER2> It's amazing to me that with all the evidence showing that increased road capacity doesn't relieve congestion and often times exacerbates it these projects still happen.

I'm glad Los Angeles passed measure M (a public transit funding bill) and the disappointed over this road widening should only bolster it.</comment>


Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/17/regulate-facebook/ <comment><USER2> There should be only one regulation for fb, display following warning on all pages/screens: Statutory Warning: This product is specifically designed to cause behavioral addiction so you are guided down a slippery slope of over consumption & that is how this company makes money. Overuse of this product is known to cause - anxiety, depression, low self esteem, constant craving for attention, short attention spans, inability to concentrate on tasks, inhibited social development in the real world & possibly general "unhappiness", especially among the young & impressionable.

<comment><USER3> I always disliked Facebook and still don't care much for it, but having worked on ranking there for a few months, comments like this just sound incredibly naive.

Facebook is not "specifically designed to cause addiction". It's designed by a complicated process with many people trying to maximize many competing metrics, some of which might go up when people are "addicted". In fact the complete opposite is one of the main goal metrics for most teams (measures of well being) and only a small fraction of people are even trying to increase time spent.

<comment><USER4> On what basis are you claiming that that most teams at FB are optimising the product for well being as opposed to 'engagement' (addiction)? Do you have first hand knowledge? Do you know the people involved? Do you have citations?

I stopped using FB a few years ago after I had an argument with a friend on the platform. The algorithm decided to keep showing us one anothers' content - I assume so we would both write more angry comments ("engagement!"). I ended up blocking the friend, then on reflection left the platform entirely, since as far as I can tell FB was optimising as intended to manipulate me.

Has it changed since then?

<comment><USER5> If facebook only shows content you agree with, it's creating social bubbles where everyone is cheering each other on and criticism is not allowed, and you end up with anti-vax groups.

And if facebook emphasizes content you engage with (albeit negatively), you end up with anecdotes like yours.

Facebook is a tool, use it as such rather than being entitled and feeling disempowered. You can hide people from your timelines, get "less messages like these" and more.

<comment><USER6> Entitled is a loaded word. That makes it seem like the user is unreasonable and he should take whatever facebook gives him. Be quiet you don't matter, you are lucky they allowed you on the platform.

Is it unreasonable to expect facebook to be able to determine the tone of the conversation. They probably already do this or are in the process of researching this. This is a great feature and I look forward to getting content aligned with my mood. I'm mad, show me angry posts, I'm nervous show me calm posts. I'm bored show me exciting videos. Maybe a box on top how do you feel to determine current mood.

Users complaining give free feedback. As a developer it helps shape the product.

<comment><USER5> I absolutely think the user is unreasonable in this context. what about people who actually enjoy discussing other people's conflicting opinions? (maybe hard to believe that exists any more, even moreso on facebook, but still...) how would you allow this positive engagement to keep happening but avoid OP's example of negative engagement?

the tools are there on facebook to control the content of your feed to quite an extent. if you don't use this and demand that facebook change its system to adjust the feed for everyone based on your personal tastes, yes I think that's entitled.

not saying I like or even use Facebook, but still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Classic regulatory capture. Once you're big enough lobby effectively, get legislators to pull the ladder up from behind you.

This reminds me: I was working at a small health services startup in 2009. We had a good relationship with a number of small-scale healthcare providers, and when the ARRA was passed mandating that all providers move to electronic health records, we evaluated the concept of getting into that business. We concluded that there was so much legal red tape in that sector that the only way to legally create an EHR product would be if your lawyers were the ones writing the laws governing them (which would have been true for Epic and McKessen).

<comment><USER8> Blows my mind how many people ignore this problem when they demand more regulations.

<comment><USER9> They always talk about the big evil Facebooks of the world when they demand regulations that hit entire industries and mostly just keep the same big companies in power.

The regulations _never_ just target the big firms who caused the individual incidents that caused the outrage or the individuals only doing bad behaviour.

Nor does the regulations go away as industries adapt, change for the better, or get disrupted over the course of decades the same old laws apply, further keeping old entrenched powers in place and their negative anti-consumer behaviour which markets were attempting to correct.

It's the story of modern America industry. And it always starts with good intentions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love tech. It pains me to come to the conclusion that in Facebook, we have created something that should not exist: an addicative worldwide mob where peddlers can sell emotionally manipulative ideas to the people least able to handle them, whether it's clicking cows all day long or believing Elvis is still alive.

In defense, I don't think anybody that was on-board at the beginning realized this. I do, however, feel that anybody in the last decade working at FB should have been smart enough to figure out what was going on. They just didn't care.

<comment><USER11> I view it the opposite way: We underestimated as a society how many people were feeling bad. Addictions to alcohol is horrible, but their harm doesn't scale. With social networks, we suddenly see what we chose to ignore before: The swathes of MGTOWs, Incels, doubters, we also see the swathes of "scientific studies" which were provably wrong, the lies of the medias when you compare the scientific study and how the articles spin them.

We should rather treat it as a brand new society with new balances, like after Gutemberg's invention of the printer, which enabled communication and gave birth to Martin Luther, the accession of Bible translation to masses, the accession of The Encyclopedia, and more generally, the Humanists.

And maybe, just maybe, we should have taken better care of so many people we've put in such horrible situations that content binging becomes better than their life. Rather than assuming they were just crybabies.

<comment><USER12> > we should have taken better care of so many people we've put in such > horrible situations... Rather than assuming they were just crybabies.

It may seemed callused, but they _are_ just crybabies. Just because social media facilitates the formation of certain identity groups now does not mean that the cultures formed from those identities are good or productive. Just look at the increase in suicides, depression, school shootings, and general extremism since the spread of social media. Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO.

<comment><USER13> >we should have taken better care of so many people

>Those are not mentalities that we should foster and support IMO.

Those are not the same thing. The first says to connect people to services that can help stem the negative and unproductive mentalities. Yours says to help them grow that negativity. These are not the same things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like Facebook wants the regulations, so that a new upstart competitor, cannot invent something novel, and pull the rug from under them.

Like maybe, a social network that doesn't manipulate us, or scan our faces without permission, or build dark profiles of everyone, or read our personal messages, or .....

<comment><USER15> >Like maybe, a social network that doesn't manipulate us, or scan our faces without permission, or build dark profiles of everyone, or read our personal messages, or

Heh. Fat chance. The next generation of social networks will be coming from China because China is the perfect incubator for this category of software. You'll yet wish for Facebook.

<comment><USER16> The next generation of social networks is already here. It's decentralized and open-source. Mastodon, Pleroma, PeerTube, loads more, all part of the same network, the fediverse.

<comment><USER17> I'm a regular HN user, deleted FB three years ago, I've never even heard of any of those sites.

<comment><USER18> I am building a few aggregators if you want to explore the fediverse without registering first.

[https://mastodonia.club](https://mastodonia.club)

[https://pixelfed.club](https://pixelfed.club)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The most important regulation for Facebook is that they should provide a way to communicate with other social networks, so someone on Diaspora, MeWe or Friendica can follow people on Facebook and vice versa. That way, people won't be forced onto Facebook simply because their friends are there.

And once that has been done, it'll also be easier to cut Facebook into smaller chunks if it turns out they're still a monopolist.

<comment><USER20> Would this also make it easier to slurp data from Diaspora, in the name of providing friend recommendations?

<comment><USER21> No. Other platforms already have open APIs, Facebook is the one that has no interoperability. It would make it easier for a Diaspora server to slurp data from Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a much better way to deal with Facebook. Stop letting them buy their competitors.

<comment><USER23> Start by forcing them to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp.

<comment><USER24> Exactly this. That is why there is such pressure to keep Warren off the ticket. I'd love to see her swallow her pride and jump to a Sanders/Warren ticket. If she does well, then she can get her chance in a few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Depending on the regulation, IMO a sensible middle ground is to phase in regulations based on company size as measured by revenue and/or employee count.

This avoids crushing upstarts while regulating companies large enough to matter.

<comment><USER26> If you have regulations by revenue/employee count then the companies will restructure themselves to be below those thresholds.

<comment><USER27> While true it is harder for companies to manipulate those 2 measures.

E.g. could Facebook run with 20 staff? Would Facebook and its shareholders be satisfied with 20m in annual revenue.

This scenario requires trade offs. My opinion is that monopoly, political and market dominance is a sub-optimal outcome

<comment><USER28> It could certainly run with 20 staff – it would just spend a lot of money on license fees to a separate Facebook Services Inc that provides software and server administration services. This is similar to how companies avoid tax e.g. IKEA and Starbucks.

It could similarly avoid large profits but avoiding large revenues works be trickier. But I'm not an expert in these things, so maybe it's possible if you really know what you're doing.

<comment><USER29> Then you just base it off of the number of employees overall in the parent company, not the number of employees in the subsidiary.

<comment><USER28> The problem is, there's no legal distinction between a company that own shares but is "really" part of the same company, vs a completely separately company owning shares e.g. a pension fund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

<comment><USER31> Except no. That's where the regulators fundamentally agree with the regulated company.

This is a different but also common phenomenon. Well established companies tend to favor strict compliance requirements with harsh penalties and difficult targets. The big companies can hit those targets because they can afford to sink time and money into activities that don't make money. Small companies can't.

It isn't necessarily about being anti-competitive. The requirements may be the _right thing_ to do, and better for everyone. Except startups generally can't afford it. In fact, startups are usually absolutely crap at privacy, security, and other elements of social responsibility.

<comment><USER17> Can you explain why this case is not regulatory capture? I dont see your link between what you wrote and the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reading through the actual proposed regulations, most of them are regulations I'd like to have enforced on any social media tech company above some small threshold in size, and are not onerous to implement. Many of these proposed regulations cover exactly the type of issues that are often complained about on HN.

Why does it matter so much that it's Facebook proposing it, and that they have already implemented it?

<comment><USER17> Because they are using it to prevent competitors from being able to take their market share. They're the market leader, they have resources and codebase already...

<comment><USER33> Or they have already implemented them cause they consider those measures to be important / effective. Recommending something you don't think is worth the effort would be stupid, just like not implementing good ones. If FB decides against adopting some measure, they obviously will use the same arguments for not recommending it.

As for FB recommending lower standards to govern the competition... would anyone here actually do this unless part of a brand? Evaluating recommendations is a politicians job, and I'd expect them to listen to more than just the few biggest companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> a typical example of a big company trying to put up barriers to entry by using politicians who want to please the public with worthless (and damaging) regulations and policies.

<comment><USER35> And may I add: politicians that don't understand anything about the internet

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Should companies be suggesting regulations that they don't know how to meet? Maybe before making something a standard, it should be tested in the real world first?

But this doesn't mean you have to accept their proposal.

</comment><comment><USER37> Outline: [https://outline.com/caBX8n](https://outline.com/caBX8n)

<comment><USER38> Thanks for this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> They want to get to a point where they just say we follow all laws strictly and continue to violate privacy. That is why zuckerberg keeps bringing it up. Right now he is asking for laws and he wants to get to a point where he can hide behind laws and say "the law has t caught up yet so it's not our fault we sold your data to the Russians and Chinese ".

</comment><comment><USER40> The answer to technology is technology. People need better tools for communication and authentication, but tools are public goods, and the market under produces public goods because there is no way a producer of public goods can capture the value generated through private property rights, and so there's no mechanism in the market to sustain and incentivize producers.

The solution will make both free market advocates and government intervention advocates happy: use public revenue to create better communication and authentication tools. Let consumers freely choose between the tools provided by private enterprise and those produced by government funded development.

If the government fails, consumers are no worse off: they still have their market borne options. If it succeeds, they have better options than they did before.

Regulation of private enterprise is lazy, authoritarian and a case of putting all of one's eggs in one basket.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm glad to see a case made against anticompetitive lobbying. But I'm disappointed in the use of the GDPR as a straw man.

There are many reasons that could explain why ad network market concentration increased after the GDPR took effect, and not all of them are bad. For example, if some significant percentage of companies depended on exploitative behavior outlawed by the law, we should expect to see concentration increase as those companies leave the market. That's not a negative side effect; it's the law working as intended.

</comment><comment><USER42> It'll probably be too hard to regulate every unethical dark pattern and shitty default on the site.

What you can do is force Facebook to allow the user to 1 click export their graph and all friend data with it in a standardized format.

Once you force them to give me MY friends email addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays in a list, they're fucked because better products can then emerge.

Similar to the idea of regulating Google by making them open source their search index.

<comment><USER43> I can see Cambridge Analytica or other companies offering $100 for your Facebook data export. Are you sure your friends or your friends' friends will not sell your data?

<comment><USER42> No, but if they did I'm kind of the one at fault for making them my "friend". The old world analogy is you go around the world collecting business cards. That address book is yours - you can burn it, sell it or do whatever you want with it - most importantly use it to contact the people who trusted you with the info. People just became more judicious about who got what info.

Similar correction needs to happen here. When I add someone to a digital platform, instead of a 1 click process it needs to be a 1 click + select what info to share process.

Then the data needs to be portable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Maybe it's a sign that we shouldn't want government bureaucrats to invade every area of our lives and let grown people make their own informed choices.

<comment><USER45> Meanwhile, Facebook and Google bureaucrats have already invaded every area of our lives. Oh, and they're monopolies so good luck "choosing".

<comment><USER44> Surprisingly enough. I'm perfectly capable of not logging into Facebook and choosing another search engine.

What I'm not as capable of doing without a lot of trouble is changing the government I'm under. So given a choice, a government with less power is good for my personal liberty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Facebook asks for a moat of regulations it already meets...and a startup or smaller competitor cannot. I doubt EU will fall for this though

</comment><comment><USER47> The article points out that Brussels are alright making regulations around artificial intelligence etc:

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in Brussels lobbying the European Union's regulators as they form new laws to govern artificial intelligence, content moderation and more"

Does anyone know what they are thinking of doing in this regard? And what problems they are attempting to solve?

<comment><USER48> One example is facial recognition. From what I gather, there is a growing consensus that unrestrained facial recognition might be either in conflict, or pose a potential threat to certain legal rights of European citizens.

In Germany, for example, privacy-threatening issues are covered by a body of norms called "Persönlichkeitsrecht". Which are based constitutionally on Articles 1 and 2 of the German constitution (Grundgesetz) - the Right to Human Dignity and the Right to Personal Fulfillment/Development.

Allowing anyone storing and sharing facial recognition data willy-nilly might endanger those rights and hence might be a need for regulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is how they remove the chance of competition.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is called Baptist and bootleggers effect. Facebook benefits, government benefits while we suffer.

</comment><comment><USER51> Bury their potential competitors in compliance costs so no one can ever dethrone them.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm not sure this sort of meta-comment is allowed. But, given the importance of this information, and it's potentiality to induce outrage that leads to participation and commentary, and given the imperfect hacker news ranking algorithm which can fail to differentiate between conversation and flaming when punishing posts in visibility—might I implore you to refrain from commenting unless substantial so that eyes that may have power to action against such malfeasance catch note of this here? (Really likely of note only if comment:points ratio gets close to 1 and above. I accept that this comment's very existence is ironic, but with hope of the wider aim achieved.)

<comment><USER38> Assuming the TechCrunch article's headline is the same as the HN post headline, then I think you are already too late. I would describe it as inflammatory at best.

I can't actually load the article because (I think) my web browser's anti- tracking blockers interfere with TC's adtech. I'm using Firefox Focus with iOS Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The one regulation that could save us from Facebook would be to mandate an open API. That would solve the network effect problem for new social networks and enable real competition.

<comment><USER54> That would be a mixed bag in several ways - while good for making a diverse ecosystem it would mean Cambridge Analytica style abuses would be the norm and rely upon user savviness for security. In a lowest common denominator base like Facebook - that won't work well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> On iOS 13 mobile safari - is anyone else unable to use the Back button to leave TechCrunch?

Might blacklist their site with a content blocker if they are indeed hijacking the back button.

<comment><USER56> Just tried, both a swipe back and the back button work here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The multi-billion dollar question is whether someone with serious technical acumen is prepared to step up and fight for a law that meaningfully restrains surveillance capitalism while allowing startups to compete. Or build a compliance-as-a-service business and give it away to startups for free.

</comment><comment><USER58> Back when the GDPR was still pending, the consensus on HN was that there was nothing to fear because European regulators emphasize the _spirit_ of the law, rather than beating people over the head with the letter of the law like American regulators do.

Anyway, the law went into effect and some guy got fined just over $2000 for using CC instead of BCC on his personal mailing list of 150 people. There are a bunch more examples just like that [1].

I miss the tech community that used to be much more skeptical of government regulation -- remember SOPA/PIPA?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20278819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20278819)

<comment><USER27> GDPR "hurt" tech companies, but hurt the big ones less than the small ones.

The big tech companies have increased market dominance so it seems like spirit of the law was actually to crush competition so that there fewer players for the EU to regulate

<comment><USER59> I'm not convinced that was some ulterior goal, but even if, I don't mind as long as it is followed by actually regulating the remaining players.

As I keep saying: we don't need innovation in adtech. We don't need more companies in this space. We need this industry burned down to the ground, encased in a concrete tomb, with warnings for future generations plastered all over it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> They're asking for this to make it harder for the competition. Simple. Happens in many industries too.

</comment><comment><USER61> Imagine my shock. Asking for regulation simply to attack the competition or new entrants..

</comment><comment><USER62> They are trying to gatekeep.

</comment><comment><USER63> Facebook execs should be on trial for what their company has done to personal privacy

</comment><comment><USER64> Anyone else notice that after you accept TechCrunch's cookie consent pop-up that the site blocks you from tapping back on your browser to get back to HN?

<comment><USER65> Try a longpress on the back button and there you should see the hn=>techcrunch=>guce.advertising=>techcrunch redirect chain. Hitting back will go back to guce which immediately forwards you to techcrunch again. Select hn instead

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> The problem is that there are too many influential people financially invested in Facebook and other monopolies. It creates perverse incentives for governments and other companies.

People these days are using the stock market as a giant collaborative money laundering machine; all small businesses exist only to take bank loans which go straight to paying these big corporations for whatever useless services they provide. The small businesses then go bankrupt and new ones spawn up in their place with fresh new loans for the corporations to feed on. That's what our fiat financial system is all about; the big mega corps feed on the bankrupted corpses of small business and let the rest of society foot the bill through inflation. The main sport for the elites is to move around this inflation to parts of the economy that are not being monitored so that it doesn't show up in the CPI.</comment>


Ask HN: How do non-experts run technical companies (Carnegie, Musk, Jobs)? - <AUTHOR> What do these leaders do that cannot be done better by someone else? <comment><USER2> Inspiring the team, maniacal Determination, Resourcefulness, fast rate of learning ( beginners mind ), making the tough decisions fast, seeing the big picture, intuition on seeing the next big thing ( move to where the puck is going to be ) and articulating that vision clearly , incredibly focused execution and most importantly thinking from first principles and keeping their assumptions informed by the ever changing reality and doing a complete 180 at the drop of a hat if the situation merits it.</comment>


Twitter to uncap retweet_count - <AUTHOR> https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/5129 <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps this is not in response to Idan Gazit's complaint <http://gazit.me/2012/01/09/Twitter-documentation-fail.html>, but the timing is certainly interesting.</comment>


Rationing, errors and mammogram math  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/magazine/13Fob-wwln-t.html?ref=magazine

<comment><USER2> Wow! Bayesian analysis in the New York Times. Maybe there is hope for this world after all.

<comment><USER3> I'll start by saying that I'm not trolling.

Using conditional probability, or bayes theorem to calculate a conditional probabilitiy, does not make something bayesian analysis.

I haven't read the original report (it's on my list) but what is presented in this article isn't really anything except probability. It would be bayesian if they put a distribution on the proportion of people that have a "certain cancer."

<comment><USER4> <http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes>

He uses the mammogram statistics as an example to explain Bayes' Theorem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mammogram examples are everywhere! Where did it come from?</comment>


Legends in D3 - <AUTHOR> http://d3-legend.susielu.com/

<comment><USER2> A team I work with built a great internal tool with D3 and there were a few things that they did that really bumped it up to the next level:

\- The data was the interface. Things that they used d3 to show, were also the interaction elements which could be clicked to focus-in on subsets of the same data. It was almost fractal, but also immediately clear and simple to use. There were no control bars or sliders or really buttons. Anybody who could use google maps could use this and it took about 10 seconds to show somebody how it worked before they could operate it at a high-level.

\- The legend was not just a visual aid, but had interactive components in the tool:

1) Hovering over an element in the legend caused all the corresponding elements in the display to highlight so you could see where they were in a complex display. (and visa-versa, hovering over an element in the main display caused that element in the legend to highlight)

2) Clicking an element in the legend caused it to filter on-off, allowing various unimportant parts of the display to be eliminated.

These three things changed it from just a static picture into a useful analytic tool and getting more value out of the legend by turning it from just a picture into a fully interactive element felt so obvious in retrospect that legends I see now that are just a legend feel incomplete.

<comment><USER3> This really reminds me of toggling legend in Rickshaw. [http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/examples/extensions.ht...](http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/examples/extensions.html)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the legend works very similarly in the one I saw as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice! I was tired of making my own legends for each single things. And this one looks really nice and easy.

Though, one of my pet peeves: people, please don't use discrete color scales for continuous parameters. It distorts presentation for no good reason. For example two countries are colored the same way even though they are on the opposing edges of a bin (so the difference is being masked), or two countries are colored in a different way, even though the difference is minimal, but just passes an artificial threshold (then an artificial difference is being shown).

<comment><USER5> And the colormap should be easy to read with color blindness (so the blue/green one is not good), and also look good with various amounts of hue on different screens or print. For instance, printed in b&w. This page has a lot of color maps and how they look in greyscale in the bottom: [http://matplotlib.org/1.4.1/users/colormaps.html](http://matplotlib.org/1.4.1/users/colormaps.html) As can be seen, the "jet" map often used is unreadable, luckily it is no longer default in matlab.

<comment><USER6> > _And the colormap should be easy to read with color blindness (so the blue > /green one is not good)_

Well, blue/green or blue/red are actually the most acceptable scales to use, since most colorblind people only have problems distinguishing red and green, while for most of the others blue is very dark so the scale still works somewhat. The others are a very, very small minority that will already be used to use various tools to enhance their vision.

As far as I can see, testing with [http://colortest.it/deuteranopia:http://d3-legend.susielu.co...](http://colortest.it/deuteranopia:http://d3-legend.susielu.com/) for example, the chosen colorscale is not the worst there is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks very good.

For the size legend, the defaults are a bit odd. You should almost always be using d3.scale.sqrt() as you're comparing area, also zero in the domain should usually map to zero on the range.

I made a similar legend for circle areas, but they are stacked within each other. [http://bl.ocks.org/aubergene/4723857](http://bl.ocks.org/aubergene/4723857)

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't be the only one who thought this article would be about people who will be known throughout history for their amazing work in D3- champions, heroes, front-end developers!

<comment><USER9> No, but those comfused would be people who haven't worked with plotting and charts and so don't know what "legend" means in this context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. After spending a lot of time tweaking chart legend code, I would be very happy to pull a polished toolset like this in to future projects.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Tired of making legends for your data visualizations?"

No. It never takes more than about two minutes to whip up something basic like this.

Integrating your legend tightly with your visualization has lots of benefits, mostly in terms of enabling interaction.

<comment><USER12> Good for you. For me it would take close to a working day at least the first time. Later on, maybe an hour if I am lucky.</comment></comment>


World Chess Championship will move on to rapid games - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/sports/world-chess-championship-draw-tiebreaker.html <comment><USER2> More people (including love him or loathe him Kasparov: [https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067125702712004609](https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1067125702712004609)) are finally starting to see that the (rapid) tiebreak is not a foregone conclusion.

While people keep looking at FIDE's ranking list ([https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_rapid](https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_rapid)), most seem to be ignoring the fact that Magnus Carlsen's 2880 rapid rating has not been updated since January. There's simply no guarantee that he's still at a 2880 level. This appears to be quite a quirk with FIDE's rating system - it's certainly not how professional tennis (see: Serena Williams during maternity leave) or cricket rankings work (see: Steve Smith's ranking after starting his 1-year ban).

Meanwhile, in the 2017 World Rapid Championship, Carlsen did _not_ finish 1st despite having an Elo above 2900. In fact, he came a "lowly" 5th, and finished behind Bu who was a 254 points behind (seeded 68, or ranked roughly 88). Meanwhile, Anand, seeded 12th but ranked around 17 or 150 Elo behind, won the title.

Right now, while Caruana is ranked 10th, he is still higher than many players who have in the past been considered stronger than him at rapid - in tennis terms, the ranking difference is nothing (for the record, he's only 91 Elo behind, if we can trust that system). The pecking order appears perennially turbulent.

Lastly, Caruana actually finished 2nd in the 2014 World Rapid Championship - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rapid_Chess_Championship...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rapid_Chess_Championship#World_Rapid_&_Blitz_Chess_Championships_\(2012–present\)) \- it's definitely note far-fetched to consider the question that he could well win the rapid tiebreaks, _and also_ achieve 1st at the upcoming World Rapid Chess Championship (provided it's not held in Saudi Arabia) next.

Some more archived tables for dissemination:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170909194137/https://ratings.f...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170909194137/https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_rapid)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20171115220847/https://ratings.f...](https://web.archive.org/web/20171115220847/https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men_rapid)</comment>


Google Voice: A Milestone in Telephony - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twilio.com/2009/06/by-evan-cooke-this-week-is-a-big-week-for-telephony-after-years-of-development-google-voice-is-preparing-to-to-go-public-t.html

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't give Google Voice full credit for innovation on this. The real credit needs to go Asterisk for innovation in the VoIP front, their the ones who brought this tech from out of no where to the masses first...

To Google's credit, they did take something that was useful and made it available for the masses in a super easy fasion and made it better, like searching and email.

<comment><USER3> Google Voice was originally GrandCentral so its founders Walker and Paquet would seem more deserving of your award of partial credit.

Google has added some features but I think their main contribution can come from popularizing voip and forcing the mobile networks to accept reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Twilio is possibly a more ground-breaking service, or at least it will be when they finally support international calls properly.

</comment><comment><USER5> duh... FollowMe, MeetMe, VoiceMail, Conference, IVR, etc... Asterisk has been doing all those milestones for a decade now...</comment>


Grafted plant produces potatoes and tomatoes at the same time - <AUTHOR> http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-grafted-tomato-potato-plant-yields-ketchup-n-fries/

<comment><USER2> I never thought i'd see a Thompson & Morgan product on HN. Hot from the cutting-edge agro-tech research hub of, er, Ipswich:

[http://blog.thompson-morgan.com/gardening-news/tomtato- harve...](http://blog.thompson-morgan.com/gardening-news/tomtato-harvest- potatoes-and-tomatoes-from-the-same-plant/)

Although it says here that the first working potato-tomato graft was made in Germany, and the Thompson & Morgan product is actually put together in the Netherlands:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomato](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomato)</comment>


My Startup has 30 Days to Live - <AUTHOR> http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> First submission, and significant discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5939498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5939498)

TheAtlanticWire article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5942374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5942374)

Other, random submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5941920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5941920)

</comment><comment><USER3> These types of of writings are often hard to come by, but they always provide a refreshing taste of an often hidden part of entrepreneurship.</comment>


Show HN: We Freelance, a community where freelancers share stories and resources - <AUTHOR> https://we-freelance.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, "We Freelance" maker here.

I've been a freelance mobile developer for 3 years now, and I remember my very begining, I hesitated a long time to become a freelancer.

So I hope "We Freelance" will help some to take the step thanks to inspiring stories, books and resources.

I also love trying new SaaS tools (maybe too much), so the next feature will be a list of all the tools suitable for freelancers.

If you have any feature idea, do not hesitate to comment, or PM me on Twitter.

<comment><USER2> I recently got laid off from dayjob and had been doing a little frelancing on the side...I'm re-empployed again. But I've been thinking really hard about going freelance full-blown (even if only to feel like I'm in more control of my "employment fate")...so I definitely agree with your "...hesitated a long time..." note. I have not yet taken the plunge...so very much appreciate this site that you have built! Kudos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why the Upwork color theme? That turned me off for a while.

The first thought I had: "Is this from Upwork?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Pure coincidence, I chose the main color when I was driving for the holidays, so I guess I saw too many trees on the road ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like stories is kind of misleading - I was hoping for literal stories, while instead it seems like it's just a non-standard name for your discussion/forum section

</comment><comment><USER5> So how do we actually share something? I don't see any signup or submit link. I'm Chrome for iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was a bug. You should see a "Submit" button on the stories subheader now. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a place where we can out bad clients?

</comment><comment><USER7> Just out of curiosity: What is your tech stack?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- Front : Angular / No CSS Framework, only the HTML5 Reset.

\- Back : Firebase (Database, Hosting & Storage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All I see is "WF" in a box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey JTxt, I think Firebase is crying. Trying to see what's going on!

<comment><USER9> Console warning, if it helps:

      > 16:03:13.269 FIREBASE WARNING: Specified Firebase database has reached its Peak Connections limit.
      > If you are the Firebase owner, consider upgrading. (https://wefreelance-prod.firebaseio.com)

I didn't get any further than the WF in my boutique QupZilla browser, with ancient ad-block tech built-in, but extension-free Chrome got to the point where it looked like it was actually trying to load something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. Don't really understand how the firebase peak connection limit is calculated. From what I see on Google Analytics, I don't have 100 simultaneous connection.

Edit: I upgraded, so it should be good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How much time did it took ? Like commenting a hackernews child in hackernews :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks like the VueJS Hacker news script. Not knocking it but just curious if it is. I've used that script to build a few things myself. [https://github.com/vuejs/vue-hackernews-2.0](https://github.com/vuejs/vue- hackernews-2.0)</comment>


Amazon recruiters lying about hiring managers so they can trick candidates - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/K5s7tYg4

<comment><USER2> Based on the reviews we're hearing about Amazon an an employer, you might should be thankful.

But definitely opaque in an atmosphere where they need you more than you need them.

I can understand if they don't want to give the hiring manager's name until the interview because some people are crazy on linkedin. BUT, they should definitely be able to give you better details about the interview.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have had a lot of calls that go like this.

But usually I wont waste my time past the first call if they can't put a name on the hiring manager.</comment>


Sun and Wind Alter Global Landscape, Leaving Utilities Behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/science/earth/sun-and-wind-alter-german-landscape-leaving-utilities-behind.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> Utilities will fight back. To help this transition in the US municipalities should not be allowed to require residences to be connected to utilities.

[http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/18/texas- state-t...](http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/18/texas-state-tried- to-shut-down-a-sustainable-community/)

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-10/off-the- grid...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-10/off-the-grid-in- florida-robin-speronis-fights-municipal-code)

<comment><USER3> Why?

Its extremely rare and costly to produce enough power yourself to go off-grid. Requiring utility connections seem sensible policy (in urban areas anyway).

<comment><USER4> _Its extremely rare and costly to produce enough power yourself to go off- grid._

If so, then the law seems unnecessary. If not, the law seems harmful.

Why should the individuals who do not need utilities be obligated to purchase them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there is a huge opportunity for VCs and everyone else here. Invest directly in solar and wind installations. Small enterprises (startups) do home installations and the customer pays the company with interest like a micro- utility. I've heard that this is very much how many installers operate in the United States. The show stopper for many people is the initial investment in solar and wind, so if VCs have the money to invest this is a win for everyone involved. It's maybe not the same as investing in shares of a tech. company, but I think that it is a much safer investment.

[http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#energy](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#energy)

<comment><USER6> There was a startup doing that in India, IIRC. They installed the solar panels, then you paid for the energy until the panel was paid off, which then became your property.

EDIT: found it: [http://simpanetworks.com/our- solution/](http://simpanetworks.com/our-solution/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is somewhat misleading in portraying Germany as a leader. In fact, these policies find their origin in the 2003 EU Energy Directive. What they describe is true in all the E.U. countries which met their respective renewable energy objectives as mandated by the E.U.

<comment><USER8> How well do the EU countries meet their objectives? Are any doing better than others? German demand for solar was so strong it drove up the price of silica.

<comment><USER9> Germany is the clear leader for non-hydroelectric renewable generation (which is, after all, the difficult form, and the form that can be rolled out worldwide).

Curiously enough, though, it is outperformed by the UK and particularly France, in actual CO2 emissions:

[https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9...](https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=en_atm_co2e_pc&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:DEU:FRA:GBR&ifdim=region&ind=false)

That is, because of its reliance on coal. The UK, in comparison, gets much of its energy from gas, and France nuclear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Australian state I live in (SA) took _72%_ of its power generation from wind power for one (windy) day last week.

</comment><comment><USER10> The chart in the article puts fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) on one side and renewables (solar, wind) and low emission sources (hydro) on the other. Then it puts nuclear with the fossil fuels. Nuclear belongs on the renewable and no emission side; its disadvantage isn't global warming or limited fuel but possible industrial accidents. the chart would be much more informative if the divide reflected actual future energy and pollution challenges the nations are facing.

Wow. Has Japan really abandoned its nuclear power that thoroughly? If it sets itself up in a resource race with China, it's going to be sorry someday.

<comment><USER11> How do you renew the supply of nuclear fuel?

<comment><USER10> There isn't any shortage now; plenty of known cheap reserves exist. New fuels in upcoming fission reactors like thorium are also very abundant.

Also, breeder reactions can extend the current supply of nuclear fuel effectively indefinitely and reduce the amount of waste to dispose of.

Meanwhile by comparison natural gas supplies are set to peak within two decades and oil production peaked in 2005. Coal won't peak for a while but the most desirable anthracite is already exhausted outside China and Vietnam. Filthy lignite production is twice as high and bitumen is ten times as high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did the NYT buy this website when I wasn't looking?</comment>


Seeking remote job due to coronavirus unemployment - <AUTHOR> Hi fellow hackers.
This is probably a long shot - and I'm sure you'll see quite a few posts like this over the coming weeks - but I'm going to swallow my pride and ask nonetheless.
I've been a data entry clerk for the past twenty years, working for a major bookmaker in Northern Ireland. With the coronavirus pandemic hitting recently, many businesses have decided to lay off large numbers of staff. I've just become one of the unfortunate victims of one of these layoffs today, with a mortgage to pay, a wife and two young children to support.
I've also been programming, in my own time, over the past seven years or so, in Python 3, Javascript and PHP mainly. Over that time I've developed a number of tools that were used in my former place of employ, to scrape data from websites and automate the process of data entry. I've also built some online tools in Javascript and PHP for scraping/munging data. Most recently, until the coronavirus hit and unemployment loomed, I was working on a Mario/NES style level editor in HTML5 and a random tile generator for building platformer levels, while I learned C++ and wrote a platforming engine to develop a platform game for release on Steam.
I've placed a number of these tool in public repos on github. You can check them out at:
https://github.com/Zleet
I've also got a resume ready to go for anyone that's interested. What I'm looking for is any remote programming job that fits my skillset and will enable me to keep a roof over my family's head and food in the cupboard for the next few months.
I apologise for posting something like this here. I've been reading hacker news for years now. It's my favourite website. But, along with many other people right now, I'm in a pretty bad place and I've got several little people relying on me to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Be assured that any job offer right now would be gratefully accepted.
Thanks in advance,
Miktor <comment><USER2> The apology's unnecessary. Keep on chugging. While I can only offer words of encouragement, know that this is the right place to ask. Ask everywhere and anywhere. No shame at all as we're all dealing with fallout of this event. We all need to support others through this.</comment>


Birthday Paradox Revisited - <AUTHOR> http://datagenetics.com/blog/february72019/index.html <comment><USER2> The Birthday Problem [1]:

        How many people do you have to put in a room
        before there's a 50% chance of two having the
        same birthday.

Assuming a uniform distribution of birthdays. The answer turns out to be about 23. In general, for M possible birthdays (other than 365, say), you need about sqrt(M) people before you get a 50% chance.

The article is a standard introduction to the Birthday Problem with some real world data thrown in. The 'paradox' comes from the surprise that the number is so low (23) compared with the number of days in the year (365). As the article points out, one short description of why the number is so low is that you're comparing each new person with every person already in the room instead of drawing two numbers at random and seeing if they're the same.

For the curious, I have a minimal post on how to derive the Birthday Paradox and other canonical probability problems [2].

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

[2] [https://mechaelephant.com/dev/Assorted-Small-Probability- Pro...](https://mechaelephant.com/dev/Assorted-Small-Probability-Problems/)

<comment><USER3> An even, shorter intuition would be that: number of pairs in a group of n people grows O(n^2), which implies some square root factor. I would lead with that before starting a more rigorous proof.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. To narrow down some of the details: There are n*(n-1)/2 = roughly n^2 / 2 pairs. If each pair has a 1/k chance of matching, then the expected number of pairs that match is (n^2 / 2) / k. Therefore, if we set n = √k, we get roughly 0.5 pairs on average.

Now, if it were impossible to ever get multiple matching pairs, then "the chance there's at least one match" would be equal to "the expected number of matches". Specifically: "chance of at least 1 match" = "expected number of matches" \- "chance of at least 2 matches" \- "chance of at least 3 matches" \- ... . Since it's possible but unlikely to get multiple matches, the approximation should be reasonably close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really enjoy reading about those kinds of problems because they are so opposite to my intuition.

Even thinking about this more, and reading (and understanding) the solution, if I think about this, my guess would still be "well, with 182 people, half the pigeon holes would be taken, so there would be 50% chance the next person getting in the room would pick a taken hole".

Another similar problem is the Monty Hall problem. Simple, easy to understand when explained, but still, despite understanding the solution, doesn't feel right!

<comment><USER6> You're formulating the problem wrong in your mind.

Its true that if you have 182 people in the room all with unique birthdays and you add one more random person to the room there is a 50% chance of them sharing a birthday just like you described. But you're assuming you already managed to gather 182 people without any birthday collisions. That's a different problem then the one originally posed. In your case you collected 182 people _with unique birthdays_ and checked the probability of a collision when adding one more. But the real question asks what is if you grabbed those 182 people at random what is the chance that any two of them _already_ share a birthday?

<comment><USER5> indeed, that makes more sense this way!

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately I don't have any good intuition to share for the Monty Hall problem, as I haven't been able to get an intuitive understanding of it yet.

However I did just read about Bertrand's Box Paradox[1], and it's very much the same sort of thinking as the Monty Hall problem, but more intuitively understandable for me at least.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%27s_box_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%27s_box_paradox)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The result is that the non-uniformity does have an impact effect, but it 's very, very small. When there were four or less people in the room, from my experiments, the non-uniformity of distribution resulted in a slight decrease in the chances of a birthday collision (but this could loss of precision from too small a sample size as the percentage of times, for instance that two people collide is just 0.274%). After five people, the non-unformity provided a slight increase in the chances of all collisions. This is what I would expect._

Does this make any sense? The author says that with a realistic non-uniform distribution of birthdays, they found that collisions were less likely when there were fewer than 5 people involved. I can't think of any reason this would be the case. If certain birthdays are more common than others, I'd think that the chances of a collision must go up regardless of the number of people involved.

Is there any plausible mathematical explanation for this effect? Or was the experiment just underpowered? Or worse, might the simulation code be buggy? Presumably they would have run the simulation more than once after getting such such a counterintuitive answer, and it seems really unlikely that this effect would be consistent unless something was broken.

<comment><USER8> _> I can't think of any reason this would be the case._

The author suggests such a reason: the loss of precision. As I understand it hints to a limited precision of float/double number representation. When you calculate a sum of millions of fractions some of fractions could turn into zero, because you have divided a too small number on a too large one.

<comment><USER7> I think the floating-point precision interpretation is negated by the author's suggestion that the loss of precision is "because of the small sample size". I can sort-of see how a purely analytical solution might be susceptible to rounding issues (and I say sort-of because I don't think such an approach would actually include multiplying millions of fractions, and the straightforward approach involves numbers near 1 instead of near 0), but the reference to "sample size" makes me think that this was a numerical simulation.

But presuming the author ran the simulation more than once (wouldn't you do this if you had such a surprising result?) I don't see how there could be any consistent effect unless there was a bug in the logic of the program. Unless maybe they ran it multiple times with the same random seed and got exactly the same results?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a similar vein, I saw this linked from HN not too long ago and thought it was a really neat application of the birthday paradox--all about finding duplicate packs of Skittles: [https://possiblywrong.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/follow-up- i-f...](https://possiblywrong.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/follow-up-i-found-two- identical-packs-of-skittles-among-468-packs-with-a-total-of-27740-skittles/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The US data show that the healthcare system is happy to induce labor to support holiday gatherings of hospital staff.

The interesting thing is that induction increases the risk of c-section, which is a negative for the family, but a positive for the healthcare system (for obvious reasons).

Also note that the US has one of the worst birthing mortality rates amongst western countries...

USA#1

</comment><comment><USER11> Me and my 4 year younger sister share our birthday. Growing up people would often gasp and ask themselves "what are the odds??", to which I'd usually reply "1/365?".

My father and step-sister also share their birthdays.

I guess probabilities are just really unintuitive to people.

<comment><USER12> Obligatory quote by Richard Feynman:

"You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is there a huge drop on July 4th?

<comment><USER14> As the article points out, induced labor provides an element of choice with regards to birth.

Not as many mothers (or doctors) in the U.S. seem to want to induce labor on U.S. Independence Day.

<comment><USER15> A lot of maternity wards will try to avoid booking inductions on public holidays, because they will have fewer staff to deal with the spontaneous births on the day.</comment></comment></comment>


SharePoint--The next big 'OS' from Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=327 <comment><AUTHOR> I've been involved with SharePoint for some time as a consultant. I'm not a huge fan of the product from a usability perspective, but I agree with the author of this blog post that it's Microsoft's direction to tie all of their products into the platform. Anybody writing applications for the Microsoft platform should be aware of this suite of products.</comment>


Engineering Ladder Archive - <AUTHOR> https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/04/26/Engineering-Ladder-Archive.html <comment><USER2> I wish FAANG shared theirs. It'd be interesting to see how similar or different they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, they employ tens of thousands of engineers though so a lot of information is also floating around on their ladders. Check out this post: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-job-levels-in- Googles...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-job-levels-in-Googles- technical-career-track)</comment></comment>


Proposal – let's backport Go := to C - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7758 <comment><USER2> As if that ever was the problem with C.

Multiple return values could have been way more handy but even that would be a though sell.

</comment><comment><USER3> IMHO this would lower the already limited type information contained in a C program. `auto` still has some use in C++ where typing out repetitive template types can get tedious but it still reduces readability in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER4> But...but...c already has variable assignment with definition?

        int x = bar(i);</comment>


Smasher – Turn your directories to JSON and back (XML, YML support on it's way) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kamranahmedse/smasher <comment><AUTHOR> Note that: It isn't a compressor, the name "Smasher" might make you think that it is a compressor (terrible name, I chose), but it isn't. The idea is to use it programatically. Originally it was used to index cloud formation scripts that were stored on disk. It will parse the files assuming that they are JSON files. However there can be many usages, For example:

\- When parsing several directories of files it's nice to just provide a path rather than iterating through all the directories (which means more memory and usage of resources).

\- You may use it to index your directories and easily locate the place you are looking for.

\- Or may be you can use it to search files or folders based on some keywords.

\- Or you can use it where you need some sort of virtual filesystem</comment>


How Did Paul Krugman Get It So Wrong? (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/ecaf_2077.pdf <comment><USER2> Let Krugman speak for himself and then ask if he got it so wrong.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t....](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html)</comment>


Epson customers report Google Cloud Print causing printers to power down - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chromebook-central/525W6rnP5Dc <comment><USER2> My Nexus 6P went into a boot loop on Monday and I got an RMA issued. UPS emailed me the return shipping label last night and when I went to print it this morning I couldn't because my Epson WorkForce 845 was in a boot loop.

<comment><USER3> Yo dog. You got 'boot looted'.

<comment><USER4> We don't do that here.

<comment><USER3> Do what? Make jokes?

<comment><USER5> Comments should add to the discussion. Even humourous comments. Memes don't add anything to a discussion.

<comment><USER3> That is sometimes how I talk when I make jokes. No memes here. Tough crowd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you manage to engage an internal Google team on an issue?

From the story: "We are working with Epson and internal Google teams to root cause this issue"

I've seen many help forum threads go unanswered, after days and pages of postings.

<comment><USER7> Create a viral video, they notice when a lot of people are complaining about things vs a loud few.

<comment><USER8> It shouldn't require a marketing campaign to file a bug report.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately it does, this is Google after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We'll have Fusion reactors before solid and enjoyable printers.

<comment><USER11> People just don't seem to realise that moving parts are hard. Phones are incredibly complex but (mostly) just keep working until you drop them on a hard floor. Cars have lots of moving parts and need maintenance. Screens use complicated technology and (mostly) just keep working. Printers have moving parts and break a lot.

Moving parts are inherently unreliable. We've just got really used to the incredible reliability that you get from solid state electronics.

My point is that you may well be right. Fusion power is an easier challenge than mechanical things not breaking because you can do it without moving parts (give or take a turbine).

<comment><USER12> My iPhone 4S has 0 moving parts, yet it had failed WiFi after 1 year. My Macbook has 0 moving parts, yet it had failed SSD. My Renault Logan has quite a lot of moving parts, yet I use it for a few years and almost 100 000 kilometers (and that's quite a lot of movement in extremely different weather conditions, from -40 to +40) and I had very minimal maintenance outside of regular oil change.

While I generally agree, the point is, even when there are no moving parts, there's a lot of failure points (temperature, vibrations) and manufacturers will create faulty devices, no matter what. If device is too good, they will cut expenses, until it'll be "good enough".

<comment><USER13> The iPhone has a home button, power button, and volume buttons that all move. The Macbook's keyboard is comprised of moving parts. There's also the screen hinge which used to be a very common point of failure in laptops.

<comment><USER14> Minor nit - the iPhone 7 doesn't have a physical "home button" \- it's a force-sensitive area with haptic feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am having this problem on an Epson Workforce 645. It stays in a continual boot loop. To fix it, I logged into Cloud Print to delete the printer and also unplugged my access point. This stopped the boot loop. I then did a 'reset all settings' from the printer's touch screen menus. After that, I plugged in my AP again and joined the printer to my WiFi network. I really needed something printed so I enabled Cloud Print again on the printer unaware of the consequences. The boot loop started again. :-(

I was actually thinking it was going to be time to buy a new printer as my WF 645 is very old. I thought the WiFi adapter had gone bad and was causing the boot loop. Apparently this is not the case.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've had the same thing happen with my Epson WF-3540. It's been a totally solid printer up until this point.

To fix it I started it up and immediately disabled the Wi-Fi. Then I "suspended" Google Cloud Print and Epson Connect Services. It's working fine now - albeit with no cloud services for our phones/tablets.

Hopefully they resolve this soon.

<comment><USER17> In my case (WF-7610) I couldn't even get it to boot so I had to power down my wifi router entirely but the rest of the workaround worked.

<comment><USER16> P.S. looks like they fixed it. I have Google Cloud Print re-enabled and it's working fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On first glance Google Cloud Print looks like nothing more than an Internet version of networking printing, a technology which has been around for a _long_ time; so one is naturally a bit surprised that Epson could get something like this wrong, but then I dug a little deeper...

[https://developers.google.com/cloud- print/docs/devguide](https://developers.google.com/cloud-print/docs/devguide)

...and the protocol involves HTTPS, OAuth, JSON, and XMPP(!), so rather more complex than existing protocols like IPP; although much can be said for having simple-to-parse protocols especially for embedded devices like these, some error occurring in the GCP part of the firmware shouldn't cause the whole printer to become unusable.

<comment><USER19> Wonder why they decided to invent their own protocol? I've used IPP over the internet via an SSH tunnel, it's slow but it works.

<comment><USER20> IPP's got a few problems, especially when it comes to phones/tablets or other mobile devices:

\- IPP requires unique drivers for each printer. Some mobile devices (Chromebooks and iOS, I believe) don't allow installing drivers.

\- IPP requires that you're on the same LAN segment, or that you punch a hole through your router. That doesn't work very well when interacting with foreign printers, and punching a hole through a router is too complex for many home users.

\- IPP is limited to HTTP Basic/Digest auth, which isn't user friendly or secure. The traffic's also unencrypted. (And SSH isn't user friendly enough for home users.)

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on Cloud Print.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oh wow, this happened to me last night when I was trying to scan something! I was sure that I had broken it somehow but I guess not. Super surprising to me to see the reason my printer is broken on HN anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> I didn't know Google Cloud Print before, so I made some research on their site: [https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/](https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/)

""" Using Google Cloud Print, you can make your home and work printers available to you and anyone you choose, from the applications you use every day. Google Cloud Print works on your phone, tablet, Chromebook, PC, and any other web-connected device you want to print from. """

Ok, so my printer is supposed to be registered to google cloud to make me print from anywhere. Ok. But my files?

[https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/howitworks.html](https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/howitworks.html)

""" When you print through Google Cloud Print, your file is securely sent to your printer over the web. Because it's the web, Google Cloud Print works whether you're in the same room as your printer, or on another continent. It also doesn't matter whether you're on a phone, a traditional desktop, or anything in between (like a tablet). """

So if I'm in my room, on my laptop, at 3 meters from my ubersupercloudenabled printer, I can send my file to it via the web. Securely. Ok.

""" Documents are transferred over a secure HTTPS web connection. After a job is completed, the associated document is deleted from our servers. """

The file is sent via HTTPS. But the file itself...is it encrypted? (Maybe the printer generates a keypair upon registration, and the same does every devices, etc etc...?)

[https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/2541843?hl=en&r...](https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/2541843?hl=en&ref_topic=4456298)

""" Who can see what I'm printing?

Google Cloud Print jobs are submitted and retrieved over a secure connection (https), and are only available to you and the printer you're using. """

""" Any document you send for printing is kept strictly confidential. Google does not access the documents you print for any purpose other than to improve printing. """

"to improve printing" may be the "metaphor" behind the functioning of Google Cloud Print itself. This can be read, after removing the double negations and the other usual tricks as "Google access the documents you print to give to you the comfort to print your files while staying 3 meters away from your printer, by passing them to the cloud and our automatic eyes and godknowswhat".

NO. THANKS BUT NO.

<comment><USER23> >So if I'm in my room, on my laptop, at 3 meters from my ubersupercloudenabled printer, I can send my file to it via the web. Securely. Ok.

Conversely, if you are NOT within a few meters of your printer, resetting the machine, managing paper jams, cartridge or toner replacement (i.e. solve the issues that invariably happen every single time you really need to print something, particularly if you are in a hurry) is _tricky_.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. I don't know why this GCP seems so "irreplaceable" to people using it, given the implications of "sending your files to google just to print them".

I can do the same using a wifi/eth enabled printer and my router plus maybe using a firewall to block the printer to go out on the internet and to be called from outside.

<comment><USER24> > I can do the same using a wifi/eth enabled printer and my router plus maybe > using a firewall to block the printer to go out on the internet and to be > called from outside.

Gmail? I can do the same thing with a VPS, qmail, dspam, courier, and roundcube. Why does gmail even exist?

Congratulations - you're very smart. But you're not the target market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This happened to my WorkForce 545 after sending a print job to it last night. Ended up in an endless reset loop until I was able to reset it to factory settings.

</comment><comment><USER26> Welcome to the Internet of Things.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe EPSON does not know how to update their printer's firmware.

Maybe google noticed a botnet of EPSON printer trying to knock them down. Or a poorly setup of uPnP/network that helps penetrate (THEIR) networks...

Maybe they just shut down the printers because nothing else can be done to suppress the threat.

Maybe they don't publicized it because :

1) this is called illegal penetration of someone else system (hacking...) and is a penal offense in many countries

2) it would give IoT a bad name (Google's kind of prospective beneficial market)

3) it would be illegal for them/very costly to give the information (libel, NDA...)

4) there is NO solutions...

This is pure speculation, because since I don't think google throw their printer in the trash, no one can go to their office and check if they are actually throwing away some EPSON printers.</comment>


Need Help Creating HackerNews Favorite Coding Songs Mixtape - <AUTHOR>

we are looking to create a mixtape of the best songs that you guys use for coding, and create a mixtape out of it on our site AtticTV.com.
Something like this, which is a mixtape created for Break-up Songs: https://www.attictv.com/mixtape/4f7d4ab99efcfe17300ecbe3
Help out, please, by leaving your favorite songs that you guys use for coding in the comments? and we shall build the ultimate coding mixtape together :D <comment><USER3> This is my coding playlist, I'm so used to most of the songs on there that they just provide a static that filters out the things around me.

[http://open.spotify.com/user/p.bjorklund/playlist/0eYVoppzNN...](http://open.spotify.com/user/p.bjorklund/playlist/0eYVoppzNNUN1yXR0t72yl)

Coding-music is as much about familiarity as the actual songs. They should all be similar, but with some varied tempo to make you realize that the world outside still exists.

And sometimes I just put on some white noise, that does the trick when you just want laser focus.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ministry - Corrosion, 10/10, Broken

MC,SuperGreenX - Panzer Dragoon Orta 'More Than a Weapon'

</comment><comment><USER5> Rascal Flatts - Life is a highway Metallica S&M full album

</comment><comment><USER6> LMFAO - SEXY AND I KNOW IT

right guys, right??? (._.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Armin van Buren ft Adam Young - <USER2>

</comment><comment> alFReD-NSH linkinpark - from the inside, sick puppies - you're going down, skillet - monster, ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> cool! will create these mixtapes very very soon and share it on HN again :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Plaid -[scintilli(any track)] Celebration -[What's this magical] Beach House -[Teen Dream] Aphex Twin -[Chosen Lords] The Jam -[Any song] Autechre -[any album, any track!]</comment>


PostgreSQL 9.0 Is Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODYyMg <comment><USER2> These two new features sound particularly interesting to me:

Streaming Replication: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/warm- standby.html#...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/warm- standby.html#STREAMING-REPLICATION)

Hot Standby: <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/hot-standby.html>

<comment><USER3> I've never delved into this domain before, but why is it that it is so hard to create multi-master replication for Postgres? We were considering it at work, and it seems the only solutions that provide that are unmaintained third party scripts written in Perl/Ruby, etc. MySQL has the NDB cluster solution, but that is way too restrictive as everything must be kept in memory.

<comment><USER4> It's hard because of the consistency guarantees that PostgreSQL makes. If you need true multi-master replication (you probably don't) the best solution is to use some form of queue to manage writes across the cluster. The DRBD solutions sound awesome but trade one SPOF for another, and have drawbacks in terms of speed (replicating block devices makes them slow) and risk (network latency, write contention) and are limited to at most two masters.

If you find yourself needing a replication solution beyond hot standby; it's possible that PostgreSQL isn't the right tool for the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I really like about PostgreSQL compared to e.g. MySQL is the support for partial indexes ([http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/indexes- partial.ht...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/indexes- partial.html)).

Especially when keeping normalized data, it allows the easy creation of an index without having the need to index ALL records and blow up the b+tree

</comment><comment><USER6> Bit premature imho. The offical release day is tomorrow, and these kind of announcements only cause confusion and do no good for anyone.

But awesome job PG team, it's my favorite SQL server.

<comment><USER7> > it's my favorite SQL server

Agreed. It Excels in what it does and hast fastest Access times.

[edit: didn't mean to start a pun thread.]

<comment><USER8> Word.

<comment><USER9> I didn't want to laugh at these last 2 comments... but it slipped out anyway. Nicely done.

<comment><USER10> I really shouldn't indulge in this on HN, but One might Note that it has a good Outlook.

EDIT: Downvotes feel good, in a way. Too much focus on karma, recently, amongst a subset of the current HN population.

Figured I'd been around long enough to appreciate a rare moment of humor from another old-timer, and dip my oar in -- even if in a slightly ill-advised fashion.

The caffeine made me do it! Now, on to work...

<comment><USER10> It appears you all are determined to absolutely bury me. Fine, I guess I asked for it.

But, HN used to have a bit better sense of humor and camaraderie, particularly for those who didn't abuse the privilege. I guess things really have changed, here.

Maybe just par for the course, with the community having grown so much -- most people aren't familiar with most other user ID's, anymore.

<comment><USER11> Well, I think the humor was appropriate. This isn't a corporate board meeting, it's supposed to be a community of developers and entrepreneurs. All communities need inside jokes (among other things) to help create a sense of cohesion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really strongly dislike Phoronix. I don't know why it hasn't been replaced yet.

<comment><USER13> What are your specific beefs?

<comment><USER6> I'm not the OP, and I don't follow phoronix regularly, but it seems sensationalist at times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any ideas when they plan to include materialized views? Last I checked it was part of this years GSoC.

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure they already supported that in early versions....?

<comment><USER14> No.. Unfortunately, they don't.

<comment><USER16> Looks like it's fairly straightforward to do it manually with triggers. <http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Materalized_Views>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hello! What are the problems there have multimaster replication PostgreSQL v9? Is the problem solved update error, conflict, uniqueness, and delete?

Thank you.</comment>


Transporting the CIA A-12 Blackbird to Area 51 - <AUTHOR> http://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.html?m=8 <comment><USER2> _The A-12 wasn't a bloody bomber!_

(It was the single-seat predecessor version of the SR-71 Blackbird. While interceptor and bomber versions were proposed, only 3 prototype YF-12A interceptors were built; the bomber variant was a paper study. The A-12 itself was definitively unarmed, being a pure reconnaissance aircraft.)

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12>

<comment><USER3> People are probably confusing it with the abortive A-12 tactical naval bomber: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenge...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger_II)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you enjoyed this article, I highly recommend checking out the book Skunk Works by Ben R. Rich (director of Lockheed's Skunkworks). It covers the development of this aircraft and several others through some pretty gripping accounts of engineering during the Cold War.

<comment><USER5> After seeing posts like this for a while I finally got around to reading the book this winter. Blew me away. If you're at all technically inclined and involved in engineering or science, read this book when you're feeling sorry for yourself and things aren't going your way. It will get your mind right.

I say that because many extraordinary things came from these incredibly smart but otherwise ordinary engineers. It reminds me of the quote from Steve Jobs about how once you realize all the stuff around you has been invented by people who are not that much smarter than you, it's very liberating.

I liked all the worrying and self-doubt that comes through in the book (especially since you know they pull most of it off eventually). There were daunting problems that they had to surmount one after another. They had to invent completely new ways of doing things: manufacturing, testing, materials, lubricants, etc... they were so far out in uncharted territory any one of those things could have been the end. But they pulled it all off not just once, but multiple times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read this earlier today and have been thinking about it since then. This story seems like a great example of thinking hard but methodically about what you want to do. Then planning it out. Then just doing it.

Agile methodologies are really en vogue in software development right now, but this story, complete with its 100 foot long, 35 foot wide trailer seems to be very nearly the (literal?) antithesis of "agile".

Maybe I'm grasping at straws, maybe it really is a lot more complicated to build web sites or whatever we all do, but this story seems to illustrate a "waterfall" process, executed relatively successfully 50 years ago. Why then, are we so bad at it now?

<comment><USER7> Mechanical and Civil engineering requires more up front design than software because of the physical processes involved (plus the consequences of mistakes are usually deadlier). There are more questions with definite yes or no answers in engineering, and engineering uses a more rigorous application of applied mathematics than software engineering.

If software engineering were more like civil engineering we'd spend a lot more time formally proving our algorithms before we implemented them.

<comment><USER8> There are quite a few projects that do formally prove the algorithm before its implementation, but most of them we don't have access to.

The closest we can easily see is the code JPL uses on their rovers and the associated C coding standard (<http://lars- lab.jpl.nasa.gov/JPL_Coding_Standard_C.pdf>).

That, and the rest of NASA's software was pretty much done entirely using a waterfall approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Here's the story of Area 51 Nat Geo did a few years ago. I thought it was a pretty good documentary:

part 1 of 4: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcJzDqxqmEc>

It talks extensively about the A-12 project. I thought the most interesting part was how they shipped square parts in round boxes and round parts in square boxes to conceal what was inside.

Different time back then for sure.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone else bothered by the fact that this site changes the color of all text on the page if you click any of it? O_O

<comment><USER10> I certainly was. I could hardly read the page because of it; it was just too distracting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of the recent move of Endeavour through the streets of LA. It was truly a magical sight to behold.

[http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10/15/time-lapse-video- spa...](http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10/15/time-lapse-video-space- shuttle-endeavours-trek-across-l-a/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't it have been cheaper to build a runway there and fly them there?

<comment><USER13> It was a heavily classified project, as evidenced by the enclosure to hide its shape. I don't think they would want to be flying it out of Burbank in plain view of everyone. Additionally, its first test flight occurred at Area 51, after this move, which is an ideal location for testing such things. Test flights near a city are probably not a good idea.

<comment><USER14> Had this been a few years later, they could've transported it via helicopter:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-12>

<comment><USER15> Perhaps, but then this Russian helicopter, which the US didn't learn about until much much later, would have taken it home to Mother Russia :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know a project manager tasked with moving one of the retired concordes from Heathrow to somewhere along the Thames for transport up to a museum in Scotland. This required removal of several traffic islands and signals temporarily (overnight), and was quite the logistical challenge, made for some cool pictures though!

<comment><USER17> If you like such pictures, check out the pictures from moving "Bagger 288" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288>) over a mere 22 km in 2001 (<https://www.google.nl/search?q=bagger+288+2001>)

I remember seeing a nice writeup of what that move involved, but cannot find it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool article. In a similar vein, the time lapse video[1] of moving the shuttle Endeavour through LA to the California Science Center is wonderful!

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdqZyACCYZc></comment>


What Ray Ozzie Didn't Tell You About Microsoft Azure - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/03/dziuba_azure/

<comment><USER2> "Let's say you're a business decision maker, and you got yourself on this cloud computing kick. Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from?

1\. A company whose main business is books 2\. A company whose main business is text advertisements 3\. A company whose main business is business software"

This is a really, really important observation. First time I've seen it spelled out so clearly.

<comment><USER3> It's also a very clever framing the question in a leading way. Let's try framing it in another way:

Let's say you're a business decision maker, and you got yourself on this cloud computing kick. Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from?

1\. A company who built its entire business on the high availability of its international network of online transaction engines, 2. A company which has built its business on indexing, and processing one of the biggest data stores in the world, and which has also built and run the world's most popular Internet-based productivity tools. 3. A company whose business relies om shipping a PC operating systems and which also supplies a word processor. "

I'm not saying that my framing is any less biased, just that there is more than one way to view these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When their cloud goes down, it will be called 'The Blue Sky Of Death'.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the same Microsoft business model and strategy that's been in use since the Windows product first got traction.

New and up-rated buzz phrases, same and repackaged and renamed and updated products and services. If you watch, most of the Microsofties will use the same gestures and techniques in the presentations, too.

The languages listed as "soon" would appear to be a freeze-the-market component of the classic competitive strategy, as are the barbs tossed at the competitors.

Almost certainly more technical and operations and licensing complexity and cross-version complexity, though the C-level usually discovers these costs after the deal is done. If at all.

Will it work? Sure. But you'll (still) be using Windows and Windows Networking, with all that entails.

But hey, they got you to look at Windows. Again.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ok, so the whole article is just a regurgitation of what is already known about Windows Azure + ranting. Dziuba has obviously not used the service.

If you think about it, .NET Live Services' service bus = SQS but better. SQL Services = Bigtable. Azure = AppEngine (you give it the code and it makes it run). It's not really that hard to get, different, or superfluous. It's just so easy to use that your average enterprise VB window pusher can use it.

And yes, the marketing sucks. It took me a good hour to see what's going on.</comment>


Ask HN: Can international students apply for YC? - <AUTHOR>

We are a team of international students and we want to apply for the YC. Is it legal for us to do? Thank you in advance <comment><USER2> Yes.

      Do we have to be US citizens?

      No, as long as you can get here for at least three months. We've funded many startups founded by non-citizens.

_(<http://ycombinator.com/faq.html>) _

––

Check the specifics for coming to the US for 3 months with your nationality. Most western countries fall under the visa waiver thingy, for others you'll have to get a tourist visa.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, International Students can apply for YC..as we are also International Applicant (Not student though).</comment>


Mozilla Working On Firefox Companion For eBay - <AUTHOR> http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/04/16/mozilla-working-on-firefox-companion-for-ebay/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mozilla's been extending the functionality of Firefox in a unique direction. First you have The Coop (user avatars, stepping on the toes of the Flock browser) and now eBay tools.</comment>