Show HN: Reveal – an iOS runtime inspection tool - <AUTHOR> http://revealapp.com

<comment><USER2> See also the free and open source PonyDebugger by Square : <https://github.com/square/PonyDebugger>

They do view hierarchy debugging but also network loggin in Chrome Developer Tools,

<comment><USER3> The network logging in PonyDebugger is a great feature - I use Runscope to grab and analyze API calls and the Spark Inspector for view introspection and debugging, but network logging might be coming to the Spark Inspector one of these days ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's in open public beta at the moment. We are a consultancy that work on large iOS application within large teams, with ever aging code-bases, and we built this to make our lives much much easier when it comes to debugging complex view hierarchies.

<comment><USER4> Looks beautiful. I've been using Spark Inspector but am not too comfortable with it modifying my Xcode projects.

What's pricing going to look like?

<comment><USER3> Hey! Author of the Spark Inspector here - what would make you more comfortable with the setup assistant? I'd love to get you to use it ;-) You can modify your project yourself, but it's important that the framework is added to the debug build configuration only, and the Spark Inspector's setup assistant makes sure you do this right.

If you drag and drop the framework into your project the way Reveal tells you to, that framework will be linked into Release builds (because of the '-ObjC' flag) - so you could accidentally allow people to inspect your published app!

<comment><USER5> Our integration guide is pretty explicit about how to link with the library so that it doesn't get linked in to Release builds. Everyone's environment is different, and we think it's a good thing that developers understand what changes are required to link with any third party framework.

<comment><USER3> Ahh cool - I just followed the graphic on the "Getting Started" panel (the pic with the framework being dragged into the left sidebar) I already had the Spark Inspector framework linked in so I guess I was able to skip the instructions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So any advantages for this over Spark Inspector?

<http://sparkinspector.com/>

<comment><USER3> Hey folks! Developer of the Spark Inspector here. I've been playing around with Reveal all morning. I think the biggest difference between SI and Reveal is that SI links into your app more extensively. You don't have to click 'Refresh' to make it fetch changes because it swizzles itself into UIKit and NSNotificationCenter. Though method swizzling is somewhat of a dark art, it doesn't really have adverse side-effects if it's done right. I'm curious to know why Reveal takes such a minimally invasive strategy. In my opinion, choosing not to method swizzle will dramatically limit what Reveal can do beyond view hierarchy exploration and maybe logging. There are a lot of other tabs I'd like to add to the Spark Inspector to take it beyond view introspection, and they'll require deep linking into your app!

The Spark Inspector also tries to mirror IB more closely (the sidebar panels have a more familiar feel.) It also allows you to see system views within your view hierarchy, which Reveal might be choosing to hide.

Also, it seems that a lot of the items in the Reveal sidebar are read-only? (Maybe that's just a beta thing…) I do like that it has an "Application" tab in the sidebar for seeing UIApplication properties.

At any rate - I welcome some competition, and it's great to see more tools being created for iOS developers! I'm planning to take the Spark Inspector beyond view introspection and NSNotificationCenter monitoring, and it'll be interesting to see where Reveal goes (and how much it'll cost!)

<comment><USER7> I'm a current user of Spark Inspector. One of the things I saw in the Reveal demo that's missing in SI is the ability change the 3D Z-Index spacing between the views to make it a little easier to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Free and opensource alternative: <https://github.com/domesticcatsoftware/DCIntrospect>

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm quite stoked about this app. I've been using PonyDebugger for a few months now and it has been really helpful. It's rough but sometimes that can be enough to aid you in major ways.

As for Reveal, I had it installed in two of my apps in just minute or so after seeing the post! It seems really promising. I'm looking forward to beta testing and sending my bug reports. I already have a few to send. :)

Editing because I had not heard of Spark Inspector before. That also looks awesome. Are these all inspired by the Tilt plugin in Firefox? These visualization tools are so helpful.

Time to go look at how much $ Spark Inspector is going to set me back.

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks awesome! I am writing my own version of a hierarchy viewer and debugger. Its a work in progress but you can check it out @ <http://hierarchydetective.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Does it work with RubyMotion? Any tips for installing it for a beginner? :)

<comment><USER5> We haven't tried it, but apparently it Just Works (tm). You just need to link against the framework as you would any other third party library. There is no API (yet), so no API bindings required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would be awesome if the demo app was baked into the download. I'd love to be able to try the UI instantly without even having to load up my own application.

<comment><USER5> We'll be 'pre-integrating' a few apps available on GitHub soon so you'll be able to play with Reveal by simply cloning and running those iOS apps. A full sample may be on the cards when we're out of beta.

<comment><USER12> Cool, but I'm mega lazy when testing new tools... The splash screen should have a big 1-click "Try Demo App" button :-)

<comment><USER5> Noted :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks very cool! Trying it right now. Will report back.

</comment><comment><USER14> It only works with OSX 10.8? What about the others that are on Lion or older versions?

<comment><USER5> Sorry 10.8 or higher for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks cool. Would it be possible to use cocoapods?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not just yet, but we are working on it.

<comment><USER5> Update: there is now a pod spec in the Cocoapods Specs repo for Reveal. Head to <http://support.revealapp.com/> if you have any issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Five Portland startups looking to hire developers and technical talent - <AUTHOR> http://siliconflorist.com/2010/04/05/economy-portland-startups-hire-developer-technical-talent/

<comment><USER2> Make that nine. Four other companies just commented with open gigs.

<comment><USER3> Can't see any comments. I'd like to see them, and know if I can contact them about job4dev.

I put a couple of listings there, one for ENTP (<http://job4dev.com/company/entp>) and another @Dark Horse (<http://job4dev.com/company/dark-horse>)

<comment><USER2> Getting similar reports from others. I blew away the cache to see if that solves the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We just moved to Portland: <http://web.elctech.com>. About a block away from the ENTP guys. We're also hiring!

</comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat off-topic but this is the first time I've heard the phrase "Silicon Forest" and it's quite catchy! Silicon Florist is even better. Kudos from someone who appreciates a quality name but sucks at coming up with them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Glad to see Puppetlabs included.

If you are into devops and/or Ruby scripting, give them a call!

Here's their codebase: <http://github.com/reductivelabs>

</comment><comment><USER7> FWIW that Dark Horse job pops up on Craigslist about once a year.

</comment><comment><USER8> HN discourages job postings.</comment>


Welcome to the web's dark side - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06cc026e-7566-11e4-a1a9-00144feabdc0.html

<comment><USER2> Pay walled/Needs Login.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very sorry. Did not realise this. Will try to find the free source.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I learn how to program, or come up with an idea first? - <AUTHOR> I'm only interested in programming as a tool to execute and make tangible my entrepreneurial ideas. If I don't have an idea, is it worth it to learn programming? Or should I first come up with an idea, then learn programming?<p>Thanks HN. <comment><USER2> I would do both simultaneously and partner with someone that has experience programming and give you feedback on the idea and your programming.

Starting to learn programming from scratch would be a little bit difficult since there are so much to learn. Having an idea in mind would be your compass. Given that big picture idea, having someone to guide you to learn the area to help solve piece of the puzzle would save you lots of time. Depending on your idea, what you learn in programming might be quite different.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're only interested in programming because of entrepreneurial ideas, you will be a crap programmer.

<comment><USER4> I second this. You have to have some passion to be a good programmer. You are better off hiring someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I'm only interested in programming as a tool to execute and make tangible my > entrepreneurial ideas.

In that case, you need to have a specific entrepreneurial idea before you can advocate whether learning programming is a useful course for you to execute on it and make it tangible. Depending on what your entrepreneurial idea is, that may or may not be the case.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree that having something you want to create helps to speed up the learning process, but also you will most likely not create something very good. So the right answer probably is learn programming by doing some rather basic ideas until you feel comfortable enough to create something big, until then just collect your ideas.</comment>


Interview with YC?  Crash at my house if you want - <AUTHOR>

I just found out that my group will interview with YC (yay!).
If you're in the same boat but traveling in for the interview, you're welcome to crash at my house.  It's in Menlo Park, next to Stanford, about 20 minutes from the YC office.  I have room for 2 people.  I can probably drop you off at the Caltrain station, depending on when your interview is.
Reply or email me.  Contact info in my profile. <comment><USER2> Congrats! What time did you get the email?

<comment><AUTHOR> 6:03 Pacific

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Might take you up on that :)

</comment><comment><USER4> congrats!</comment>


No gain from brain training - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/4641111a.html <comment><USER2> This paragraph from the original paper explains beautifully how little benefit brain-training really provides:

"To illustrate the size of the transfer effects observed in this study, consider the following representative example from the data. The increase in the number of digits that could be remembered following training on tests designed, at least in part, to improve memory (for example, in experimental group 2) was three-hundredths of a digit. Assuming a linear relationship between time spent training and improvement, it would take almost four years of training to remember one extra digit. Moreover, the control group improved by two-tenths of a digit, with no formal memory training at all."

This is far from the first study of its kind. People have been trying for decades to find any sort of training task that can improve general cognitive ability, and there is simply no evidence that one exists. Tests with sufficiently high g-loading are virtually impervious to any form of preparation or training. The closest anyone has ever come to finding one that works is the discovery that the dual n-back task improves scores on Raven's Progressive Matrices (which is very much the gold standard of g-loaded tests), and that's highly suspect given that both n-back and RPM involve the very idiosyncratic task of holding three-by-three matrices in working memory.

As important as discovering a general IQ-raising task would be to psychology, there's nothing especially depressing about one not existing. Remember: _You can still learn things._ All this research tells you is that if you want to get good at some particular task, you have to train either at that task specifically, or something that's in some way related to it. Playing Tetris, memorizing chess openings, or practicing Bach's Goldberg Variations is simply not going to help you become a better programmer. For that, _you need to program_.

<comment><USER3> > Playing Tetris, memorizing chess openings, or practicing Bach's Goldberg > Variations is simply not going to help you become a better programmer. For > that, you need to program.

That's leaving out the benefits from practicing general problem solving skills, logical reasoning, analyzing design trade-offs, etc., though. You make it sound like programming is all about remembering where to put the semicolons!

Meditation also seems to have positive cognitive effects, though they probably come from improved focus rather than intelligence.

<comment><USER2> "That's leaving out the benefits from practicing general problem solving skills, logical reasoning, analyzing design trade-offs, etc."

Yes. I do so explicitly and intentionally, as there is no evidence these benefits exist. That was my whole point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Owen concedes that his findings don't necessarily mean that training in young children or elderly patients is pointless. But "the evidence is not strong", he says. "And someone needs to go and test it."_

This guy is a true scientist and a man after my own heart. He admits that he could be wrong, and responds with an honest analysis of the limitations of his results and a suggestion to go do some more tests to explore those dark corners.

</comment><comment><USER5> _a series of online tasks for a minimum of ten minutes a day, three times a week, for six weeks._

How much benefit can one expect from three hours of investment? If this were about, say, weight resistance training, would you expect to have bigger muscles after this program?

<comment><USER6> > If this were about, say, weight resistance training, would you expect to > have bigger muscles after this program?

Yes, absolutely, and you will have better muscles. You can have big changes in performance in a few days if you spend more time per day (but whether your muscles _look_ bigger maybe not).

<comment><USER7> Most of the initial quick gains in weight training are related to gaining the skill needed to coordinate your muscles correctly to do say a bench press. Adding muscle requires patience - gaining 10-15lbs of muscle _per year_ is about as good as it gets without steroids, and that's with training hard and eating right all year too.

<comment><USER6> Sure that is part of it but that isn't the only thing that happens. For example: when I cycled 4 days about 60 km/day at age ~10 I was completely amazed how much easier & faster it was when I cycled to school after this vacation. This is _not_ due to better coordination, as I had cycled every day for many years.

I'm not saying that you get significantly bigger muscles quickly, but you can get _better_ muscles quickly (or perhaps it's due to the lungs/heart?).

BTW 10 lbs per year is a lot. It's more than 12 grams per day which is about 12 cm^3 per day. This is definitely noticeable. Where do you have this information from? Do you have other information like this? I'd be interested to know what exactly makes muscle tissue grow.

<comment><USER7> Loads of great info on www.crossfit.com www.t-nation.com www.gymjones.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The interpretation of this study is astonishingly over-reaching. The BBC researchers designed their own cognitive stimulation program, applied it at a very low intensity in healthy young people, and then saw no effect on cognitive function. To then claim that their data shows that "computerized mental workouts don't boost mental skills" is akin to saying "sugar doesn't help with a headache, and sugar and aspirin are both molecules, so aspirin must not help with headaches either." This is an elementary logical fallacy.

There is a tremendous body of published evidence showing that certain specifically designed cognitive training programs drive real benefits: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19220558> <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17565162>

If the BBC researchers want to contest those results, they should use the programs and methods used in those studies. This is a fundamental principle of the scientific method, and its surprising to have to point it out to working scientists.

The only conclusion from the BBC study is that very limited amounts of everyday cognitive stimulation does not improve cognitive function. This is an interesting conclusion, and the study should have reported it as such.

Henry Mahncke <http://www.positscience.com> I am a researcher at Posit Science, where I design and test cognitive training programs.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing the links with your brand-new Hacker News account. What about the confidence intervals in the link

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19220558>

you kindly shared? The overlapping confidence intervals show that the effect size is meager, even if there is "statistically significant" differences in outcome between the treatment group and the control group, don't they? That's always an important issue in interpreting research,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

as pointed out in Warning Sign I5 of Peter Norvig's famous article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This link

[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/4641111a.html?s=...](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/4641111a.html?s=news_rss)

may be out from behind the paywall for many readers.

The story is interesting and important.

<comment><USER10> Fortunately, neither appear to be behind the paywall. In fact, it appears that the original article is free, as well: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/pdf/natur...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/pdf/nature09042.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if this applies to Dual N-Back? <http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/>

This claims to have the support of a scientific study.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does this mean my coffee break go games haven't been making me smarter? :(

(They've actually made me worse at go; blitz builds bad habits.)</comment>


Startup will help landlords and employers mine intimate data from Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/09/creepy-startup-will-help-landlords-employers-and-online-dates-strip-mine-intimate-data-from-your-facebook-page/ <comment><USER2> _"If you're living a normal life," Thornhill_ [the start-up's co-founder] _reassures me, "then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about."_

That's a truly horrible justification of an invasive, creepy service. Who defines 'normal'? What's the scoring criteria?

I've got a mortgage on my flat, but if I were renting, I wouldn't rent any landlord using this start-up. Being sent this request by them would instantly signal to me that they're not the kind of landlord from whom any sane, reasonable person should rent if they have any other choice.

I sincerely hope this start-up fails and that Thornhill and his other co- founder/s come to realise that their idea is deeply invasive and shits all over a large part of society who are less fortunate than they.

<comment><USER3> Did he seriously use that argument? Who decides what's a normal life?

> First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was > not a Socialist.

> Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I > was not a Trade Unionist.

> Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a > Jew.

> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

<comment><USER4> As long as you're identical to the CEO, you're normal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Who wants to work with me on my next startup, which sets up an innocuous- looking Facebook profile for privacy-conscious individuals, including friendships with other perfectly normal people and records of totally commonplace, unobjectionable activities? We can make sure that you'll never be rejected by a landlord, AirBnB host, or insurance company because of your online presence.

All for a low, low price of $9.99/month!

<comment><USER6> I used to work as a nurse, and certain bay area hospitals would want access to our facebook profile log ins and passwords as part of the hiring background check and our 1-year review.

How everybody got around this was to set up an innocuous, benign facebook dummy account with our real name, no posts excite liking the SF giants and talking about the Warriors games. Then we would all make our "real" facebooks with the wild stuff using our middle names instead of the last name. HR was none the wiser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"People will give up their privacy to get something they want," he said._

And there in lies the problem I have with this. The sad thing is that a large percentage of people would give up their privacy because the old "if you have nothing to hide then what are you worried about?" is still sadly a common mindset.

I would expect there to be a greater push from Facebook, Twitter, etc to crack down on companies trying to do this though. Because at the end of the day the way to avoid this surveillance is to not use their services.

<comment><USER8> Why would they crack down on this? It's not much different than what those companies are already doing - it's just that they strip-mine your data and sell it to advertisers instead of landlords.

If anything, I would expect them to buy that startup, or build a competing product, rather than just shutting it down entirely.

<comment><USER9> But that's the point, isn't it? It's fair game if FB does it to their own data, but if they're being scraped by a company that makes the news, they might decide to revoke their API keys or otherwise use technical or legal ways to limit their access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow they found a perfect trojan horse for this business. They found a situation where you'd be likely to grant them permission -- wanting to rent a house, where you'll usually give over your SSN for a credit report and background check.

And then once they have your permission, you'll _probably_ forget about it.

So once they go to release their dating app, if they have enough people, they don't need your permission because the probably already have access to your profile through your friends who might have rented an apartment.

And this kids is why even if _you 're_ secure, you need _all_ your friends to be _just as secure_.

<comment><USER11> Well, they're in the UK so no, the permission they get to trawl your data to sell to landlords doesn't transfer into permission to use your data for online data.

EDIT: from 2018 the fine could be 4% of global turnover, which feels significant.

[https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and- bl...](https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and- blogs/2016/06/consumers-taking-action-over-mistrust-of-organisations-handling- personal-data/)

<comment><USER12> Well - also, if it's a legal judgement against you, you have to stop doing what you have been doing, no arguments, no equivocation. Tough if that's your business!

<comment><USER11> Sadly, it's just your business that has to stop. You can just start another business.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/18/watchdog- demands-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/18/watchdog-demands-more- powers-to-stop-cold-calling-kingpins-from/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any land lord asking me to let them do this would be blacklisted as far as I'm concerned. Using a service like this raises huge red flags as to what type of person they are and what it would be like to live with them as my landlord.

<comment><USER14> Unless this is made manifestly illegal, and carries significant penalties, both criminal and civil, it's not likely to change.

</comment></comment><comment> nommm-nommm Its not clear if the service (based in the UK) will be available in the US or not but:

"Meanwhile, unlike credit reports — which you may, under federal law, request every 12 months — Tenant Assured doesn't give users any way to view their ratings or dispute misleading data."

Well, if they make this service available in the US they would most likely be considered a CRA (Consumer Reporting Agency) and be subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act which requires all those things.

I also take issue with "going out on the weekends" being considered a negative in general. I go out most weekends but we both make so much money we can more than afford it. I don't think an algorithm can determine irresponsible spending from responsible spending just from Facebook, your bank account balance tells you more than your Facebook posts, which can be misleading.

And you guys who are saying "oh, I'd never rent from a landlord who uses this service," you may not have a choice. If 99.99 - 100% of landlords use this service you don't get a choice. This is where laws come in. You aren't going to be able to negotiate with a landlord either because if they deviate from their standard tenant policy than it can look like housing discrimination.

<comment><USER11> > I also take issue with "going out on the weekends" being considered a > negative in general

...and in the image they use the phrase "staying in" as a sign of financial stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this idea is bad but it works both ways sorta.

I was recently looking for an apartment and found one in liked . After contacting the landlord I Googled his name and found his facebook. Scrolling through his history I saw a post from 2 years ago commenting that he just "found a sucker" to rent out the apartment. I thought it was pretty tasteless at best.

<comment><USER6> Another good practice is to always put your landlords name into online civil court databases for your and neighboring counties. See how many times they have sued tenants and been sued by tenants. The results will probably surprise you, it's quite often!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Among the behaviors that count against your Tenant Assured "credit" percentage — i.e., how confident the company is that you'll pay rent — are "online retail social logins and frequency of social logins used for leisure activities."

Are we to believe that this company has actually done proper analysis to make these kinds of correlations? If not, what sort of legal liabilities exist for trying to make these sorts of predictions based on speculation / assumption? This seems like something that consumers should be protected against, but I assume that the company at least thinks it can hide behind the (implicit or explicit) consent that potential tenants provide by signing up voluntarily.

</comment><comment><USER17> From a legal perspective can't they be liable for helping employers and landlords break federal law? Since we have EEOC, Fair Housing Act, etc.?

<comment><USER18> In part it depends how they advertise the service. I've seen issues with both an apartment rental site and a credit report/background check company. It is one of those things where the company pays a small(ish) fine, but if they ever do it again they will be in really big trouble.

Being very imprecise with this comment, but yeah, I think you are right. At the least the employers or landlords are breaking the law if they are using data or requirements which unnecessarily bias their selection based on ethnicity or gender.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
       a list of every time I've tweeted the words "loan" and "pregnant,"

At least in the US, discriminating against families or pregnant women in housing is illegal.

I help manage an apartment building. We prefer not to even know if applicants have kids so we can't be accused of anything if we turn them down. Though the applicant ranking process is essentially dump every applicant with bad credit, then sort by income decreasing.

Also, in the image, you see the word "loan" and "loans" show up. I'd put money on their 'NLP' really being grep, because it looks like they aren't even stemming. ie even mentioning the word loan will show up there, regardless of context. Or borrow, as in I borrowed a book from the library.

</comment><comment><USER20> and if i don't have social media accts? or the 'right' ones, anyway? no apartment for me?

<comment><USER21> Make some dummy accounts. Seems like everyone is going to need to do that.

<comment><USER22> Everyone's going to need a startup monthly service to manage those sockpuppets. "Famous people" and corporations already hire identity consultants, why shouldn't middle and lower class people have carefully managed sock puppets?

<comment><USER21> Filled with tons of boring photos of family picnics, graduations. All with the right number of upvotes and comments like "Congrats" from other sock puppets.

<comment><USER6> That's actually a good startup idea- online identity management.

<comment><USER21> You can select your fake profile from "family man", "student", "crafter housewife", ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Be interesting to see if this is accepted by the Information Commissioner.

The new information commissioner will be Elizabeth Denham, so it'll be fascinating to see what she thinks.

EDIT: I can't seem to find their ICO registration. I can find one registration for Steve Thornhill, for a "Sonic Finance". I have no idea if it's the same person.

[https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z1586532](https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z1586532)

</comment><comment><USER23> > "People will give up their privacy to get something they want," [Thornhill] > said.

Housing isn't a want, it's a need. What a disgusting perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like EU should shut this down pretty fast.

<comment><USER24> I'm assuming you are not in the brexit camp ;)

<comment><USER25> Even if he was wouldn't the EU banning an application have damning consequence to a company in Britain? Surely they want customers from all over the EU.

<comment><USER24> If they grow to become large, they can use their power of people making stupid decisions (or not necessarily in their best self interest) along with the wealth from landlords to sway markets that they may not be legally based in to their favor. You'd have to make it illegal for landlords in whatever market to go against doing something like this, and for people to not give their data away willingly.

Facebook might shut them down from C&D if they grow bigger than comfort, but its still technically possible to get the data if you are willing to not submit to/reside in the legal jurisdiction. I know of financial services companies in the US that make loans to foreign students based on non-fico data, this is growing market and people want people servicing their loans/contract terms and are willing to pay for signals that help secure their profit margins.

But hey, don't let me stop people for putting up their own resources to play this game of wack-a-mole, esp if you are more interested technical means of subversion :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there service which shows which companies use such Facebook data? I would pay for that

</comment><comment><USER21> Well that's horrible.</comment>


Ripple (XRP) by the Numbers - <AUTHOR> https://xrphodor.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/xrp-by-the-numbers/ <comment><USER2> Ripple: the cryptocurrency for adults!</comment>


The Cult of Elon Is Cracking - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/elon-musk-coronavirus-pandemic-tweets/611887/ <comment><USER2> I'm in the camp that has slowly lost respect for Musk over the years via his tweeting, but it's certainly not a complete loss of respect.

I would say I've downgraded him from one of the coolest figures in engineering history to one of the coolest figures in engineering history who is also a pretty flawed person. But who isn't?

<comment><USER3> I suppose it's about what is "cool" ultimately

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Musk didn't create PayPal. Didn't Found Tesla. Hyperloop isn't a thing...

How this guy get some much love around here is beyond me.</comment>


Inherit the Cloud: Who gets your Google Docs when you die? - <AUTHOR> http://notes.kateva.org/2013/02/inherit-cloud-who-gets-your-google-docs.html

<comment><USER2> You could just put all your passwords into a place where they are accessible after your death and your relatives can access your accounts regardless of any TOS you've clicked through.

<comment><USER3> or just the password to your email. Then they can use the 'forgot password' to get a new one.

Some sites require you to state a username, but if you're anything like me, you've used less than half a dozen. Even my bank is happy to assume that access to my email is sufficient to prove identity.

<comment><USER4> For internet banking? Please tell me which bank it is so that I can avoid it.

<comment><USER3> not for internet banking. but my bank is happy to take intructions by email (for the business account anyway). I also receive my bank statements by email - complete with name, address, account no etc. all in a plaintext pdf.

But it seems most people - even supposed techies - are happy to equate email verification as identity verification. I'd be surprised if you couldn't get into most accounts just with an email address you can send from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In my home country at least, the inheritance law follows the principle of universal succession. Definition vom Merriam-Webster:

 _Succession under Roman or civil law to the totality of a man's estate including both his rights and liabilities according to the principle that the heir is the same person as the deceased._

With regard to accounts, it means that all your personal accounts become your heirs' accounts upon death. Enforceability in the US where most online servies are located these days remains an open question though …

Personally, I have deposited my most important user credentials as print outs in sealed envelopes with two persons I trust. In addition, I have listed them in my will as executors for my digital estate. Working access to accounts is IMHO more important than ToS etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Charlie Brooker's latest 'Black Mirror' episode touches on a similar subject in a dramatised fashion and it's quite an interesting/thoughtful watch. UK users can catch it on 4OD, it's called 'Be Right Back'.

</comment><comment><USER6> Aaron Swartz provided a solid example for you to follow. Publicly have a continuity document that lays out what is to happen with your digital assets when you are dead or otherwise unable to maintain them yourself. Your trust should have all this information as well, but to have it publicly may discourage individuals from going against your wishes.

</comment><comment><USER7> My suggestion: Get a familial domain and use something like Google Apps for Domains (though you have to pay for it now). In this case, there is someone with admin/root level access to the accounts. There's still an issue if the admin passes on, but you could always have two people with admin access.

</comment><comment> saw-lau I've been wondering this for a while now, regarding splitting assets up if one gets divorced. (N.B.: I'm hoping this won't happen to me!) Me and my wife share an iTunes account and some purchases are solely for me, some for her, and some we both use.

</comment><comment><USER8> This highlights why the right to make a backup of your data is so important.</comment>


Nuclear Experts Explain Worst-Case Scenario at Fukushima Power Plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-core <comment><USER2> "we're in a land where probability says we shouldn't be."

You, sir, need better advisors.

<comment><USER3> Go easy... "it was the earthquake and tsunami." they didn't go together in any of the scenarios they ran.

<comment><USER4> The earthquake and tsunami weren't the coupled failures they were talking about. It was the loss of external power and backup generators. This is what they didn't expect, because it is hard to predict the probability of an event big enough to trigger these two things failing at the same time.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's indeed hard to predict an earthquake to take out the external power and the subsequent tsunami to take out the backup generators _on a coastline facility_.

(Note: This was sarcasm)

<comment><USER4> How big of a tsunami was required? How big of a earthquake would be required to generate such a wave? How much water would be needed to reach the facility? How much to damage it? What about damaging backups?

Sarcasm aside, it is easy to predict that the facility would be at risk for an earthquake/tsunami combo. The hard part is to predict how much of one to prepapre for. Remember, even in this neck of the woods, the was a quake of historic proportions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the case of a meltdown, what exactly is the damage?

<comment><USER7> If a meltdown does occur, damage will depend on whether or not the reactor's containment structure holds. In the case that it does hold, the plant itself is FUBAR'd but, otherwise, there isn't significant cause for concern. This would be analogous to the Three Mile Island accident -- in which a partial meltdown occurred but was successfully contained.

If the containment structure is breached, the resulting fallout will be comparable to that of the Chernobyl disaster which, like most Soviet reactors, had _no containment structure whatsoever._ Wikipedia has a good article on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects>

<comment><USER3> Are the containment domes intact in Japan? Edit: found this on IAEA site: "Containment remains intact at Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2 and 3". It doesn't even mention the 4th, but does say the explosion occurred outside unit 1s primary containment dome. What does that mean? It's outer shield is wrecked?

<comment><USER8> There's no containment dome.

<http://i.imgur.com/CckjP.jpg> (X)

The reactor is the red cylinder in the middle, the containment is the pear- shaped cavity it sits in, closed on top with the yellow hood and connected to that torus in the lowest-level which in case of an accident is supposed to condense the steam back into water, thereby removing heat from the containment.

The part that's exploded is the flimsy metal "hut" on top of the concrete building.

(X) from another HN comment I can no longer find, sorry, no attribution for who posted it initially

<comment><USER9> Original was

NRC: "Reactor Concepts Manual | Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Systems"

<http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf>

Here's one with labels:

<http://i.imgur.com/Oj4kg.png>

Magdi Ragheb, "Containment Structures"

[https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www/NPRE%20457%20CSE%20462...](https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www/NPRE%20457%20CSE%20462%20Safety%20Analysis%20of%20Nuclear%20Reactor%20Systems/Containment%20Structures.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why aren't all reactors mandated to keep a huge tank of emergency water at some height, so that you only need to open some bulkhead and gravity will ensure that the reactor gets cooled during the 7 or so days it takes to cool down. No batteries, no diesel, no offsite power needed.

<comment><USER11> This is actually the case for the design of some of the newer ALWR style reactors.

There are 3 or more holes at different heights, designed so that the most water flows in the early hours of cooling when the most cooling is needed, then tapering off to 2 then 1 holes with the water flow lessening over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who lives in Shanghai, 1850km away, I wonder if I should go a bit further away as a precaution? During the Chernobyl accident the nuclear clouds reached up to 2500 kms away from Chernobyl...

<comment><USER13> Dominant winds go to the Pacific, even if there is meltdown _and_ containment breach, California is more at risk than China is.

<comment><USER14> As someone who lives in California, 8800km away, I wonder if I should go a bit further away as a precaution...? ;-)

<comment><USER15> You should probably move away to avoid the air pollution in California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Things are moving fast. TEPCO(Tokyo Electric Power Company) reported that they have restored AC power to all units.

[http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031302-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031302-e.html)

<comment><USER17> No, that is not the plant where the main problems are.

They are talking about the Daiichi reactors here:

[http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031305-e....](http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp- com/release/11031305-e.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lesson: Don't build systems whose steady state is a catastrophe.

</comment><comment><USER19> Serious suggestion for our Japanese friends <http://nukalert.com>

added: looks like they have a page for Japan <http://nukalert.jp></comment>


Breast-Feeding the Microbiome - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/breast-feeding-the-microbiome <comment><USER2> > "We got eighty litres, collected over two years, from someone random at > Stanford University, who said, 'I have all this milk. Do you guys want it?' > "

Wow... that's quite an amount. So human milk doesn't "expire"? Why does cow milk expire then, and what exactly is expiry in the context of milk?

<comment><USER3> It is frozen. This can be done for cow milk as well. It changes the taste of cow's milk and (probably) changes the taste of breast milk.

It's not commonly done for cow's milk because (1) fresh milk is usually readily available and (2) adults will complain about the taste.

With breast milk, the supply is more limited and an infant won't tell you the taste is off (but they might refuse to drink it!).

<comment><USER4> From my short (3 month experience) , refrigerated milk will take on a "soapy" smell and flavor. From what I've read, this is due to the enzyme lipase and can be removed by heating the milk. My baby will sometimes refuse to drink it at first but then I guess hunger takes over and she downs the whole thing.

<comment><USER5> My kids as babies has all sorts of reason to refuse my wife's milk for all sorts of reasons, not that we could ever be certain what it was but it seemed somedays they didn't like what she ate that day, if it was pumped and stored and reheated the temperature wasn't precisely right, etc.

But yeah, in the end when that's all that's on the menu... hunger takes over :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So ... does this mean we are going to see yogurt with "B. Infantis"? Or is this a infant-only symbiotic strain? Curious.

<comment><USER7> Probably not yogurt, but I have run across several probiotics with this particular bacteria present in it. Additionally I have read that yogurt for the most part is pretty useless as a probiotic as your stomach acid kills most of the bacteria in it (also, many yogurts have little live culture in it).

<comment><USER8> Yoghurt as a probiotic is bad simply because it doesn't contain the right mix of gut bacteria. Typically it's a lactobacillus strain, which is present in our gut, but it's only 1 of millions of strains.

<comment><USER9> It's not bad, it's insufficient.

But in the stomach, it is my understanding that the bacteria in yogurt can help process the sugars in milk, thus avoiding an excess of sugars in the gut, which might upset the balance of the intestinal flora.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/05/garden/personal-health- enz...](http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/05/garden/personal-health-enzyme- deficiency-is-the-reason-many-can-t-digest-milk.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Every mammal mother produces complex sugars called oligosaccharides, but > human mothers, for some reason, churn out an exceptional variety: so far, > scientists have identified more than two hundred human milk > oligosaccharides, or H.M.O.s._

The second part is very suspicious or at least misleading. I guess that chimpanzees and bonobos have a similar milk composition.

<comment><USER11> > A study recently published in the Journal of Proteome Research details how > human milk has a stunning 1,606 different protein types essential for > newborn growth - a cocktail of many key nutrients that other mammals' milk > does not boast. By comparison, the mother's milk of rhesus macaque monkeys - > one of humanity's closest primitive relatives - boasts only 518 key > proteins.

([http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/13528/20150319/human...](http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/13528/20150319/humans- need-stronger-breast-milk-thank-mammals.htm))

<comment><USER12> _1,606 different protein types essential for newborn growth_

I read that as "if the baby doesn't get all 1,606 of this proteins, it won't develop normally."

That sounds like a ridiculous statement.

<comment><USER11> It might be, but that's orthogonal to the point I was making, which was "yep actually human breastmilk is significantly different to chimpanzees".

<comment><USER13> Maybe. A chimpanzee is much closer to a human than a monkey, which already had ~500 of the ~1600 proteins.

<comment><USER10> I found a handy graph of the primate family: [http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n5/fig_tab/nrg3707_F1....](http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n5/fig_tab/nrg3707_F1.html)

> _The time of separation of the human lineage from the rhesus macaque lineage > is dated at 28–25 million years ago, whereas the human and chimpanzee > lineages are believed to have diverged ~9–5 million years ago._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand why HN is so obsessed with gut bacteria.

I don't oppose posting it, I just don't understand the fascination.

<comment><USER15> I suspect, from my own anecdata, it's because a great many of us in the field have had gut issues. A lot of us lead lifestyles that aren't necessarily the greatest (although I feel overall that old adage is changing for the better rapidly) and have a deep interest in fixing the problem. Plus, knowing how things work, biological, electrical, whatever.. it all fits the hacker ethos

<comment><USER16> Finding shortcuts is literally hacking. Let's shortcut our way to good health by reading Wikipedia instead of seeing a doctor. Okay then

<comment><USER17> No one should entrust their health solely to a doctor. It is like entrusting our life to technical support, which half the time is terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, it's literally seen as a medical revolution. "There is increasing evidence that the microbiome and its output (our interactome) touch many, if not most, pathways that affect health, disease, and aging. It is reasonable to propose that the composition of the microbiome and its activities are involved in most, if not all, of the biological processes that constitute human health and disease, as we proceed through our own life cycle" [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191014/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191014/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Regarding the Microbiome, I'm currently reading Rodney Dietert's "The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life". I haven't finished it yet, but it's been a great read so far.

[[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101983906](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101983906)]

<comment><USER20> Why did you post this a second time under another account?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163740)

<comment><USER21> Nice catch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Regarding the Microbiome, I'm currently reading Rodney Dietert's "The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life". I haven't finished it yet, but it's been a great read so far. [[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101983906](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101983906)]</comment>


The Black Cauldron - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2010/10/the_black_cauldron.single.html <comment><USER2> I have fond memories of the Sierra adventure game that was licensed from the Disney movie.

IIRC the game ran on Sierra's original 286/EGA era interpreter (the same as _Space Quest_ , _Leisure Suit Larry_ and others), but it required less typing and had less complex language than other Sierra titles so it was much more approachable.

I was about 9 years old. I and my friends wanted to play adventure games so bad, but we didn't speak English, so in practice we were dependent on an older kid or a parent to play _Space Quest_ for us... _The Black Cauldron_ was a Sierra game that we could learn to play ourselves. I learned so much English from that game. (I can vividly remember learning the word "cupboard" in a scene that was set inside the protagonist's home.)

Maybe _The Black Cauldron_ didn't do justice to the original work, but it certainly made an impact on me, and I'm grateful to Disney and Sierra for making it.

<comment><USER3> That game is probably what got me into computers (I was 9 when it was released). I'm getting a sleeve of it inked onto me next Tuesday. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disney's new Snow White may already have been made, but unless you have a small child you may not have seen Frozen. Great songs, better script extremely but subtly subversive of the Disney archetypes.

<comment><USER5> Reading the part about Disney Animation's lack of success prompted me to check the date of the article. Sure enough this is from 2010, so pre-dates Frozen, the biggest grossing animation, and fifth biggest overall grossing film of all time.

It is also an excellent film that stands up to rewatching.

Which is fortunate as my kids want to watch it over and over and over...

<comment><USER4> Indeed, I've had a lot of opportunity to appreciate each and every nuance of the film myself. I thank goodness it's a good movie...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGsds9s615E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGsds9s615E)

"And despite the cuts that removed its goriest details, the Cauldron-Born sequence is still a glorious outlier in the Disney canon—loud, gross, and delightfully scary, with dramatic gouts of green flame and melting fiery skulls."

</comment><comment><USER7> "A great deal of the books' power comes from the development of Assistant Pig- Keeper Taran from callow youth to reluctant hero to lost soul to, in the end of the series, wise leader of men. But at the time Disney opposed sequels, so the full, five-volume epic was merely grist for the Disney mill: Joe Hale plucked story elements from the first two books and discarded the rest. Even before it flopped, The Black Cauldron would always be the only Prydain movie; that it fumbled such terrific material just made it worse."

I've always felt, since watching the movie after I finished the novels, that they would work much better with live actors; filming five movies over the course of five years could benefit from the natural aging of young actors. It strikes me as a shame that so much effort in Hollywood goes into creating shallow imitations of classic tales, rather than retelling the classics for a new generation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why the Treasure Planet hate? I really liked that film when it came out. It was just torpedoed by interdepartmental politics that hurt theatrical sales, like Emperor's New Groove. IIRC, they weren't allowed to make a trailer for it until the last minute, so the boring and uninformative one that aired in theaters came to be.</comment>


Vim plugin makes Ruby blocks into text objects - <AUTHOR> http://vimcasts.org/blog/2010/12/a-text-object-for-ruby-blocks/

<comment><USER5> Stuff like this can usually be handled with a quick macro in Vim.

For example, I use the macro `zEkzfggj%jzfG` (minus backticks) to fold everything above and below the current { and it's corresponding C block.

And now that I see all of it typed out like that, I'm not sure myself if this is an argument for Vim, or a parody of an argument for it ;)

<comment><USER6> I couldn't even tell if your parody is a parody. Is that seriously the macro??

<comment><USER5> It is indeed a macro in vim. The key to realizing what's going on is to realize that when I made it I didn't sit down an type that out... well, not really.

Rather I just pressed qf (which starts recording a macro to 'f'), then preformed the sequence of commands that would need to be done to do what I wanted. You do it step by step while watching what's actually going on, so it's not as hard as it seems. Then from then on I can just press @f to do what would normally take all of those keys.

broken down, this is how the macro works:

zE - clear other folds

k - <USER2>

zf - start creating a fold from here to...

gg - ...the top of the document

j - <USER4>

% - go to the matching bracket

j - <USER4>

zf - start creating a fold from here to...

G - ...the bottom of the document

I don't really remember why those ups and downs were needed, maybe they're not. Just how I typed it out at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An indentation-based text object solves the same problem in a language- agnostic way. There are several implementations out there. I maintain one that includes proper handling of languages without ending block delimiters (python, haml, sass): <http://github.com/austintaylor/vim-indentobject>

</comment><comment><USER8> Nifty, but this seems like plugin overkill.

I just use matchit (<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=39>) and then I can do v% to visually select everything to the end of a block.

<comment><USER9> Matchit.vim is great too, but you have to position your cursor on one of the block delimiting keywords (e.g. class, module, def, if, do or end) to make `v%` do what you want. The nice thing about text-objects is that the target area where you can trigger them to achieve the desired effect is much larger.

<comment><AUTHOR> plus you get the ability to increase and decrease the block scope with ir / ar

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the little things that I love most about IntelliJ is its expand/shrink selection command. It's one of those things that you have no idea how useful it will be until you get used to it, then you can't live without it.

</comment><comment><USER11> This made me smile. Such a nice Christmas gift. I just started getting into vim and things that solve little nagging annoyances really help me stick with it. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER12> Anything like this for Python? Any plug-in or built in macro?

</comment><comment><USER13> Anybody know an emacs equivalent?</comment>


Show HN: Code Change Filters for Git with Bitbucket, GitHub and GitLab Support - <AUTHOR> https://gitsense.com/blog/gitsense-contexts.html <comment><AUTHOR> Code change filters is how I describe my context technology. My background is in developing in house productivity solutions for large enterprises and I never liked how we communicated code changes, since it required too much effort to put things into context.

With GitSense contexts, it's very easy to logically group code changes from different branches, repos, and GitHosting solutions (Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab).

The front end (100% JavaScript) will also be opened sourced, which is critical since I want others to be able to decorate commit messages among other things. For example, if a commit message references a bug tracking number for an internal tool, I want to context creator to be able convert that number to a usable hyperlink.</comment>


LivePlace To Launch Photo-Realistic Virtual World Rendered In The Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/liveplace-to-launch-photo-realistic-virtual-world-rendered-in-the-cloud/

<comment><USER2> The video that is being shown is a rip off of a movie that is actually fairly famous in 3D graphics circles. It has been around for years, at least 3 by my count. This demo was made almost certainly without the author's permission. Further, it demos only video editing skills, as the actual rendering was done years ago. It is interesting that they are leading the viewer of the video to believe that this is a world in the cloud that is being rendered real time. It seems a little less than honest to me.

By the way, the video can be found at:

        http://3dblasphemy.com/personal/CITY.html

For those who are interested, the 'tell' is that the camera angles are exactly the same as those in the 3D Blasphemy video. Additionally, the apartment that is rendered a few minutes into the video is rasterized and not raytraced, like the city is.

I am curious, now, to see OTOY in action. I know I am starting to smell a paper tiger, or perhaps vapor ware.

<comment><USER3> Certainly my first impression was Buzzword Bingo - we win!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From their "about" paper... a lot of these are pretty incredible. I don't know what kind of a team they have but many games companies would have hard time claiming even half of these innovations.

OTOY 1.0 features:

* super fast software rendering (surpassing many DX7 and DX8 cards at 640x480) with 100% support across all types of systems (see <http://www.otoy.com/city/>)

* simple to use scripting language - very easy migration from Flash, Director or C++

* average 6-8 week development time line for games

* scene graph and collision system optimized for very large worlds - ranging from infinite terrain to indoor scenes

* proprietary compression for Audio (2x better than MP3), lossy image (5x better than JPG, 1.5x better than JPEG200), lossless image (2x better than PNG) and lossless data and text (25% better than ZIP)

* voxel space rendering for cinematic scenes

* imaging support in software (hand optimized ASM code for x86 on Intel Macs and PCs): includes all Photoshop and Director blend modes, real time full screen dilation, glows, blur, toon shading, convolutions, flood fills, color keying, CMYK/HSV/RGB conversion, vector drawing, noise effects, flare generation.

* Real time switching between full screen, windowed, and embedded

<comment><USER5> I'm going to guess that if they even have most of these features, they've probably just stolen existing technology and called it their own. Much like most "high performance proprietary video compression methods" these days are just ripoffs of H.264 (see SVQ3 and RV30/RV40), I would not at all be surprised if even their non-vaporware tech is copied.

1.5x better image compression than JPEG-2000 is rather easy; H.264 can pull that off handily with intra compression. 2x better than MP3? They're probably using HE-AACv2. 2x better than PNG isn't difficult either; lossless wavelet or just something FFV1-style should be sufficient. 25% better than zip? LZMA.

Of course, eventually people will realize that almost all this stuff is patented up the wazoo...

Another thing I found rather amusing was "5x better than JPEG, 1.5x better than JPEG-2000"; implying that somehow JPEG-2000 was over three times better than JPEG...

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/JPEG_JFIF...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/JPEG_JFIF_and_2000_Comparison.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I call bullshit.

Raytracing an entire city with quality exceeding that of any video card on the market -- and do it in the cloud in real time?

Mind-blowing and seductive, but impossible with today's technology.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how reponsive this really is. A fair number of people get nauseous when there is a ~250ms lag between their command to move (i.e. moving the mouse to look up) and their view actually moving. A lot more would find it irritating, at the very least.

That being said, I can't wait to try it out myself.

</comment><comment><USER8> So basically the whole thing is a scam?</comment>


Distributed Filesystems: Fraunhofer vs. Gluster (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/fhgfs_vs_gluster.html

<comment><USER2> > _" We tried Ceph about a year ago and it wasn't nearly ready for production > use"_

Given that it's a year-old article, that 2 year-old impression is probably very outdated. I would have loved to see Ceph benchmarked there as well.

<comment><USER3> The article is really outdated. There is no "FhGFS" anymore.

[http://www.beegfs.com/content/](http://www.beegfs.com/content/)

What i don't like are metadata servers. I mean mostly I would start out small, with every project. But the "real" cluster file systems don't follow this tradition. The bare minimum of a solid production environment is probably more than 5 nodes, which is really huge for using it as a layer for content distribution in the small scale.

I mean its cheaper to rent s3 / the new aws nfs solution or any other s3 like storage solution, than running a server with a distributed file system by yourself and I'm just considering the running costs, no maintance etc...

Its really hard to do this on premise on a really small scale and just for availability. Most people will mostly just buy this stuff from san/nas vendors if they could afford it, if they have a system that needs to have this built in your pretty much fucked with ugly hacks / solutions.

<comment><USER4> > I mean its cheaper to rent s3 / the new aws nfs solution or any other s3 > like storage solution

Sure if you never pay for bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is also little known but very cool MooseFS [http://www.moosefs.org/](http://www.moosefs.org/)

<comment><USER6> Also [http://www.xtreemfs.org/](http://www.xtreemfs.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Glfs has a severe problem with small writes, both with writing small files > and small writes into large files. FhGFS does not have this bottleneck."

GlusterFS has implemented many smallfile performance enhancements and with the latest release I am seeing a 20-50% improvement on smallfile performance. There are more improvements in the pipeline:

[http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Fea...](http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/Feature_Smallfile_Perf)

I would be curious to see these tests run on a properly tuned(readahead on bricks is important for spinning disks and read workloads, I didn't see any mention of brick tuning in the article) and on the latest version of glusterfs with the smallfile performance enhancements.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not sure if they've worked on it, but 3 years ago Gluster performance during rebuild was about 1/100th of in normal operations making it effectively impossible to do a rebuild of a production cluster if you lost a node.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also Arvados Keep ([http://arvados.org](http://arvados.org)) is a content- addressed distributed file system.</comment>


Goes-West – Sector View: Pacific Southwest - <AUTHOR> https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector.php?sat=G17&sector=psw <comment><USER2> Some of the inversion layers in California lately have been truly impressive as well in the past week. Take a look at some skew-T log-p diagrams over the past week:

Norcal (Oakland): [https://climate.cod.edu/products/analysis/raob/index.php?typ...](https://climate.cod.edu/products/analysis/raob/index.php?type=conus- current-current-skewt-KOAK-0) Socal (Vandenburg): [https://climate.cod.edu/products/analysis/raob/index.php?typ...](https://climate.cod.edu/products/analysis/raob/index.php?type=conus- current-current-skewt-KVBG-0)

If you've never seen one of these before, the blue lines of temperature (isotherms) are skewed to the right, so that everything fits on the graph, and the pressure is logarithmic so it corresponds to height. The light green lines are adiabats -- air rising or falling will follow along these lines until water condenses. The big red line is temperature, and the big green one is dewpoint temperature -- where the lines touch there's a cloud.

So what we have here are large inversion layers, where temperature increases with height. Normally, the red line goes mostly straight up the graphy, as lowering pressure should lower temperature of air. And indeed, this creates a cap, where air above and below the edge of the inversion gets trapped.

These huge inversions are why the smoke is largely staying above the ground. It rises hot from the fire, but any sinking would be countered by the buoyance of the air wanting to keep it up. Mixing at the boundary layer is slow with this strong of an inversion.

But the inversion is also low, which means that the temperature differences with altitude can be extreme. I'm on the coast in Ventura, but if you went up the hills in the same city, it would be 30°F/17°C warmer at the same time. And in LA, the 100-120°F highs a couple days ago. We're having Santa Ana winds that are literally blowing over the top of calm air below, because the pressure gradient is too weak to overcome the strong inversion. This is really crazy weather.

Dramatic photos of SF, for anyone who's missing out on the bright orange sky. [https://abc7news.com/weather/photos-orange-hazy-skies- seen-a...](https://abc7news.com/weather/photos-orange-hazy-skies-seen-across- bay-area/6415624/)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I'm reading that graph correctly, over Oakland there's currently an inversion boundary at ~50m, ~1500m, ~2000m and 14000m. Is a correct interpretation that the smoke is trapped between one or several of these inversion layers, preventing both sinking and upward dispersion?

<comment><USER2> Talking about the 12Z 19 Sep sounding (you might have click back to a previous one if you read this later):

The data is a little noisy because it really is just a weather balloon getting knocked around. There's a huge inversion from 300-500m. Then the temperature is roughly constant between 1500-2500m (the T line is skewed), and we finally get a big decrease in temperature below that. The 14000m one is normal, this is called the tropopause. Normally it's a bit lower than that, but heck, even the 500mb level is at 588dm heights. It's hot out there.

So really, nothing is going to sink below that 500m point. Now, lots of Mount Diablo is above 300m -- it's going to be hot and smokey up there. But if you tried to push a parcel of air down from 500m, it would be so much less dense than the cool moist air below that it would bounce back up. The whole troposphere is very stable, but extremely so at that level.

Most people who look at skew-Ts are interested in thunderstorms -- the area of the blue line to the right of the red line tells you how much energy you can release from condensation of water, with some air from the surface rising. Like, look at Brownsville, Texas: [https://climate.cod.edu/products/analysis/raob/index.php?typ...](https://climate.cod.edu/products/analysis/raob/index.php?type=conus- current-current-skewt-KBRO-0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A different view of the same data, linked in another HN thread a few months ago

long url to get you in the right area: [https://rammb- slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-17&z=3&im=...](https://rammb- slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-17&z=3&im=12&ts=1&st=0&et=0&speed=130&motion=loop&map=1&lat=0&opacity%5B0%5D=1&hidden%5B0%5D=0&pause=0&slider=-1&hide_controls=0&mouse_draw=0&follow_feature=0&follow_hide=0&s=rammb- slider&sec=full_disk&p%5B0%5D=geocolor&x=14150&y=3034)

<comment><USER4> That's definitely an interesting view. I scrolled over towards the east a bit to watch the activity of Texas. I'm fascinated by the 3-dimensional detail. You can see the lower level systems pulling in the moisture from the Gulf. You can also see the clouds over central Texas getting taller which is pretty indicative of thunderstorm activity. I can verify that by looking out the window as it heavily raining right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that the inland clouds in the geocolor view are white compared the coastal smoke.

It seems to me that you should be able to see the fires directly on one of the IR bands but I haven't found it.

<comment><USER6> They're fairly visible on band 7 IR.

<comment><USER7> I think it stands out better in band 6.

[https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G17&sector=psw&band=06&length=240)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Much of the west coast on fire or covered in smoke.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a great Web Site Designer. Who do you recommend? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
We are Gerger (www.gerger.co), the creators of Formspider (www.theformspider.com), the Web 2.0 framework for Oracle PL/SQL developers. We are preparing a new version of our product and we would like to renew our product web site www.theformspider.com along with it.
Our product Formspider is for a specific group of developers namely, the Oracle PL/SQL developers. It's mainly used in mid to large size companies to build Budgeting, Accounting, Order Management, HR, ERP etc.. software.
Current Web site was done by us a year and a half ago. It's nice but building web sites is not our focus. The site is also showing its age.
Formspider impresses our users with its simple and elegant design. It is perceived as an unusually high quality, very innovative product built with care and attention to detail. We would like our new web site reflect these facts.
We want a simple yet beautiful design in our web site. Readable large fonts, excellent copyright, gorgeous pictures, icons and screen shots should provide a enjoyable experience to the visitor. We don't want run of the mill, stock photos, icons and text anywhere on the site. Each page needs to be individually crafted and be of excellent quality.
The entire goal of the web site is to reflect the high quality of our product.
Our favorite product, company web sites are www.apple.com (you should have seen this coming at this point :-) ) and http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/
We've been struggling to find a freelancer or a team that can get this done. I thought of asking you on HN hoping that you can help.
Best, Yalim <comment><USER2> I can strongly recommend Dennis Covent - <http://denniscovent.com/>

He recently designed a site for me, and I was really impressed with the quality of his work, and his responsiveness and attitude throughout the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll check it out. Many thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There should be a who's hiring thread later today, that would be a better place to post this: <http://news.ycombinator.org/user?id=whoishiring>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. We are not hiring. We are looking for a freelancer or a company to do the work. Would that still be the right place to post?

<comment><USER4> There is also a freelancer thread. Keep posted, it should go live in the coming minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My best advice is to find sites you like with similar functionality to what you need and try to find out who did those. Often companies will share who they used. If it is an internal person then he or she might be willing to share inspirations or point to freelancers with similar approaches.

Note that this isn't really about the "look." Good designers are flexible enough to work in many styles and are always trying to solve your unique problem. What you are trying to spot is quality and familiarity with the technologies you need.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're still looking, check out my portfolio at <http://www.madebyargon.com>

My email is: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey Yalim,

What I usually do is go to Dribble and search for designers that I like. I´ll contact them and work out a deal.

Most of the designs I´ve done for my projects were done that way and it has worked out great.

</comment><comment><USER8> We'd be glad to help. We have a stable of designers with different aesthetics, I'm sure we'll have one to match.

<http://versastudio.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> check out mikekus.com hes incredibly talented and works with a bunch of YC Co's. Pricey but if you've got the money to spend....

<comment><USER7> Awesome design... last quote was in the XX.XXX range though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd be happy to help & support you :) please contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com

www.michalkosecki.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Michal. I'll check out your web site and get back to you.

<comment><USER10> The website is still under construction but you should definately check out my works on deviantart <http://michalkosecki.deviantart.com/gallery/>

I found out that we have a common friend - Marcin from PlaceChallenge. I'm Art Director at PlaceChallenge. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I noticed too. :-). Hope all is well with PlaceChallenge. I looked your work. Quite nice. Did you make any other product web sites other than PlaceChallenge web site?

<comment><USER10> Well, most of people like these projects: [http://michalkosecki.deviantart.com/art/FanPage-Trender- two-...](http://michalkosecki.deviantart.com/art/FanPage-Trender-two- versions-283923928) [http://michalkosecki.deviantart.com/art/Mobeelizer- website-d...](http://michalkosecki.deviantart.com/art/Mobeelizer-website- design-296614336) (please download these and check out the details :))

From time to time I'm making small landing pages like this: <http://noacowork.pl/karta/>

And in case you've missed it - similar pages for PlaceChallenge games: <http://runawayapp.com/> <http://www.serpentapp.com/>

There are also few more projects that I can't show yet, due to the NDA, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Feel free to ping us at <http://www.cloudshuffle.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you do any startup/product web sites that are not in your portfolio on your web site?

<comment><USER11> Yeah quite a few. I haven't updated the site in almost 6 months + there are NDA issues with a few. So until they launch can't add some of them to my folio.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested in seeing them.

<comment><USER11> Sure. You can find my email in my HN profile</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who smeared Richard Feynman? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/

<comment><USER2> Posted three months ago, with extensive discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024982)</comment>


Taking on the Last Bureaucracy: People Need People -- But Do They Need Personnel? - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/01/15/207172/index.htm

<comment><USER2> The article's dated 1996 and the average company has not only made no progress in this area, but actually gone backwards.</comment>


Some people get it, some people don't - <AUTHOR> http://getnotget.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The world according to John Gruber.</comment>


Ask HN: What would our world's tech be like without our flawed financial system? - <AUTHOR>

A recent Economist article explored "What's wrong with finance" -http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/05/finance-and-economics In the article a finance professor is quoted saying "at the current state of knowledge there is no theoretical reason to support the notion that all the growth of the financial sector in the last 40 years has been beneficial to society."
As an example, todays VC environment would look quite different if interest rates were not near 0% and as a result, the products of this environment would also look quite different. Less resources in tech development = less tech development. Now, this is the result of central bank policy printing cash in an attempt to save a recession and spur growth and investors search for yield.
But lets think pre 2008 when the majority of the growth of the financial sector was from financial innovation/engineering - IRS, MBS, ABS, the whole option market!, to name a few - the type of growth that the professor is saying is not beneficial to society. Surely this growth also had an impact on our investment in technology through easier credit and better tools for risk mitigation.
So this poses two questions:
1. Without the fortunate/unfortunate (you decide) growth of our financial system, how would our world's tech stack be different? Would it?
2. Assuming that a smaller financial system would have less technology, is this better for society?
Edit: 2. Assuming that a world with a smaller financial system would have less technology, is this better for society? <comment><USER2> I was CTO of a dot-com in 2000 when the Bubble first. We had to close the company down and I ended up taking a contract setting up web servers and application servers and doing the security for online trading systems at Deutsche Bank. I discovered that investment banks are very quick to embrace new technologies that give them a competitive edge over their competitors. At the time, that included techology and software that was coming out of the Internet sector - I personally deployed Red Hat Linux, Apache/Stronghold, Netscape web server, Tomcat, Weblogic and nCipher during the 2000-'02 timeframe.

So, there's no doubt in my mind that a significant chunk of revenues found its way from the investment banks to companies like Red Hat and Netscape. Whether that was a "make or break" contribution is another question. They may have contributed to the success of a company like Red Hat but I think it would be a stretch to say that Red Hat would not have been successful without orders from the financial sector.

As well as financial innovation (i.e. creating CDS, CDOs, etc.), the investment banks and hedge funds also do technology innovation. They were crunching "Big Data" more than a decade before it became a buzzword, and using clusters and grid computing, graphics cards and FPGAs long before Bitcoin arrived on the scene. Go read _The Predictors_ by Thomas A Bass, to read how a group of chaos scientists made a killing in the futures markets.

Some of those technologies end upo making their way into wider use but, while their contribution to the world's tech stack is significant, I think it's dwarfed by the new technologies that are created by non-financial-focused companies, like Apple and Tesla.

On the second question, I would question your assumption. One of the ways the financial system could shrink in size is through technology.

But, going with your assumption, my answer would be "Probably."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I asked this question, and based the responses I think I may have de- emphasized the type of 'fat-financial' system and its effects that I was getting at. I was mainly talking about the expansion of credit (creation of the american consumer) and advanced financial engineering that has allowed that. The housing bubble wouldn't have occurred without MBS product. Credit would not be as easy without ABS.

I don't think there is a 'clear' answer, but personally I think the tech world has benefited _very_ much from these innovations. Creating consumers of technology, access to credit, access to financial tools that allow large corporations to use as profit seeking enterprises (i.e. Google has an interest rates trading team).

After thinking about this for a bit, without a definition for what "all the growth in the financial system" means, its really hard to distill what the affects would have been and what financial innovations we'd be without. A better question would be without the MBS market... or, without IRS...

</comment><comment><USER3> The opportunities in tech right now are not interest rate driven ... They are tech driven. If the finance/political world were "fixed" you would see vastly more resources in tech as people were shifted out of unproductive sectors of the economy (eg. Housing, finance, govt corruption).

</comment><comment><USER4> I might be very biased, personally, but I think technology would be better off if the NSF and DARPA had controlled more money than Wall Street, since I tend to think real technology development comes from research before companies are even formed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Even without considering the tech bubble, hardware probably wouldn't be as good or cheap as it is today without the demand directly created by big finance.

Whether this is ultimately beneficial to mankind is a matter of personal taste.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the world wide web has become commercialized and monetized, and quality has suffered because of this.

<comment><USER7> I think this is probably true, but on the other hand wouldn't we be lacking a lot of the sites we have if it wasn't for the ability to make money? Especially at the scale they exist. How could Google (cs.stanford.edu/google?) serve billions of people if it couldn't make money? It'd still have to rely on grants? Actually I guess this could be good for fundraising for Stanford, all the alumni that use Google. Although without Google's commercial dominance some other university may have made a better search engine. Hmm, maybe you're onto something.</comment></comment>


For the young and the old hacker - <AUTHOR> http://forum.itunix.eu/viewtopic.php?id=405

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy New Year 2015!</comment>