In-flight hacking system - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ioactive.com/2016/12/in-flight-hacking-system.html <comment><USER2> Last job was at Panasonic Avionics' cross-town rival, Thales Avionics. From the many Panasonic veterans working at Thales, they mentioned our architectures were quite similar, so I will use what I know about Thales' system to make what could be a close comparison. You have a system called ACARS, which is an ancient technology that sends data from the cockpit to the IFE system (GPS, airspeed, etc). ACARS I believe is a 1-way protocol (think of it as an RSS feed where you can subscribe for updates) The only bit of communication that can go the other direction (I think) is BITE (built-in test environment) which is a centralized way for a technician to see status messages and error codes sent from individual components (such as each seat- back screen, power distribution boxes, switches, wireless access points, etc). The IFE systems we developed had separate satellite systems for internet connectivity from that of the cabin, including separate antennas. From my understanding, hacking an IFE system could mean gaining access to CC info, but it would be very very unlikely to take control of the plane from a seatback screen.</comment>


Google, Facebook spend big on U.S. lobbying amid policy battles - <AUTHOR> https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKCN1PG2TD-OCABS <comment><USER2> Lobbying is nothing more than legalized corruption. When companies lobby, they do so at the expense of the people and other, smaller, competitors who cannot afford to bribe politicians.

Politicians should craft laws based on what's best for the country and not on what's best for the few corporations that manage to outbribe other companies.

Also, remember when Google complained about lobbyists? Former Google CEO Erc Schmidt even admitted that most laws are written by lobbyists.

> _" The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by > lobbyists" to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told > Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. "It's shocking > how the system actually works."_

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googl...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles- ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908/)

<comment><USER3> That's cool but where are the lines? The problem is that a LOT of lobbying goes on, and we don't know how to allow what, when or why - and no country does it well.

Examples: protests - are they ok? What if they are funded by some group?

What about a concerned citizenry meeting a politician? Is that OK? What if their funding comes from Iran?

It gets real complicated real quickly.

> Politicians should craft laws based on what's best for the country

That seems so simple, but man, that is SOOO complicated. Imagine a law that made life better for 80% of people, but made 20% worse off - should it be implemented? What about 2% better off, 98% worse off, but the worst off 2% amongst us benefited?

That simple sentence fragment is why lobbying, and groups like the NRA and teachers unions, exist and hold so much sway. Many laws affect groups disproportionately, and how we decide who to hurt and why is what politics is, in part, about.

There just aren't any magical, mystical policies where everyone wins, not even things like free trade which has been great for almost everyone on the entire planet.

<comment><USER4> > Many laws affect groups disproportionately, and how we decide who to hurt > and why is what politics is, in part, about.

Let me quote John Rawls with "The Difference Principle" [0] which can indicate some general direction on making laws.

> Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (a) they are to > be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Differ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Difference_Principle)

<comment><USER5> The problem with Rawls is that, brought to its logical conclusion, his ideas essentially say that you can all but enslave the most effective people in your society to benefit the least advantaged, so long as they are slightly more advantaged than the single least advantaged member of your society. It sounds nice on paper, but it's essentially endorsing extreme totalitarian socialism. It's the kind of dystopia Kurt Vonnegut was satirizing in Harrison Bergeron [0].

It also complete ignores the rights of the so call "advantaged" class. From the stand point of Social Contract Theory, society exists because it's advantageous to all of its members to give up some rights in order to protect others. If you systematically disadvantage a group of people, especially those who are deemed the most capable and advantaged, you will quickly leave them with no reason to want to be a member of your society. Unless you plan to run an authoritarian dictatorship, you will be left with few citizens other than the disadvantaged, who will suffer for having the others run off. Not to mention that the idea of intentionally systematically disadvantaging an entire class of people is, on its face, disgusting.

There are plenty of other arguments against Rawls, but the primary ones are made by Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia [1], and he can make them better than I can. Rawls is a brilliant philosopher, but his ideas are better left in the realm of thought experiment, and not in government.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This increased lobbying by tech companies was the result of everyone taking the lesson of United States v Microsoft ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)) to heart and trying to make sure they did not end up in the government's crosshairs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain how these numbers are calculated?

Are these perhaps just expenses related to lobbying (eg: hiring an external agency, or expenses for a particular lobbying action)? Are salaries of internal staff included?

$20m sounds ridiculously low. Giving the magnitude of these efforts, I'd expect the costs for the legal work alone to be far greater than that number.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00006782...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000067823) : it seems to be by summing up costs to known lobbying agencies.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, so lobbying efforts from within the company appear to be unaccounted for. I'd also venture that ancillary costs (especially legal services) are unaccounted for.

That really diminishes the meaning of the quoted $20m. For all we know, Google and Facebook could be spending ten times as much on staff lobbyists and lawyers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are we upset that big tech is lobbying, or are we upset about lobbying in general?

I can't think of any big US corporation that doesn't spend money lobbying.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lobbying itself is not culprit as it has been present since the beginning of society. Only thing that make it heinous now is the change in mindset of people(more greedy).

Its the responsibility of people to support virtuous corporations(choosing product they use) just like they vote their politicians to power.

<comment><USER11> If by lobbying you mean bribery, then yes, it has been around forever.

I think the way it is done today, legitimized, in the open, and at scale, is a relatively recent phenomenon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can anyone explain how lobbying works in the U.S? Where does the money end up?

<comment><USER13> Hi I represent the *PAC, do you have a few hours to chat about $TOPIC over a nice dinner? We are a PAC prepared to fund politicians in favor of friendly campaigns $X

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article does a poor job at putting the numbers in perspective. How much is it compared to other industries like Pharmaceutical or the aggro industry?

</comment><comment><USER15> Now facebook is working on election integrity. I love it how they are always able to find a cool name for everything.

</comment><comment><USER16> Non native speaker here. What is the difference between government lobbying and corruption?

<comment><USER17> Lobbying is talking to congressmen, which isn't corrupt at all.

<comment><USER16> What is the $21.2 million figure for?

<comment><USER18> That money is not given to the congresmen.

<comment><USER19> Not directly. It is given to all their friends. Their friends have helped them get elected and will again in future. Direct corruption is only used when you want to blackmail someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale It's not exactly like they have much of a choice.

Here's a piece on how Microsoft initially tried not to get sucked in the quagmire of DC lobbying:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QivPQdRc49s&t=155s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QivPQdRc49s&t=155s)

TL;DR: DC to MSFT : if you think we're going to let you do your thing without collecting a piece of the action, you're deluded.

</comment><comment><USER20> duh. you'd have to be incompetent not to with the way our political system works.

<comment><USER21> Anyone who doesn't loot defenseless stores is a fool!

<comment><USER22> That has me thinking about extending the metaphor horrifically. Part of the answer for "why not?" has been "the owner has a gun". It obviously violence would be non-ideal on several levels but a really any sufficient counter force could work and probably would work better albeit with collective action problems. The reason "lobbying" works for cheap is because it helps get them elected. If it was as bad as having an extramarital affair or otherwise a kiss of death the "lobbying" would get more expensive. Similarly if lobbyists got boycotted to hell and back they would hesitate more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Which companies with a large footprint don't spend big on lobbying efforts? I'm sorry but why is this news? Is it particularly nefarious or even noteworthy at all?

No offense to op, but this is clickbait garbage.

<comment><USER24> It is not clickbait. Even without further information about specific policies being pursued, the article has hard numbers about the amount spend for lobbying. I don't think that it is restricted to these quite low amounts, but the information is definitely interesting.</comment></comment>


7 Lessons Learned at a London Startup - <AUTHOR> http://micvog.com/2013/11/16/7-lessons-learned-at-a-london-startup/

<comment><USER2> Great article! A startup is a risky choice but a rewarding one..</comment>


Selling Clojure to the Business - <AUTHOR> http://blog.juxt.pro/posts/selling-clojure.html

<comment><USER2> Another great selling point of Clojure in big, evolving projects is architectural agility. The combination of dynamic typing and focus on data structures allows you to pivot your codebase even when it has grown out from infancy. Changing database model, splitting to different microservices etc. come relatively easy so you can perform a refactoring while still continuing to add new features.

To be fair other types of refactorings (e.g. changing some map keys from keyword to strings in a big codebase) are unnecessarily painful. But dev tools are getting better and better by the day.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm rebooting my life, and could really use your advice. - <AUTHOR>

I'm rebooting my entire life.
I'm moving to a new city (Philadelphia), I'm getting married in six months, and I have over $100,000 in personal debt ($70k credit card, $30k IOU to my co-founder) resulting from the failure of my previous business.
My focus is on being a reliable provider for my soon-to-be family.
As such, my immediate goal is to get a corporate job, but I need some advice:
Question 1: How do I find somebody to help me write my resume?  I want to find somebody who can understand the cross-functional role I played as a founder/COO and help me express that experience and my skills effectively in a resume.
Question 2: Once I'm happy with my LinkedIn and my resume, how do I go about finding a good recruiter and/or appropriate jobs in a town where I have thin personal and professional networks?
I'd really appreciate any guidance at all.  I'm hoping to start the job hunt in earnest in early January. <comment><USER2> I think you're going about it backwards. Let me get this straight: You're moving to a new city without a job and getting married in 6 months with 100k in debt? Yikes. You're resume and LinkedIn can wait (or be done on the side at night). Start networking NOW! Job 1 is getting a job. Best way to get a job is to be introduced. Talk/email/call/bang on the doors of everyone in Philly.

Good luck with the reboot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not to be daft, but what all would you do to 'start networking now'?

I've added a few possibly relevant professional events to my calendar, and I'm trying to get to know my neighbors but it doesn't feel like nearly enough and I've had trouble finding more (particularly with the holidays, which seem to have killed a lot of the late december events).

<comment><USER2> "Possibly relevant professional events" are the 5-10% of what you need to do. Most of those events are just drinking and schmoozing with little benefit and even less follow-up.

Have you identified potential places of employment? Have you posted on relevant local boards? Have you called up/met with any recruiting centres that focus on Philly? Have you contacted the HR departments of companies that may fit? Have you spoken with the Philly board of trade/commerce? And stretching out, how about the local chapters of the Knights of Columbus/Shriners/other social groups? How about your university/college alumni? Facebook? Have you extended your possible career choices to include teaching at a community college (I know one guy who did that)? Have you checked with the city and what jobs they have (municipal governments are all hiring IT guys these days)?

There are lots of ways to find a job. Sitting in front of your computer, browsing Monster/Craigslist/etc. is not the best way. The holidays definitely put a crimp on opportunities available right now so you should, IMO, be taking the initiative to introduce yourself to those who may have openings in the next couple of months. First the introduction, then the reintroduction after the holidays. That shows drive, determination, and desire.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for an incredibly helpful post. I've done about half of what you suggested, which means that half of it is new to me.

One follow-up question for you: Do you have any advice on how to contact the HR department of a candidate employer and have a conversation that's deeper than 'yes, I will send a cover letter and cv'?

Thank you again for taking the time to list some specific ideas that I hadn't considered.

<comment><USER2> That's a tough one. Persistence and lucky timing could help if you can't get a direct and personal introduction. Till you get the introduction it will all be about persistence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll take a stab at this. First, a few assumptions:

1\. You have no children 2\. You are currently single 3\. You are technically savvy 4\. You are healthy, probably relatively young (20's) and able to work.

If those assumptions are all accurate, then I offer this: Hit the power button and reboot again.

Marriage, as someone else said, can wait. Finances cause a lot of marital problems. This, of course, is optional. Get married if you want. But I think it would be better to do so with a clean slate. Your first years of marriage should be joyful and full of intimacy. It's hard to do so when you're financially strapped. It's just an extra source of stress you don't really need.

Since you currently don't have other baggage (kids, wife, mortgage, presumably pets) -- how about another stab at doing a self-employment thing? Do some consulting work to get some cash flow and build work on a business you might enjoy. Once the wife and kids and house and dog and cat and picket fence come along, that's going to be a real bitch of a thing to do without significant cash reserves. I know, because I've got first hand experience and have limited myself and my options as a result of my choices.

A lot of people fail at their first (and subsequent) business attempts. Surely you've read this all before. Wouldn't it suck to quit right before you got it right?

But, forget all that crap! Right? I get it. You want a little stability. Good! But, will you be happy? Will your corporate job fulfill your passionate needs? Will that steady paycheck make you happy? Perhaps. If so, do it!

How about getting that corporate job and seeing if you like it? Before marriage! Hey, if this person loves you, they'll wait. No rush my friend, right? Or am I wrong? If I'm wrong, then maybe you better think twice.

Now, you got your corporate job, you aren't married, you have no kids or house or pets and picket fence --> you have options! Selfish options at that. Step out and get back to your thing.

Oh hell, I probably said too much. Good luck and smart choices to you. And...my sympathies for the debt - but don't let it destroy your spirit. Life is a roller coaster - the nice upside will pay you visits in your future and you'll look back at this as a great education.

<comment><AUTHOR> A few reactions to this:

\- No kids, engaged, I have strong technical skills (10+ years of dev and ops experience, lots of IT project management experience), I'm healthy, in my 30s, and I am ready, willing and able to work.

\- Marriage rescheduling isn't on the table. The wedding was supposed to happen last year but got nixed because my business had just entered free-fall and I was a ball of stress. Now the situation is crappy, but well-defined, so I no longer panic about finances. She would wait again if I wanted, but that's not what I want, either.

\- I did quite a bit of consulting in the past year, as we were winding down the company. The positive side was that the pay was fairly good and it helped scrub a lot of debt (there was a point where I was down close to $200k.) The minus side was that I felt stressed by having what was more of a collection of part-time jobs than a business or a career. This downside is amplified by the fact that I stopped enjoying dev work, hate doing outside sales, and I legitimately miss having to go to an office each day.

\- Right now, a steady paycheck is exactly what I crave. I have a roadmap laid out that includes both a corporate and an entrepreneurial fork, but both start with me working in the PMO or IT PMO of a relatively large corporation for the next four years, then move to Singapore and attend INSEAD.

\- Thank you for your post. I'm extremely grateful for everyone who took the time out to offer their thoughts.

\- The debt really isn't that bad. I paid $100,000 for a transformative experience. If you gave me a time machine I'd do it again.

<comment><USER4> It's tough but if you made 100k consulting could you either a) do it again or b) tell (charge) others how to do it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's how I did it, for free:

I spent the first month putting together a 'web dev' resume. This took a month because most of my experience was non-public, involved large teams, and/or NDAd. As such, I supplemented my resume by writing a few applications that while not overly complex, were clear demonstrations that I can do more than a basic CRUD app. (After all, I've got more than a decade of dev experience, it'd be weird if I couldn't do that.)

I further emphasized that competence by opening a github account, submitting a few minor patches to other projects, and open-sourcing one full application of my own.

Once I finished that, I started scouring everything I could find for jobs and contracts where I might be a good fit, and I applied to approximately two per day. I started with a 'take anything, as long as it's short' approach, and got pickier over time about what I'd do, and the rates I wanted.

After about two months, I wound up working with a client who was incredibly impressed with me, and wound up buying about 50% of my capacity for $100/hr on an ongoing basis. Most weeks I wound up working 20 hours for him, and the rest of my time was spent trying to land small-ish higher-pay contracts, or working on those higher pay contracts.

Altogether, I grossed about $160,000 in a year with almost none of that coming in during the first two months. The vast majority of that cash was used to pay off corporate debt that was personally guaranteed.

The only reason I don't want to repeat this is because while it would help clear the debt, it left me deeply unhappy. I don't enjoy coding anymore, and I don't enjoy working alone.

<comment><USER5> That's a great story and a good strategy, which you pulled off admirably. Reading that, I don't think you should pull a 180 once you get to Philly.

I hear what you're saying about your distaste for the 'lone wolf coder' role but you can use your skills and experience to hit the ground running instead of hunting for jobs until you catch one. The networking advice is all well and good but it doesn't pay the bills and it's not a quick fix. You network so that you can call on your contacts in times like this, starting now just delays the payoff and poisons your interactions with dread that you have to hit them up with your plea sooner or later - or worse, right off the bat. Networking is about building a rolodex, give and take, but mostly building relationships. If you need something right away it ruins the premise and people can smell it.

My advice is this: Philly must have coworking space. That will solve your 3 problems. You can be with people. You can help them, and receive help. You can advise, consult, contribute. Make money, join the community and networking will be a part of your life. You can hunt for a job for a few hours a day, but help people and they will help you. You'll become a part of your new home, and your new life. You may even like coding again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for suggesting coworking space. If I decide to burn off the rest of my debt via freelancing, that'll give me at least a shot of sanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should write an ebook on how to find a fiance and move to a new city while being unemployed and having $100K in debt. This would be more interesting than any of the advice you're going to get about how to find a tech job in Philly. Maybe you could sell enough of them to pay off your credit card. I'm only being about 10% tongue-in-cheek. I'd buy it...

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like you've thought this through. Congrats to your fiancee for landing a great gig. You are a true partner for making this move.

Since no one else has said it, find out which alums from your university are in Philly and set up informational interviews with ones in fields/jobs you find interesting. Everyone loves to talk about what they do/how they got to where they are. Key: follow up with a hand-written thank-you note. This is far more memorable than an email! (and do this for everyone who takes time to talk to you)

I would also set up an informational interview with these Philly folks to get a better idea of the local scene: <http://www.dreamitventures.com/> I totally get that you want a job-job, but they will "get" your background and may even put you in touch with one of their companies and/or introduce you to others in the Philly tech community.

I'd also check out <http://asktheheadhunter.com/> for advice on how to treat your job search the way a recruiter operates in matching companies and talent (essentially, you research the heck out of a place where you'd want to work and then show them how they need you). The "Ask the Headhunter" book is a bit repetitive but may be worth picking up as well.

Best of luck! And don't be too hard on yourself. The process will most likely have its setbacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome ideas. I've had coffee with people who were far more successful than me many times in an effort to understand how they did it. It hadn't occurred to me to do the same in this situation.

I just added a todo to my calendar to contact DreamIt as soon as I'm in Philadelphia full-time, because that is absolutely brilliant. I might be able to go "corporate" by working for a portfolio company, or perhaps somebody in their network would clearly understand what I bring to the table.

And frankly, even if none of that works, once my debt is cleared my wife wants to found a startup so it'd be great to have a better handle on what DreamIt is doing.

I know this isn't a memorable hand-written note, but I can't tell you how appreciative I am for the advice and ideas. I truly appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Me being blunt.

Find someone to help you write your resume? Why can't you do this yourself? You are just offloading responsibility. It takes a day to do and is fairly easy.

Find a good recruiter? Cannot you just start applying for jobs now? Why do you need a recruiter? They can be helpful but as you need a job as soon as possible you shouldn't limit yourself here.

Finally, starting the job hunt in early January is procrastinating. Get up and start applying now. There is a pre-Christmas lull in many offices that make it a good time to hire.

Good luck with your job search.

</comment><comment><USER9> Network first. Start with your network locally and ask if they have contacts in Philly. Join some meetups in Philly.

You write your own resume. Don't spend more money doing that. You know yourself best. Then get your friend to review.

</comment><comment><USER10> From a young developers perspective Philly was fun. Lots of events, low living costs for a decent city and tons of web work. I was able to easily freelance with few contacts.

A previous co-worker on the other hand (usually working in the very top of a company) found Philly to be difficult as he had too much experience in high positions and expected to find it again and again with a cushy salary too boot. Its been over a year and I still think he is out of work.

Pharma while soul crushing will get you the fast cash you need, is abundant and should be easy enough to get into.

</comment><comment><USER11> With $100k of debt, I'd consider a marriage a "luxury" that could wait.

<comment><USER12> Why? You don't need a lot of money to have a unique and meaningful wedding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't expect to get the perfect job right away. Get any job and start paying down your debt! Once you're settled and your network is more established, you can look for other opportunities.</comment>


Refresh for a new OS, VMs as homepage backgrounds - <AUTHOR> https://benjojo.co.uk

<comment><USER2> What web resources did you use to develop the vm video feed?

any links to help me make one?

<comment><AUTHOR> qemu is launched in the background, then a go program connects to the VNC endpoint in qemu and ships that stream over websockets, though CloudFlare</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much to work at HP - <AUTHOR>

Quick poll.  How much would you need to be paid to accept a job at HP.  100k, 150k, 300k,...etc. <comment><USER2> What's special with HP?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd do it for 250k + bonuses.

</comment><comment><USER4> In which office? (state/city)</comment>


Blender on sale in alleged violation of GPL - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Blender-on-sale-in-alleged-violation-of-GPL-1182216.html

<comment><USER2> Hmmmm ... just checked <http://www.3dmagixpro.com/> they actually acknowledge Blender as the source of their fork, it is at about the middle of the page (not a very clear statement I admit). I wonder if this acknowledgment was done after the Blender foundation has noticed the fork or before. I didn't check if the modified software is GPL or not.

It looks like a rip of GPL, but I'm not a lawyer...

</comment><comment><USER2> How can we stop this kind of things to happen ? I wonder if the Free Software Foundation can help with legal advice if there is a clear violation of the GPL.</comment>


The C++ Lifetime Profile: How It Plans to Make C++ Code Safer - <AUTHOR> https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2020/the-cpp-lifetime-profile/ <comment><USER2> I would prefer if C++ would be extended with a function level borrow checker with real safety guarantees that could optionally be turned on for functions.

In the first look Lifetime profile looks like it just tries to find the low hanging fruit cases.

Can it be further extended to guarantee safety guarantees in the future, or it's just a hack? I'm not sure about it.

<comment><USER3> RAII solves lots of lifetime problems, but it's surprisingly easy to have refs outlive their targets (among other things). Static-analysis can spot a portion of these, but in general the lifetime of input and output values of functions/scopes needs to be explicitly stated by the user (part of the type) and can thus be verified by the compiler.

I think Rust captures the core lifetime concepts pretty well, but the notation can be cumbersome, and I think C++'s rich type-system could make for a less- tedious solution. TFA mentions doing some implicit lifetime-analysis based on signatures (e.g. inferring ownership based on type-traits), but ultimately it is 'just' low-hanging fruit. It would be nice to capture in signatures/types that "the input must outlive the output" and have more meaningful error diagnostics and less implicit magic ("did I follow the iterator traits correctly?").

<comment><USER2> I think the main problem for C++ programmers is not the notation of Rust, as Rust is a simpler language than C++.

It's backwards compatibility: there are hundreds of millions, or probably billions of lines of C++ code out there. I found working with big code bases really hard, because the memory ownership situation is crazy, in fact impossible to keep track of.

That's why my question was whether there's a future path for C++ Lifetime Profile to get programs to Rust like memory safety in the future, but I still don't know the answer.

<comment><USER4> I think the answer is yes. There's a complementary project [1] that aims to enforce a slightly more restricted memory safe subset of C++ than the lifetime profile checker does (or eventually will). The restrictions do not manifest as limitations on the code, but rather as extra run-time checks in some scenarios.

The C++ language maps one-to-one to the safe subset, so auto-conversion of (reasonable) existing C++ code to the safe subset should be a straightforward (if tedious) undertaking. The issue will be the performance of the converted code, which will depend on how pointers/references are used in the original code.

Pointers that are expected to never point to (in addition to never dereference to) a destroyed object can be converted to "safe" pointers with little run- time overhead [2]. Otherwise the pointer would need to converted to one with more overhead [3]. Pointers that can be verified (by the static analyzer) to conform to "scope lifetime" rules (akin to Rust) can remain zero-overhead pointers.

New code written in the safe subset would generally have performance in the ballpark of traditional C++ [4].

[1] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/scpptool](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/scpptool)

[2] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#norad- point...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#norad-pointers)

[3] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#registered-...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#registered- pointers)

[4] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus- BenchmarksG...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus- BenchmarksGame) (note that the benchmark code is quite old and will be updated soon)

<comment><USER5> Is there a document that describes roughly how to do the conversion? How are things like pointer arithmetic handled?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, documentation [1] is still kind of lacking. Like Rust (and arguably modern C++ conventions?), the safe subset doesn't support pointer arithmetic directly. You would have to convert the pointer to an iterator (and its target to an appropriate container).

Auto-conversion of code that uses pointer arithmetic is challenging, but has been demonstrated to be solvable in the general case [2].

[1] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#getting- sta...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#getting-started-on- safening-existing-code)

[2] [https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus- AutoTransla...](https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus- AutoTranslation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm really interested in the Core guidelines. They are only a few years old, however. It will be super interesting to see some case studies of large codebase adoption in the next few years. The lifetime profile is the one that I 'm most interested in seeing some real studies on. Some of the changes seem pretty simple (of course, I don't have to make them in any codebases) so it makes me wonder if they are expressive enough to solve a large chunk of the use after free problems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not a long term approach, in my humble opinion (as a C++ veteran that has worked with it for 20 years).

What the language needs is a new set of types that will ensure memory safety. Using the old types with the new ones should not allow the code to be compiled, thus ensuring memory safety.

It would be nice to have such a tool in short-term, though. At least some old bugs could possibly be more easily revealed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's my problem with the approach: it's a compiler warning. Nobody looks at those so it's configured to be treated as an error. Now you have to deal with false positives and differences between implementations across compilers. I'd rather have this be part of the language with string guarantees and an obligation for compilers to adhere to the spec. Of course that isn't possible in C++ without breaking existing code, which is why this ended up where it is.

</comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR - Ownership to C++

</comment><comment><USER10> At this point, why not write Rust instead?

I know, C++ is a dirty snowball rolling downhill, gobbling up every feature it can put its tendrils on, and always has been, but it is getting silly.

<comment><USER11> Even if you don't care about the language itself, there is a giant amount of C++ in the wild that won't be reimplemented. Anything that can make that code safer is a huge win.

<comment><USER10> How much of that existing code, really, is ever going to be updated to the standard of even C++11?

<comment><USER12> I am working on a device, where the initial code was written in 1995-1997 on a pre cpp98 compiler, the code has recently been updated to cpp11, I am sure we will move to cpp14/17 soon. So this is slowly but steadily moving, even if very conservatively.

On the other hand, Hell would freeze over before you could convince the business to throw the cpp codebase and replace it by anything else, without necessarily a lot of things to show to the customer. And as much as we like to criticize business decisions, here it is probably the right call.

However, if you are startup starting today, it would probably be a good idea to consider other options, that could be used as an advantage against incumbents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A common issue with C++ software is the need for a stable, standard ABI, which C provides but C++ does not (except through `extern "C"`). Because C++ name mangling is not standardized and the standard library headers have tons of implementation-specific details, something like `void foo(std::unique_ptr<Bar>);` does not have a stable ABI.

<comment><USER14> In practice, there is a stable and standard ABI in C++. On Windows systems, you use the (undocumented, but mostly reverse-engineered) MSVC ABI. On everybody else, you use the confusingly-named Itanium ABI, except for exception handling on ARM, which uses a slightly different ABI.

Standard library implementations do not necessarily share the same ABI, but it is possible to interoperate between libc++ and libstdc++, and libstdc++ maintains ABI compatibility across different versions.

And, to be pedantic, C does not provide a stable, standard ABI. It is the platforms themselves that provide this ABI standard, and these platforms equally provide a C++ ABI standard. So C++ ABI compatibility is no more or less a problem than C ABI compatibility.

<comment><USER15> The legitimate difference between C and C++ ABIs is that the C ABI is easier to understand and reason about.

It's analogous to Java and Scala; each has an ABI, but it's easier to tell when the former breaks ABI than the latter.

<comment><USER16> That's right. C being more limited, it has a more simplistic ABI. But the parent comment was replying the "need for a stable, standard ABI, which C provide". Which is misleading as both C++ and C have the same level of stability and standardisation of their ABI. (I.e: none of them is standardized, but both of them are stable on practice)

<comment><USER15> Yep, you're right.

There is a difference, but the difference is in complexity, not availability.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Life in a universe with 2 time dimensions - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+johncbaez999/posts/4boRo5TQuop <comment><USER2> I've always wondered about a place where time had > 1 dimensions, it would surely allow for some strange things to happen (e.g. something appearing out of nowhere when it's time "vector" crosses my time vector")?

How do we know that we only have one time dimension in our reality anyway?</comment>


3D Printer Shootout – $600 Printrbot vs. $20,000 UPrint SE Plus - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/3DPrinterShootout600PrintrbotVs20000UPrintSEPlus.aspx <comment><USER3> Ok, I am compelled to point out that the $22,000 printer works ~8 times as fast or does 8 times as much work...depending on how you look at it. Droplets versus mugs.

        Maths
        (0.2mm/0.1mm)^3

There is not much of a premium for performance in supply costs. The premium in hardware costs is ~4.5x. A lot for a consumer. Cheap if you're racing.

What I was reminded of is commodity servers. You run the models through a cluster of three or four cheap rigs (maybe with different slicing software) to increase the odds of getting a good artifact in 8 hours and to allow taking a machine offline for tuning.

Of course eight 0.2mm resolution printers will no more create a 0.1mms artifact than 9 fertile ladies will gestate an infant in one month.

<comment><USER4> not completely true, as there are more variables at play. 0.1mm vs 0.2mm is the layer height, but you are missing the extrusion width settings. For all you know, the $22,000 was running twice the extrusion width. In addition, just cause a printer was run at 0.2mm doesn't mean that's the smallest layer height it can do, I would expect the printrbot metal to do at least 0.1mm, if not better.

<comment><USER3> The filiment could have been wider as you suggest. The filiment on the $600 printer could have been wider too.

My internet connection to the omniscience is down. I was just going with what's described in the article.

There's a reason that the $22,000 model costs $22,000. Margin is only one of them.

<comment><USER4> Not the filament itself, the extrusion width. It's something that you specify in the slicer, and can vary by a bit, between hard bounds specified by the nozzle diameter of the print head. Also, consider how much of that $22,000 is "make it look pretty". They are already trying to do everything they can to make money off the thing, i.e. expensive filament and disposable build plates.

<comment><USER3> If a part effectively takes a calendar day to print, the build plate increases the odds of an acceptable prototype 0.1%, and net revenue on the completed project will be $5001 per day, then a $5 build plate pays for itself in a properly capitalized design development cycle.

And that's only the case if other features of the system don't add any value that could offset the cost of the plate and the additional day of design labor and overhead is ignored.

All of which is to propose the possibility that there might be business cases where the machine makes sense and the possibility that everyone besides we two obvious geniuses might not be incompetent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoyed reading this, as the author stated it is a rather contrived test, there are things the Stratasys printer can print that the Printrbot cannot (anything with complex overhangs and undercuts) but that really wasn't the point I think. There is also the entire 'tools' thing where the tool is often less important than the operator. I know people who can carve a bust out of ice with a chainsaw, but I'd be lucky to make a square block with the very same chainsaw and equivalent ice. The point being that tools are only as good as the training of the operator so tool comparison really does need to expert operators if it wants to be diagnostic.

But what it _does_ say, and I believe it is incontrovertible, is that the "personal 3d printer" market is evolving at least as fast as the "professional" 3d printer market and the overlap of capabilities is growing. For any manufacturing technology its going to be speed, cost, finish, and capability and while personal 3d printers have nailed it on cost, and they are now competitive on speed, they are working on finish and capability. And that suggests to me its a time thing, not a 'new science' thing between when 3D printers start delivering on their potential.

I've got a Makerbot Replicator 1/Dual (the last of the 'opensource' Makerbots and currently replicated by the Flashforge Creator 3D for half the price I paid :-) which was much better than the original Makerbot 'cupcake' or the early reprap machines. There are print heads (a combination of an extruder and a hot end) now available which both improve the finish significantly and the speed. So its really a fun place to be.

And my personal favorite is that its a way to exploit robotics hacking in a much more practical way than running around a room avoiding walls :-).

</comment><comment><USER6> It certainly raises some good questions, and the Printrbot is a great machine at the price point (I have a Printrbot Simple RepRap clone myself). His looks pretty well calibrated as I've seen a lot of Z-wobbling artefacts on the prints from several Printrbot (Simple Makers, not necessarily the metal one).

Worth nothing is that things like the Z-scar being on the side of the cup instead of under the handle is something that's decided by the slicer (the software that translates the 3d model into printer commands).

Different open source slicers that are regularly used produce different locations for these scars -- and I'm not sure if it's actually possible to position/hint this Z-scar manually in any of them. They often do try to be "smart" about it, but the end result may vary.

<comment><USER7> Do you think I just got lucky with the Z-scar and Cura?

<comment><USER6> So I just took the coffee cup STL and loaded into the latest Cura myself, rotated in 90 degrees so it was standing upright. Without changing anything else, I ended up getting the layer changes on a few difference places over the print (I'm seeing this just by analyzing the G-Code using [http://gcode.ws](http://gcode.ws)), depending on the layer height. It starts to the right of the handle and after a while seems to sort-of stabilize almost on the opposite side of the handle and on the right side of the actual handle, before the handle separates from the cup body.

All in all, it will likely have come out decent, but certainly not under the handle as you have. This I guess is because Cura will start the new layer close to where it finishes it's previous layer by default. In other words: it depends on infill percent/pattern and model location on the build platform.

I figure this is because you've added support. This causes the print head to get a "closest" start of the new layer exactly under the handle (because that's where the support material are). So going as far as calling it "lucky", no. The support placement actually helps Cura put the Z-scars in a good place on this model. On another model, it might be the exact opposite.

(PS: I use Cura for all my slicing and I like it a lot -- but I don't feel like the software actually gives me much control about the Z-scar placement)

<comment><USER7> Fascinating. Thanks for this. I was thinking it was either the support or running it through NetFabb first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We bought a Makerbot Replicator for $6,000 and it's been a huge disaster. I'm not sure if the people who bought it didn't read the Amazon reviews or what.

We were having the local college print things for us for $150/pop. For double what we paid we could have gotten a lightly used Stratasys which is the same printer the college uses.

<comment><USER9> >We were having the local college print things for us for $150/pop.

Care to expand on this? I've been playing with the idea of buying a couple very nice 3D printers and starting a 3D printing company. I think a lot of people have been burned by the consumer-level printers or simply need bigger or higher quality prints. What are you guys printing? Do you feel $150 is a fair price? What is the turn around time? What materials? Does that include delivery?

My gut feeling is a local company with local delivery and quick turn-around could be more tempting that going with one of the web-based providers who take days.

<comment><USER10> There's already a few established companies in the "cloud" 3d printer market, even 3D Systems (the 3d printer manufacturer) participates with their Quickparts brand ([http://www.quickparts.com/LowVolumePrototypes.aspx](http://www.quickparts.com/LowVolumePrototypes.aspx)). Just go get some quotes and see if you can make a business case doing this type of thing better in some way.

Being cheaper isn't going to win you a ton of business, imho. Being faster or better or more personal, or providing unique materials may win you quite a lot of more niche business, though. For instance, for low volume injection molding, Proto Labs are hard to beat as they will do a fully automated quote and give you flow analysis for parts you upload within an hour or two (usually this takes days). Your business would need to separate itself from the other existing 3d printer providers in order to have good success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's up with the abundance of cheap extrusion printers, while (almost) no consumer-grade SLS (selective laser sintering) machines are available? The latter technology seems vastly superior to me, in terms of freedom to actually print anything you want. Is the technology that much harder?

<comment><USER12> Harder, much more expensive and much more dangerous to operate. So that's why they're not more common. The last thing you want is for a machine like that to be run in a regular home without proper fume extraction. At the back of those machines you usually see a thing like a very thick vacuum hose connected to remove the (toxic!) vapors.

They also consume a lot of power, usually requiring industrial power hookups.

edit: here is a nice picture of such a setup

[https://www.solidconcepts.com/content/images/repeatable- proc...](https://www.solidconcepts.com/content/images/repeatable-process- control-001.jpg)

Those white tubes going up out of the machine are the extraction channels.

<comment><USER13> If only it was possible to hook up on single-phase house mains an arc torch- based plasma gasifier to direct those toxic fumes into. I specifically looked for access to three-phase power when choosing a residence because I don't see power consumption requirements for the metal sintering gear coming down anytime soon.

<comment><USER14> FYI you can use either a static phase converter or rotary converter to convert from single phase to three phase. A decent 20A three phase static converter will run you about $500. Much easier than trying to find a house with three phase!

<comment><USER13> Yes, good point, thanks for pointing that out. I did look into phase converters, but at the time was considering continuous usage of three phase power, due to the energy losses. Of course with an infrequently-used 3D metal sintering printer, it becomes much more practical to deploy a phase converter for just the printer's gasifier. Bonus: the well-built digital controlled rotary phase converters can last 30+ years, and from my poor electrical ed- shu-ma-ka-shun I understand these better ones yield a true analog sine wave good enough for even very sensitive electronics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 3D printing reminds me so much of the early days of personal computing - <USER2> was an expensive hobby for techies, the equipment was hard to configure, and the everyday (practical) uses of the technology weren't immediately clear. But like personal computing, I have no doubt that 3D printing will become an essential part of our daily lives in the decades to come.

<comment><USER16> Just like today's printer cartridges, the 'print material' used by 3D printers is insanely expensive. That's gotta change for any essential daily lives application.

<comment><USER17> Really? My impression has been that filament is pretty cheap e.g. < $30 per kg. For printing small objects, enclosures, small replacement parts etc, the filament cost has been pretty much negligible. That's why a lot of 3D print shops end up telling people just to buy their own printer if their doing any reasonable volume, because once the capital cost is out of the way, the consumables are fairly inexpensive.

<comment><USER18> $30 is ridiculous. ABS plastic is around $1,000 per ton (or cheaper if you buy 10 tons). Does it really cost so much to make a wire out of the granules?

<comment><USER17> That means there's approximately a 30x markup from raw ABS to a spool of 3D printing filament being sold over the counter in a shop to a consumer. I don't know how much filament costs if you buy industrial quantities rather than consumer ones.

To be honest I don't know enough about industrial pricing to understand if it's ridiculous or not, 30x from raw material to something being retailed at a consumer level doesn't seem unbelievable to me.

Markup on a black ink cartridge (the original comparison) is something in the region of 200x, so nearly an order of magnitude higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The problem here is patents and the cost of R&D.

The only reason why 3D printing became main stream is because some patents expired and printers are being sold as kit instead of a product.

</comment><comment><USER20> What this suggests to me, is that if you are making a lot of smaller 3d-prints, that don't leverage whatever special capability the UPrint has (size?), then it makes a _lot_ more sense to have a large cluster of a couple dozen Printrbots than a single UPrint.

</comment><comment><USER21> They reason they both have the "pile of spaghetti" look is that they're both FDM printers. The fact that even the most expensive FDM machines still give that crappy-looking result is because that's all the technology can handle. If he'd compared it with the results from even a consumer-grade SLA machine like the Form 1, let alone professional SLA, SLS or inkjet such as Objet then it would be completely different results.

<comment><USER9> I'm completly bewildered by the current 3D printing fandom. Every FDM print I've see just looks... off. I certainly am impressed people can make these things casually, but from an aesthetic and even practical point of view, it just looks terrible. I can't imagine using it for some of the more interesting use cases I hear about like replacing a cosmetic part in your car or house.

I spent a bit of time on 3d printing forums and from what I can tell its just figurine printing and hobbyist screwing around. These photos are very telling:

[http://maukcc.blogspot.com/2013/03/comparison-between-sla- an...](http://maukcc.blogspot.com/2013/03/comparison-between-sla-and-fdm.html)

A low price SLA would be a serious game changer. The Kudo3D project will be interesting to watch. I'd much rather spend $2000 on something that prints beautifully than $600 on something that will print "piled spaghetti."

Interesting comment from the Kudo3D person on reddit with some details:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/25teeg/kudo3d_ce...](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/25teeg/kudo3d_celebratory_tshirt_contest/chmt25g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's pretty amazing how the difference in object quality between the enthusiast and professional systems has evaporated.

I would be interested to hear how frequently the Printrbot gets a clogged extruder vs. the Stratasys, what print quality on ABS looks like between the two units, what happens when you have a more complex shape with a lot of overhangs, etc. Aside from warranty service, what are the advantages of the professional system?

</comment><comment><USER23> Stratasys has a $3bn market cap, and this post basically says their flagship product isn't much better than something that costs about 3% of the price. Probably not good for Stratasys long term outlook - SSYS.

[https://www.google.com/finance?cid=61380041562207](https://www.google.com/finance?cid=61380041562207)

<comment><USER24> That printer is definitely not the flagship from Stratasys. It's actually their 'entry level' product and seems to be aimed at companies who want a printer comparable to consumer ones but with perhaps more durability and better support.

A better comparison would be with the Fortus line which is used in commercial applications for functional products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Black color makes it hard to see the shape.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a lower cost "prosumer" model and I believe has the best Amazon ratings:

[http://www.makergear.com/products/m-series-3d-printers](http://www.makergear.com/products/m-series-3d-printers)

</comment><comment><USER27> Don't know much about 3D printing but seems it's got a long way to go yet if it's taking 7 hours to make a mug with some ugly scaring which costs between $2 and $30 in materials.

If I want to print a mug I'd want it done in 5 minutes and cost $1, otherwise what's the point of owning one from the point of view that one of these will be in every household. Does anyone know if the current materials have any hard limits on them as to how fast they can be manipulated for example?

<comment><USER12> The amazing thing is not to look at that it costs _all of $2 and all of 7 hours_ but that it costs _only $2 and only 7 hours_.

This capability is useless if you're making mugs but it is priceless when you're prototyping.

Making mugs is entirely the wrong application.

<comment><USER28> I believe the application is that you can make exactly one mug for only $2 and 7h. Then you can make exactly one tumbler. Then you can make exactly one plate. Then you can make exactly one coat hook. Then you can make exactly one collar clip that secures the armrest onto the driver's seat in your car. Then you can make a chess piece to replace the one the dog chewed up. And then you can make a bowling trophy.

Any specialized machine can absolutely annihilate the volume printer on the basis of cost, and for many things also on the basis of quality, but you have to produce thousands of units to pay for the machine.

You don't even need it to be a prototype. You just need to be making something that no one else needs--or not enough other people to warrant building a specialized machine to make that thing.

But then, if you do need that specialized machine, maybe there only needs to be one of those, and you have just the right sort of machine to make unique items....

<comment><USER12> Sure. But making mug _s_ is wrong. You can't compare the output of a machine like this to an industrial process designed to make tens of thousands of something.

Nothing beats a cheap ceramic mug for mug-ness.

And that goes for pretty much any one-off produced with a 3D printer that attempts to re-create a mass produced item. It'll be more expensive, more fragile, less pretty and in general less functional and strong.

<comment><USER28> That's correct. Making _mugs_ is wrong. Making _mug_ might be correct. If you are making a second one of anything, you are probably better off using the volume-printed item as a physical model, to make a mold, which would then be used to create two whatevers by a different process.

For mugs, that means constructing a plaster mold, then using liquid clay (slip) to fill the mold. The clay is dried, glazed, and fired. If your mug design is not already unique, someone else already does this faster and more cheaply than you can. But if you want 20 mugs shaped like your own head, you're still only going to volume-print one copy.

Or maybe you're making mugs out of food-grade silicone elastomer instead of ceramic. You still only need one printed copy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Blank: The International Business Model Competition - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/01/27/7719/

<comment><USER2> Being one of the few teams not from BYU, I was initially a bit worried about potential biases in judging. Quite to the contrary, the people at BYU were incredibly kind and welcoming, and made the experience a generally awesome one.

My co-founder and I had the fortune to spend a large part of the weekend with a CS PhD candidate from University College London. He had been a part of Business Plan competitions run in the London area for the last few years, and was effectively sent as an envoy to see the benefit of a Business _Model_ competition. After talking to him and competing in said competition, I've come to realize the underlying benefit: The emphasis on input over output truly puts BYU's competition above the rest in terms of practicality and learning.

As an aside, my co-founder and I make up Gamegnat, the team that took first place at the competition. We're currently exploring options for MVP creation, and would love to talk to anyone with a passion for gaming and web development that may be interested in working with us in a founder (significant equity) or freelancer (cash) capacity. See profile for contact info.

<comment><USER3> Congrats on winning the competition! I did a bit of searching and saw your presentation, <http://prezi.com/iyjcef23lmez/copy-of-gamegnat-bmc/>.

Wow. Did you use powerpoint to make that? It's one of the best presentations I have ever seen. Good luck developing the MVP, it looks like it could be a fantastic community.

<comment><USER4> It's using Prezi. I agree the presentation is top notch. No surprises they won!

<comment><USER2> Sandip is correct! Big thanks to the team at Prezi -- it was great fun using their tools to create that presentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was at the lunch he mentioned - we have a good startup community here in Utah but it was surprising to see the number of people that showed up to hear him. I hope to see the number of scalable startups in Utah increase over time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Go utah!

I just moved back to Utah from SF. Thinking about a HN meetup.

<http://utahack.com>

Anyone interested? Hit up the site and fill out the form.

Also would love to hear of any if you know of any.</comment>


With A Small, Simple Feature, Gmail Continues Its Assault On Desktop Email - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/11/gmail-drag-and-drop/

<comment><USER2> Nice idea, but I'm running the latest Chrome, and when I drag an image on, it shows the "Drag Files Here" part in GMail OK but then when I let the click go, Chrome changes URL to the file:// URL of the local image. D'oh..

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good, but it's not really an 'assault' to play catchup on features.

<comment><USER4> It is when you are already better as measured by a large number of heavy email users and the primary hold outs point to small, mostly moot, feature holes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Must use Chrome? Doesn't sound like it uses open web standards. Will other browsers need a plugin (eg. Gears) to make this work?

<comment><USER6> I think it uses web standards (HTML5), that's why it only works on Chrome (webkit) yet. HTML 5 has made/is making Gears obsolete btw.</comment></comment>


Apple Changes Business of Selling Your Browsing Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-changes-business-of-selling-your-browsing-data-1514127600?mg=prod/accounts-wsj <comment><USER2> AdNauseum is one of the most harmful things you can do against ads.

Proof: Google pulled it from it's store, but not adblock.

Ethically though? Not so sure. Safari adding that might make a bigger difference (but at what cost?)

<comment><USER3> _AdNauseum is one of the most harmful things you can do against ads._

Perhaps, but someone is still getting paid; it doesn't matter if a human actually sees the ad or not. As long as someone gets paid, it incentives more ads and the violation of users' privacy.

I think a better approach is to disrupt the whole online ad market as it currently exists, which is what Brendan Eich with the Basic Attention Token and the Brave browser intend to do.

Brave: [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

Basic Attention Token: [https://basicattentiontoken.org](https://basicattentiontoken.org)

Video: [https://vimeo.com/209336437](https://vimeo.com/209336437)

<comment><USER2> Why not both in combination? Use one to make the current system unviable, which forces everyone onto the new system.

<comment><USER4> Because loading all the (daisy-chained) 3rd party scripts and then spoofing clicks on ads compromises your privacy and on top of that, costs major page load and radio/data performance, compared to blocking aggressively as Brave does. This may amount to $23/month data-plan cost to user, per a NYT study).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> no paywall link [https://t.co/tEC9BHWrnf](https://t.co/tEC9BHWrnf)

<comment><USER6> This one works better for me: [http://archive.is/fXZlh](http://archive.is/fXZlh)

<comment><USER3> Same here; this one works great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't read all of it due to paywall.

What is technically happening with these features? As far as I understand it, there is a cookie that lives in the browser which gets sent with the request to the Google/Facebook ad script CDN, or an iframe reads the browser's cookies.

Is Safari running some kind of Machine learning or other algorithm that guesses which cookies are hurting privacy and which ones aren't, and expires them sooner compared to other cookies?

What are the odds that safari ends up breaking some other cookie driven functionality ? Can google theoretically use an iframe that reads localstorage instead? Websql? Can't Facebook still use the like button to track users? Or does this change mean having to sign in to like things.

I feel like this is not possible to fix without breaking persistent storage for the web. Maybe I am missing something. There are a lot of use cases where I might need this. SSO for multiple domains is one that immediately comes to mind.

I think that the current approach of private browsing mode which puts the user in charge is good enough from a privacy standpoint.

<comment><USER8> Answers to many of your questions here:

[https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking- prevention...](https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paywall link, oh well....

<comment><USER10> Paywalls with workarounds are ok on HN, so please don't post like this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

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


Living with a Censored Internet, You Never Know What You're Missing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/13/magazine/internet-turkey.html <comment><USER2> Tad ironic seeing as they are behind a paywall</comment>


Ask HN: How to allow users to add Adsense code without security risks - <AUTHOR>

What's the best way to allow users on your site to add Adsense code (javascript code) while still maintaining some sort of site security.<p>In other words, if we allow users to add javascript, how do we prevent from putting any and all sorts of code, including things that are unsafe or generally unwanted. <comment><USER2> The old adsense code simply required publisher id. Not sure how to get around that for new ones.

<comment><USER3> You can still use the old ones. They just don't go out of their way to advertise them, so to speak.</comment></comment>


Treehouse gets $7M to bring learn-to-code programs to high schools - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/09/treehouse-high-school-series-b/ <comment><USER2> This is good news for an ambitious startup, but I have to say: this whole thing seems like a bit of a shame.

If Carson truly is motivated by by the proliferation of knowledge to the underprivileged, then more power to him. But I still think there are better ways of contributing to such a global effort. I mean, there are better ways than attempting to monetize atop crumbling home lives and shameful education voids. For example: <http://www.codeclub.org.uk/> (what a cool initiative!)

In an industry so blessed with the huge amount of free knowledge available online, open to both public scrutiny and moderation, like Coursera & Khan Academy, you'd think that there'd be no possible niche for Treehouse to serve. But there is. There is a niche of people who simply don't know better. They don't know of the freely available content nor the millions of hours freely spent by programmers worldwide contributing constantly.

Instead of creating a private monetizable bubble of ignorance around the underprivileged, how about letting them learn through the already existing freely available content?

So congrats and all, but I just, on a personal level, want more for the future of education.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've looked at a lot of the "learn-to-code" introductory material that's out there these days, and the Treehouse content is some of the worst there is. I could run down a list of issues, but maybe it suffices to say that I've met many people who've completed the courses and still do not have any understanding of the basics of programming. And this is the material that is going to get high schoolers jobs? I don't think so.

<comment><USER4> I've been working through stuff on Treehouse trying to learn Ruby/Rails and thought the content was ok if not a little shallow. Are there better programs/methods that stand out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm all in favor of teaching kids how to program, but please be careful about setting expectations. To me, it sounds as if you're telling people "hey, learn to program in 6 months and get a six figure salary at Facebook!". While that may be a good way to sell the program, it's unrealistic and deceitful.

Can you replace a 4-year CS program with a 6 month course? No offense, but I doubt so. I figure the best you can do is have students to know their way around Ruby, know how to build simple apps relying on Rails, some basics about algorithms, familiarity with git, etc. That might be enough for some jobs, but I doubt that's the kind of engineer companies like Facebook are looking to hire.

Again, I'm not saying that teaching these kids how to program is bad. It's great. But please think about the expectations that you're setting.

(I would've written more to express myself better, but I don't have time!)

</comment><comment><USER6> _"So when we tell them, 'You could get a job at a company like Facebook, you could be earning $100,000 plus, they pay for your insurance, they feed you, and you can work from home and wear casual clothes.' They're like, 'What are you talking about?"_

Indeed. What _is_ he talking about?

Teaching coding to high school kids in under-performing schools is great, and may help some of them find an excellent career path they might never have thought about. But I think Carson is raising false hopes in many of the kids by exaggerating the potential impact of the program in their lives.

He seems to have totally forgotten the reality of supply and demand. It may be true that _right now_ entry-level developers can command $40,000 a year. However, whenever it becomes well known that workers in a certain field can command high salaries, it motivates many more people to enter that field in anticipation of earning those salaries themselves. This tends to cause a glut in workers, and salaries fall as the competition for jobs increases.

One sign that this is already happening is the rapid increase in enrollments to computer science undergraduate programs over the last several years.[1] Adding thousands more to the pool of available workers will only bring salaries down farther.

The more high schools this program is successful in, the more this effect will come into play, especially if the program gets "rolled out to every high school in America" as mentioned in the article.

Also, companies naturally seek to minimize costs by looking for cheaper sources of labor through outsourcing to other countries or by bringing workers from other countries here on H-1B visas. This is already happening.[2] As time goes on, these efforts will likely be increasingly successful, and will impact entry level jobs the most.

I think it would be much fairer to the students to tell them this is one skill they might be able to base a successful career on, if they have an aptitude for it and are willing to put in the effort to get really good at it. Otherwise, he's placing unrealistic expectations that might eventually hurt the students if they don't become reality.

[1] [http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer- sc...](http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-science- enrollments-rise-for-fourth-straight-year-cra-taulbee-report/)

[2] [http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa- program-h...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa-program-has- been-hijacked-outsourcers/VAg6o9KgS2tuoZ3WbmaqeK/story.html)

<comment><USER7> I don't think Ryan has forgotten the reality of supply and demand. I think it's more basic than that: he is totally overestimating the demand.

Yes, there are entry-level developer positions that pay $40,000, and more. However I think you'll find it difficult to locate many that require just six months of participation in a high school vocational training program. And you'll find even fewer in the economically depressed regions where this program may be most appealing.

Thanks to the current tech boom there _is_ higher demand for more senior development positions, but those positions require a lot more experience and skill. Hard-to-find intangibles, not programming ability, often make these harder to fill.

It's funny that Ryan mentioned Facebook. As big a name as it is, the company only employs a few thousand people and from what I have seen, most of the developers there, even in the entry-level positions, have college degrees. At many of the big tech companies where you will be most likely to find six- figure salaries post-boom, college degrees, including those from particular institutions, are favored if not required.

<comment><USER8> We've spoken personally to Facebook's hiring team and they've confirmed they no longer require degrees for their developers. The reason is because there isn't enough computer science grads.

<comment><USER7> If you look at the job descriptions on facebook.com/careers for technical positions, all of the development roles I see listed require a) a college degree, b) a specialized skill set no entry-level candidate would bring to the table and/or c) a certain number of _years_ of job experience.

So the question remains: just what evidence backs up your assumption that there are significant numbers of entry-level technology jobs paying above national averages for high school graduates with less than a year of vocational training? That seems to be a big part of your pitch, both to schools and to students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this can really put high school students on track for 6 figure salaries, then we're going to see a lot less college students in the future. This could truly be a game changer.

<comment><USER8> That's the plan. I think High School grads could realistically get $40,000 starting as Entry-Level Web Designers or Developers, then work up to $100,000+

<comment><USER10> If tons of high school grads are taking already-scarce entry level developer jobs, it is unlikely that many people will be making $100,000 for it

<comment><USER11> Think you're reading it wrong. The $100,000 jobs are very different from the $40,000 (or whatever) entry level jobs. Entry level could mean something entirely different with high school vs college graduate developer jobs. In NYC the $100,000 jobs don't seem to be entry level, and there seem to be more mid/senior developer job openings than mid/senior developers looking for new jobs. It's been this way here for at least one year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Super sweet, good luck. I personally got started in High School and would have loved more advanced classes.

The issue was that they bundled people together into the same computer class. We used to have people who didn't even know how to turn on a computer, much less make a Pascal game.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER13> Please allow me to play devil's advocate to this story. Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY>), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: <http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone>).

I am in no way saying that what Treehouse is trying to do is a bad thing, nor that we shouldn't be providing much better resources for learners, though I don't think such education should be paywalled for monetization. I'm very much pro-Khan Academy, Coursera, StackOverflow, etc. I've spent SO much of my free time in IRC channels teaching people and helping people with their problems and I've never asked for a penny in return, so I have a lot of resentment towards any company that wants to charge for access to basic education (<https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans>). I'm very much for proliferation of high quality teaching materials for learners of all ages and all levels, and so I am conflicted somewhat by this story, and I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but I think it's worth considering motives here. Even the best of actions that are used to veil inconsistent or conflicting motives are questionable, and this seems like wolf in sheep's clothing.

>The school I'm most excited about is in San Jose. All the kids are from at- risk homes — they have single parents who are working full time; they're from minority groups. … Out of 12 [students], we think four or five are going to be job-ready right away. These kids have never coded before, and I've talked to them in person, and I'm 99 percent confident we will be able to place them in jobs.

<snip>

>That pilot program, Carson said, went well, and he's looking forward to the next phase: rolling out Treehouse to many other schools around the country. The program takes six months, and the total cost is just $9 per month, per student.

We jumped straight into a pivot or business expansion into virtual instruction (much the realm of things like KA/Coursera) announcement and talking about how this will help certain kids find jobs. That's great, and I hope it works out, but I'm confused. Are we trying to sell the goal instead of figuring out the logistics? I got the headline, and the summary, so why was discussion about logistics so far separated from the initial announcement of the program? How is this going to be structured? Who pays for this? We're talking about low- income families and at-risk children, so are we expecting them to opt-in to a $54 course? Is it the schools, so it's tax funded? Will it include every student at the school, or just some? If the latter, how is that selection made? If the former, what about people who don't want to pay for it?

Further: as a professional in this space I'd love to review the content and provide feedback, too. Why can't we involve the community at large and reduce the costs? But the biggest question, for me, is if Coursera is doing this with the college space where education is significantly more costly, and for free, what does Treehouse offer that Coursera can't?

>"This isn't something we're doing to get money," Carson said as we concluded our talk. "This will change the world. And yeah, the company will make a lot of money in the process, but that's a trailing fact."

But is it, really? Given the target audience, I don't know if this can be considered a "trailing fact." It seems to be so insistent and damaging that it's worth putting in the spotlight. You're going to take money from an audience that is primarily under-privileged in hopes of pulling them up to some glorious $100k/yr salary point in 6 months, or more realistically just set them on that path? How are they going to get the further education necessary to make that transition from High School? The article includes a few anecdotes, which is great, but it's not statistical modeling. What kind of % of these students will be interested and capable of continuing education in this space to reach that goal? Is the idea to pitch the chance at high-salary jobs at under-privileged kids saying "learn this and have your life made?" That feels like a really crappy motivation, to be honest. Making $100k at a big company is definitely achievable for anyone with an aptitude, but there's a lot of work from having never heard about programming to being there.

I'm far from sold on this. I hope this is still very early in the planning stages so it can be evolved into something more workable.

<comment><USER14> Why bother writing such a wall of text, when the whole thing can be summarized as "I believe non-free educational materials are bad".

Selling educational materials to schools in the form of textbooks has been going on for a long time. If you replace "Treehouse" with "textbook", your rant reads like it was written by a crazy person.

<comment><USER13> I didn't really say that, nor did I imply it. I said I'm for high quality, free educational materials at all levels.

There's an entirely different rant about textbook sales in schools, more to do with corruption, greed, and sweetheart deals than trying to provide quality materials for learning. I definitely believe those materials (the ones marketed at the expense of students) are entirely bad, no doubt.

<comment><USER15> I don't believe that "high quality, free educational materials" is something that is easily attainable. I will say that the "free" part will exist but "high quality" may not be there. I don't think we can equate educational materials as the same level and quality of open-source software.

If you look at Khan Academy, really the forefront in this area, you quickly realize that someone is absorbing the cost. In this case, Bill Gate's foundation and others. As a result, you have someone with the calibre of John Resig working for the organization and they are putting out job postings.

I really like Coursera. I like the open-course offerings from MIT, Harvard, etc. Someone is definitely paying for these as it is not cheap. In this case, the universities are paying (and implicitly the students).

So, I definitely agree with your sentiments but I do believe we will get high- quality when there is a profit motive. I am not saying free and high-quality cannot co-exist with educational materials but I don't believe its very common.

In addition, my hope is that there is enough traction that the subscription plans stay low for these learning companies. One of the benefits in this area is that it has become very competitive and hence costs are coming down. Just take a look at what Pluralsight was charging five years versus now (or even Tekpub). There is a definate downwards pressure on how much these companies can charge.

<comment><USER16> I agree. Anyone can make educational materials. Making a relevant curriculum is hard. Making a relevant curriculum for teenagers is very hard. The amount of preparation that goes into just 1 hour of class time is often overlooked by those who haven't spent any time teaching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's really tough to beat the attitude that most kids have towards school in general. It's true that bringing these explicit programs will help the very few that would naturally be interested in the subject but for some reason don't know anything about it.

However, the problem is that the vast majority of these kids are turned off by anything related to school. The answer lies in consumer hardware. Computers are interesting because they're either horribly closed-off, but attractive (Macbooks) or very open but with such a steep learning curve that they would have a hard time knowing where to start (Raspberry Pi).

Something new needs to come out that is immediately accessible and attractive, but with layers of depth that can be readily exposed as the user wants to know more. Oh, and this new thing cannot be a consumption device - games and media will always win in the battle for a child's attention these days.

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome. Maybe now high school computer courses will consist of more than how to make PPT presentations.

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats Ryan - this tech has huge potential and is targeting such an important problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yay yay yay! :)

<comment><USER20> I hope that at least 1/2 of this money goes to making videos that feature Jason's signature end-of-video "Creeper Smile"

I've never met him, but I love that guy!

<comment><USER21> I love you, too, BrainScraps! I made this for you: <http://i.imgur.com/xNOzWJz.jpg>

<comment><USER20> Auuugh! Jason is creepin' on me! Best Day Evarrrr!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bring a class to impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago where they just closed 50 public schools and the media will have a field day with your story.

So many wins here: 1\. Win for the community 2\. Win for the kids who participate 3\. Win for Treehouse in the marketing department. 4\. Win for society as a whole to have more critical thinkers in the world

But if you sell this company to DeVry or similar (because that's who's in trouble here, not 4 year universities), I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER23> The key to teaching students to program is probably teachers who know how to program and how to teach programming. Given how poorly teaching pays, especially compared to -- say -- programming, and how it requires getting special qualifications you don't need to earn more money from programming, I won't hold my breath.

High school is also probably a bit late.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a bit amused that this is on the front page at the same time as Peter Norvigs "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" [<http://norvig.com/21-days.html>], with which I agree a whole lot more than the whole "Learn to code" movement.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if people would be so opposed to the monetization strategy if he wasn't targeting low-income families? If he was targeting programmer parents to teach their kids, and charging them, would it be bad? I think it's safe to say most gainfully employed programmers could afford this.

<comment><USER8> We are not "targeting low-income families"! We have 25,000+ paying Treehouse Students and almost zero are from that group. This is a simple pilot program in one high school with kids that are at-risk.

If the pilot is successful, then the school districts will decide if they want to pay for Treehouse at around $9/mo per Student.

<comment><USER25> Well the pilot program is what seems to be drawing the most ire, and that's the one I was referring to. I'm not debating either side of the argument and I believe in charging for a good product. I was just asking a question because I was curious about the thought process of some of the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love this for so many reasons.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is awesome, kids need an easy way to get their feet wet in programming.</comment>


What do you look for in a startup CEO? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say there's a startup that has a fantastic product that's not yet public but is well on its way. Today the CEO got hit by a bus on his way to work. You're an investor and member of the board and whatnot and have a say in hiring a replacement CEO. What are you looking for? <comment><USER3> If I were in that position, I'd probably vote for not hiring a replacement CEO yet.

Maybe this is just because of my lack of business experience, but I don't really think a pre-revenue company particularly needs a full-time CEO; until you've managed to make something people want, the challenges are primarily technical.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why I'm asking this: I know someone who's looking for a CEO for a funded startup with an apparently great product. I considered it briefly than wrote myself off, deciding I was more of a CTO type and a CEO type, assuming a CEO deals more with the business aspects of the startup.

Now however I'm wondering what a _startup_ CEO actually does. Still not going to apply for the position but thought it would be interesting to solicit information here as to what qualities are needed for a startup CEO.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good Teeth.

A distinct lack of a criminal record.

Sociopathic Tendencies.

Enough smarts to hide the sociopathic tendencies.

A fanatical adherence to the idea of projecting an image of ethical probity.

A deep dark secret that I can hold over him like a damocletian sword.

Or not. Realistically a CEO needs leadership skills and a keen sense of what tasks are better handled by other people; everything else is optional.

</comment><comment><USER5> Integrity, passion, and experience in that order. My 2 cents and probably over-priced.

<comment><AUTHOR> Business skills? Connections? Technology experience? Coder or not? Has a presence than can convey leadership, Financial experience? etc. Are any of these relevant/necessary?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. I was being very general and would say that these are all covered in my "experience" category. Of course, all these are very fact specific. What do you need the most? What gaps need to be filled? Can you outsource your coding needs? Do you need investors or, if you already have investors, do you need someone that can keep up investor relations? I stand by my original comment that integrity and passion come first. After that, you need to make sure that the person has the skills necessary to fill in the shoes of the person you need. If you have more than one person with all these qualities, go with you gut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be committed, has a vision for the startup, the ability to move the startup to the next stage, and the ability to solve problems promptly and properly. And of course the ability to lead the team.

Passion for the startup, and ready to spend 18 hrs daily - if needed - <USER2> for the sake of making the startup in a leading position.

But the problem that you won't be sure if the applicant for the CEO job really has these abilities or not. You can know it, only if he/she has a history record!</comment>


Is the square a secure polygon? - <AUTHOR> http://www.math3ma.com/mathema/2018/5/17/is-the-square-a-secure-polygon <comment><USER2> Really fun read.</comment>


Rare self-rolling giant snow balls found in UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6950788/Snow-stories-rare-self-rolling-snow-balls-found-in-UK.html

<comment><USER2> I did not know these existed. The enjoyment I get from spending time reading HN (even the new links) is you learn something new, be it a new algorithm, software package, business story, or a dang cool snowball.

Thank you for not self-filtering and posting this.

</comment><comment><USER3> s/gia/joi/ would be a lot more fun, though. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Really, HN? As someone who is already only interested in HN for hacker stuff and not entrepreneurial stuff, please please do not add articles about snow donuts on HN!

Edit: Or I don't know, maybe create another HN style site for Quite Interesting news?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why shouldn't the natural world and science in general be an interest for hackers?

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify, I _do_ find this interesting.

However, I don't find it interesting because I am a "hacker", I find it interesting because I am a person, and people are likely to find this interesting - it has nothing to do with whether you are a "hacker" or not.

When I visit Hacker News, I want to see news that is interesting, sure, but also related to hacking or entrepreneurship.

There are lots of interesting things in this world and like I said, it could easily make up enough content for another HN-style site. One that I would visit. When I wanted "generally interesting" news. As opposed to "Hacker" News.</comment></comment></comment>