Larry Ellison (2006): If an open source product gets good enough, we'll take it - <AUTHOR> http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041820061306424713

<comment><USER2> Man is he a shark. Seriously, between him, Steve Jobs, and Eric Schmidt it's no wonder a glorified sales guy like Ballmer is lost in the wilderness.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is what he's saying different from what RMS has said how you should make money with open source software? You might not like Ellison, but making money by offering support services is perfectly legitimate with open source software.

<comment><USER4> > You might not like Ellison, but making money by offering support services is > perfectly legitimate with open source software.

Agreed, but with Oracle it's more like bundling free code with very expensive not free code and then supporting the whole package. Case in point about what he mentioned regarding Apache.

<comment><USER5> _with Oracle it's more like bundling free code with very expensive not free code and then supporting the whole package_

Sure but that's called a 'solution' (sorry for the enterprise corp dev speak). Most FOSS projects don't solve a customer's problem in their own right and larger customers want to buy into _solutions_ not disparate projects that they then have to put together and maintain.

These customers don't see it as X amount of free code and Y amount of 'very expensive not free code'. They just see the sum of X+Y and a price point.

To use a completely left-field expression for this context: don't hate the player, hate the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To all those who read the title and think "OMG Oracle is so evil," by "take it", he means "use it in compliance with its license and build business around supporting it."

I'm not a fan of Oracle but the title given here on HN is kinda deceptive.

<comment><AUTHOR> The title is a direct quote from the interview, with one word, 'just', removed to fit the 80 chars limit.

<comment><USER6> And selective quoting is _never_ deceptive or equivalent to editorializing, right? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like > Oracle is free to take it for nothing

Doesn't that just piss you off?

This is not what RMS and the "Free Software" advocates say about making money from free software.

What this guy is saying is, we'll take open source and embed it in our proprietary products and we don't owe anyone anything.

<comment><USER8> You can make money from free software (according to RMS), you just can't restrict usage and exercise of rights. It amounts to what LE is saying -- sell the support. If Oracle includes GPL software, then they have to make the software that embeds it GPL as well. Apache is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In other words, open source developers partially enriched Oracle as a glorified consultancy to the point where the company could buy Sun and its patents for aggressive litigation against an open source project?

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a problem?

</comment><comment><USER11> Hubris like this triggers unstoppable _nerd rage_ in me. I can't even imagine how big of a jerk one would have to be to seriously believe they can appropriate the work & passion of hundreds of thousands of developers from all over the world who are _giving_ the fruits of their labors and imagination to the world. Ellison flat out doesn't understand software and thus he deserves to get completely steam-rolled by the open-source community, just like _we_ did to Balmer a decade ago with Linux. Oracle could not be killed fast enough for my liking. For far too many decades Ellison has _fucked up_ the software industry, like a parasite siphoning money off of everybody. Now you may think that's an inflammatory remark and that Oracle really does provide "real" value to their customers. (I've had to use Oracle for _real work_ , and there is not a single thing I like about it.)

 _Bollocks!_

Invert the question: for every dollar of "profit" diverted to Ellison, imagine the lost opportunity cost to the rest of us—what else could those billions of dollars have been spent on other than a shitty, obscenely overpriced database that belongs back in 1983 and that is entrenched into the biggest Gordian-knot of enterprise vendor-lock-in? A helluva a lot more good could have been done in the world if Ellison was a pauper. He might have even been a good man before he had all that money, though I doubt it.

My only question is: how best can the open-source community align itself to cut off Oracle's air supply?

Now that Google is unabashedly marching under the evil flag of Mordor, can't they just open up Big Table or something for enterprise customers, and snatch the pebble from Ellison's hand? Since day one, Google's dominant strategy has always been to take an expensive, over-engineered technology that other megacorps sell, scale it off the charts of those selling it, and then give it away, recouping the difference by becoming the quasi-impartial steward of the Internet.

I don't think NoSQL yet has the traction to put two bullets in the back of Oracle's skull and call it suicide, though as we saw with the success(and then failure) of MySQL, the situation can change in as little as a few years.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand. If you substitute "take" with "use", which is basically what he says, what's the problem? Having Oracle DBs run on Linux is good for Linux, surely, no? Having whatever-he-was-talking-about run on Apache is a vote of confidence for Apache, and it's probably getting some corporate patches.

Where's the harm in that?

<comment><USER11> You are absolutely right in pointing out that Linux has greatly benefited from being able to run Oracle. But I would argue that Linux no longer needs Oracle more than Oracle needs Linux. Linux has been mainstream for many years now, while Oracle has lost a lot of ground to Mysql, Postgres, etc and is greatly waning in influence. (Even though Oracle will never go away, much in the same way IBM and mainframes will never go away).

IMHO Ellison's lack of distinction between "take" & "use" is _precisely_ the harm. The danger is how easily that becomes the _Embrace & Extinguish_ strategy. He obviously sees no such distinction himself and imagines that he's big and powerful enough to just take whatever he wants. He sounds like a modern day warlord, and not in the good way. In my book, any individual who assumes that much power, without giving back in proportion, deserves to be shut down on general principle. How is it possible to respect one of the most eminent business leaders on Earth when he shoots his dumb mouth off in public like that? At best he reveals his inability to strategize & maintain coalitions, and at worst he reveals his sociopathic hubris. Being so mighty he would do well to learn the value of at least trying to listen to the advice of his PR viziers, and wear a false-face of humility in public, so as to not trigger indefensible public outrage. Which would lead to eventual Federal investigations—anyone as big as Oracle has a graveyard of skeletons buried in the basement.

I can forgive accidents, stupidity, and even short-term, limited corporate greed(implicit in _The Game_ ); but never when it's backed by the treacherous potential to cause long-term harm to much weaker open source allies. Linux, Java, Apache and other open source software projects are not mere pawns to be moved around the chess board upon which Oracle, Apple, Google and IBM engage in battle.

I hope the hippie idealism of open source populism hasn't been drowned in the ocean of money, but is instead still alive & kicking—Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers!

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

<comment><USER12> I agree with everything you say, but this article says more about Ellison than Linux. He just sounds pompous, arrogant and irrelevant, I don't think he presents that big of a threat. Certainly not the way some other commenters have taken it, some people seem to think that it means he can extinguish whichever large OSS project he wants at whim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whereby "Take it" he says:

No. If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. Take [the web server software] Apache: once Apache got better than our own web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. Keep in mind it's not that good in most places yet. We're a big supporter of Linux. At some point we may embed Linux in all of our products and provide support.

<comment><USER14> He did do that, he "took" Red Hat Enterprise Linux software source code, recompiled it, called "unbreakable Linux" and proceeded to undercut Red Hat in support pricing.

By most accounts, it's an unmitigated disaster. I think they sold like the first reference sales and then trickled to almost nothing. They still use the term "unbreakable Linux" but there is no OS product marketed around it anymore.

Sometimes people don't like the cheaper knockoffs.

<comment><USER13> That's the market at work. I'm sure Larry is not crying over this failure, and if it had been a success it would have only succeeded by spreading linux to more institutions and improving the linux marketplace, market size, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In case anyone hasn't already figured it out, this should be proof that you shouldn't take anything Ellison says too seriously. He's like the tech crunch of CEOs.

<comment><USER4> Why isn't he serious here? He's not suggesting anything nefarious--he's simply stating that when open source is good enough his company will begin to use it (for free) and make money with it. Seems logical.

<comment><USER16> The part where he's talking out of his ass is where he claims that Oracle can support Red Hat better than Red Hat.

I'll grant that Oracle can support Oracle running on Red Hat better, but that's a different story.

<comment><USER4> From what I've read about Ellison, I don't doubt he believes Oracle can support Red Hat better than Red Hat can support Red Hat. You and I believe otherwise, but that has nothing to do with what Larry Ellison believes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adobe Brackets 1.4 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brackets.io/2015/07/27/brackets-1-4-is-here/

<comment><USER2> The speed improvement for all file search is amazing. Searching the whole project as you type is a really nice feature.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Glad they fixed font rendering on OS X :)</comment>


De-Google-Ify Internet - <AUTHOR> https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/alternatives/ <comment><AUTHOR> Relevant here -> [https://prism-break.org/en/](https://prism-break.org/en/)

A listing of various privacy conscious email service providers with specific information around security and privacy -> [https://prxbx.com/email/](https://prxbx.com/email/)</comment>


Ask HN: How to Find Our CTO? - william-at-rain If you were looking for a CTO, how and where would you invest your energies?
I'm a mediocre developer with a narrow view of what's possible in the tech space. I also started a tech company that's taking off faster than I imagined.
We have ~10 contractors, and I'm just not the guy to guide them (or our technical direction) anymore. I'm too busy with biz-dev and my exposure to what's possible just isn't broad enough.
How do we attract and showcase our little venture to the right people?
Who ARE the right people? Ideally we would like someone with a startup track record and FAANG-like experience (we make business process software for title insurance companies using Real-Time (r) Big Data (tm) ). <comment><AUTHOR> Startup experience maybe. FAANG experience, you probably don't need. There are a ton of people out there that specialize in getting you off the ground and through your first couple of years. Realize, people coming from FAANG-like companies are use to having resources available that your very young company may not have. Finding someone that understands that to me is more important than finding the best possible technical genius. Don't forget google didn't start with "Google scale" engineers. They hired smart, driven people with a lean mindset. For your enjoyment the early google infrastructure [http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/...](http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/GoogleBG.jpg)

<comment> william-at-rain Awesome! I'm sorry I came off as wanting a FAANG person. I don't care about that.

What I DO need is someone familiar with data engineering, full stack web dev, startups, and managing people/projects.

I've posted jobs on Indeed and others - no luck! Any tactics for finding and getting into conversation with these folks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> How can one apply ?</comment>


Compressing Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2014/05/introducing-new-video-series-compressor.html

<comment><USER2> A related plug: my python-lzjb project which is what it sounds like: a 100% pure Python implementation of LZJB, the compression scheme used in ZFS among other things.

See [https://github.com/unwind/python-lzjb](https://github.com/unwind/python- lzjb).</comment>


Ask HN: How much are sales people making at B2B SaaS companies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I once heard as a rule of thumb, that your base salary is quite low (somewhere in the area of an account manager). Usually you can assume to receive 10-15% from the yearly revenue you generate.

</comment><comment><USER3> More than the engineers</comment>


Microsoft releases Silverlight 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-releases-silverlight-5/11391

<comment><USER2> "3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives."

Is this the type of thing they said was a security problem with WebGL? What have they done to mitigate the security risks they raised themselves with WebGL?

<comment><USER3> The concerns that have been raised around security in WebGL are 99% centered around shaders, which have been available in a limited form (just pixel/fragment shaders) in SL for a while now, as image filters. It's been a fairly hypocritical argument the whole time, IMO, although I do believe the risks are real (since I've been doing a good bit of WebGL/general 3d security analysis for a while myself).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought they gave up on Silverlight. Is this the last hurrah? Or are they not going down without a fight?

<comment><USER5> What makes you think so? sl4 support until 2013 and sl5 until 2021 sounds like great news for people invested in silverlight. Also despite Maryjo's speculation that sl5 will be IE and windows only, now we know SL5 continues to support the same set of browsers it supported in sl4 on both windows and mac.

<comment><USER6> "SL5 until 2021" really means "bugfixes and security updates only," of course. The future of the technology is stagnation.

<comment><USER5> There is still only speculation that this will be the last version. That said, it will most likely fit the bill for a lot of apps in it's current form. If SL5 can give you what you want, I don't see a real problem not to use it to develop your next app. It has the tools now and it's in production now.

<comment><USER7> If you don't think an app you start writing today will still be being used in 10 years time, you're being short-sighted in my opinion. That kind of attitude is the reason so many companies are still stuck on IE6 (which came out just over ten years ago) due to poorly written intranet apps.

<comment><USER5> You raise a point which is interesting if there was an official word from microsoft that this will be the last version. Right now this is still only speculation. Anyway, from a pragmatic view point SL5 is available today. A fresh release like this is a good reason to rejoice instead of speculating when the next release will be. Out of curiousity, what alternate are you suggesting that has the same unmatched tooling, documentation and support "today"? Specifically, if the mobile/tablet is not your target and your main audience is desktop on mac/windows and perhaps linux(note: with a small effort you can make your app work on moonlight too).

Edit: note also that with a small effort you can target the new windows 8 marketspace and release it as a metro style app as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I mistaken that what we know as silverlight is built in as a first class API in windows 8 and thus you wont need a plugin anymore to write code for it?

<comment><USER9> Do you mean a plugin as in the browser? No, you will need a plugin to run Silverlight in IE10 on the deskop, and you cannot use Silverlight (or Flash, or any other plugin) when IE10 is in its tablet-style Metro mode.

The new WinRT API that Windows 8 is built on is very similar to Silverlight/.NET but is not totally compatible so it requires code changes. Most SL programmers will be able to find their way around pretty easily though. The UI guidelines for Metro have changed quite a bit so there are more considerations than just porting code.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/br22957...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/br229571%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

<comment><USER10> _No mouse/keyboard events: They along with Touch events are unified under Pointer events. For more information, see Touch and mouse input._

I can see that being a PITA. Will have to look through what they've done sooner rather than later I think.

Is Win8 going to be the first hybrid system that people are going to have to write code for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Microsoft released to the Web on December 9 Silverlight 5, which could be the last major release of Microsoft's"

The last major release of microsoft. Does that include IE?</comment>


How To Package Your Python Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.scotttorborg.com/python-packaging/

<comment><USER2> I've wondered why using a dictionary to initialize _setuptools.setup()_ isn't more advocated in such guides. I understand this is superficial, but imho, this looks much clearer than the author's suggestion [1]:

        from setuptools import setup

        kw = {
            'name'         : 'funniest',
            'version'      : '0.1',
            'description'  : 'The funniest joke in the world',
            'url'          : 'http://github.com/storborg/funniest',
            'author'       : 'Flying Circus',
            'author_email' : 'firstname.lastname@example.com',
            'license'      : 'MIT',
            'packages'     : ['funniest'],
            'zip_safe'     : False,
        }

        if __name__ == '__main__':
            setup(**kw)

Here are a few of my _setup.py_ files that follow this convention [2] [3] [4].

[1]: [http://www.scotttorborg.com/python- packaging/minimal.html#cr...](http://www.scotttorborg.com/python- packaging/minimal.html#creating-the-scaffolding)

[2]: [https://github.com/gvalkov/harstats- graphite/blob/master/set...](https://github.com/gvalkov/harstats- graphite/blob/master/setup.py)

[3]: [https://github.com/gvalkov/jenkins- autojobs/blob/master/setu...](https://github.com/gvalkov/jenkins- autojobs/blob/master/setup.py)

[4]: <https://github.com/gvalkov/python-evdev/blob/master/setup.py>

<comment><USER3> Adding spaces to make things line up is proscribed by the Python Style Guide. Which is entirely optional, but many people follow it.

<http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#pet-peeves>

<comment><USER4> I'm so glad Go removes these sort of nitpicky style problems with gofmt. At first I was bothered by how gofmt makes things line up like this, but now I prefer no style guide and a tool that formats stuff for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Python has a tool (aptly named "pep8") which provides similar functionality. It doesn't make the changes for you, but it's very specific about what you need to fix to comply with the style guide.

<comment><USER5> Autopep8 makes the changes for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Taking a quick look through this it looks pretty good! I find that beginners have tons of trouble navigating the slightly tricky waters that is packaging in Python, so more resources is great.

One thing I think is missing is to point out __not __to use setuptools, but to use the less broken, more maintained, drop in replacement distribute (<http://guide.python-distribute.org/>). That website also has some further information on the packaging ecosystem that's worth flipping through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll definitely add that to the "See Also" section.

Can you elaborate on the places where setuptools is broken? I wanted to keep things as simple as possible for the sake of this tutorial, and I think the described constraints should avoid any setuptools bugs.

<comment><USER6> There are various posts on the distribute/setuptools/distutils mailing list. I don't keep track personally, but I do know that it's pretty widely accepted at this point to use distribute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact that there is no good, canonical guide for doing this in Python is one of the reasons I moved away from it and toward Ruby. With Ruby I had no problems writing and forking gems using the canonical guide (<http://guides.rubygems.org/make-your-own-gem/>). With Python, navigating the hell that is packaging is just demoralizing when it comes time to give end users a complicated chunk of code. (Setuptools is truly "a hack on a top of a bad design", not my own words.) I hope for Python's own sake that distribute (<http://packages.python.org/distribute/>) catches on and people are simply shamed out of using older tools, but since Python already has a problem with getting everyone to migrate code away from old things, I'm not holding my breath.

I'm still not sure how to do certain things "right", e.g., distribute a modified version of somebody else's package with my own package. In Ruby, I can do this with bundler specifying a git repo for my own fork of the gem (and then submit a pull request for the original fork, if it's a patch that's useful upstream).

<comment><USER8> if setuptools is a hack on top of bad design, distribute has exactly the same issues, since it is simply a fork that was started because of the impression that setuptools dev was stalled. None of the (numerous) design issues from setuptools have been fixed in distribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here are other good packaging guides for Python (by Tarek Ziade). I think Scott Torbog has joined the ranks of these greats:

<http://www.aosabook.org/en/packaging.html>

<http://guide.python-distribute.org/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Are setuptools suitable for packaging the whole web application (for example in Django) together with html/js/css files, configs for uwsgi and some management scripts?

I once tried to do something like this and failed and I had an impression that setuptools are not really intended for such things, but mainly for packaging plain Python modules.

Is this a right impression? If yes, what is a good way to package the whole Python based web application?

<comment><USER11> I find setuptools works great for packaging whole apps with HTML/JS/CSS. You can put these data files in your Python package directory, list them in MANIFEST.in, and set 'include_package_data=True' in setup.py. Then you can reference them in your code relative to __file__. And you can include a run script for your app using 'scripts' in setup.py, or let setuptools generate it using 'entry_points'.

Take a look at <https://github.com/getsentry/sentry> for a good example. After doing 'pip install sentry', you can run the included gunicorn-based HTTP server via bin/sentry ('sentry init && sentry start'). A uWSGI-based server would have worked, too.

I like to create a virtualenv under /opt, install the package and its dependencies with pip, and then run fpm to create an RPM or DEB. Then I use Chef or Puppet to install the package, deploy config files, deploy a service script (for upstart or daemontools), and enable the service.

See also <http://www.12factor.net/> for some principles on how to structure your app. These can be applied whether or not you use setuptools. For example, Heroku's Python buildpack will deploy your 12-factor app in-place using requirements.txt and Procfile in your app root, ignoring setup.py. I find 12-factor apps are easier to deploy whatever method you choose, since configs/services/logs are cleanly separated from your app itself.

<comment><USER12> There are a lot of interesting things in Senty. Its good reading though that code base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know this isn't exactly related to packaging the code, but any thoughts on utilities like py2exe (<http://www.py2exe.org/>), cx_Freeze (<http://cx- freeze.sourceforge.net/>) or pyinstaller (<http://www.pyinstaller.org/>) for distributing finished python modules to end-users?

</comment><comment><USER14> You guys might also find this github project useful: <https://github.com/splaice/py-bootstrap>

</comment><comment><USER15> ive been writing python for ages but never found a simple introduction to how to package modules - always thought it was voodoo, so thanks a lot! so simple...

<comment><USER16> It is but now you know the correct incantations ~ _computers_ ~ :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I apologize for the spam, but apparently I'm unable to save articles for some reason. I'd like to read this later, and I want to see if a comment will work.

<comment><USER18> If only there was some way to save a url within the software that we use to browse the web. That would be an incredibly useful feature, someone here should consider developing an addon or put in a feature request for such a thing.

<comment><USER17> Touche. Rather than ask other people if there exist issues with the intended story saving and voting features, I will start using browser bookmarks. Thank you for your valuable feedback. Pre-emtpive: "I know this is not the proper place to file a 'bug-report'"

*edit: not alone (semi-old) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4164468>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While I've already been doing things a similar way, it's nice to have a clean, clear explanation of how to package stuff.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome job. I had been stressing about getting my code up there but your tutorial made it easy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for the last few weeks and couldn't find :)</comment>


Identify the Unregistered Drone - <AUTHOR> https://instagram.com/p/9FaR4ngQ8T/ <comment><AUTHOR> My Facebook friends probably won't get it. But maybe you will?

In real life I'm not a drone evangelist/advocate. But the whole idea of registering a potentially autonomous robot that could look like a bird or insect--that opens the door to some interesting questions.

Are we only concerned about collisions? Will we need specialized drones that exist to find rogue drones?</comment>


Academics argue over how many people read and cite their papers (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/half-academic-studies-are-never-read-more-three-people-180950222/?no-ist <comment><USER3> I think that _is_ something worth investigating - because if it is true that 50% of all papers written never get an audience, then I would see that as a pretty major flaw in the way we do science. (As if we don't have enough of those already...) I mean, many people having been saying for years now that the scientific community is much too focused on churning out papers, but this would take things a step further by saying that all those extra papers are essentially useless. And if they are indeed useless, then they represent a phenomenal waste of time and money that needs to be stopped ASAP.

(Personally I doubt those numbers, but I have no hard evidence to back that up.)

<comment><USER4> 'I know half the money I spent on advertising is wasted, but I don't know which half.'

A lot of research is supposed to be new, uncertain, high-risk, high-reward. So it should fail often.

[A lot is also to be meticulous fact-checking, building certainty to later build new breakthroughs on.]

IMO, there is a real problem with people doing bad research they know is bad, but I wouldn't say that the 50% unread figure is the thing to focus on.

<comment><USER3> Your quote is thought-provoking, but I do not quite follow the rest of your argumentation:

> A lot of research is supposed to be new, uncertain, high-risk, high-reward. > So it should fail often.

Setting aside the question of whether or not science _ought_ to be the way you describe it, what do you mean by research "failing"?

IMO, there are two levels on which research can fail. The first (and I get the impression that you are describing this type) is the failure of some new theory to be corroborated by the facts, or the failure of a new approach to fulfill its promises, or a later experiment contradicting an earlier one. But this is part and parcel of the scientific method. In fact, this leads to an advancement of science, as we then know which explanation is not correct, or which observations need more detailed scrutiny. And so, such a failure of research is actually a success of science.

However, this scientific process is based on scientists exchanging their findings freely so that they can cross-check each other. Thus, the second and much greater failing of research would be to fail to communicate itself. And that is exactly what (appears) to be happening. If scientists aren't reading what their colleagues publish, that is not a failure of research - <USER2> research itself might be fantastic, but if nobody reads it, who is going to know? This is not a failure of research, this is a failure of science. And that is a much more serious issue altogether.

<comment><USER4> >whether or not science _ought_ to be the way you describe it,

I'm assuming a charitable readership - but its frequently stated, and I agree, that industry is for high value things we know will work, science/research/academia is geared for less certain / more speculative projects difficult to commercialise yet.

> If scientists aren't reading what their colleagues publish, that is not a > failure of research

Well, maybe?

Or maybe the paper authors hoped the results would be amazing, but they were only mediocre [research issue]; but they decided they might as well publish after getting the results (which is good), and some people skimmed the abstract; but it wasn't as interesting to others as the authors hoped (diverse perspectives; good); or the whole field went a different direction; or the specific competition found a better technique/result in the interim [research issue] and got all the love.

That's all just how research goes - doesn't mean anyone is failing to communicate _necessarily_.

> This is not a failure of research, this is a failure of science.

Maybe; maybe not.

I agree there's lots of problems in science, but based on my limited experience, I'd expect and think its OK for lots of stuff to be unread; lots of dead ends.

Lots of startups should fail too, that's not a bad thing; its like there's simply a high bayes error.

IMO real failure is things like people making up data, or doing research they know is bunk (maybe they hacked their p-values or left out data, or something) or continuing research they discovered is useless but their Adviser is politically wedded to etc.

<comment><USER5> Yes we should totally incentivize publication of negative results / failed experiments. If anything, we need more publication of negative results, that are likely to not be cited ever for the most part. It's a big problem that many failed experiments go un-noticed because researchers are dis-incentivized to publish negative results.

<comment><USER6> This brings the interesting question: how many failed experiments are being "replicated" just because the past failed attempts are not published? Said differently, how many researchers are wasting time on something that is bound to fail, like all the researchers that happen to have tried the same idea in the past failed, but didn't publish, because who wants to publish failure?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Hopefully, someone will figure out how to answer this question definitively, > so academics can start arguing about something else.

The reason academics argue about citation counts isn't necessarily that they care, but that, at many institutions, citation counts are directly tied to hiring decisions.

</comment><comment><USER8> So what's the modern academic clickbait? I've only read the greatest hits like Part time Parliament or Goto Considered Harmful. But those were really successful.

Is there something widely read that is not particularly insightful?

Is there a buzzfeed of journals?

Not trying to sleight an author, just curious what attention culture looks like in academics. Perhaps it doesn't exist, or it's driven by author reputation or some other effect.

<comment><USER9> Nature and Science, kinda. Those articles, though very good, can be very buzzfeedy in their 'zeitgeist-ness'.

I got to talking with one of their editors a while back, they know they are the 'gatekeepers' to a scientific career, and they hate it. The guy said that in the first week of the year, the submissions that they have for just the first week for the first issue are so much, and of such high quality, that they could just shut down the rest of the submissions for the year and see no drop whatsoever in quality. Getting into Nature or Science is so prestigious, it will make your career if you are grad student. Unfortunately, it is effectively a lottery to get in them.

Not to say you can't "make it" in other journals, but Nature and Science are sure things. If you are a post-doc in some fields, you pretty much have to get in Nature or Science, sometimes twice, to be considered as a faculty recruit worth mentioning. It's a giant god-damn mess of a system. It is very 'up or out' and as such, we waste billions training students that have no chance, doing work that languishes in unranked journals, and generally loosing the trust of the public that pays us.

NIH is trying to help, but it and the NSF are so inundated with Bullshit Artists and Yes-men that I doubt they can get away from their sclerotic bureaucracies and change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here are the original papers cited:

Meho 2007: [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-7058/20/1/33/...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-7058/20/1/33/meta) (not open access)

Evans 2008: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.183...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.183.3668&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Lariviere & Gingras 2008(?): [https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.5250v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.5250v1.pdf)

The third paper is especially interesting, as it brings forward what seems to be a pretty solid analysis that goes against what the previous two authors (and the Smithsonianmag) say about the state of science. So maybe there is hope yet :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Curious if this takes into account online publishing and online views. These days, with search engines indexing everything, while something might not seem immediately useful doesn't mean it's worthless.

Sometimes you're just ahead of your time, or in too niche of a field.

All that being said, the writing papers does seem to be the academic version of the corporate hamster wheel.

<comment><USER11> Look in to the budding field of altmetrics if that kind of thing interest you.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's just a symptom of how dysfunctional the current funding & promotion practices are. For many years now these decisions have been based directly on measures more or less equivalent to "inbound links" to ones publications, to an extent that such measures have become a de-facto form of capital -- to be fostered and protected accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not surprising, but it's also not a problem.

First, the need to publish is due to the publish-or-perish strategy, that forces authors to put out 1-2 papers per year in order to stay afloat. If you work in research, you realize at some point that advancing the state of the art in any field is hard. It takes intuition, dedication, some luck, and most importantly a _LOT_ of time. That is, /years/ of work where nothing comes out. The world-class papers you see in Nature are works of years, not months.

Ignore bad research for a moment: imagine you had only great researchers, which is what we'd all like to sustain. This is /fundamentally/ incompatible with the current model. You have two strategies as a researcher: put out crappy work to sustain a larger project, or publish bite-sized pieces of your larger work over time, which leads to incredibly specific papers that taken by themselves seem useless. If you take the second path, it's obvious that you'll also take advantage of the weak spots of the system, and cite yourself on each subsequent paper you publish. This is common knowledge. Because you need whatever you have to stay afloat.

The first strategy (keep the bigger task going) is almost never attainable. In fact, if you need infrastructure, such as a lab of any kind, it's impossible to pull off. This is something that only a tenured researcher working in a very successful team or with good connections might be able to do. Aside from your vision, and any grant you might have, you need mindshare in your fellows and your supervisors to simply let you do it. This is much harder than it needs to be, with too many factors out of your control.

As for the "unread" output, I'm not worried. I assume there's a good 30% of papers which are just turmoil due to the above system. As said, this very system has pushed authors to publish even more, increasing artificially the number of publications one would have written. This is also placing a burden on new authors that need to do literature research. Finding all relevant articles about any subject has become a massive task, even ignoring the problem of getting the articles themselves.

But how can you tell if the published works are worth it or not? It's impossible. Consider the evolution of all the odd fields of math, most of which would have seemed just ludicrous at the time of publication for anybody but the author. Stuff like origami to fold an antenna on a space telescope. Again, if you considered all past works and projected forward, you'd realize there's _no_ way an honest reviewer could tell "this is useless".

</comment><comment><USER14> A idea, propably a bad one- what if, not by accident, but by intention, there was a flaw in every paper, and a reader was only allowed to cite, if he could state the line and type of flaw?

<comment><USER15> Someone would quickly set up a database that would tell for each paper where the mistake is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1447/](https://xkcd.com/1447/).</comment>


OMG, Java is so verbose, guys - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sebastian212000/omg-java-is-so-verbose-guys-dca93fec9e03#.kgiawcpgg <comment><USER2> But Java _is_ objectively verbose. The amount of milliseconds it takes someone to type a semicolon is pretty irrelevant to the inelegance of the language itself and how it is used. Author seems to be going on a rant defending Java more than anything else IMO.

<comment><USER3> > But Java is objectively verbose.

So what?

> Author seems to be going on a rant defending Java more than anything else > IMO.

Also known as "a breath of fresh air" :-)

Edit: on a more serious note I find Java to be completely worth it as long as I make simple webapps and do simple backend tasks (payment and messaging integration).

<comment><USER2> > So what?

Exactly! I don't necessarily consider this a problem as much as something that "just is".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Focusing on semi-colons is a distraction.

There are two core problems w/ Java:

\- It doesn't support local type inference. Supporting this would clean up a ton of java code with unnecessary type annotations while still keeping signatures explicit and making refactoring tools, code completion, etc. (a strength in the java world) working properly

\- The culture of java library design is one where the entire domain of the problem is surfaced to the end user, typically in the form of a complex object model. This means to accomplish anything you often need to write some fairly complex code dealing with concepts you aren't particularly interested in.

My theory on the second problem is that java's type system and code completion allowed very complex libraries to work well enough, and the culture of java development (OO, highly technical) encouraged them. Meanwhile in the dynamic world, with no-or-shitty code completion and a focus on getting things done, darwinian selection weeded out libraries with verbose APIs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please don't write articles in this kind of tone. It's pure self-sabotage, guaranteeing that you'll only be preaching to the choir.

<comment><AUTHOR> I submit the link. I didn't write it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My main gripe with Java is its lack of type inference and the resulting redundancy that pops up. Things like the following got tiresome quickly (I might be a newb missing out on a better way to do things like this)

      private final TreeMap<String, TreeMap<String, Record>> searchTree = new TreeMap<String, TreeMap<String, Record>>();

<comment><USER3> FWIW This will raise a warning in my dev environment as I have declared in my pom file that I use JDK 8.

Also I'd consider it better style to only specify the interface on the left hand side, something like this should work:

private final Map<String, Map<String, Record>> searchTree = new TreeMap<>();

Edit: if you use Netbeans with maven it will automatically pick up correct settings from the pom and autocomplete with a shorter version like the one I suggested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll be honest, semicolons aren't the first thing that pops into my head when someone mentions Java's verbosity.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it strikes me as really odd to write an entire article where the main focus is semicolon 'verbosity'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kind of a muddled message... I am an Android developer and while I don't _love_ Java, I don't _hate_ it either. But to say it isn't verbose... well I don't know, it definitely seems verbose to me.

I feel like the author set up a straw man so he could knock it down. But buried inside is a message that I think is important: "use the tools that make sense for your specific situation".

I started developing a new Android app just under a year ago. From day one the client had a release date in mind. Sure, I could have come up with a million reasons to use Kotlin instead of Java. I could have justified using Kotlin to myself and my client would have trusted my decision. At the end of the day though, I had no experience with Kotlin and could not confidently commit to the proposed timeline if I used it.

So I went with Java. Everyday I read articles about the cool things happening with Kotlin. I'm definitely curious about it and I hope to try it out at some point. But I don't regret using Java.

With all that in mind, I feel like the general weirdness of the Android SDK and the fragmentation issue are far bigger problems in the Android world. I don't see any particular language choice solving this problem. I also don't think there is much that Android App Developers can do to fix this issue. I think it comes down to what Google wants to do to fix it, until then developers can only build ways around these deficiencies. Maybe this helplessness is why we see so much noise about different languages/frameworks/patterns/etc in the Android world.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love Java. It's a bit verbose. I love Kotlin. It's a lot less verbose.

Java has been my go-to language for a while. After taking 3-4 days to learn Kotlin earlier this year, I'm thinking my default is gonna be to use Kotlin. It's very nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just try static imports, then you can write Java that looks like python

<comment><USER12> Why static imports are not used in most programs? Any gotchas or disadvantages to it?</comment></comment>


Exploring the Digital Ruins of 'Second Life' - <AUTHOR> http://digg.com/2018/second-life-in-2018 <comment><USER2> The density of WTF and GTFOOH moments in this article make it a quite a read.</comment>


HTML5 image sharing with drag 'n' drop - <AUTHOR> http://min.us

<comment><USER2> It may be just me but I despise the layout of the pictures. Sure it's fine when you use your keyboard to navigate but for using a mouse it sucks. There also seems to be a problem when on the second image, the previous image doesn't show up on the left side making it impossible to navigate back with a mouse.

I can't find a way to delete images even though the FAQs mention it.

Layout seems fine/same on Chrome 7, Firefox 3.6.6 on Win7

(general rant about web galleries)

It seems to me that every gallery currently used on websites sucks. Except one: <http://boston.com/bigpicture/>. I'd really love a Big Picture like layout of pictures. When possible same width for all pictures. Let me middle- click on them to open the full version in a new tab (instead of those stupid modal overlays) and scroll the gallery with my mouse like every site on the web. Added j/k or arrow key navigation is a plus.

Edit: Well it's two. <http://imgur.com> has it right too.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's awesome. Seeing some strange layout behavior in Chrome on Win 7, but speaking in general: awesome.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I start my own consulting business? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I am seeking advice on whether or not I should start my own consulting business. The business will be a management consultancy advising software companies. I've done the market research and I know there is demand for the niche I plan to focus on. The question is can I turn it into a successful business?
I'm a consultant by trade but have spent the last 7 years of my career in sales. I like to think selling is my strength and will be my only focus after 12 months in this business. My intention is to see this company out for the remainder of my corporate career so I would like to exit at some point.
Here's my plan for the first few years. Appreciate your thoughts and any advice on how to get off to a good start
Fly solo year 1. I expect to be doing 3 jobs at once – the consultant, sales and marketing. Keep costs low.
Find a T1 customer, deliver above and beyond to build reputation
Focus on high end consulting - helping companies to make money or save it.
Raise profile as a thought leader in my space (working on this at present)
Build pipeline by networking like crazy + running local meetups as well as building a strong search and social presence.
Build cash pile to fuel future growth
Productionise my service offering to make it as repeatable and scalable as possible (if there's such a thing for a consulting business!)
Build pipeline of projects for the next phase of growth
Expand years 1-2. Hire VP of Consulting to build fulfillment team and deliver projects.
Aim to hire 5 more consultants
I take on commercial responsibilities as Managing Director at this point
Grow team to 20 consultants around year 3
Find funding to fuel growth and establish a board.
....Set the business up for growth with a view to selling by year 10.
Thanks all,
Jeff <comment><USER2> To me, the real test is getting a client and getting paid. No other plan detail matters,

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks brudgers!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tcconfig – Simple tc wrapper, easy to set up network traffic control - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thombashi/tcconfig <comment><USER2> Very nice, thanks. I hate the UI of these tools ("tc filter add dev eth0 protocol ip parent 10: prio 1 u32 match ip dport 22 0xffff flowid 10:1"), so this will come in handy for my use cases, which are usually more something like "simulate a bad network".

<comment><USER3> If you desire to simulate a bad network you would _really_ appreciate the power of dummynet on FreeBSD. It is very simple to simulate links with specific bandwidth, delay, and packet loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool, though I was hoping to see something that would allow one to specify IP addresses, for use in a router application. I use tc on my Debian- based router, but I know just enough to be dangerous and am never completely confident in applying new rules. Would be great to have an easy to use wrapper that makes the common cases straightforward.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added the option that specify IP address (and port). I hope this will meet your needs. Thank you for the suggestion,

<comment><USER4> Very cool, I'll check it out. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Comcast[0] is a nice alternative if you're looking to simulate poor network conditions.

[0] [https://github.com/tylertreat/comcast](https://github.com/tylertreat/comcast)

</comment><comment><USER6> Just a reminder for everyone wanting to simulate a bad network connection: setting a static packet-loss percentage, latency, and bandwidth limit does not accomplish that task. Real networks suck due to wireless interference and bufferbloat, which aren't simulated by tools this simple. Optimizing your software to perform well under this simulation may help it work well on a satellite link, but could be counterproductive for common real-world problems.

<comment><USER7> are there tools or applicable models out there that do represent the other factors you mention? I've been looking recently at ways to smoke-test my network app (probably separated into parts using docker containers) under adverse network conditions.

There was a nice looking python library that wrapped things that I can't seem to find at the moment. There's [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/atcd/0.1.0](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/atcd/0.1.0), but I don't think that's what I was thinking of.

<comment><USER6> Direct use of queuing disciplines lets you create bloated buffers and use features of TBF and netem that aren't exposed through this simple wrapper. If you're testing at line rate, bfifo suffices to create bufferbloat, and TBF lets you do rate limiting with the kinds of burst allowances used by many cable ISPs. The IFB module is used to do ingress shaping, which is totally not addressed by this tcconfig tool.

For packet loss, you really just need to create competing traffic in order to cause congestion, preferably realistically bursty competition. Dropping packets based on a fixed probability isn't a realistic simulation of any common real-world cause of packet loss, and generating competing traffic is probably easier than figuring out the right way to approximate its effect using the other loss models implemented by netem (and again not exposed through this simple tool). Simulating the behavior of WiFi under congestion and interference is hard, and I don't think the stock Linux kernel (or any other mainstream OS) has adequate tools to emulate layer 2 retransmits, packet aggregation, and the periodic interference of microwave ovens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has 'tc' been updated in the last 15 years? last time I looked (15 years ago) it was a poorly understood mysterious, unmaintained code.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thank you.</comment>


HTC partners with Valve to create the Vive VR headset for gaming - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2015/03/01/htc-partners-with-valve-to-create-vr-headset-for-gaming/ <comment><USER2> Better link (primary source with actual specs including screen resolution): [http://www.htcvr.com/](http://www.htcvr.com/)

Highlights:

      - 1200x1080 per eye with two 90Hz panels of unspecified type
      - "Consumer product available holiday 2015"
      - No pricing information and not taking preorders.
      - Inside-out position and rotation tracking with a laser position sensor
      - Outside-in tracking with a pair of base stations covering a 15ftx15ft area
      - Will include a pair of single-handed controllers with location tracking in them

<comment><USER2> Based on my past subjective measurements with a DK2, which is a similar resolution (960x1080 per eye), I estimate that the 1200x1080 resolution corresponds to a minimum tolerable font size that would be equivalent to 27pt on my 2560x1600 monitor at 3ft. (This is assuming, first, that because the vertical resolutions are the same, the extra horizontal pixels were allocated to peripheral vision; and second, that it's the same the same 2:1:1 pentile style display. If those are full pixels, that drops by a factor sqrt(2) to 19pt.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The Vive headset was developed in conjunction with Valve, creators of such ground-breaking games as Portal and Half-Life."

And that sentence pretty much illustrates why the shine has come off Valve, at least for me. The last Half-Life game was in 2007 (as was the last Team Fortress game). The last Portal game was 2011, and Kim Swift has moved on to other things. Left 4 Dead's developers have moved to another publisher with Evolve. Counter-Strike is still limping along. Dota 2 exists, I guess. The only thing they've released since Dota 2 are Linux ports of old games, unless you count the ports of old games that Nvidia did to Android. Meanwhile the Steam Machine hasn't seen commercial release, we still don't even know what their Steam Controller is supposed to look like in its final form... and they're announcing a VR headset? After all their big names in VR already jumped ship to Occulus? Is there an adult somewhere at Valve minding the store?

<comment><USER4> Dota 2 basically prints money, and they're spending most of their development time on it. They're currently working to completely upgrade it to the Source 2 engine.

Saying Counter Strike is still limping along is a pretty inaccurate portrayal as well. CSGO's popularity is in a constant increase currently - as I write this, there are 433k players currently in game in CSGO. It's honestly probably more popular than old CS ever was, even prior to the popularity decrease with 1.6 and then Source.

With the overwhelming success of Dota2 and CSGO, I don't think you can really suggest Valve is in a decline.

<comment><USER5> The decline is not in money, but artistic output. Instead of focusing on great stories, they are focusing on great hats.

<comment><USER4> Is there not artistic merit in a game development company making two games that are among the greatest competitive games currently available?

<comment><USER5> Artistic merit and commercial appeal are orthogonal. As Half Life and Portal showed, great storytelling can be profitable, but great multiplayer battles and addictive digital hat markets are not necessarily artistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More details here [http://www.htcvr.com/](http://www.htcvr.com/) warning: site contains all the web design shenanigans you have come to (not) love lately.</comment>


Monsanto's Sway Over Research Is Seen in Disclosed Emails - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/business/monsantos-sway-over-research-is-seen-in-disclosed-emails.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=1&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F08%2F01%2Fbusiness%2Fmonsantos-sway-over-research-is-seen-in-disclosed-emails.html <comment><USER2> They also enforce that sway with a massive internet PR arm as well, which does a good job burying stories like this. Personally, what I find more interesting than the particulars of this story itself, is the web of connections they use to accomplish these types of goals. For example, I really like the show "Uncommon Knowledge" from the Hoover Institute, but I have noticed a trend of their fellows being used like Mr. Miller allowed himself to be. If I remember correctly one of my favorite conspiracy theorist authors was a Hoover fellow, Antony Sutton, who was forced out after writing "National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union" which really ruffled some feathers, and it makes one think about how much think tanks are being used to promote agendas vs actually providing unbiased policy analysis.

On a related note, while I was a sysadmin in genetics, I came to understand just how weak and unreliable the scientific publishing community is. Peer- review != good science, but that's how the journals present themselves. Quite often I stumbled on obviously bad science, mostly by academics/scientists trying to pad their resumes. Usually with comments along the lines of "I've been published 1k+ times!". As if that had any bearing on the quality of their work. I think, in this case, instead of jumping on the anti-monsanto bandwagon (which having worked in the industry I'm still ready to do!), in this case the real solution is to fix scientific publishing, because things like this are happening in every single industry, not just bigag.

For example, I think a potential solution, besides making the journals completely free and open, would be to finance centers that test reproducibility, randomly or targeting specific examples such as the paper referenced.</comment>


Su VS sudo su VS sudo -u -i - <AUTHOR> http://johnkpaul.tumblr.com/post/19841381351/su-vs-sudo-su-vs-sudo-u-i

<comment><USER2> "With no extra arguments, as far as I can tell su <username> is exactly the same as attempting to login remotely as that user,"

This is not correct. su does not change the ownership of the pts (tty), so for example you can not run screen after doing that.

I actually have no idea how to change to a different user and also setup the pts properly, so I've resorted to telneting to localhost when I need to do that.

<comment><USER3> I've changed the permissions of /dev/pts/X in the past to allow anybody to access it. (e.g. sudo chmod o+rw /dev/pts3) This may open up the screen session to others, I've not played around with it enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> su is unnecessary; _sudo -s_ is equivalent to _sudo su_ , but allows the admin to restrict who may sudo to whom, for which programs, and so on.

<comment><USER5> They are not equivalent. `sudo su` changes the values of USER, HOME, and SHELL to that of the root user. `sudo -s` only changes USER (it seems), but HOME is retained as the SUDO_USER's home directory.

Neither invocation changes the working directory, which is convenient.

<comment><USER4> Whether sudo sets $HOME depends on your /etc/sudoers configuration. Alternatively, _sudo -Hs_.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. I didn't know about `sudo -H`, though, so thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always do

      $ sudo su -             # root
      $ sudo su - username    # user

      $ man su
           -, -l, --login
                  make the shell a login shell

</comment><comment><USER7> Completely missing the different aspects of logging each different invocation may have.

</comment><comment><USER8> people still writing stuff and getting upvotes without bothering to RTFM to the slightest.

man sudo

=> sudo -s

hard uh. always read the f. man damnit. you know, that's what RTFM means.

<comment><AUTHOR> AFAIK, sudo -s is only if you would like to open a shell as root, not when you would like to open a shell as another user. The original point of the post was about how to create a shell as another user, without needing any password.

Edit: just added the last phrase. "without needing a password".

<comment><USER4> That's possible using _sudo -su user_ (which looks similar, but doesn't hand over to su).

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, AFAIK, that doesn't respect the NOPASSWD option in /etc/sudoers. That might just be the specific configuration I'm working with though.

<comment><USER4> I've just done some testing, and my sudo (1.7.4p6) does honour NOPASSWD in /etc/sudoers, when I _sudo -su_ to any user. Are you sure your configuration is correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I'm not sure. I'm using Sudo version 1.7.4p5. sudo su <user> does not prompt for a password. sudo -su <user> and sudo -s -u <user> do prompt for a password.

<comment><USER9> Works here. We use it extensively on our boxes to allow access to certain initscripts, among other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use _sudo su - <username>_ pretty regularly when I'm working on servers. I have a dev box where I do initial deploys of all of my apps, and each app has a different username with different configurations to run/debug the app.

 _sudo su - <username>_ takes me to the homefolder of the user and allows me to switch without remembering the password for all of the different users. If I need to do some system-level operation, I open a new tab and run the superuser there.

<comment><USER11> Isn't sudo -i username equivalent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a sudoer on any box i administrate, and i've apt-get remove'd it from my personal VPSes. It's a little worrying, occasionally you'll run across a shell script that runs sudo for half it's lines and you're not entirely sure why.

Using plain su instead of sudo <command> forces me to enter my password, thereby encouraging a concious decision about whether a command needs to be run as root, and the change in prompt is another reminder to be careful.

<comment><USER5> The sudo timeout convenience feature is worrisome, but there's no need to remove it entirely from the system [1]. You can set

         Defaults timestamp_timeout = 0

in your sudoers file to make sure sudo always prompts for a password. I think this should be default, since the current default of 5 minutes is an easy privilege escalation vector [2].

Also, if you like entering root's password instead of your own, you can set the `runaspw` option.

[1]: Unless you'd like to remove one more possible SUID vulnerability.

[2]: It's far from the only way for a local process to escalate privileges, so I understand it's nothing worth yelling about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The only use that I can see for this is, as a system administrator, > debugging issues that are user specific. So far, I have not needed it.

I use `sudo -i` daily, but when doing things that would require things to be in root's path (eg `service` on RHEL envs).

</comment><comment><USER14> Real men _su -_ and that's it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Forgot vs root.</comment>


Researchers claim hydrogen energy advance - <AUTHOR> http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_358595_en.html <comment><USER2> Slightly more information: [http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_358595_en.html](http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_358595_en.html)

Full paper: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1326.abstract](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6202/1326.abstract)

<comment><USER3> Any details on what the energy density is of this "liquid sponge" they're using?

If it isn't corrosive or difficult to store then it may be an option for large, stationary batteries, but it would be a really big deal if it's energy density is even comparable to ethanol. Pure ethanol is 76,330 Btu/gal and gasoline is 116,090 Btu/gal: [http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf](http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf)

<comment><USER4> The editors summary at the Science link says it's silico-tungstic acid.

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

The university press release talks about replacing fossil fuels in fertilizer production, from that I would guess they aren't pushing it as a storage solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds interesting. Not real clear about details, but apparently it uses silicotungstic acid, a common oxidative catalyst. Water electrolysis produces oxygen, which would be catalytically oxidized to peroxide, binding O-, and presumably the H+ is bound somehow as well. Later hydrogen (as H-H) and oxygen are recoverable without further energy input, much as oxygen is released from hydrogen peroxide because it's already at a higher energy state.

That's as much as I can glean from the paper's abstract. Perhaps some folks out there can read between the lines better than I'm able to.

I gather the utility of the technology is not so much for high demand applications, like electric cars, but more for large scale electricity generation, replacing (or augmenting) current fossil-fuel sources feeding the electric power grid.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think hydrogen has any chance of working in cars anymore, not when through the combination of solar panels and batteries, cars can run virtually for free. That said, it's probably good to see research continue on this, since we might end up using it for other purposes.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure that battery production could scale up to 50 millions vehicle produced each year, without mentioning we will also need to replace a significant part of the installed base regularly. We can however hope that self driving car would significantly reduce the number of car needed.

<comment><USER8> Self-driving cars would not reduce not number of cars produced. If anything, it would increase it, since going somewhere would become easier.

<comment><USER9> Self-driving cars may change the model from "everyone needs one" to Uber-esque "there's a shared fleet, one shows up when you ask" model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Currently, industrial production of hydrogen relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to power the electrolysis process.

Currently 95+% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas via steam reformation (releasing just as much CO2 and fugitive methane as burning it), which also uses lots of heat (read: coal). With such an enormous factual inaccuracy, it's hard to take the rest of the article seriously.

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

<comment><USER11> Uh, coal and natural gas are both fossil fuels.

Edit: As long as we're using wikipedia links for citation, here's the one on fossil fuels. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel)

<comment><USER12> They are fossil fuels, but extracting hydrogen from natural gas does not use electrolysis. So the article is factually incorrect, yes?

<comment><USER11> Ah yes, I see. I thought you were saying that coal wasn't a fossil fuel and that's what the error was.

<comment><USER10> That was a different person who replied, but their explanation is correct!

Furthermore, the distinction is much more than just pedantic. Hydrogen production from electrolysis (which theoretically _can_ be carbon neutral) is about 3x as expensive as hydrogen production from steam reformation (which realistically _can 't_ be carbon-neutral). And I'll give you one guess which method all the hydrogen articles talk about…

When put in those terms, it becomes quite obvious that the whole operation is a fossil fuel bait-and-switch.

[http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/consumer/hydrogen/basics/producti...](http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/consumer/hydrogen/basics/production.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When you have cheap hydrogen it is relatively easy and cheap to use the Sabatier reaction to produce methane (and capture co2 from industry in the process). Basically natural gas. Easy to store and handle. Carbon negative.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't there still the problem that storing hydrogen is impractical?

<comment><USER15> Yes and No.

Storing liquified gasses is a _solved_ problem. The auto-industry at least has been experimenting with Liquid Propane Gas for a while, without issues. Actually most automobiles in Turkey run on LPG.

Hydrogen is a slightly different animal, colder temperatures, and more _explosive_. We know the materials that will work, we know how to produce them. Its more of an engineering/production/economy of scale issue then anything else.

<comment><USER16> Hydrogen storage is significantly more difficult than LPG.

The pressures need to be higher, which means stronger and more expensive tanks. It also means we must input more energy to compress the gas for storage.

Hydrogen is also significantly smaller and more reactive than NG. Which also means the tanks are more expensive as they need to be resistant against corrosion. Additionally, the valves and seals in the system need to be of a higher class as hydrogen is more prone to leak.

<comment><USER17> And then of course, since you can not stop the hydrogen from leaking, you have to make sure that the storage for the hydrogen storage is sufficiently secure.

Can't keep the car in the garage.

<comment><USER18> Also the density of liquid hydrogen is extremely low, meaning you need a huge tank to store more than a little bit of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How long will it take to put this technology into production?

</comment><comment><USER20> I hope this makes my childhood visions of ocean floating hydrogen production factories come true!

</comment><comment><USER21> How would the hydrogen be used? Directly as a fuel, or as a means to create electricity ?</comment>


U.S. should spend $44 billion on broadband - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/18/US_should_spend_44_billion_on_broadband_1.html

<comment><USER2> I guess I'll be the first to say it: why?

Rural areas cannot have the same connectivity as urban areas without government subsidy or people paying more per month. So, why shouldn't they pay more per month?

If they shouldn't pay more per month, should they subsidize my rent so that I don't have to pay more for housing than they do? Why shouldn't we encourage people to live in places that it is economical to provide services?

Rural living is different. You get a lot of privacy, freedom, land, etc. In exchange, you loose out on things that require a dense population such as the latest internet connectivity, theaters, stores open late at night, etc. It's a trade off.

If we are going to stress rural broadband, I think the best idea is to push Verizon and AT&T in their rollout of 3G wireless services. Wireless is much easier and economical to roll out to rural areas. It isn't as fast, but it has a good upgrade path (with speeds increasing to several Mbps in a year or two and continuing on from then). It's also easier to upgrade. In rural areas, you could have one tower serving many square miles and all you need to do is upgrade that one tower. No fuss, no muss.

In urban areas with dense populations, wireless actually makes less sense because so many people would be sharing bandwidth that you'd have to put cell sites everywhere and that isn't so feasible. Rural areas are really prime for wireless. Push the wireless carriers to serve these areas a little faster.

<comment><USER3> The article does indicate that the rural roll-outs will be wireless.

Also, the money is not all spent on them, it is also meant to improve current services. Compared to countries like Japan, for instance, U.S. "high speed" is like a 9600 baud modem and could really be better.</comment></comment>


We're Drowning in Tech Debt. Why Isn't Anyone Listening? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/were-drowning-in-tech-debt-why-isn-t-anyone-listening-f4269cb5cc40 <comment><USER2> Hackernoon has a bad redirect, looks like the correct URL is:

[https://cutle.fish/blog/were-drowning-in-tech-debt-why- isnt-...](https://cutle.fish/blog/were-drowning-in-tech-debt-why-isnt-anyone- listening)

</comment><comment><USER3> LOL as proof the title is relevant, the link is broken.</comment>


Want Apache Kafka to Work with Apache Mesos? Here's How - <AUTHOR> http://www.confluent.io/blog/making-apache-kafka-elastic-with-apache-mesos

<comment><USER2> Kafka always seemed like an obvious fit for something to run under mesos. More so with the soon to be released Mesos 0.23, which will support persistent volumes and dynamic reservations.</comment>


I Am Trying To Believe (that Rock Stars aren't Dead) - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/09/i-am-trying-to-believe-that-ro.html <comment><USER2> I don't think the Internet will kill the Jonas Brothers. People will still buy music, though probably not as much. The marginal cost of a song distributed online (hq) is probably less than a penny; the music industry should look at this as an opportunity not a death knell.

These arguments have been made before in better prose. The article is too long, even if you enjoy the description of the NIN concert inside.</comment>


Watch me layout a 4-layer gyro+accelerometer+AVR sensor circuit board - <AUTHOR> https://livestream.com/accounts/14573229/events/4246946 <comment><AUTHOR> The accelerometer/gyroscope IC I am using is this one: [http://www.murata.com/en- global/products/sensor/gyro/scc2000](http://www.murata.com/en- global/products/sensor/gyro/scc2000)

It is an avionics-grade 3-axis accelerometer + Z axis gyro.</comment>


How Many People See Your Tweets? Twitter Opens Its Analytics Dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/how-many-people-see-your-tweets-twitter-opens-its-nifty-analytics-dashboard-to-everyone/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> Having only an infrequently-used personal account, I was told by the landing page that analytics would only apply to tweets going forward. Rather disappointing, but I suspect that I'll check in on it from time to time anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how this counts third-party clients; does a download by Tweetbot count as an "impression?"</comment>


Swarm Connectivity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.libtorrent.org/2012/12/swarm-connectivity/

<comment><AUTHOR> "One way to ensure evenly distributed connections is to come up with a globally-agreed upon connection ranking function. The function would take two endpoints and return the priority of those two peers having a connection. It is important that the function would be commutative. Both peers should have the same understanding of the priority for them to connect (otherwise the swarm may never converge, and you end up with infinite peer churn)."

Great insight with good results as the post goes on to explore.</comment>


Google Pixel 4A Review: At $350, a Win for Those on a Budget - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/technology/personaltech/google-pixel-4a-review.html <comment><USER2> No GrapheneOS yet, just 4 and 4XL.

But probably close behind.</comment>


Qwery - The Tiny Selector Engine - <AUTHOR> http://dustindiaz.com/qwery

<comment><USER2> Shizzle is quite heavily performance optimized. I'd be interested to see how the selector performance of both compare.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean sizzle? As in <http://sizzlejs.com/> ?

<comment><USER2> Oops, I did!</comment></comment></comment>


Registration conversion rate - <AUTHOR>

Hey everybody, I've been working for some time now on my private project called 9folds, and have been trying to understand conversion rates for users, and why users seem to drop out mainly on the registration/login phase, and how can I improve on that.
Currently I'm using Google Accounts login since I thought it's the easiest and most safe (to avoid spam). However, it seems like people are somewhat intimidated by the Google Account signup form. My idea is that people mostly do not understand the difference between a Google Account and GMail and end up thinking that by signing-in they give access to their mail account, which is of course spooky but completely untrue. Also of course there are people that do not have Google Account or prefer to avoid using it for different reasons.
So I was thinking... maybe I should add Facebook Connect? Would that have better signup conversion? It seems to me that for some reason, people are pretty comfortable with that option even though it exposes much more private information than any other.... I couldn't find any statistics to support these assumptions.
Finally I was thinking I should just add a built-in registration... This flow is widely familiar for users... however people are mostly lazy going through the process and shut off the window as they see such a form...
So now I'm thinking which of the options should I choose:
1) leaving the current Google Account implementation 2) Adding Facebook Connect 3) Adding internal registration 4) Adding both
I'd appreciate any feedback or insight <comment><USER2> I think you are attempting to create rationalizations for users' behavior from numerical data. _This is dangerous._ Low conversion rates do not necessarily imply any particular reaction to the signup form -- for that matter, the entire notion of a "low" conversion rate is suspect unless you have a thorough understanding of the domain and the traffic mix you are seeing, which is rare for an early stage startup.

On the basis of several years of dealing with non-technical users and their reactions with OpenID and other single signon technologies, my opinion is that in aggregate non-technical users are very confused by them and confusion leads to failure to convert. The most common user behavior is to create a username/password at your site and use the same credentials they always use. This is what they've been doing for over a decade now. The newfangled options have not been explained to them and they do not understand the fundamental "Facebook Connect replaces having an account with this service" value proposition. For that matter, many of them have a severely broken mental model of what having an account means in the first place. (I have some users who are convinced they need one bingo account for the blue Googles and one for the green Googles.)

I would certainly implement accounts for your service, and test that against Google. This assumes you have 100+ visits a day, which you'd want for A/B testing. If not, I'd implement accounts and deemphasize the Google option (e.g. give it a simple text link when the signup form was prominently visible with big colorful buttons). You can always test later after you have some traction.

With regards to technical users, I have no data which I can share with you but I strongly, strongly suggest rethinking any strategy which does not have internal accounts _unless_ you are committed to customer acquisition via spam- early-spam-often viral mechanics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Patio, Thanks for your insight... indeed you are correct, I do not have enough data to actually conclude that the Google Accounts is what actually hurting the conversion. I have less than 100 visits a day. However what I do know is that I can see in the raw logs people forwarded to the Google Accounts signin and never come back... which is a bit frustrating.. however it is possible that they are reluctant anyhow, any would probably fail to convert in just the next step.

Indeed I agree that OpenID is confusing for most users.

I guess I will follow your advice and implement an on-site registration.

Thank you</comment></comment>