EveryBlock could still be sold, says NBC News Chief Digital Officer - <AUTHOR> http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/203813/everyblock-could-still-be-sold-says-schiller-after-abrupt-closing-of-hyperlocal-pioneer/

<comment><USER2> I'm going to miss that one, anyone else? Maybe because I live in Mission where it started.</comment>


Zynga's Quest for Big-Spending Whales: 25-50% of revenue from 1% of users - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/zyngas-quest-for-bigspending-whales-07072011.html

<comment><USER2> Wonder if it still applies, story is almost 18 months old.

<comment><USER3> Human nature doesn't change over 18 months. From my experience this has been the case for non-Zynga games as well, such as MMO's which allow buying ingame items with real money. People that put real money into the game are releatively rare, but those that do can sometimes put in extremely large amounts to increase their chance of winning and status within the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a lot of eggs in a small basket.</comment>


Third undersea Internet cable cut in Mideast - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/index.html?eref=rss_topstories <comment><USER2> "France Telecom, part owner of the other cable, said it was uncertain when repairs on it would be repaired."

Recursive saboteurs?</comment>


Show HN: One Click Battle – Simple Real-Time Polls - <AUTHOR> https://oneclickbattle.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I have been working on this simple polls website for a few weeks and decided to share it here to get some feedback and maybe some help. The idea is to let anyone create simple beautiful polls that update in real-time. If you stay on the poll page and people vote, you will see the background move. We were on the PH home page a few weeks ago which was cool and the community really helped improve the product. Let me know if you have questions or comments that could help us push this further. Thank you!

<comment><USER2> Enable voting from the main screen by clicking on either side.</comment></comment>


What if in-app purchase came to real life? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirandfar.com/2013/08/what-if-in-app-purchase-entered-real-life.html

<comment><USER2> This is really hard to take seriously, because it's operating under the assumption that 'freemium' is some sort of digital innovation. Businesses have been trying to get people in the door and then convert them to paying customers for a _long time_ : whether its a bookstore holding a reading, test drives at auto agencies, etc., the idea of offering a value proposition to inbound consumers in order to reduce the friction of making a purchase is not particularly novel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author of the (guest) post. The point I'm trying to make here is not so much that freemium is a new, innovative model, more that the speed in which you can transact via in-app purchase should give us all more reason for caution. When you test drive at an auto agency, it's a long time between the intent to purchase and the actual transaction.</comment></comment>


A list of nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/slightly-more-than-100-fantastic-articles/567574/ <comment><USER2> Great list. Some of the journals cites are subscription-based such as the New Yorker. Yet the identified articles don't have paywalls. How does this work? Do some of these publications have paid-for as well as free publications? If so, how do they lure people to subscribe to their paid materials when the free materials are just as appetizing? Are the identified articles older, hence the reason they are free?</comment>


Bitcoin finds a way forward - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DCGco/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consensus-2017-133521fe9a77 <comment><USER2> This is actually big news: the miners are pushing ahead with 2MB blocks and SegWit, and damn the developers.

Actual title: "Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017"</comment>


Bent on teaching entrepreneurs to build great apps - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
A few days ago, I came here to post about http://howtocode.io, the free online course on web development, from novice to employable.
A lot has happened since the last update, and all of it has been massively positive.
First off, a big thank you to all of you who have registered your interest into HowToCode.io so far. This project started with a clear ambition to produce the best and most comprehensive course possible, and to get it out there.
I'm happy to say that we also released a sample lesson titled Working With Fonts in order to show you the course format and teaching style. It is available here: http://howtocode.io/sample.html
Currently, a fantastic team is being assembled and you'll notice there's a new voice on the video. This is Neil, an awesome coder. A graphic artist is also joining us and will design the final HowToCode.io platform as well as create amazing graphics to help us teach you some rather abstract concepts.
Have a great day and leave your comments! <comment><USER2> I came to know about this few weeks back and I've also registered. May I also suggest a track (Block) on the basics of Database.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks!

Actually, Block 5, lesson 9: Databases is designed to be just that. What are they, why we need them, the different engines options what's SQL and few other tricks.

Much later, in Block 10, we'll learn about using an ORM but I really feel it's important to understand the theory behind databases before being able to use an ORM :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> spam

<comment><AUTHOR> Why, dear Guest?</comment></comment>


SimplyThick: A Tragedy No One Saw Coming (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.stlmag.com/Simply-Thick-A-Tragedy-No-One-Saw-Coming/ <comment><USER3> Per [https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/nec/conditioninfo/ri...](https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/nec/conditioninfo/risk), NEC occurs in about 9000 preterm babies a year in the US. The mortality rate is about 25%, so that's roughly 2300 deaths from NEC a year.

What the article doesn't mention is how many babies a year are fed SimplyThick. That's necessary to assess whether SimplyThick is really causing deaths significantly above the expected rate.

Infant deaths are all tragedies, and when they happen it's tempting to try and find a reason. Certainly, it's in everyone's interests to exercise caution, but I would like to know what the state of the statistical evidence is like before pinning the blame on one factor.

<comment><USER4> It is true that we cannot know if the product causes NEC without statistics.

But the point is that _even if no one had died_, SimplyThick had not been developed and manufactured with health and safety in mind.

The incident illustrates the dangers of reckless innovation and experimentation.

<comment><USER5> Did you miss the part where it dramatically improved the quality of life of tens of thousands of people who were in the intended consumers of the product (post-stroke and old age)? There's a significant long term cost to killing off innovation in the name of some idealized pursuit of perfection.

The fact poor factory production quality hurt a small subset of children it wasn't originally 'invented' for is not a failure of 'reckless innovation and experimentation' (whatever that means). Xanthan gum was tested by the FDA and continues to be consumed in countless other products today, that process will always be imperfect.

It's very questionable any sort of hyper-safe approach to regulation and a general hostility towards innovation/experimentation would have even caught the risks of poor factory conditions... or whether they would have even tested it on a subset of premature babies at risk for NEC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, the long term result (post this article) was to recommend that no such thickeners be administered to anyone under 12 months of age (it was not only neonates who suffered). This was was an observational response pending any actual study of the cause (whether manufacturing or inherent to the source material)

I'm not aware of any subsequent study but the result is not unreasonable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also the current recommendation is to consult the doctor if the child is under 12 years old, but doctors still continue to prescribe thickeners based on xanthan gum or any other gums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bit of a content warning. This is horrifying stuff especially if you are a parent or expecting.

<comment><USER8> The surgeon's description was a bit gratuitous. I could have done without that.

<comment><USER9> Well, I guess be glad the surgeon is there, they have to live it, and we struggle just reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is terrifying as an entrepreneur. You build a product, someone starts using it in an off-label fashion, people get hurt, you issue guidance, and then you still get sued.

<comment><USER11> There is a lot more nuance and a lot you missed.

\- if I as an entrepreneur, create a product in good faith, work with the experts, honestly go through all of the FDA approvals, get approved and follow all of the regulations, then if later on my product is at fault, I don't think I should be sued [1]. Sometimes things happen even if no one was being negligent and everyone was acting in good faith.

\- on the other hand there seemed to have been abnormalities in how the product was produced by the company they outsourced to. Yes you can outsource manufacturing, but you can't outsource responsibility. It was the company's selling SimplyThick responsibility to ensure that all of its partners were doing things in compliance. So yes, SimplyThick should have been held liable.

\- Even when they found that their might be problems, they buried the lede and put the warning down 9th on the list.

[1] I am on the other side of this argument. I have relatively mild cerebral palsy. I've lived an active life - run half marathons, was part time fitness instructor and today I have a decently well outfitted home gym - when I research information on CP, the first few links and all of the ads are for lawyers looking to get people to sue doctors. I find it appalling. My parents didn't spend time in the 70s looking for people to sue - they were looking for doctors, therapists, etc.

<comment><USER12> > My parents didn't spend time in the 70s looking for people to sue - <USER2> > were looking for doctors, therapists, etc.

For some people (at least in the US), the suing was presumably to be able to afford the doctors and therapists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know an adult with wheat sensitivity that swears up one side and down the other that xanthan gum causes issues. And it shows up in a lot of GF food to help bind things together without gluten.

Used to be we used guar gum for these things. But fracking companies are buying it up by the truckload, raising the prices. Maybe we could get them to switch to xanthan.

</comment><comment><USER14> > It is mind-boggling how you can market a product and sell it to a patient > population knowing absolutely nothing about how it will affect them

Seems the problem is that the product got classified essentially as "just a new baker baking bread". And in that case you wouldn't do clinical trials to see how people react to eating your exact loves of bread.

Then people realized that his exact brand of bread could be given to infants, and still you wouldn't do a clinical trial because it's just bread.

Then it seems that the production process might have been flawed in a way that doesn't quite harm adults, but is dangerous to infants and here we are.

So what really was the major flaw? Should we start doing clinical trials on all foodstuff given to infants? It likely wouldn't have shown anything if the root cause is manufacturing process problems, because those problems would not have been present in the batches used for the clinical trial anyway. But we would end up having to test every single brand and procedure of mashed carrots to see if it caused problems in infants.

That seems to be the pitch because it fits the trope of "big bad company never thought of the potential consequences of their money making scheme!"

But really this might just be a straight forward case of manufacturing practices not being held to the needed standards, because a plant got thrown around between a couple of companies and the people on the ground didn't know any better.

Also, you have to now wonder if Heinz ketchup produced with the same process given to infants might cause NEC. I'm sure that even if there where such cases no-one would have been able to connect the dots.

</comment><comment><USER15> With all the research coming out about gut bacteria's ties to pretty much everything, this makes me wonder if other supposedly innocuous ingredients could have an effect we didn't notice before, and in adults too.

</comment><comment><USER16> > "Some of these kids, when you operate on them, everything is dead, from the > stomach to the rectum. It's called a peek-and-shriek. You have to close and > hand the child to her parents."

That's horrifying... "Your baby's power source is gone. There is no replacement."

</comment><comment><USER8> What did the Food and Drug Administration's investigation reveal? It seems like the agency failed to do its job in multiple ways. I cannot find any current information on this case.

<comment><USER17> TFA says 'still investigating' ... I hadn't heard of any of this that i recall, my wife says she's heard of at least one of the case stories.

<comment><USER18> But TFA was written 6 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr: someone came up with the idea of a xanthan-based thickener for adding to liquids for post-stroke adults, xantham is made using bacteria, and they outsourced the production to an established manufacturer or such products. Turns out hat manufacturer didn't actually ensure that there were no live bacteria in the final product, people started marking the substance as suitable for premature infants, and babies have died from the worst possible bacterial infections imaginable as a result.

For those who don't want to spend 20 minutes reading an article that's written by someone 1/4th journalist, 3/4th aspiring novelist.

<comment><USER20> Thank you for the summary. If this is indicative of your style I wish you a long and prolific career in journalism. We need more writing like this.

<comment><USER21> Pomax is already very well known for excellent technical writing, making arcane topics such as Bézier curves accessible to a wide audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vincent-toups Move fast and break stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> Had to create a throwaway to touch this, and I am _not_ an anti-vaxxer but...

One of the primary arguments of the anti-vax movement is not that "vaccines cause autism" but that the FDA is a poor, industry-captured steward of public health WRT the shit that they give the thumbs up to be fed or injected into kids. This story is a case in point for that argument.

<comment><USER12> The problem claimed in the article was with manufacture, not with the product as a concept. You could definitely argue that the FDA needs a greater supervisory role for manufacture, but this wasn't an issue with the approval.

<comment><USER23> The article left that in doubt. They did not rule out the thickener.

FTA

> Did the cold processing method and the failures in sanitation cause NEC?

> Nobody's sure. The FDA's current theory is that the problem is the xanthan- > gum thickeners themselves, because of the way they interact with an immature > gut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is why I try to avoid products labeled "cruelty free", or "not tested on animals". If you don't test your product, how do you know it's safe?

There are so many cosmetics and food additives put on the market with no, or barely any testing. Why would you advertise "we don't know if it's safe, we never tested it"?

<comment><USER25> Well, here's an outside perspective with no particular axe to grind:

Your position to avoid "cruelty free" products may or may not be valid. But this case does not support it.

I think in this case you've fallen victim of the natural human tendency to confirmation bias ("the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories")

Sorry... you may not be receptive to this info, in which case I'm sorry to bring it up since it's only going to annoy you. (Also, sorry if I'm wrong.)

<comment><USER24> I don't mind a discussion, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

> But this case does not support it.

Seems to me it supports it. This was a product that seemed safe, no testing needed, just like "not tested on animals" products - the ingredients are probably safe, no need to test.

Except that in the particular way it was used here, it wasn't safe.

To lead back to cosmetics: What if a particular mixture of two otherwise harmless ingredients is toxic? What if an ingredient is thought safe, but next to the eye is actually not safe?

Or for food additives, thought safe - except if used in an acidic food, or heated, or mixed with some other additive?</comment></comment></comment>


Error Code 451: an HTTP error for censorship - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2012/06/13/error-code-451-an-http-error.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the RFC: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tbray-http-legally- restric...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted- status-00)</comment>


New York Is Making Its Own Hand Sanitizer – Using Prison Labor - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/york-making-own-hand-sanitizer-191732641.html <comment><USER2> >Cuomo unveiled the "NYS Clean" hand sanitizer during a press conference, calling it superior to existing products thanks to its scent and alcohol content of 75%. That exceeds the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s recommendation of 60%.

Umm, no, the alcohol doesn't work like that. 75% of alcohol is no better than 60%.

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia mentions (with poor citations) 75%-90% as being best, balancing effectiveness and non-flammability.

> (95% alcohol was seen to be most effective in eliminating most viruses).

> 90% alcohol rubs are more effective against viruses than most other forms of > hand washing

> The World Health Organization has published a guide: > 80% ethanol or 75% > isopropanol

> 95% alcohol was seen to be most effective in eliminating most viruses

> 90% alcohol rubs are highly flammable,

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is legal slave labour.

<comment><USER5> Doing labor for the community is a feature of almost every system of criminal punishment. It at least sounds more enjoyable than traditional prison labor like breaking rocks for construction projects 10 hours a day, and the injuries that tended to go along with that.

<comment><USER4> You may be absolutely correct and it would still be legal slavery.

This is also generally not labour for the community in the general sense - there is an entity drawing a profit from prison labour (the state if it's a publicly owned prison, or the prison owners if it's privately owned). What you describe would be community service, which you may be able to argue is not slavery (and I would say is also an acceptable form of punishment for some crimes if it reduces recidivism).

<comment><USER5> Mandatory community service is slavery if prison labor is. People aren't doing it willingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> win-win-win

<comment><USER7> Unless you're the person working a six hour day and still need one more shift to save up enough for the luxury of a Spicy Kung Pow Instant Noodle Bowl: [http://www.efordcommissary.com/Pasta- Noodles_c_15.html](http://www.efordcommissary.com/Pasta-Noodles_c_15.html)</comment></comment>


Jenkins 2.0 is here - <AUTHOR> https://jenkins.io/blog/2016/04/26/jenkins-20-is-here/ <comment><USER2> This release was discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11362058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11362058).

<comment><USER3> Are these not distinct events? That was the "we're almost at 2.0" announcement, and this is an announcement that they've released 2.0.

<comment><USER4> These are distinct events but the overlap in comments is likely to be significant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was looking at this over the weekend to see if the risk/benefit ratio was appropriate for our team. Meh, we already use the pipelines plug-in, and the insecure-by-default configuration has already been locked down, so for our team the answer is, "no, it's not worth risking mikestew having to spend a day putting things back the way they were if the upgrade goes horribly wrong". I'm supposed to be writing code, not dicking around with broken installs.

That's not to poo-poo the hard work that obviously went into this release. Big, shiny new stuff there, and the next Jenkins box I setup will be running 2.0. But for my particular situation at this point in time, it'll be 1.6 for a while.

<comment><USER6> In my experience installing updates to Jenkins has been painless, 2.0 was no different.

<comment><USER7> I've always been afraid of updating Jenkins or the plugins because things always broke. Always.

That being said, I updated a few instances to 2.0, immediately applied all plugin updates and things kept working as before. That was a surprise. I was already prepared to spend hours trying to find why our jobs were failing. That was nice.

<comment><USER8> We have had problems but mainly with plugins. There's basically no mandatory QA process for plugins, nor is there any facility to make it obvious to an updater that an upstream change affects a downstream plugin and might break it.

In my opinion, Jenkins is a product that you really need to have a test instance for, where you either have copies of your builds or you've set up some 'unit test'-type builds to exercise functionality you depend on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jenkins has been good to me over the years, but DroneCI is where I'm at now. It's certainly not as powerful as JenkinsCI at this stage, but that's why it's an instant improvement for me.

I hope to see Jenkins, and the team behind them, stay strong within the industry for a long time :-)

<comment><USER10> +1 for Drone.io [[https://github.com/drone/drone](https://github.com/drone/drone)]

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you didn't yet, try [http://concourse.ci](http://concourse.ci)

demo: [http://ci.concourse.ci](http://ci.concourse.ci)

<comment><USER12> Concourse is pretty sweet. I enjoy it more than my experiences with Jenkins.

FD: I work at Pivotal (but not on Concourse), the makers of concourse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats to the Jenkins team!

Is there a good resource with screenshots that show these new features? For a 2.0 that was in the making for years, the page is pretty light on screenshots.

<comment><USER14> >For a 2.0 that was in the making for years

it was not in making for years. 2.0 started only 4-5 months ago.

<comment><USER4> From the article:

> This is why in 2.0 we've added the pipeline capability. This 2 year old > effort allows you to describe your chain of automation in a textual form.

It seems that they have been working on some 2.0 features for two years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does Jenkins 2.0 use the same plugin based architecture as 1.0?

Does anyone actually prefer to use plugins for project types rather than a hand written build script? (i.e. using Jenkins to just kick off a shell script)

<comment><USER16> Yes, 2.0 is fully compatible with 1.x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Might be worth noting that if you're using the ppa's from jenkins ([http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian/](http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian/)) you will 'get 2.0 for free' next time you update. It makes sense but I wasn't really prepared for this.

You likely want debian-stable instead: [http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian- stable/](http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian-stable/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have used Jenkins many times and it's always worked fine. But I always wish TeamCity was more widely adopted and deployed. Sure, it costs money, but so does IntelliJ. And it's completely worth it.

<comment><USER19> Can you list few reasons why you prefer TeamCity?

<comment><USER18> Much nicer UI, nice support team at JetBrains. I found plugin writing to be pretty friendly once I got it set up though I've never written a Jenkins plugin to be fair.

Also very easy to define build pipelines in the UI.

See 'CraigJPerry answer also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What does pipeline solve? When I start to set this up it looks like a build script wrapped in the Jenkins ui. So now we introduce yet another scripting language for build/deploy?

</comment><comment><USER21> The Jenkins 2.0 overview page has screenshots and details: [https://jenkins.io/2.0/](https://jenkins.io/2.0/)

It also explicitly mentions backwards compatibility:

> Jenkins 2 is a drop-in replacement of the Jenkins 1.x series of releases and > fully backward compatible. There is practically no reason not to upgrade!

</comment><comment><USER22> > Groovy, so when your pipeline grows in complexity/sophistication, you can > manage its complexity and keep it understandable far easily

Scripting languages like Apache Groovy _don 't_ scale, instead bring technical debt, complexity that must be fixed up by someone else in the future.

<comment><USER23> Groovy seems to work fine for Netflix.

<comment><USER22> Businesses where it didn't work fine don't usually openly advertise the fact they had to rewrite everything. Many of those that do stick with Apache Groovy often have restrictions on its use. Perhaps they only use the dynamic features of Groovy (the 1.x features), or only the non-Turing Complete DSL features like virtually every Gradle build script out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does it still have an insecure default configuration?

<comment><USER25> I mean, how does one determine whether to use an internal user DB (when there is none) or whether to piggy-back off of Unix user accounts, when running a JVM on a machine which does not use Unix style user credentials?

<comment><USER26> Ask. Or allow the first person who logs in to get admin privileges, from which they can set up or not set up additional users as they like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> long live Jenkins!</comment>


Want a Ticket to eCommerce Hackathon? First You'll Have to Solve a Puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/06/etsy-dwolla-ecommerce-hack-day-developer-ticket-puzzle-06292012/ <comment><USER2> I need to solve a puzzle to be allowed to sit down in a room with other programmers and code? You've got to be kidding me...

I'd rather buy a coffee at a coffee shop, I could care less about 'posers' I do have other things to talk about besides whether ruby/php/python is more scalable.

At least the coffee shop isn't trying to disguise selling coffee as recruitment, pretty soon your local microroaster will be holding 'baristathons' and asking obscure questions about coffee to weed out the 'posers'.

<comment><USER3> Even worse, it's a binary string that you convert to ASCII to produce /ImAHacker, to which you then apparently send a JSON PUT. So, you know you're only dealing with the truly l33t.

<comment><USER4> Actually, its a POST, not a PUT :)

<comment><USER5> I enjoyed it. Didn't take all that long and I'd rather be coding with people that are actually capable of doing it

<comment><USER2> Converting 'binary' to ASCII and being able to make a POST request is what counts as a capable coder these days?

I'm just saying that it seems like an arbitrary hoop, when I go down to hackspace they don't make me jump through hoops... some of the people at the hackspace definitely can't code they're doing things like yarn bombing or moss graffiti, some can't code and are absolute geniuses with electronics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I liked the challenge. It's only limited to web hackers though. iOS/ObjC or Android/Java developers are cut out pretty much if they've never done web coding. Also the hardcore coders that do algorithms and and such. These people are necessary part of any good hackaton, otherwise the final products are just web eye candies. Do you think giving some RegExp's (which are pretty much a part of all languages) would attract wider hacker audience?

<comment><USER7> I was going to say that for an eCommerce hackathon, you probably don't need hardcore algo-hackers or mobile devs, but then I started to wonder what you could do with good web skills, data-mining/scraping, and a slick mobile experience with some of the API's it provies (geolocation, etc.).

That would indeed be a pretty impressive hackathon, I think :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> {"success":true,"message":"Thanks for playing! In the meanwhile, why don't you share your achievement on FB + Twitter and help us spread the good word? Head over to the 'url' parameter.","url":"<http://ecommercehackday.com/share,totalTime:260> seconds"}

Eating pizza makes coding double hard for me, I should have had less then 3 mins for that puzzle, but I just don't think this was even remotely hard enough of a puzzle to weed out people for serious eCommerce development/hacking? Submit a few HTTP requests and you pass the tests? Besides filtering out people who don't know jQuery and console.log, I don't think this was a very good test/quiz for what they are looking for. I think they should be looking for the people who can create these simple puzzles from scratch in X time instead of the people who can solve them.

<comment><USER4> You can really solve this in a number of different ways... jQuery is just the easiest way because I've included a basic snippet there...

The puzzle part was merely a way to weave out people who can't even figure out basic documentation, and disrupt the workflow of those who can during hackathons...

<comment><USER8> Yea, as I read through the comments here I understood that was the idea. It's just I was expecting something more.... substantial to get "invited" to a hackathon, especially if you only know my email address and that I can construct valid HTTP requests in the language/program of my choice. For example, not including the jQuery library in the source code would have been better imo, so we would at least have to problem solve a little. Just my thoughts, I wish I could go to something like this but I can't so I am just complaining here instead :)

<comment><USER4> Oh I like this! Good idea. Removing jQuery now...

<comment><USER9> So I solved the puzzle about an hour ago and received an email within about 5 minutes after finishing it. When I went to register for the event though, there was no option to sign up as developer/hacker. The field only has N/A next to it on the event brite page.

Is it supposed to be like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> no you didn't get the real invite. It will come later today or over the weekend. It will be a ticket, not a sign up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Got to the step with what looks like a hash in the instruction param, no idea what to do with it. I'm not cool enough for these guys :(

<comment><USER11> I'm trying to not give it away, but by Google searching "encode jquery" (without quotes), the answer was the 4th ("suggested") dropdown result.

<comment><USER12> Base64 decryption only works for the first part of the hash, though. The second part after the slash is still garbled. :/

<comment><USER13> try a different decoder (utf-8 is the key here i think) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That was a fun puzzle. Did it just for good times, but does anyone have an actual opinion on whether this would be worth going to?

<comment><USER15> Etsy is considered to have one of the top engineering teams in NY - their CEO was originally brought in as CTO to solve what was at the time a technology mess - and they have a strong engineering culture. Dwolla is hungry to get developers to use their platform, and Alex and the NY team were a key part of organizing AngelHack NY. I imagine b/w the two of them they will do a good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the typical hacker news fashion we see waves of posts that criticize the simplicity of a puzzle.

I don't know why people are so fussy these days. Just think about this test like a FizzBuzz test. It's primary goal is really to weed out the beginners, not to find rockstars.

Just appreciate it for what it was intended to be, a simple filter. Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am really excited to see events like this in NYC. The tech community around e-commerce is not as strong as it could be- events like this are great for building the community. There is a lot of growth and opportunity in this field, but I think it is being overlooked by a lot of developers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice little Friday afternoon distraction. Shame I'm on the wrong side of the Atlantic to actually go

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks, that was a fun puzzle for a Friday morning. Solved using Node.js and Restler.

</comment><comment><USER20> I just did this while I was eating my lunch. I guess that means I'm a hacker. This looks kinda silly though.. I think they're definitely limiting their audience in terms of programmers by only making an ajax puzzle.

<comment><USER4> This isn't necessarily an AJAX puzzle.. You can solve this by using CURL, WGET, or simply pointing your browser to the endpoints...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When you get to the share button is that the end of the test or is there some secret level for l33t h4x0rs?

You can do the whole thing without JS, just use standard HTML forms. Assuming it does finish there.

<comment><USER22> Or with curl to really save you some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ...that was easy, thought they would have made it tougher

<comment><USER4> The point wasn't to make it super hard... Just hard enough to ensure that other coders won't waste their hackathon time teaching others how to code...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I write C and... how the heck do I use AJAX ?

<comment><USER25> system("curl")

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is actually a pretty cool way to hype a conference that's free anyways.

</comment><comment><USER27> If anyone's going to this and wants to team up with a designer, hit me up!

</comment><comment><USER28> What the fuck is an eCommerce Hackathon?

</comment><comment><USER29> 71 seconds; I'm disappointed in myself.

</comment><comment><USER30> that was easy fast fun

</comment><comment><USER31> way too easy

<comment><USER32> "The point wasn't to make it super hard... Just hard enough to ensure that other coders won't waste their hackathon time teaching others how to code..."

<comment><USER23> I feel like I have seen this before... _strokes chin in deep thought_</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your repeatable marketing process? - <AUTHOR> For those of you who're launched and growing, what have you discovered to have worked to acquire customers and decided to double-down on it?
Is it cold email, social media outreach, content marketing, PR/publicity, forum signatures, "Powered by" backlinks, affiliate marketing, perhaps some guerrilla marketing tactic?
What has worked best for you that you're still executing the crap out of that blueprint to grow and grow?
I'm curious because I just recently launched my app (https://zlappo.com), and I'm looking for ideas on how to market it. <comment><USER2> 1\. Choose your vertical (wisely)

2\. Deep dive into at least 50-100 web sites / online presences

3\. Begin to recognize patterns

At this stage you should be ready to analyze your findings. Essentially you'll discover there are key components that every player must have. And typically its around digital content curation, inbound marketing, etc.

You can strategize two ways. An indirect approach, where you begin to publish your analysis in the form of blog posts, whitepapers, etc. And let potential leads find you.

But I think I prefer the direct approach. Cloud computing / SaaS is a great example. There are myriad events right now. For example, enterprise-scale such as AWS:reinvent coming up in Dec. But also smaller ones, such as Slack's inaugural SPec conference next month. You can literally generate 100+ quality leads in hours walking the show floor. Using your research and your skills, be specific about where a company may be weak, and what value you can help them realize.

You can open a conversation with something as easily as, "Hey, I noticed you still require a call to sales to make a purchase, have you considered an online storefront, I happen to have some Stripe API integration tools I built for my own site that can help..."

Best of luck ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really depends on your budget. The most effective way in the shortest possible time would be with AdWords. You can outbid buffer/others in your industry and your website will show up ahead of them. Keep in mind that you will need to bid more and will need a decent budget.

Organic marketing will take time. Take a look at companies like Intercom, they dont market their product but create great content around the target market. Intercom has actually published a great e-book on this. The other option is to build interactive pieces like calculators. This should be focused on what happens if the customer does not leverage your product and potential revenue/other metrics they could be missing out on.</comment>


Request for some critique on our startup - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, we'd like some criticism on our startup. It's Ingolingo, and the url is http://www.ingolingo.com. Be harsh, I don't mind! <comment><USER2> Don't require users to sign up. Let the users start the process and then decide whether or not to sign up. I don't like having to type in all that information just to try out a service.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I'll do this as soon as I figure out how to!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, lousy execution. Besides the problems others have already mentioned, it's slooooooooowwwwwwww. Also, two very serious fundamental problems:

1\. Many of your translations are wrong. I took the Spanish lesson. All of the Spanish verbs are infinitives, but the English translations are all gerunds.

2\. Learning a language one word at a time doesn't really teach you the language. You need to learn more than just vocabulary, you need grammar, conjugations, declinations, etc.

But I hasten to add, the idea of a language tutor that keeps track of what you know and only drills you on the stuff you don't is a really good one and very promising if you can actually make it work. But it's not an easy problem. (For an aspiring entrepreneur this is a good thing. If it were easy someone else would have done it already.)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first stress test, and looks like Django on webfaction is not holding up too well! Or maybe just my poor coding :)

<comment><USER4> I noticed that it took some time to process each answer. If I had made this, I would probably have loaded the answers and image URLs for each lesson only once, in a single JS file (preferably a static file). Then you would not have to connect to the web server for each answer.

And try to keep the user's progress in a cookie if it's possible. Make the login optional if a user wants to save their progress permanently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I probably should preload all the answers for the questions. However, we store the mistakes the user does, so the server has to be contacted each time anyways. And sending back to the server will be useful for later when we mix in sentences and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK, ruthless criticism ahead!

It lists 6 languages, plus "other languages", but won't let me even see what the others are without registering. ("Hi, Joe's Repair Shop." "Hi, can you replace the clutch on a '96 Volvo?" "Let me get your name and number before I answer that." "...")

The flowers that overwrite the words on the top-right of the page are kind of annoying.

The "help", "about", "staff", etc., links are all 404, which doesn't exactly look promising.

It claims "3000 words in 3 months", which is over 30 words a day. This seems pretty incredible. I've studied several languages, and I don't think I've ever learned 30 new words in a day (much less consistently for months!). According to <[http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html>](http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html>), "The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years -- that's 8 words per day". So I'm skeptical a webpage will help me learn something 4x faster than when it was basically my full-time job.

It says "Read more in our "About the system" page", but I see no such page or link. Do I have to register for that? (What's the point, then? If I have to register anyway, I'll just try it.) Do you have any people who have learned 3000 words in 3 months with your method?

It's not clear if this is written, or verbal. Will I be hearing native speakers? Or is the goal of this simply to read a newspaper?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the criticism. Well, just try it out. 30 words is just two lessons a day - I think people underestimate the power of repetition in learning. 30 words is easy if you do two lessons a day. Yes, the text stuff is not completely done yet, it still references parts that are not online yet. That's why we have the 404s still.

<comment><USER5> No problem. I did later try it out, and it looks like those 6 languages are all that's offered; unfortunately, the language I'm learning right now (and the previous one) are not among them. Maybe I'll try back later.

Right now I've got a stack of flash cards I carry with me everywhere. Whenever I'm not being productive at work, I pull them out and flip through them for a few minutes, sometimes many times a day. If I can learn (and remember) 5 new words, it's a good day. So I'm still skeptical if the trick is simply "repetition".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, try this. Click on the chinese course and spend 1 hour on it. You should be able to do 2 lessons in that time. Write down all 30 words you learnt on a piece of paper. Sleep on it, wake up the next morning and read the paper and see how many you still remember. It won't be 30, but I think it will be more than 5. Don't forget to click the button to view the pictures for the words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site looks very wordy. Even if you're in the business of teaching language, you're users still don't want to see that many words on one page. Try breaking up all your benefits into separate pages like a tour.

I really like the idea and the interface once you get logged in, although I don't really like the background color, except for the purple on the bottom of the front page

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the idea now is just to describe it. Later we'll make it more imagey, with a video tour and all that on the front page

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Front page is too busy. While base color scheme is nice and consistent, whoever decided on help/blog/login colors must be shot. Do the same to whoever spelled "this is the fastest .." all in lower case and highlighted with lime background.

Selecting German and clicking on Start brings me to the page featuring a photo of dude wearing what looks like an Afghani hat. Also bunch of text is in bold - this is really annoying, you should really ease off on neurolinguistics :)

The overall impression of first two pages is "amateurish", which means that I am leaving even before I had a chance to learn what the site is about. Work on your design, make sure it's as visually polished as it gets. Then poll people again, this time - regarding the functionality of the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I do need to do design work. But it's tough to be good at programming and at design too!

<comment><USER8> I was in the same boat and hired somebody. It wasn't cheap for me, but now that the dollar has fallen it might be cheap for you to hire someone in the U.S.

<http://ourdoings.com/2008-02-12>

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember your site. It looked very plain, now it looks pretty good! Nice choices there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally think it's the wrong approach to learning a language. Plain memorization is not how languages are learned. There is a lot of context and structure that must be learned that isn't apparent in the lessons (just listen to someone with a foreign native language speak English. They will construct sentences with English words but will do so incorrectly. They are putting them together how they would if they were using their own language's words).

I certainly think this is a problem ripe for hacking, but I think the application won't stick. What I've seen so far is a decent supplement to a traditional course for those who want to broaden their vocabulary repository, but not (IMO) a complete way to learn a language.

Another note: What about for people who already know a portion of a certain language? Maybe you could implement a test that checks where they are and provides lessons accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER10> A few minor things:

\- after I signed up, it asked me to login. There's no need for this.

\- I went through German lesson 1, but at the bottom it says "You are doing Lesson 0".

\- progress went over 100% towards the end - a bit surprising \- restarting a lesson probably shouldn't reset the fact that it was completed

\- I would like to see a list of the lessons I completed, maybe some stats to see how I did (maybe there is one and I missed it?) to track how I'm doing over time

\- the links at the bottom of your homepage are broken

\- being asked to pay for more than 3 lessons felt a bit like bait-and-switch, since the homepage promises 3000 words in big letters, but has no mention of cost (true, if it had, I might not have registered in the first place)

Al in all, a good idea, and good implementation. Clean, clear, and simple to use. I'm actually considering signing up.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are the images coming from flickr? Because I am getting pictures of a baseball and the word is "playing". Since the images are crowdsourced then maybe there should be an array of them to convey the idea.

In my opinion there are too many words off the bat to remember if you are new to the language. How about doing a delay of one where you define a Spanish word and its image(s) and then the question after next is the image to assign the Spanish or English word to it, then a few questions later its the Spanish word to assign the English word to it? That way you get a 1-2 punch to help memorize it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hit the same button again to get more pictures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your design is good, I like the colors and buttons.

The second page is a nightmare, too much content not enough call out/ organization, just calls to action.

Registration is painless, contrary to the feedback here.

The app is easy to use, but it's missing _something_. What I'm not sure...?

</comment><comment><USER13> In terms of graphic design, you want to limit the number of fonts and font sizes in any given composition. You have a lot of different sizes and some odd bolding. "The average newspaper..." doesn't need to be bold. In fact, it hurts the readability.

</comment><comment><USER14> Be more front and center with what it is you're doing. (Which isn't about "improving your vocabulary") It's about learning another language!

Once I farted around a bit, I liked your site. I should get that interest within 1-2 seconds though.

<comment><USER13> I agree, I thought it was more for vocabulary building and it took me a couple of moments to realize it was about foreign language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why do I need to sign up to use it? What reason is there that I need to create an account, give email address, choose a password?

Either allow everyone to just use it, or at least show them a demo, or let them play with something.

</comment><comment><USER16> On the Chinese section (using IE), the pictures won't display. Also, the characters don't display. Being able to read pin-yin is useless in a Chinese speaking country. Maybe pin-yin and characters should show.

<comment><AUTHOR> The characters only display if you have eastern languages enabled on your PC. This is microsofts fault, not mine!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I want to learn english, a page full of it with big fancy words is not going to help. Need to simplify the verbage throughout the site.

</comment><comment><USER18> Did you get the post-prediction idea from a scientific journal article, and if so could you provide a link?

</comment><comment><USER19> with a great program like Rosetta Stone, why would someone use ingolingo?

Because it's free sure -- but many people have tried and failed many language learning systems, so what value does ingolingo provide that an established player like Rosetta Stone doesn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's different. Ingolingo concentrates on words, Rosetta teaches you how to use sentences in situations. They complement each other.

<comment><USER19> OK -- as a wanna-be linguist this is definitely a valuable tool.

What library of languages did you use to create your definitions?

<comment><AUTHOR> The definitions are human translated for now. We're still working on improving the translations to match the words - as in running = run and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> the entire "Learn together with other people" section reads very cheesy, imho. i don't think you should focus on whether or not this service gives people any kind of bragging rights.

the service itself seems valuable, though.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wanted to try Italian, because I speak it fluently, but it's not on the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we don't have any italian guy to help us!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> be better than mangolanguages.com</comment>


Show HN: Hurricane now runs Rails and Django - <AUTHOR> http://icheishvili.github.com/hurricane Written in Erlang, lots of new features--I hope you find it cool/useful/interesting. <comment><USER2> Why does the library itself not use OTP? You seem to have re-implemented a lot of what OTP already gives you (such as gen_server and the supervisor tree).

<comment><AUTHOR> While chasing the performance goals that I had, I ditched OTP. However, it has now become obvious that it would make sense to just use gen_server and gen_supervisor, instead of rolling it on my own, like you said. That is one of the next things that I plan to work on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The correct URL appears to be <http://gethurricane.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my co-workers pointed out that the domain was available, so I quickly bought it only a handful of minutes ago :)</comment></comment>


One Big Reason For Apple's Market Share Gains. - <AUTHOR> http://www.notebooks.com/2008/11/07/my-apple-curse-strikes-again-but-apple-store-saves-the-day/ <comment><USER2> This is fine and dandy if you live near an Apple store. If you don't, especially if you go overseas with a US bought product, things get much less pretty.

Non-US Apple has refused to handle my US warranties, so the only recourse was to ship it to the US for repair, which means you're without your machine for several weeks.

I think with companies like lenovo or dell that cater to corporate customers worldwide you probably end up with better service in more "remote" locations.

When I was living in NYC, owning Apple products was relatively painless because of the Apple stores there.

<comment><USER3> > I think with companies like lenovo or dell that cater to corporate customers > worldwide you probably end up with better service in more "remote" > locations.

I had really good results with a US-bought laptop here in Innsbruck, Austria, which in some ways qualifies as 'remote'.

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/11/20/and-were-back-in- actio...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/11/20/and-were-back-in-action)

I was dreading dealing with who knows what sort of awful bureaucracy, but instead it was simple, fast and convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _his is a ridiculously fast turnaround- Apple took less than half of the estimated time to complete the repair._

Promise less, deliver more.

Even if you think you can find a solution for your client in three days, tell them it will take a week. If your estimate is accurate, they will (probably) be happier than if you told them it would take three days originally.

<comment><USER5> This type of service really depends on location. A store here in Boulder is so backed up you cannot make a same day or even next day appointment which means the 5-7 day repair is suddenly 7-10 day repair and even then its closer to 10 business days than 7. While thats not the case in less busy areas, it really does depend on the store, so they aren't delivering more because they're Apple, but because they don't have as much work to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The other reason they might be gaining so much marketshare is that some of their customer base is opting to buy new machines rather than have relatively minor repair work done.

(The Mac Book he bought for $325 comes to mind.)

<comment><USER7> Todo: get in a position where people are _looking_ for excuses to buy my products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From your lips to God's ear but, that they have so many problems in the first place would _scare_ me off of Apple.

<comment><USER9> I agree. If this was a post about a Dell laptop you'd read endless amounts of comments lambasting Dell / Vista / PCs and hear every single PC-to-Mac switch- story about how the Mac does everything short of being a free energy device that powers homes.

Of course when it's an Apple product that fails constantly it's just a "lemon" or "fluke". We'll see how Apple support turns out once they get their dominant market share every Mac fan dreams about.

P.S. It doesn't involve free upgrades to new computers. Secondly, I'm sure we all remember how Dell was renowned for their amazing customer support before they got to #1.

<comment><USER10> But it costs _more_ to provide customer support as a smaller player - you have to provide the same geographic availability of service providers, the same ratio of support techs per customer, all without the advantage of economies of scale. IMHO Dell's fall from customer service heaven is purely a result of their own obsession with budget computers and the race to the bottom. So long as Apple remains a premium brand I don't think they'll have trouble keeping good service.

I am a Mac user myself, and while my laptop has been far from trouble-free, I've had zero trouble with customer service. Every single time my phone call has been answered in less than 2 minutes, nobody's _ever_ hassled me or tried to weasel their way out of a genuinely defective part, and many reps have even offered more expensive solutions (i.e. shipping the machine back to Apple instead of visiting a local shop, or full machine replacement) instead of me having to badger them for it. I am currently entitled to a "new" (read: refurb) machine because I've had so much repair work done on mine (twice to the shop).

While it certainly sucks that my laptop has had these problems to begin with, the fact that the service is there to back you up means I will be an Apple customer for some time yet.

<comment><USER11> I run Windows & Ubuntu, and I would shudder at the thought of having to ship my laptop in. That's a lot of time to be without my computer.

I've honestly never encountered a problem that required the manufacturer's support. More than a handful of my Mac friends have had to ship theirs in.

<comment><USER10> This is, of course, anecdotal, but my roommate had his Dell break down a while ago. Spent about 5 hours on the phone arguing with one support rep or another before they agreed to send a tech out the next day to look at it. His computer was hunky dory the next day (better than Apple, who took 4 days round-trip from time of call to time laptop was returned), but IMHO the aggravation required for it just isn't worth it.

Also, FWIW, you don't ever have to ship your laptop in (unless you are doing a full replacement like me). Plenty of service providers will look at your machine without taking it away from you for extended periods. They won't come to your house though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The process was painfully slow and took nearly three and a half hours to complete"

wtf do you do at the genius bar for 3+ hours? I can imagine maybe 1 hour talking to the bored apple genius guy, convincing him that i am just as geeky as he is, but anything longer than that and I'd be annoyed.

<comment><USER13> Just drink in the genius.

<comment><USER14> I know it's fun mocking the Geniuses, but they've always given me pretty excellent service. The name's kind of ridiculous, but don't knock a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hm... I get exact same stripes about twice a month, usually when it gets really hot, most commonly when watching a movie via Hulu or iTunes. But it always goes away if I turn it off/on. I never bothered going to an Apple store because I couldn't reproduce this reliably. Perhaps I should. Has anyone here tried to fix a similarly unreliable problem?

<comment><USER16> You should consider getting a laptop cooler. It does a good job of keeping my macbook cool.

<comment><USER15> I considered (and agreed with myself) Thinkpad T500 which is in the mail. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. That counts as a positive experience?

</comment><comment><USER18> I've had good and bad experiences with different apple "genii". One time I needed to replace the little detachable extension cord segment that goes from the power adapter to the wall outlet and the guy at the palo alto store was hostile to me and flat out _refused_ to give me a part number or any useful information (other than to suggest I purchase a whole new $100 power adapter). I eventually found someone on craigslist who was willing to sell me theirs for $15. But another time when my GPU failed a guy at the emeryville store saw to it that I was sent a new powerbook by overnight delivery.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you're going to experience failure, it's awesome to have the company make that easy. I do have two Dell laptops at home (ages 4 and 5 years) that have never had a single issue. My wife's macbook had a battery failure within 2 years, but Apple replaced it even though it was out of warranty. We've since sold that one, and got a new one, and I hope it continues to work without issue.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are macs really that crappy?

<comment><USER21> I can see why you'd ask that, considering that two incidents could so rationally be considered a representative sampling. I don't know, do people really pose such stupid questions?

I've had a MBP since 2006 and the only time it had to be repaired was after a drunk guy poured a litre of Sprite into it. I've also owned a Mac Pro since February that has given me no issues. Provided this clearly superior anecdotal evidence, I must wonder, "Are all macs really this good?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've had nothing but positive experiences with Apple at their Genius Bar, and on the phone. I don't know of any other manufacturer that has such an in-store experience, but it sure was nice not having to ship my machine out and instead just get to leave it there for a couple days while it was repaired under warranty. my previous Mac, a 12" powerbook, worked perfectly for the 3 years that I had it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Apple is for faggs only.</comment>


The Many Places Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos Calls Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-many-places-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-calls-home-1507204462 <comment><USER2> paywall...

Where does he own houses?</comment>


Show HN: iOS Fonts - <AUTHOR> http://iosfonts.com/ <comment><USER2> One of my original hesitations about the iPad (especially) was that I couldn't install custom fonts for reading books. It's good to see they've included a range of elegant fonts (though I'd still like the option to add more!)

<comment><USER3> In the latest iPad firmware, WebKit supports TrueType web fonts ([http://blog.typekit.com/2010/11/23/ios-4-2-improves- support-...](http://blog.typekit.com/2010/11/23/ios-4-2-improves-support-for- web-fonts/)).

I think that makes it feasible to write an ePub reader that renders to WebKit, and does support WebFonts (or does iBooks support that already in the new firmware?) That is not quite 'install custom fonts,', but it would be good enough for some use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Papyrus_

/shudders

<comment><USER5> Nonetheless, there is thanks to be had for the exclusion of MS Comic Sans.

<comment><USER6> Chalkboard[1] is equally bad (good?), and is included.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalkboard_(typeface)>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it a bit odd that all of them bar a couple like Papyrus come out as Times New Roman on Windows. Even Trebuchet MS which is supposed to be an MS font.

<comment><USER8> It's just down to naming and the fact that TrebuchetMS != Trebuchet MS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would be nice to see the fonts rendered

<comment><USER10> Take a look at the page with an ipad.</comment></comment>


Welcome to Google Island - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/on-google-island/ <comment><USER3> (disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs)

At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to." After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient privacy daydream. Whether it's people writing polemic screeds about Glass despite knowing nothing about how the devices actually work (which they make up for by imagining a host of capabilities and features that it doesn't have), or things like this that manufacture a Lovecraftian monstrosity that has as much in common with the Google of today as a pineapple, they're not really saying anything interesting. Every argument is trivial to win if you first convert your opponent into Mecha-Hitler.

Is privacy a central, unsolved challenge for the next decade? Yes. On the one hand Google (and Apple and Amazon and ... ) need to innovate, or we'll soon see posts on HN describing how "Search has stagnated" and "Google is done for". Keyword search isn't good enough anymore, but to do anything more you need to start understanding the user's context. The "Star Trek computer" interface that everyone wants can't function if it doesn't have a sense of the world and the person it's talking to. I would love it if there was a distributed way for people to provide this information without having it live in a centralized datacenter somewhere. Sadly, no one's really talking about that.

(there's an equally interesting discussion to be had regarding public privacy and cameras, but villifying Glass isn't going to make that problem go away.)

<comment><USER4> _The "Star Trek computer" interface that everyone wants can't function if it doesn't have a sense of the world and the person it's talking to. I would love it if there was a distributed way for people to provide this information without having it live in a centralized datacenter somewhere._

That makes sense. Why can't we have both? If Google needs to store all my context data off in the cloud somewhere, why not absolutely guarantee that no one will get my data without my permission or a court order? And then earn my trust by defending my right to data privacy?

<comment><USER5> Google has done just that:

1\. When DOJ sent Google a subpoena for search logs, Google fought it in court, while Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL did not: [http://news.cnet.com/FAQ- What-does-the-Google-subpoena-mean/...](http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-What-does- the-Google-subpoena-mean/2100-1029_3-6029042.html)

2\. Google is lobbying to change federal law to require search warrants backed by probable cause and signed by a judge for stored cloud email (and Google Drive, Dropbox, Flickr, etc.) files, a privacy protection opposed by the Obama DOJ: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20123710-281/google- facebo...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20123710-281/google-facebook-go- retro-in-push-to-update-1986-privacy-law/)

3\. Google began requiring police to obtain search warrants for email after the Warshak decision nationally, even though it was binding only in a few states. So did (from memory) Facebook and Microsoft.

4\. Google became the first tech company to disclose information about FBI warrantless data acquisition through NSLs in March, and in April became the first tech company to challenge their legality in court: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57572634-83/google- offers-d...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57572634-83/google-offers-data- on-fbis-national-security-related-requests-for-user-identities/) [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577958-38/google- fights-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577958-38/google-fights-fbis- warrantless-data-requests-in-federal-court/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm... as a Libertarian / Voluntaryist / Anarcho-capitalist / whatever-you- want-to-call it, I am sympathetic to what Larry Page is saying. But there are definitely aspects of this story that are fairly unappealing (Larry Page naked, for starters).

I'm not sure what the answer is though: By now it should be clear that "government" as a tool to social engineer a perfect world, isn't working. Corporations are always the villians in this cyberpunk'ish stories, but you don't have corporations without government. But you _can_ have technology without government or corporations, so what happens when the tech itself becomes so powerful that it changes the basic nature of society? Getting rid of government and/or corporations won't help, and if you try to counter technology with more technology you just have an arms race.

OK, I'm depressed now. :-(

<comment><USER7> Technology can never solve social problems. The answer is to simply work on fixing the problems we have in society the only way we actually can: through discourse, activism, democracy.

<comment><USER6> _Technology can never solve social problems. The answer is to simply work on fixing the problems we have in society the only way we actually can: through discourse, activism, democracy._

I'm not actually sure _anything_ can truly solve social problems. I tend to believe that human nature is such that we will always have some level of strife and conflict in our world. I think the best we can do is to minimize it, and create structures that at least respect the sovereignty of the individual.

But even what I just said gets to the point of why "we" will never be uniformly happy. Different people have fundamentally different goals and principles and there's objective way to resolve those disputes. My foundational principle is freedom from use of force or aggression, and the primacy and sovereignty of the individual. Other people have more of a utilitarian "the most happiness for the maximum number of people" as their principle. And unless the former inevitably leads to the latter by coincidence, there's really no way to reconcile those two positions, in terms of "how do we solve social problems" since those two people don't even agree on what the problem is in the first place.

As for democracy: "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the vote".

Even in a representative republic like in the US, democracy is nothing special if you're the under-represented minority who has to suffer the "tyranny of the majority".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While its very interesting to explore and write about the implications of Larry Page's idea of experimentation unfettered by government laws, this reads like a poorly written sci-fi story by someone interested by technology, but not knowledgeable enough to write something remotely credible. It lost me at Google Being, 'stitched from photographs'. It focuses mostly on unfettered data collection, which is the main fear of journalists writing about Google.

<comment><USER9> We should write a similar story about a world where journalists control the decision of everyone with this kind of article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The biggest blunder of this article is how they convey Google. Do they know a little more about me than I like? Sure. But so does Facebook, Microsoft, and OkCupid!. The difference here is that if I want out of Google, I simply go to the dashboard and erase my history. I don't know how deep their erasure goes, but it is certainly more comforting than what any other company offers.

Facebook holds your info for a week and if you sign back in, the week restarts. During that week they goad you to come back. Not exactly cooperative.

And lets vilify Google first and foremost (/s). I run Ghostery. I am much more scared by the number of unique tracking companies. I don't know anything about them. How could I even begin to tell nearly 1500 known tracking companies to leave me alone? Simply telling them to leave me alone gives them data about me, which they certainly must keep if I am to be left alone.

<comment><USER11> > Facebook holds your info for a week and if you sign back in, the week > restarts.

I think this might be intended as protection against attacks on your account. If someone gets ahold of your password and deletes your account, it's nice that you'll be able to restore it for some time after, isn't it? I agree that the wording of the e-mails they send when this happens is unfortunate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lately I have been feeling we as builders had this responsibility to build the Internet that the world needed, and we failed. We were distracted, we got rich, we ignored or misread the needs of our fellow humans.

The walled gardens that we now find so insidious and creepy are due to our own failure to empower the users. We made HTTP, SMTP, XMPP protocols. Large companies brought these to the masses, in ways the masses can understand and interact with in their limited capacity... for a price.

Can we reclaim humanity's birthright? Can we build a vision of the world we wish to live in, that is accessible to and understandable by many? Or is our entire collective fate to become a monetized click stream of suckers?

This article names Google, but to me that is beside the point. Google is a large system set in motion by shareholders and market forces that has equilibrium. It consumes click streams and subscriptions, and excretes money, like others of its kind. Can such an organism ever serve the best interests of humanity all the time?

If you find yourself hating Google, better to look within yourself. Do you have the courage to walk away from these kinds of services and build an alternative, however humble it might be, that empowers and liberates your fellow humans?

I am still working on this in myself. My email is still gmail, I would miss some personalities in my G+ circles, but I am uncomfortable, and I find current trends unsettling.

(edited for grammar)

</comment><comment><USER13> I see it now, Google is an embryonic stage of The Culture [0].

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture>

<comment><USER14> "in practice social convention among the Minds prohibits them from watching, or interfering in, citizens' lives unless requested, or unless they perceive severe risk"

One of the cute things about the Culture is how damned _nice_ the Minds are - even when they are effectively gods to their meat friends/pets/therapists.

<comment><USER15> > One of the cute things about the Culture is how damned nice the Minds are

Were the Minds (originally) designed to be "nice"? Or have they evolved to be nice because that is an effective way to influence humans? (I've only read one Culture book.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am scared, intrigued, worried, and overall frightened. Not frightened by the article, but by the fact that I can't decide if I am for or against this.

I wonder at what phase 'Don't be evil' would break down, or alternatively, when their definition of 'evil' would be changed to exclude what they were doing.

<comment><USER6> _Not frightened by the article, but by the fact that I can't decide if I am for or against this._

That's sort of the same reaction I am having. I'm all for getting rid of governments and most of what we call "law" today, but this particular vision of a possible outcome seems a bit disturbing in some ways. But, then again, it's just speculative fiction, not reality...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> But when Google Island is somewhere where are no laws, then anybody with enough muscle can take it away from poor Larry. And nothing Larry can do, because there are no laws. Taker keep.

<comment><USER18> Except that he's the only one with the root access.

<comment><USER19> Quite. In the Star Trek example, the Captain can say "Computer, locate X", and sometimes he says "Computer, deactivate X's devices" and the computer just does it. It's very unlikely, because he's an idealized fictional hero, that anyone with that kind of power in the real work, is as wise and benevolent as Picard - and even Picard makes mistakes.

<comment><USER20> Two things about Star Trek -

1\. Other characters can and do ask for locations. This is apparently considered non-private information.

2\. As open and utopian as the Federation may be portrayed to be, Picard is still the commander of a military vessel, so I wouldn't be surprised if in other contexts, computers give out less personal information and grant less power to administrators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ultimately, I think that this article fallaciously anthropomorphizes Google, and that is the reason why the situation it posits seems so scary.

Google is a machine, designed by people. It is true that they have lots and lots of data about individuals, but it is being handled by vast amounts of software and hardware alongside so much other data about so many things about people that there is somewhat of an anonymizing factor. If Google were an individual, what they do would certainly be creepy, but they are not. To put paranoia to rest, it might be in their favor to enact transparent safeguards of some sort that assure consumers that their data is in general not being accessed by Google employees or nefarious third parties (the most notable nefarious third party being, of course, the government).

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems like I may have missed the point or that this struck a sensitive nerve for a few people but I just found it mildly funny. I'm not sure if the piece was supposed to be anything more than a bit of satire and a friendly jab at Google.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is the worst opinion piece I have ever read. The fact it made it to Wired just devalues the whole magazine in my eyes.

Did nobody seriously review this before it was published? Did nobody ask what sort of trauma the writer may have suffered?

</comment><comment><USER24> We haven't passed through the digital renaissance yet. Shouldn't be too long (10 years? - right now it's just a party) but until then lines will be gray and rules will be befuddled. You need to have the visionaries to get us through it, though. There aren't many.

</comment><comment><USER25> _"It also has thousands of micro sensors which are now swarming through your blood stream."_

This metaphor of the electrolyte solution is nice. Obviously an allusion to a seemingly innocuous service which ends up tracking every aspect of one's life.

</comment><comment><USER26> I do believe we need a place like that, except I don't think its feasible to do it on Earth - there is simply too much baggage here.

Luckily we could be less than a generation away from colonizing Mars - <USER2> what better place for the adventurous experimenters to go? Imagine an entire planet where you can do anything you want, but also an incredibly harsh one where the need of survival will drive experimentation and adaptation.

</comment><comment><USER27> Begun the Google Backlash has.

<comment><USER28> Yet disappeared the Yoda fad, has not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Point of interest: google has owned an Alpha fighter jet for years

[http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-fighter-jet-to- air-f...](http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-fighter-jet-to-air- fleet-15252)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a very scary potential view of the future.

<comment><USER31> I also do not wish to see Larry Paige naked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This. Also my first impression was a city like Rapture in Bioshock.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you change the recruitment process? - <AUTHOR>

Caveat: I'm a developer who has crossed to the dark side and become a tech recruiter. I have been a HN lurker for a signifficant amount of time and I am progressively becoming a more active member of this community.
I've been recruiting within the London market for a number of years now and it was instantly obvious from the word go that Tech Recruiters are generally viewed with a high level of disdain and to be fair, having spoken to so many clients over the last couple of years, I can understand why given the approach and attitude a lot of fellow tech recruiters adopt.
What I'm asking is this, what can I do, as a recruiter, to convince you, as a client, that I'm not just another wide-boy salesman?
Differentiating yourself in the market is a key element to being successful in this job and I do a very good job of that with current clients (which is why they are still current clients!) but I am noticing more and more that when I contact potential clients for the first time I can hardly get a word in due to the assumption that I don't know my Git from my Github.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I have worked in this space as well, as a recruiter for full-time roles and now account manager for contract staffing. The biggest thing is getting to know your candidates and understanding their goals, desires, and path. There are so many recruiters who are in the game because they aren't good enough for sales or not really qualified for much else. This gives the industry a bad name. Not a lot of people go through college with the dream of being a recruiter, but many end up there for lack of other options.

Changing the recruitment game is hard because there are so many little IT shops popping up with the low barriers to entry, looking to be a middleman and grab their piece of the pie. They see a $10-15/hr margin in contract staffing and think, wow, this is easy money by just submitting a resume. Of course, these small contract staffing recruitment shops often have offshore recruiters because you pay them 1/5 of what a U.S. based entry level recruiter would make.

I am currently on the path of teaching web development to myself so I can implement my own ideas on small scale rather than relying on finding a willing technical partner. It's rewarding on it's own and gives me a little more insight into the technical world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whilst I agree that people don't set out to become recruiters, I disagree that it's due to a lack of options.

My reasoning for making the switch was simple. My best friend was a recruiter with little to no practical IT experience and average sales patter. He showed me a series of payslips covering a 6 month period where he had earned £70k during that period because of his commission. I was young and exclusively money driven so it was a no-brainer.

As for upskilling yourself, it never hurts. I'm adding to my skills at the moment by learning Python and loving it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A friend of mine worked for a tech recruiter in 2009, in Houston. She reported being 'trained' to take the references from people who were looking for a job, and recruit _only_ the references for open positions. The original applicant was generally ignored altogether, and often lied to.

So, how about convincing everyone in your industry to not do that? Good luck...</comment>


Show HN: I made Conway's Game of Life in JavaScript/Canvas - <AUTHOR> http://nomatteus.github.com/conway-game-of-life-js/examples/

<comment><AUTHOR> As a programming exercise, I wanted to code Conway's Game of Life. I used JavaScript and Canvas to do it, as I haven't worked with Canvas before so wanted to try it out.

Code is here: <https://github.com/nomatteus/conway-game-of-life-js></comment>


Ethereum Nodes Crashing, Someone Attacking the Network Again? - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinist.net/ethereum-nodes-crashing-attack/ <comment><USER2> Fix is now merged into the development go-ethereum branch: [https://github.com/ethereum/go- ethereum/pull/3006#pullreques...](https://github.com/ethereum/go- ethereum/pull/3006#pullrequestreview-485832)

Excellent turnaround time, especially considering that most of the principal developers were asleep in Shanghai when the disruption started.</comment>


Ask HN: Chatbots ... - <AUTHOR>

I've got a robot on Richard's Play By Email server that plays CoNeutron, and I've been thinking of adding a "ChatBot" on the side.  I've played with Eliza and a few others, but I was wondering if anyone here on HN has some experience, recommendations, warnings or suggestions. <comment><USER2> I've written a couple and I had great fun with them.

One of the best attempts was a really nasty little trick, basically a human- backed chatbot. The way it worked was like this:

You get an icq (at the time) client and proxy it through the bot, the bot goes and makes random friends.

When someone reponds to the bots 'opening' line (Hi how are you?) you get back a response. You now answer with two things at once, the first a regexp that matches the response and puts in wildcards for linguistic fluff, and the actual answer.

The bot stores both in its database, and passes the answer to the user. Who then replies.

Meanwhile the bot continues to find new 'victims', and everytime it gets back an answer it tries to make a match based on it's canned responses. It knows where in the conversation it is (context), so a response will only be matched in the right spot in a conversation.

After being the bots 'backend' for a couple of days it could keep up a conversation for a good 20 minutes from the 'hi how are you' until it would run out of steam, by using wildcards in a smart way it is amazing how 'relevant' an answer can be even though the match is only on one or two words.

It was some of the most fun I ever had with computers, not because it 'fooled' the users, simply because of seeing all these patterns in language.

<comment><USER3> Sounds pretty amazing. It sounds better, at least, than any bot that I've seen. Is it open source? ;)

<comment><USER2> There is really nothing amazing about it, it just substitutes a human for any smarts. It's just as 'amazing' as the mechanical turk playing chess :)

You could probably re-implement the basics using a webform and some ajax in a couple of hours.

The hardest part was to figure out how to get on the ICQ network, someone was friendly enough to write micq and it was easy enough to splice the proxy bit in there.

The real challenge in making a chatbot is writing one that comes up with original stuff, this one just basically regurgitated whatever it was told on an earlier occasion.

edit: I've found the code, if you are really interested drop me an email and I'll send it to you, warning this is _very_ ugly code, it was spliced together in a very short time from a bunch of stuff and it should really never see the light of day again. Frankenstein looks pretty in comparison :) It will also almost certainly not work (if you can find the micq it wants that might help, not sure if that is even working), fry your computer and so on...

Here is a small sample of what you could do with it (an attempt at getting people to visit camarades.com:

(I used a different domain to be able to track who actually visited the site), this the 'ruleset' after a couple of sessions.

       color off
       # info 12089101
       rand 1
       awaittarget 60 servertimeout
       msg $target/Hi There !, I'm Jacques\nDo you like webcams ?
       await 300 abort
       !sleep 10
       match explainfree  (free free? cost?)
       match explainrand  how find
       match languageno   no do speak
       match apologise    (remove | fuck | go away)
       match apologise    fuck
       match apologise    go away

       macro affirmative  (cool | yes | yeah | yeh | yep | yup | da | si | sure | I do | very | like much)
       match payload      $affirmative
       match explain      need
       match explaincam   what
       match maybe        (dont know | maybe | could be)
       match pity         (no | nope)
       match pity         nope
       match explain      don't have
       q
       explainfree:
       msg $target/Sure it's free !
       await 300 abort
       !sleep 10
       match languageno  no do speak
       match apologise  remove
       match apologise  fuck
       match apologise  go away
       match payload    $affirmative
       match explain    need
       match explaincam what
       match maybe      dont know
       match maybe      maybe
       match maybe      could be
       match pity       no
       match pity       nope
       q
       apologise:
       msg $target/Ok, sorry to disturb you, goodbye !
       !sleep 10
       q
       explainrand:
       msg $target/I found you through Linux/micq random people finder. So do you like cams ?
       await 300 abort
       !sleep 10
       match apologise  remove
       match apologise  fuck
       match apologise  go away
       match payload    cool
       match payload    yes
       match payload    yea
       match payload    yeah
       match payload    yeh
       match payload    yep
       match payload    sure
       match payload    I do
       match payload    very
       match payload    like much
       match explain    need
       match maybe      dont know
       match maybe      maybe
       match maybe      could be
       match pity       no
       match pity       nope
       q
       explaincam:
       msg $target/A webcam is a camera connected to the internet
       await 300 abort
       match apologise  remove
       match apologise  fuck
       match apologise  go away
       match payload    cool
       match payload    yes
       match payload    yea
       match payload    yeah
       match payload    yeh
       match payload    yep
       match payload    sure
       match payload    I do
       match payload    very
       match payload    like much
       match explain    need
       match maybe      dont know
       match maybe      maybe
       match maybe      could be
       match pity       no
       match pity       nope
       q
       apologise:
       msg $target/Ok, sorry to disturb you, goodbye !
       !sleep 10
       q
       payload:
       url $target http://www.camerades.com/ Great !\nYou can see me *live*\non www.camerades.com\nEnjoy !\nThere are 100's of live cameras there and free software too !
       !sleep 10
       abort:
       q
       maybe:
       msg $target/Hm, if you want to try check out www.camerades.com\nEnjoy !\nThere are 100's of live cameras there
       !sleep 10
       abort:
       q
       pity:
       url $target http://www.camerades.com/ That's a pity, You can see\nme *live* on www.camerades.com\nThere are 100's of live cameras there\nAnyway, sorry to disturb you...\nGoodbye
       await 180 abort
       match describe what see
       match explain what
       match explain need
       !sleep 10
       abort:
       q
       languageno:
       msg $target/No, I don't.\nThat's a pity, You can see\nme *live* on www.camerades.com\nThere are 100's of live cameras there\nAnyway, sorry to disturb you...\nGoodbye
       await 300 abort
       match describe what see
       match explain what
       match explain need
       !sleep 10
       abort:
       q
       explain:
       msg $target/You don't need any software, or camera just a browser is enough.\n
       !sleep 10
       q
       describe:
       msg $target/Lot's of people and out door views from all over the world\n
       !sleep 10
       q
       servertimeout:
       !echo no response !
       q

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a bit of fun with chatbots. If you want OS and easy way, you have 3 choices really:

\- AIML engine

\- MegaHAL engine

\- proper parsers (most of them are written in lisp-like languages for some reason)

Now it really depends on what you want to do - only waste someone else's time? MegaHAL will do just fine. You can feed it conversations all the time and it will learn to interact in some environment rather quickly.

If you want some basic scripting, you should look at AIML-based soft. You can write your scripts and basic expression reduction in XML. There's a "javascript" tag in the specification, but noone really supports it. I map it to python functions in my bot and it works quite well. You will never parse more exotic sentences though - just basics. And your bot will not learn automatically.

If you want to use it for something really useful, look at the <http://www.generation5.org/> articles. You'll find a lot of code that's easy to port to your favourite language there. Serious language parsers connected to something like word-net are the only way to go if you want good quality. And you need to create a lot of stuff yourself - afaik there are no standard response libraries like alice, because the parse format is not really standardised.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had made one very silly bot called SPEAK. It used simple matching algorithms to learn. I wondered who would use it, but people actually used it for real.

<http://paraschopra.com/software/>

</comment><comment><USER6> A.L.I.C.E [ <http://alicebot.blogspot.com/> ] is a 'brute-force' chatbot model that has been developed for many years. It has several free software implementations and is very easy to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> A.L.I.C.E. now has a "Fake Kirk" personality, so I thought I'd try it. Here's the "conversation" we had:

      Lieutenant: What's our mission, captain?
      Fake Kirk:  Our five year mission: to seek out
                  new worlds and new civilizations.
                  To go boldly where no man has gone before.
      Lieutenant: Did you not originally split the infinitive?
      Fake Kirk:  No. We beamed it out into open space,
                  Lieutenant. Widest possible dispersion.
      Lieutenant: But didn't that kill it completely?
      Fake Kirk:  How?
      Lieutenant: By ensuring it could never come back.
      Fake Kirk:  Explain.
      Lieutenant: On widest possible dispersion you could
                  never re-integrate the original confinement
                  beam.
      Fake Kirk:  To read minds?
      Lieutenant: Oh dear.
      Fake Kirk:  Lieutenant.
      Lieutenant: Yes captain?
      Fake Kirk:  Lieutenant, get the doctor up here on
                  the double. How bad is it?
      Lieutenant: It's not at all bad - just a flesh wound.
      Fake Kirk:  Oh, yes, it is. It's exactly the same.
                  Only this one works.

I'm afraid this just screams "Eliza!" at me ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> MegaHAL is open source and a lot of fun to play with. Be ready to feed it a lot of text, though.

<comment><USER8> I second that. It's a lot of fun to tinker with. I've once fed it 20k+ posts from an online game I was playing, basically the whole usergenerated story and put it online in the game's IRC channel. And as it is, the users indulged in nostalgia every now and then, which triggered the bot to happily tell about old times. :)</comment></comment>


What is the best way to learn flash? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The tutorial here is really good:

<http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc>

Introduces the command line compiler and has the source for several simple SWFs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you mean Flash animation or ActionScript? I learned Flash/ActionScript and PHP at the same time by reading "Foundation PHP 5 for Flash". But I already had an understanding of animation programs like Toon Boon and Autodesk Animator Pro.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I wanted to learn both of them.

<comment><USER3> Which version of Flash do you own? I'd start by learning the animation aspect first. Learn about key frames, the timeline, layers and suchlike. There has to be a tutorial online somewhere. I remember when I was learning I turned to Google many times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I do not know where to start. I have basic programming knowledge in python and vbscript.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.Flex.org>

<comment><USER5> what chwolfe said.</comment></comment></comment>


Trapped Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Subsurface Water - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101028125634.htm

<comment><USER2> Whoever designed and built the Mars Rovers deserves a huge amount of credit. These things lasted far longer than expected and continue to produce useful data even after they were trapped. Fine hackers must have put these together.

<comment><USER3> Makes me wonder if Mars is a bit more hospitable than it's made out to be.

<comment><USER4> Sure, if you don't need to breathe or maintain a 37C body temperature it's not too bad at all.

<comment><USER3> hospitable relative to say venus or an econolodge. obviously it's not San Diego.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Mars rovers were amazingly successful and continued to function well longer than anyone expected. It was a minor miracle that they even survived the landing and everything deployed as planned. They got so much data from the rovers they actually made an IMAX movie with the gigapixel imagery! Scientists have found tons of evidence of water and more, but they are extremely hesitant to discuss because no one wants to be the scientist ridiculed for saying aliens existed on Mars. Here's an article that discusses a little - <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4480097/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Life imitates art: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1256039/synopsis>

(spoiler alert, in case someone missed Big Bang Theory)

</comment><comment><USER7> By the way, you can see the engineers working on the next bigger, badder rover here: <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasajpl>

</comment><comment><USER8> I may not live to see my great great grand children, but I want to live long enough to see us reclaim these little guys.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. Your life might not change that much after the first couple of billions, but hey - you have a better chance of getting these guys back.

On the other hand - they are just a piece of iron, silicon and a few other metals. They don't have feelings.</comment></comment>


Node.js – Windows users are not happy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/629 <comment><USER2> That's what happens when two systems follow Unix philosophy and the third one uses its own philosophy.</comment>


CeramicSpeed's ultra-efficient Driven bicycle works without a chain - <AUTHOR> https://www.dezeen.com/2018/07/20/ceramicspeed-driven-bicycle-no-chain-eurobike-award/ <comment><USER2> I will be surprised to see how this makes it to production. As most motorcyclists know, shaft drive is a maintenance dream — having it on a bike will be a thing of beauty.

As a YT clip pointed out, there are side loads induced due to how the shaft output end mates with the unified 'cogset' that will require stiffening in the rear triangles of the frame. It also would tend to jump teeth under high power. So, even when production costs scale down, it may be never be a drop in replacement for the classic chain-and-sprocket.

(My bike has belt drive and internally geared hub [Alfine 8-speed], but my dream bike is gonna have a Rohloff—Hmmmmm.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be interested to see if they could ditch the awkward rear cassette and replace it with a bottom bracket gearbox. That merged with the shaft drive would be really interesting. Although they are probably more worried about ounces than reliability since it's a time trial bike.

I would pay a lot of money to not have to constantly be fiddling/cleaning/lubricating my chain drive...</comment>


Richard Turner's Full House - <AUTHOR> https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/dealt-richard-turners-full-house/ <comment><USER2> Richard Turner on Fool Us: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TwFIJyWKs1k](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TwFIJyWKs1k)

At mit: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qyV8Xw9TscA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qyV8Xw9TscA)

<comment><USER3> Favorite quote: "You know what I consider the worst disability of all? Procrastination and laziness." Ouch. Well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Your sight is your disability."

Best line in the article. Watching him work just blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hand surgery without anesthesia? Wow.</comment>