Learning Chess at 40 (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/73/play/learning-chess-at-40-rp <comment><USER2> I have some personal experience that gives me a different perspective. I learned chess when very young (~5) but I failed to be a successful prodigy -- my rating capped out around 1100 USCF. Every few years I would pick the game back up and play a few tournaments, and each time I improved a bit. I love chess, but it's never been anything like the central focus of my life.

In my late 20s I moved to California and also started playing again after a few years of drought. My strength was about 1950 USCF. In the Bay Area 80% of the players I play in tournaments at that strength are kids -- the median age is perhaps 11.

At first I thought it was shocking that they could be 1950 at 11 years old, and I was like 1200, or whatever. That's a pretty huge gap in what you might think is "talent". But then I started looking at the tournament history of my opponents. I was astonished to find that the majority of them had played _substantially more total chess_ at age 11 than I had managed to play by my late 20s.

For example, here is someone I have played several times:

[http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?15250088](http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?15250088)

He's 10 years old and 2055 USCF. He has played in 175 tournaments in the past 5 and a half years. That's almost three per month, every month! If you don't regularly play in chess tournaments, they are frequently a serious commitment -- the better part of a day, or for big ones, multiple full days. Perhaps his average tournament might involve 10 hours of serious chess. How many adults work so hard on their hobby? Is that degree of return on investment even surprising? I've only played in 129 tournaments since 1992 and I am the same strength.

The player above is not at all an outlier in this regard. I never yet observed a kid who achieved an impressive degree of skill in chess without spending this kind of time. So while I continue to be impressed by the dedication and ability of young kids who are really strong, I stopped thinking that they are magic learning machines whose age makes them unreachably capable. The author's daughter at least has regular coaching, which I suppose the author doesn't have. Does he even spend more time on the game than her? I bet he doesn't.

<comment><USER3> A famous competitive programming prodigy is tourist[1]. You can find his rating graph starting from 2006 on topcoder when he was just 12 years old: [https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA...](https://www.topcoder.com/members/tourist/details/?track=DATA_SCIENCE&subTrack=SRM)

He's now indisputably the best competitive programmer in the world. But it's comforting to know that he too had to slowly grow over many years starting from a mere mortal 1200 rating.

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

<comment><USER4> Never really liked the structure of Topcoder and similar competitions most of the "skill" is just memorizing the algorithms that show up frequently and practicing typing out the solutions fast. A great mathematician would be able to finish a math exam quicker and more accurately than a student. But someone that spends all their time practicing speedrunning math exams would smoke him, only a fool would say the speedrunner is more talented at mathematics than the mathematician that understands the material deeply and has innovated and contributed to the field.

<comment><USER5> Topcoder is kinda flawed, but competitions like the IOI and ICPC are quite legit. In addition, `tourist`is the top performer on codeforces as well as basically any competitive programming site

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started chess at about 900 lichess, and plateaued at 1800(10+0 rapid).

What got me from 900-1100 was playing carefully and evaluating my move before I played it(can this piece be taken/is there a mating strategy for my opponent), to prevent blunders

What got me from 1100-1400 was learning two solid openings (Ruy lopez for both sides/ Grunfeld against 1.d4)

1400-1600 was doing hella tactic puzzles, and putting myself in my opponent's position and looking for his tactics

1600-1800 i have no idea, just practice i guess

John Bartholomew's strategy videos and Saint Louis Chess Club opening videos were probably the best resources for me to learn

<comment><USER6> Openings are the killer for me - I can never remember them, and it feels like a cheat to just remember a particular opening and trot out all the same moves all the time anyway.

But then I lose because I've made an obvious mistake during the opening...

<comment><USER7> It's more important to remember the theme of an opening than the specifics of the multiple lines sprouting from it. For instance some openings revolve around having a bishop on a strong diagonal and an important central square or two to hold. If you remember these themes a lot of the available moves become (relatively) easy to work out, because you know why the moves are made in the first place. The best thing you can do is find resources that cover the themes as much as the lines/moves themselves, some of the Lichess studies are good, some just cover moves though which isn't helpful.

I've played a lot of people that go down 12 moves of an opening they remembered only to falter as soon as their memory runs out. It's very common, and you will always run out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I played a little as a child (enough to beat my dad, who was a complete beginner). I've become quite addicted in the last couple of years (and yes, I'm 40 now). While I agree with the sentiments that "it's a total waste of time and I should learn something useful", it's still fun to have a challenging distraction.

One thing I've found it quite good for is _learning to lose_. I _hate_ losing at games, even now, but, the nice thing about being a beginner chess player is that there are bazillions of people better than you to play against, and lose to!.

On the topic of improving, as others have said, the training puzzles on lichess are great. I've also got quite a lot of value out of [0] chessable.com . Nice little site, teaches you some basic openings which are really fun when people fall into the traps!

[0] [https://www.chessable.com/](https://www.chessable.com/)

<comment><USER9> I never played against good chess players really I once went 8 years without losing while playing every chance I got. Now that I've found good players to play against, I'm honestly scared to play because I'm sure to be worse than somebody. I would honestly appreciate some elaboration on how you learned to lose.

I'm not an amazing player at all, just sheltered.

<comment><USER8> Somewhat tongue in cheek, but, learning to lose is easy, just play online and you'll get plenty of practice ;)

I think just losing regularly helps to make it easier? Maybe. I still don't like it very much! Good luck :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Learning chess is a very time consuming skill. I don't think there is any other way besides playing lots of games against players better then you, or to endlessly drill problems, to get any better.

I am not sure how this fact lines up well with a 40yo lifestyle. This is usually the time of life where you are raising kids or making career moves, so I am not sure just how many available hours one has for study.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't say I understand devoting such time to learning a completely useless, extremely narrow, skill. Learning mathematics is useful. Learning to play a guitar is useful. Learning to program is useful.

I came to this conclusion in college. It was hard enough learning math, thermo, physics, etc., and seemed a complete waste of time to get better at chess. The former consumed my mental energies.

<comment><USER12> How are guitar playing skills useful if you don't plan to be a professional musician?

<comment><USER13> You can entertain people around a campfire. Or even on plastic benches on a concrete patio outside of a Nowhere, Arkansas highway gas station that sells milkshakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have loved chess on and off all my life, but it is an extremely harsh mistress. I'm going through the same thing, trying to become a more reliable teacher for my kids right now, but it's a fraught process.

Chess is an utterly unforgiving game: I have played many more hours of things like Magic: the Gathering in my life, the creator of which quite rightly understood that adding variance to a game means lower skilled players actually have a chance (and some actual fun) against higher skilled ones. Navigating a child's demands that you "play your hardest" against them can be quite difficult. The thing I hate most about chess is that you can play well, perhaps for _weeks_ in a correspondence game, and then one mistake undoes it all, with no hope of coming back (but then again, never resign).

The lessons you need to learn are all very valuable: the pure skill of calculation is extremely difficult but if you can teach yourself to concentrate, visualise positions and juggle the variations, I think these are actually brain powers you can take into other aspects of your life.

The rote learning aspects aren't that fun, but again, being able to memorise literally hundreds of branching openings not only buys you free wins, but teaches you a lot of patience and general schemes for memorization (or so I imagine, I am terrible at this, especially on shorter time controls).

Learning to lose is very difficult, but the one kindness chess does is that there is (at lower levels of play) almost always a reason your lose.

The interplay of tactics and strategy is very satisfying, knowing when to use your instinct or general heuristics, instead of when to brute force calculate a move, is again the type of skill you find yourself more aware of in other pursuits.

The best thing about learning chess in 2019 though is there is so much great content. Thousands of hours of stuff from the St Louis and Atlanta Chess Clubs, coverage of every major tournament on Chess24 and myriad Twitch channels, and games of every possible skill level, variation and time control at your fingertips. ChessKid is also an excellent app + educational environment for kids.

</comment><comment><USER15> I highly recommend lichess. Create an account and bookmark it and play endgames when you need a "distraction": [https://lichess.org/training](https://lichess.org/training)

<comment><USER14> Worth noting that lichess and all of the code behind it (some of which is algorithmically very interesting) is developed in the open[0], and Thibault Duplessis even regularly livecodes on Twitch[1].

0: [https://github.com/ornicar](https://github.com/ornicar)

1: [https://www.twitch.tv/ornicar2](https://www.twitch.tv/ornicar2)

<comment><USER15> I discovered lichess when I was looking for JS framework for a project and found mithril.js, where they referenced it as a successful user of the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> this is the same with poker. lots of resources and more opportunity to play the game.

in the early 2000s internet poker starting getting more and more popular and more and more knowledge was made available because of the internet. more and more players trained on the internet began showing up to live tournaments.

a lot of the "live" pros hated the way "internet kids" were playing poker but at the same time those internet kids had probably played more hands than most of the live pros did.

in a live setting you're lucky to get 30 hands an hour. probably more average would be 10-15. meanwhile players online were getting anywhere from 75-90 hands an hour.... per table. okay players probably could get to 4 tables with no trouble while at the extreme end there were people 24-tabling. 24*75 = 1800. that's about 60 hours at best for a live player.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was never able to "get" chess.

I know the rules, I can methodically scan every position, but I feel that I can never really think more than one step ahead. I just start feeling restless, get overwhelmed at the board and my processing slows to a crawl.

I might look calm and focused on the outside, but inside I'm fidgety and thinking "what the fuck am I looking at? how can I ever think of a larger strategy when I can barely think of a move that doesn't get my pieces killed?" It feels like I become a very slow triply-nested for-loop.

I work at a FANG and am very good at my job, so don't need the validation. Still a bummer. Wish I was better.

<comment><USER18> Chess excellence depends very much on experience: the more you play and train, the better you get. See, people say it's the mind game, but it only depends on the intelect as long both players are similarly experienced.

Also, a game of chess is long and can get boring: in the beginning of a game people usually play "by the book", trying to adhere to some basic principles (control the center of the table, pull out your pieces into play, protect your king by castling, etc).

In the middle of the game, as long as you managed to avoid losing any piece so far, is where the actual play takes place, when you try to gain material advantage and this is where I spend most of my thinking fuel.

The end of the game, again, depends very much on training and experience, because there are known strategies how one should play with pawn and king against king for example. Of course, some of the strategies are obvious, like promoting your pawn to a queen and mate your opponent, but others are not, like gaining the opposition to be able to promote/block the pawn.

I don't have too much patience playing whole games myself, but I like training my mind by making chess puzzles/tactics daily, which I'd recommend you try yourself: your offered a position where you know that after a few moves you have to end up in advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11653538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11653538)

</comment><comment><USER20> > As we get older, there is one thing at which we get worse: Being a novice.

Personally, I love being a novice. I intentionally seek it since mid 20 (being ~40 years old now), by learning a new game, mastering a microcontroller or programming language, etc.

I still don't notice a "slow-down" in my learning process... but maybe because learning is a process that I train continuously?

What I do notice is a _mechanical-learning_ slow-down, for example, if I pick a new videogame, it takes a while until I "catch-up" with aiming, or button sequences, etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> Has anyone taken up a hobby for the sole reason of staving off a neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's?

<comment><USER22> [https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early- retirement/av...](https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early- retirement/aviation)

Flying as a Challenge

If you go to the local general aviation airport, you'll find lots of guys in their 60s and 70s who are tackling challenges that are way beyond your own capabilities. Certainly these guys are much sharper and in better mental and physical shape than the average person of their age. Flying requires mental acuity and real-time decision-making that seems to keep pilots young. A lot of older folks seem to be preoccupied with trivial matters, such as organizing their junk mail or minutia within their childrens' lives. Old pilots don't seem to be subject to these preoccupations and the topics of their conversations have more in common with young pilots than with other old people.

The very process of training to be a pilot is challenging and inherently motivational. The FAA sets up milestones and checkpoints: Private Pilot, Instrument Rating, Commercial Pilot, Multi-Engine Rating, Helicopter Rating, Seaplane Rating, Airline Transport Pilot. A desire to excel was probably a factor in your ability to retire young. If you have that desire, the FAA rating system gives you a lot of opportunities to improve and prove yourself.

One of the tragedies of getting older is the narrowing of one's activities. An elementary school kid will write poetry, paint, play music, do math, write prose, etc. An adult will do three or four things that he or she can do at a professional level of competence. These are the things for which an adult draws a paycheck or these are the things that the adult finds rewarding because they can be done so well.

Learning to fly is an opportunity to go back to elementary school. No human is a natural aviator. Everything has to be learned, which by itself is stimulating.

<comment><USER23> I'm relatively young (31) and learned to fly last year. Out of all activities I've ever been involved in (sports, programming, executive life, teaching, etc.), flying has BY FAR made me most aware of my mental state and thought process. Nothing I've ever done has made me feel so task-saturated and consciously aware of how well (or poorly) I was coping with a cognitive task.

Not only can it sometimes be a very task-saturating environment (especially single-pilot IFR flying), but the added "nerves" of flying make it a perfect combo for you to become hyper-aware of yourself in a way that I hadn't yet experienced. The most interesting part of the whole ordeal for me has been to see my progression in terms of how my brain could handle the tasks at hand. At first, I remember intently listening to the weather report on the radio only to IMMEDIATELY forget the information I had just heard, such was my cognitive overload. Now, I can be in the middle of clouds, seeing nothing, punching information into the flight computer while hand flying the plane listening to ATC in one ear and talking to my passenger on the other. To have been acutely aware how slowly my brain adapted to the new demands I was placing on it was incredibly interesting.

<comment><USER21> How much does it cost to learn to fly?

<comment><USER22> Depending on rental and instruction costs in your area, how frequently you are able to fly, and how much time you spend studying and preparing, total cost to obtain an FAA private certificate will be somewhere in the range between $8,000 to $12,000. You'll pay as you go per flight hour rather than writing a single check up front. People have been burned writing checks up front, so I wouldn't recommend that you even consider it.

Under Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) Part 61, a student pilot is required to have a minimum of 40 flight hours to take the practical exam ("checkride") but also an endorsement from your Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI) that you are ready. I have heard that the U.S. average is 70-something hours. An alternative is FAR Part 141, which has a highly structured curriculum that the FAA approves. Part 141 programs have lower required minimums for flight hours. Part 61 flight schools have more of a mom & pop feel.

Elsewhere I wrote a detailed breakdown of the possibilities for Part 61 training that may be useful to you.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/HuntsvilleAlabama/comments/6u1ytj/w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HuntsvilleAlabama/comments/6u1ytj/whos_driving_up_north_for_the_eclipse/dlrze6x/)

A decent approximation of your cost function under Part 61 is

        cost = dual_hours * (ac_rate + cfi_rate) +
               solo_hours * ac_rate +
               medical_exam_fee +
               written_exam_fee +
               checkride_fee +
               gear

You have choice of your aircraft rental rate (ac_rate above). Choose the cheapest available and that can carry both you and your CFI along with required fuel. The Cessna 152, a two-place slow trainer, in my area rents for just under $100 per Hobbs meter hour "wet" (fuel included) but only has 574 pounds of useful load. Your or your CFI's size may push you into a Cessna 172 or Piper Cherokee. The Hobbs meter ticks only while the engine is running, not by wall clock or wristwatch time.

Your next great influence is over total flight hours that you will require, solo and dual (i.e., with a CFI). Flying frequently will minimize forgetting and retraining. Be diligent about required reading and study that your instructor will assign. Rehearse maneuvers, checklists, procedures, etc. ("chair flying") at home before and after lessons, on bad-weather days, and whenever you can.

Being a member of AOPA can get you a discount on your knowledge test ("written") fee. Gear may include a headset, view-limiting device (hood or foggles), E6B, plotter, flight bag, and Electronic Flight Bag software such as DroidEFB or ForeFlight. If you're concerned about cost, borrow or buy used. You can get a decent headset new for under $200. Foggles, E6B (a circular slide rule), and plotter each go for less than $30 new.

The checkride fee you're probably stuck with ($400 to $800) because an FAA contractor known as a Designated Pilot Examine (DPE) will have to conduct your checkride and judge whether you performed the required tasks and maneuvers according to the Airman Certification Standards (ACS), and there are only so many DPEs per geographic area. You may be able to shop around for the medical exam fee ($100 to $200), but similarly you have to visit a physician with the Aviation Medical Examiner (AME) designation to get your medical certificate ("medical").

Good luck! Pilots always love talking about flying, so come back with more questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.chesstactics.org](https://www.chesstactics.org)

I believe I picked up on this site from HN years ago and I found it to be a great resource. Easy to digest a lot of the basic concepts to improve your play.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if learning to program at age 40 vs age <10 would be similar?

</comment><comment><USER9> I played chess constantly from 5 until 25. I don't feel like I have time for it these days and I miss it. I can promise that my concentration and ability to visualize has decreased since I stopped playing

Edit: I never played online which might be a problem. Not having a physical board and another human present really throws me off, or else I wonder if I would still play

</comment><comment><USER26> I am going through this very process at the moment. Picked up chess for the first time three months ago and trying to learn it. Studying hours per day. It is kind of an experiment. How good can I get in a couple of months at the age of 37?

So far, it seems, not that good... Chess is a lot tougher to learn than I initially thought.

<comment><USER27> how are you learning though? Who you play against is pretty important. You need to try and play against the strongest players you can find. Dont be afraid of losing to them

<comment><USER28> Playing against strongest players (or engines) demoralizes me. It makes me want to avoid the game. I find I need to play against a challenger that is better than me but one that I can beat about 30% of the time.

Back in the day I was pretty good at Warcraft 2 - solo and missions. I have a friend that never lost to me - not even once, although later I found I was close on two occasions to beat him. In the end I lost interest to play with him because in a way I would know the outcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've started relearning chess after having played it a bit with my dad who learned from Microsoft chess. I came back and was ranked around 800 in December and have increased to around 1300 on lichess. Making sure to try to figure out what my opponent is wanting to do on his next move (to stop my own blunders) and learning the most common variations to an opening for each white and black contributed to a massive increase in rating. I imagine more focus on not blundering and learning some of the opening traps I tend to get caught in will probably get me to 1800 online.</comment>


Stuck and Discouraged - <AUTHOR>

I've been following this site for 3-4 years. Recently graduated college and decided to move out to Seattle to look for a job. 7 months of this so far and I can't believe the general lack of interest in what I've done and can do.... I knew I was taking a risk in moving out here to look, so I initially planned to stay for 3 months, but now I think I've overstayed. I'm getting sick of this feeling and everyone telling me that "I'll find something".
Is anyone hiring a web/mobile/desktop (php, javascript, obj-c, java) developer in Seattle or hiring remote workers? I wish I could afford to move out anywhere to interview, but that is impossible without assistance at this point...
or can recommend me to your companies' open positions?
I'm a self taught programmer and I know I have the motivation to do what I do best... <comment><USER2> Seven months and you haven't gotten more specific feedback than 'you'll find something' on where you're lacking?

You need to figure out specifically what's wrong and pose a more specific question. Otherwise no one will be able to help.

Do you have any projects to show your prowess?

How many job applications have you pushed out? Are you targeting them? (web/mobile/desktop is reallly broad.) How is your networking? (the interpersonal type)

Do you get interviews? If you do get them, where do you tend to stumble?

This is my experience -- four months of self-taught programming to a job, in the Bay Area.

[https://medium.com/life-hacks/3e990967a1f3](https://medium.com/life- hacks/3e990967a1f3) [https://medium.com/tech- blogging/79fcfd2d66e8](https://medium.com/tech-blogging/79fcfd2d66e8)

I understand you're discouraged, but this post comes off as whiny. Consider this a kick in the pants.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've applied without much success on craigslist, indeed, cybercoders, simplyhired, weworkremotely, stackoverflow careers.

1 or 2 interviews per month and yes, I do ask for feedback... Most will tell you that you they are going go forward with other candidates or other vague saying which doesn't tell me much.

Whiny? I am not saying "Give me a job" or "I deserve a job" I am looking for work.

<comment><USER2> Okay, cool. I'd go to events, meet people in organizations using php/JS stack (or other tech stacks you know), ask them to grab lunch. Your story could go something like this:

"I'm a self-taught programmer looking for my first full-time programming job. If I describe my experience, would you be able to describe the skillsets I need to develop in order to be successful in your organization?"

I did this repeatedly and got tons of useful feedback. See my customer development essay in earlier link.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try to! Hopefully someone can point a direction or help with what I need to do to get better.

<comment><USER3> There's the open source path: while you're looking for a job, get involved in an open source project that solves a problem you like, really can be anything. Get involved, participate, share ideas, code stuff up, commit. This may take longer, but this is a good way to get a job in something you like. Because contributors are employees somewhere, and they will recognize your talent, and know where to apply it. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am more or less in the same boat as you are. I graduated roughly a year ago, and I've been trying to find a developer position in any big tech city (SV, Seattle, NY, Boston, etc). I've gotten many phone/skype interviews, even got flown out a few times for onsite interviews, but I suppose I'm just not that great of an interviewer since I've been rejected a ridiculous amount of times.

It's really discouraging, but I've began teaching myself a lot of new technologies and started working on some personal projects (one was even on front page of HN a few months ago). I think the tech industry is a very merit based industry, and if I just get good enough (or at least appear good enough) then I will eventually land a good position.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad to have read this. I don't list on my resume or talk about the technologies that I've dabbled with personally or academically since they are not my core set.

Maybe I suck at interviewing, but there's no helpful feedback even when I ask. One company told me to look for a junior position at a smaller company for "more experience to be stronger candidate" even though the position that I applied for was a junior position. It was one of those interviews where you answer all the questions and feel great about it, but the hiring manager has some hidden doubts.

My biggest issue is getting interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might be able to help you look for a position at my current employer. Email is on my personal page linked off of my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are you working on besides looking for a job?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actively working on my personal projects (a online game, community moderated forum/comments system, online journal and lastly my php/javascript library that helps me reuse what I build across my personal projects.

<comment><USER6> Just throwing out ideas.

Do these demonstrate specific skills, knowledge and abilities directly related to the jobs for which you are applying?

Are the repositories open source?

Are you contributing to other people's open source projects?

Is your resume available on more mainstream job sites such as LinkedIn?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wholeheartedly believe that the projects I am doing use general skills, knowledge, and abilities for PHP/JS developer positions.

Some of my projects are open source on github.

I haven't contributed to anyone else's open source projects. That should not be a deal breaker though.

My resume is available on CareerBuilder, which is basically a huge feed for recruiters. I've applied to recruiters who email me, but never a response back.

I do not have a LinkedIn, but am considering it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why is my Nest Thermostat talking to Facebook? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tomasmcguinness/status/1292536538719559681 <comment><USER2> That looks like a snapshot from the UniFi Network manager.

Based on my experiences with UniFi gear, which I like and am running right now, I'd take any of their DPI and threat detection stuff with a full meter cube of salt. It doesn't even report local network flows and traffic statistics correctly.

<comment><USER3> The screenshot also shows fitbit, omegele, and even IMAP4 traffic.

My first guess would be that the Nest thermostat is now occupying an IP address that was formerly assigned to other devices. Now that the Nest thermostat is at that address, the old packets are mistakenly attributed to the Nest thermostat.

<comment><USER2> You'd hope they'd use MAC address instead of IP, but I fear you may well be right.

<comment><USER4> you only know the IP not the MAC of the server you are communicating with over the internet.

<comment><USER5> This is about local MAC not remote MAC

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like misleading FUD. I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions based on a random Tweet like this.

I suspect this is a flaw in the DPI system rather than Nest itself. It sounds like UniFi DPI inaccuracy is a known thing [0]. And, Omegle?? And zero bytes downloaded?

I just don't want to repeat what happened on HN a few weeks ago with that tweet about Apple refunds.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/56b6cp/unifi_cont...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/56b6cp/unifi_controller_extremely_inaccurate_when_it/)

EDIT: for context, I'm taking the approach of legal systems, where what matters is not whether someone is guilty, but whether there is sufficient evidence for them to be treated as such. Sure, maybe they do send a few KB to Omegle, but this tweet is nowhere close to enough evidence to make that claim

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it the nest thermostat, or is it the nest app?

If its the nest app, does it offer Facebook login?

If its the nest app and has the Facebook SDK, that's why.

<comment><USER8> What is the business of the Facebook SDK doing in a thermostat app? I don't feel this explanation is sufficient.

<comment><USER9> Because software engineering is expensive so the guy who wrote the app got paid peanuts and told to implement the login in 2 hours because that's how many "story points" were attached to the story. If you take too long, it will show up on your performance review, so instead, I'll just drag in the random Facebook SDK just to enable login... and your data's gone to Facebook!

Yay, Silicon Valley!

<comment><USER10> Note that the Facebook Platform Policy[1] _requires_ the use of their SDK:

> Native iOS and Android apps that implement Facebook Login must use our > official SDKs for login.

[1]: [https://developers.facebook.com/policy/](https://developers.facebook.com/policy/)

<comment><USER11> Only if you need to use Facebook login.

I think the point is that lots of non-facebook apps could implement non- facebook login and avoid Facebook all together but they don't for various non- technical reasons.

<comment><USER12> Lots of apps implement Facebook login _in addition to_ their own login because users ask "How do I log in with Facebook?" and get upset when you tell them they can't.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how much flak you'd get for creating a "facebook login" that is just the signup workflow... if it's not in your DB, just push it as a new record for followup "signins"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apart from all the other comments here - UniFi's network monitor being garbage, the app using the Facebook SDK for login, etc - the real reason your thermostat or fridge or cat feeder or vacuum cleaner sends data to an adversarial network is because it can. When you bought the device and skipped over the small print to get it to do what you bought it for without having to plough through half a bible's worth of legalese you, most likely unintentionally and unknowingly, gave it permission to do stuff like that. It would have been worded in woolly phrases about 'sharing data with partners' for the purpose of 'improving and personalising service' and possibly to 'present targeted offers from partners' but all that is just newspeak for milking your data for profiling and advertising purposes.

The solution is equally clear and simple: don't allow these things to access the 'net, put them behind a firewall which only allows traffic inside your own 'controller area network'. Use a VPN to tunnel into this CAN to set your temperature, feed the cat, mow the lawn and whatnot. If this sounds elaborate you might want to consider doing away with all this 'smart' functionality and just get a 'dumb' fridge/vacuum/cat/etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> 7 packets each to Facebook and Omegle. The Facebook could be related to Facebook logins, but Omegle? Something weird is going on there.

<comment><USER15> Bad DPI data would be my guess.

<comment><USER16> Dots Per Inch?

<comment><USER17> Deep Packet Inspection. They must be attributing packets incorrectly because it makes 0 sense that the nest app is communicating with Omegle

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Omegle

That seems even harder to explain, at least for me ...

<comment><USER19> Maybe because of the Nest Security Camera and sharing some codebase.

but still, impossible to explain in both cases.

<comment><USER18> It makes me think we're dealing with a misunderstanding here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To tell you if you're hot or not.

</comment><comment><USER21> Because you invited the monster into your home.

All things Nest went into the garbage as soon as the Google purchase was announced. It was quite disappointing.

<comment><USER22> Why did it take that long? The stories of Nest doing weird things with data were around before the Google purchase.</comment></comment>


API Design is UI for Developers - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/03/api-design-is-ui-for-developers/#comment-15885 <comment><USER2> The sentiment in the article looks laudable at first glance, but I have _real_ trouble when the first paragraph ends with this:

> In many ways, PHP is that programming language. It's simple, logical

and does not follow with "just kidding". Especially when the article itself contains things like:

> Keep your parameters consistent.

or

> What's easier to remember "gnxID" or "getNextId"?

or

> Consistency is a virtue. If you have two similar APIs (say, search & read) > they should take the same parameters and produce identically formatted > responses.

Furthermore, while many of TFA's demands are the "well... duh" kind (though they do bear repeating), quite a few are also highly debatable:

> Just because you love Ruby, doesn't mean everyone does. Show examples in a > variety of languages.

Not sure why, as long as the examples are clear and readable (meaning Java is probably out as the only demo language), the language used for the examples should not matter. Stripe is awesome[0] but I don't think that thing should be termed as a requirement, let alone a "basic requirement".

> * Yes, you love XML. Guess what? I don't!

> * The customer is always right. If the customer (developer) wants JSON, XML, > PHPobject, or just plain text – you should give it to them.

> * It's the API designer's job to make life easy for developers – so reply in > whatever formats the developer wants.

Is a second — significantly worse — iteration of the one above (and nonsensical in the face of the latter demand that the API developer provides libraries in a variety of languages: why do you care what the response format is if it's all hidden behind an access library exactly?). Are multiple response formats awesome? Sure. Are they a requirement? Fuck no, developers are not babies, as long as they have tools which let them process your responses (meaning ASN.1 is probably the wrong response format in most cases) they'll handle it just fine.

> The Wikipedia API is a brilliant example of this. They have a human readable > response for their API calls.

The link leads to a dump of the XML response in an HTML page [1] in which lines are not wrapped and the non-text content of the response is a uniform and unreadable shade of blue. Meanwhile in every browser released in the last 15 years the original XML response [2] has syntax coloration, nicely wrapped lines and the ability to fold sub-trees you don't care about.

If [1] is brilliant, I'll do without brilliance thank you very much.

TFA's demands/recommendations are to be taken with a significant grain of salt: there's good, there's bad, and you'll have to pick them apart on your own.

While it does only cover documentary issues (which really are 30~50% of TFA) and not API design, I'd strongly recommend reading Parse's "Designing Great API Docs" instead[3], I find it comes across far better and... it documents what it preaches via examples for almost all its "bullet points".

[0] <https://stripe.com/docs/api?lang=curl#top>

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=lang...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=langlinks&lllimit=200&llurl&titles=API&redirects=)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=lang...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=langlinks&lllimit=200&llurl&titles=API&redirects=&format=xml)

[3] <http://blog.parse.com/2012/01/11/designing-great-api-docs/>

<comment><USER3> I'm the author - please allow me to clarify.

1) These are some hastily tossed off thoughts on a Sunday afternoon; not a manifesto. Quite happy to be taken to task on any of the points.

2) PHP is a perfect beginner language. Having tried everything from C, ASM, Java, Prolog, Java etc - I'd much rather play around in PHP. Ruby is similar - it's a well designed language with fairly little cruft - but I've limited experience in it.

3) As I say - most should be obvious. Yet most APIs aren't well designed.

4) Primarily, I'm looking at this from the POV of someone who spends a lot of time at hackdays. Yes, if you've got a week to learn the API, it doesn't really matter how your provide the API. But if you want people to get started quickly, provide as many languages and good libraries as possible.

5) You're probably right about the Wikipedia example. I think Apigee provides a nicer way of looking at a response.

Thanks for the link to Parse - looks interesting.

To reiterate - these aren't designed as a concrete example of best practice, just a way of looking at the problem which I don't think many people have considered.

Thanks for the comment - I may update the piece to reflect some of your very fair criticisms.

T

<comment><USER4> Try python - it would blow your mind. For 7 years, I too was a PHP believer for its simplicity. It was my favorite language by far. 1.2 year ago, I started to use python and was hesitant with it at first. As I worked more and more in python, I simply fell in love it. It does lot of greats things that PHP does (dynamic arrays, dictionaries, and functional programming) and adds lot more functionality that PHP is missing.

1\. How would you add a new element to an array? PHP: array[] = 2 Python: array += [2]

2\. How to combine 2 arrays? PHP: ?? array_merge(...) ?? Python: array += array <\- it is as simple as appending to a string.

Lot more fun examples: [http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/han...](http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/handout.html#swap- values)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm building a public API in my current job and, a few weeks ago, I was scouting around for the good API design advice. Absolutely far and away the best resource that I found was this Google TechTalk by Joshua Bloch:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw>

If you're interested in the topic and haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so ASAP.

<comment><USER6> Building the API for Pwinty (<http://www.pwinty.com>) I found the Dropbox API docs to be a really good example of how to structure your documentation - <http://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/api>

All the resources are documented in the same way, it is nicely formatted, and easy to understand.

<comment><USER2> Parse's blog has a pretty good article on documenting APIs[0], with links to a number of nicely one API documentations (not dropbox's, but Github's, Stripe's, Backbone's, Mailgun's and their own)

[0] <http://blog.parse.com/2012/01/11/designing-great-api-docs/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've started a small experiment in self-documenting REST APIs.

It's a quick and dirty Ruby gem that exposes CSV data with RESTful endpoints (read-only for now) with a pretty docs page that automagically gives you:

1\. Example code

2\. Documentation for every single function

3\. Human readable requests/responses

Automatic generation of client SDKs is a big TODO.

If you're still interested, check out <http://github.com/adelevie/restivus>.

<comment><USER2> > I've started a small experiment in self-documenting REST APIs.

Reading your docs.erb, the core structure (of the docs, and of the APIs it will document) seems to be along the lines of URL > Verbs > Content.

According to Fielding, you probably shouldn't call it REST or RESTful, because it's not[0]:

> A REST API should spend almost all of its descriptive effort in defining the > media type(s) used for representing resources and driving application state, > or in defining extended relation names and/or hypertext-enabled mark-up for > existing standard media types. _Any effort spent describing what methods to > use on what URIs of interest should be entirely defined within the scope of > the processing rules for a media type (and, in most cases, already defined > by existing media types)_. [Failure here implies that out-of-band > information is driving interaction instead of hypertext.]

and

> _A REST API must not define fixed resource names or hierarchies_ (an obvious > coupling of client and server). Servers must have the freedom to control > their own namespace. Instead, allow servers to instruct clients on how to > construct appropriate URIs, such as is done in HTML forms and URI templates, > by defining those instructions within media types and link relations. > [Failure here implies that clients are assuming a resource structure due to > out-of band information, such as a domain-specific standard, which is the > data-oriented equivalent to RPC's functional coupling].

That your documentation is function-driven:

> Documentation for every single function

also hints at this being RPC-over-HTTP more than REST (which is fine, as long as it's called correctly).

[0] [http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be- hyperte...](http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext- driven)

<comment><USER7> Hey masklinn, I'm totally receptive to constructive criticism like this, so can you make it _even more_ constructive? :)

I've seen many "RESTful" APIs with this structure:

GET / => index

GET /<id> => show

GET /?someparams=someattrs => filtered index

POST / (with encoded params) => create

PUT /<id> (with encoded params) => update

DELETE /<id> => delete

If you made a Rails scaffold, and got rid of any of the POST, PUT, and DELETE actions, and then added some basic filtering to GET "/", you would have a nearly identical API as generated and documented by Restivus.

<comment><USER2> > Hey masklinn, I'm totally receptive to constructive criticism like this, so > can you make it even more constructive? :)

Sure, just ask, I'll answer if I can.

> I've seen many "RESTful" APIs with this structure:

Yes, and that API is not even remotely RESTful according to Fielding (whom you may or may not agree with, but he's the guy who thought up REST and coined the acronym). It can be a fine API, but not RESTful: it's not hypertext-driven, instead it's a (hierarchically organized) set of function calls mapped onto HTTP.

<comment><USER7> Between your edits and this reply, there's a lot to chew on, but I'll focus on one point which leaves me dumbfounded:

> also hints at this being RPC-over-HTTP more than REST (which is fine, as > long as it's called correctly).

In any context, documenting every function is good practice.

<comment><USER2> > In any context, documenting every function is good practice.

If your API is procedural (is RPC), then yes, procedures being your core abstractions that's what you document.

But REST is not procedural, the core RESTful abstraction is the resource and it is that resource which provides state transitions from itself (to itself or to other resources). In HTTP these transitions are a triplet of (method, URI[, body]) but that's incidental.

Because the core abstraction of REST is the resource, resource types (or media types) is what you document, and the possible transitions from a media type are documented as part of that media type (more precisely, the media type's documentation indicates what the transition hookpoints are — for instance in HTML they're <link>, <a> and <form> — and what the semantics of those hookpoints are relative to the resource — if any).

To clarify, I have absolutely no issue with your goal of documenting your API and every endpoint of your API, I just take issue with your claim of documenting RESTful APIs when the very structure of your tool and production preclude any possibility of RESTfulness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great sentiment. One thing that jumped out at me was "Don't engage in a needless dance where developers have to take several steps to do a single action."

I think if you want to follow the "rule of least surprise" from the unix school of thought, this is probably a somewhat dangerous suggestion. Having one call go and do several things can make that call become something of a black box. It kind of breaks the rule of transparency as well. If I find myself having to do a dance with the API, as the end user there's nothing stopping me from writing my own helper code to group those common calls together; I'd prefer an API with total transparency and the least amount of surprise, which is ultimately more flexible.

<comment><USER9> Even better, IMO, would be a layered API, with a lower layer of 'atom' (atomic would be a good name, if it wasn't taken for something else already) calls tht do one thing, and a clearly separate layer of 'molecule' calls that help you perform common operations. For example, reading a text file into a string would be a 'molecule' call. That call would not need to be as flexible as a hand-coded open-read-convert bytes to characters- close chain. For example, it could assume a UTF-8 encoding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree, except about C++, and PHP is kind of a mess, not what I would use as an example of a simple and logical language.

</comment><comment><USER11> _When I first started learning C++ (back in the bad old days)_

Siiiigh. Here we go again, the C++ hate bandwagon. Let's see why he thinks this.

 _I was convinced that any 1st year student could design a better programming language._

That's normal for someone who doesn't yet have any idea what he's talking about.

 _One which behaved in a sane fashion without a lot of legacy cruft._

Okay, that's kind of vague...

 _In many ways, PHP is that programming language._

Nope. No, it isn't. Not at all. PHP is a mishmash of C-ish APIs that get things randomly backwards along with some handy built-in constructs. Also, it has some of the most appalling documentation of any mainstream language.

 _works without having to know lots of esoteric computer science._

I would love to know what "esoteric computer science" necessary to use C++, or any language for that matter. But that's not contained in this link-bait-y post.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start developing distributed software? - <AUTHOR> I want to start building distributed applications like chats, forums, etc. What is the easiest way to start? What papers/software/blog posts, etc. to read? <comment><USER2> At what level are you wanting to develop?

I ask as there are significant differences between the developer writing a "basic" distributed application that utilizes others work to handle the complexity of a distributed system and the guy/gal writing her own leader election (or raft type) algorithms etc. Not that either is better then another, but they are different levels which require different skills and/or mindsets.

Either way, I suggest you look at leader election, raft, time syncing etc so you have a reasonable understanding regardless of what level you decide to write at. Also, look at other applications that are distributed, read up on eventual consistency and just design systems on paper to identify issues. Take a look at systems like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, redis, mongodb etc that publish quite a bit about their architectures and where you can find good and bad about their designs (e.g. redis/mongo).

I will say one thing, if you don't already know it, time is critical in a distributed system. I do not think it can be overstated how important the time value is, as almost every action is usually coordinated or decided in relation to time.

edit (fixed some text)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I started reading some stuff (see some of my submissions). I also started learning elixir. Really fun language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want to e-mail me (my address is in my profile, obfuscated), I might be able to help (been doing networked multi-user applications since 2000, including 5.5 years at Google). This is a pretty complicated question, and depends a bunch on what you're trying to accomplish and what you already know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sent you an email yesterday, did you receive it? :)</comment></comment>


Two years without caffeine, a followup - <AUTHOR> http://bryanalexander.org/2014/12/23/two-years-without-caffeine/

<comment><USER2> That is quite interesting!

I recently quit _coffee_ , though not caffeine altogether. I just substituted about one liter of coffee per day with about one liter of green tea, which - at least the kind I am drinking - has way less caffeine. (And it tastes soooooo good! The coffee I used to drink tasted like industrial sewage in comparison!)

Before, when my alarm clock went off in the morning, I used to roll straigt out of bed into the kitchen and turn on my coffee maker before even getting dressed. Now, I make myself a pot of tea, when I arrive at work. I am still groggy when I get up in the morning, but less so, and it clears up pretty much by itself before I leave for work.

I remember the mid-afternoon crash rather well. ;-) I still get tired in the afternoon, but much less so than before.

I am not sure I want to quit caffeine completely (and besides, I really love the taste of green tea), but I find this post encouraging, if I ever wanted to try.</comment>


Bitwalking - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitwalking.com/ <comment><USER2> This kind of horseshit makes me insane:

> We believe that everyone should have the freedom, and ability, to make > money. A step is worth the same value for everyone - no matter who you are, > or where you are. What matters is how much you walk.

Earning money mostly comes through creating value for others. (When it doesn't, it comes from diverting value into your pockets.) Walking around is great, and I encourage everybody to do it. But pitching it as the "freedom to make money" is absurd. Talking as if random people walking around Africa can double their monthly income is obscene.

I can't believe the BBC would publish that article, either. I understand the tech press is mostly toothless, but even so I can't believe that such a hallucinatory scheme received only the mildest questioning.

I can't wait for this bubble to be over.

<comment><USER3> If you enjoyed the landing page, you'll love the Mandela quote at [http://www.bitwalking.com/about/](http://www.bitwalking.com/about/)

<comment><USER4> The missing closing quotation mark was the worst.

<comment><USER2> Here you go: "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can't tell whether this is sarcasm/toy-product or if it is real.

<comment><USER6> It's a prank on the verge of becoming a con :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very funny. I'm sure their very advanced security measures will prevent me from creating a nice passive income, earning mint while my smartphone lays motionless on the couch next to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> > We believe that everyone should have the freedom, and ability, to make > money.

Except for bed- or wheelchair-bound people. Fuck them, right?

<comment><USER8> My BedBucks startup will take care of it; soon, they'll be earning BedBucks every time they're in bed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the information sharing business booming, I just cannot in good faith use something like this. I'm almost 100% sure they are going to sell location data and (maybe) shopping habits.

</comment><comment><USER10> My guess, this is like a loyalty card, but it gives you points for been there rather than buying and it also works on different shops.

If that's the case the way of selling it, as if it is the best thing for your health, its obnoxious. They probably won't care if you walk of drive by as long as your mobile reaches the shop wifi so the customer -the shop- pays.

Location data selling, as other commenter noted, is a real possibility too.

EDIT: After reading the more complete bbc article seems like I was wrong. They say to be using gps and acelerometer data, no idea how it doesn't get hacked to death since both can be faked easily. They also mention that location data won't be for sale. I'm still sceptical.

<comment><USER11> The only practical application I see is it being a loyalty card for a gym. Members would earn points for exercising at their gym which could be redeemed for tchotckes. If the app implements geofencing it could be practical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't see how this could be real. Faking GPS data and simulating movement on a device you control is trivially easy. Add an incentive to obtain a benefit by deception and you have one broken product.

</comment><comment><USER13> Until proven otherwise, I'd say it's a scam. No explanation whatsoever, and running miner on a smartphone is a bad idea.

<comment><USER14> They covered it on the BBC's click show. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34872563](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34872563)

<comment><USER13> Thanks, that's much more informative than their website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been wondering whether this is a prank or a con, so I have looked into the people behind this. The whois record shows the domain registered to one Nissan Bahar of Keepod Ltd, London, UK.

You may remember Keepod, the $7 personal computer the size of a USB stick that runs Android[1]. It got insane media coverage circa 2014[2], has a respectable-looking Wikipedia page[3], got funded to the tune of $41k on Indiegogo[4], currently is out-of-sale. $7 for an equivalent of Chromebit, I hear you thinking? Well, not really. The "personal computer" part of the pitch is a lie. In reality Keepod is the same kind of a live USB distro that has been around for years. There is no added value.[5]

So it is a con. But the media coverage. Is. Insane. The quality of the website is stellar. The funding dollars will be real. And a year from now, another seductively implausible project will appear. I'm looking forward to it, this guy has talent!

[1] [http://www.keepod.com/](http://www.keepod.com/) [2] [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=keepod+site:bbc.co.uk](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=keepod+site:bbc.co.uk) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keepod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keepod) [4] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keepod-project-in- mathare...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/keepod-project-in-mathare#/) [5] [http://www.ictworks.org/2014/05/14/keepod- wasting-40000-to-r...](http://www.ictworks.org/2014/05/14/keepod- wasting-40000-to-reinvent-linux-on-a-stick/)

</comment><comment><USER15> seems my newly created account is shining

there were CRAZY ideas that changed the world but this BS isn't one of them. the math simply doesn't doesn't add up. if _everyone_ (except people that can't walk) is making money (3 USD/day is max) without _actually_ contributing back to society ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

how in the hell did they get funding is what I want to know

Bitsleeping™

</comment><comment><USER16> Seriously! Bit walking?! Give me a f __*ing break.

</comment><comment><USER17> Where does the money come from?

<comment><USER8> From walking!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting - <AUTHOR> Here's a question for you brilliant folks. Suppose you are at the end of a spectacular career — a writer, an engineer, a CEO, whatever. And that you've created a simple static site that showcases your life's work. Mostly HTML/CSS/PNGs. Maybe some downloadable files.
Suppose further that you have no kids.
You'd like to get this site hosted on a custom domain. You want it to be available as far into the future as possible. Money is not really a limitation. You can prepay. In fact, you want to prepay.
How would you go about setting up a simple HTML site to last far into the future? Which vendors would you use? What extra layers/protections would you build in?
Would you select the optimal DNS/registrar and host? Or would you select one vendor for all three functions? <comment><USER2> I'll give a non-technical answer: set up a legal trust. This is the typical way a person has their wishes carried out after their death.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hosting-your-website- aft...](https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hosting-your-website-after-death-- cms-23492)

Seems to be a decent read on the subject, it even shows at least one service (I just scanned it) that promised to do this then went belly up.

</comment><comment><USER4> The best way is to set up a trust. Domains and hosting have a maximum period before renewal longest being 20 years. A trust ensures the renewals are completed. One legitimate vendor e.g. Google, would be the best option.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's the goal? How long term is long-term? (A couple decades? A couple centuries? A couple millennia?)

For the really long term, printing something and getting it into some major archives (library of congress, etc) may be your best bet to persist information.

For somewhat long term, perhaps archive.org or another organization with a related mission might be part of the strategy?

</comment><comment><USER6> I had a similar idea of an "eternal bit" \- to break the problem down, how much would it cost to host a bit for the next X centuries? Not sure if there's a realistic or practical solution.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd use ipfs as the authoritative storage. Some scripts triggering archiving on the major internet archives.

You could, say, buy 3 tlds for the same name and have different strategies for each.

If money really isn't a problem you could put the data on the bitcoin blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER8> I know ramnode and ovh accept prepayment (maybe more than one year for ramnode).

The simplest is to make a static website, put it on GitHub pages, and make your domain point to that.</comment>


So long, and thanks for the Ph.D. - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/azuma.html

<comment><USER2> _"... We discovered that we could tell what performance group the interviewees belonged to within a minute or two by their attitudes toward people and politics. Individuals who were ranked low by their managers spoke of organizational politics as if it were poison. They were exceptionally annoyed by the people side of the business. ... They characterized the social side of organizations as "soft and gushy." They sounded like Spock turned bitter... The difference between them and those ranked at the bottom of the totem pole was clear. They had found a way to make peace with organizations, people, and politics. They climbed to the top of their field by mastering both hard things and soft and gushy people ..."_

Is this why people try so hard to be popular? Training for mastering the 'soft & gushy'?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an old old article. I read it many times when I was doing my CS PhD. There is a quote on initiative that always resonated with me. "The difference between people who exercise initiative and those who don't is literally the difference between night and day. I'm not talking about a 25 to 50 percent difference in effectiveness; I'm talking about a 5000-plus percent difference, particularly if they are smart, aware, and sensitive to others."

</comment><comment><USER4> The same article, posted on the author's homepage, hit HN about a month ago. There are some pretty good comments there as well. Check it out. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1999010>

I will say that, as I'm preparing for grad school, this sort of writing is incredibly helpful. If anyone else is considering writing a piece like this, I encourage you to do so.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is full of excellent advice- anybody out there thinking about a PhD would be well-advised to read it, and pay especially close attention to the part about figuring out _why_ you want the PhD.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else notice the mention of Randy Pausch? Quite sure this article was before he became famous for his "Last Lecture"

<comment><USER7> Sure. Pausch had a connection to Fred Brooks, who founded and built the CS program at UNC-CH. And Brooks was on Azuma's (the article's author) committee.</comment></comment>


Toilet paper orientation - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation <comment><USER2> I love the caption on the second image: "The improper under orientation".

I remember a crazy discussion a few years ago on the Something Awful Forums about wiping direction preference, which turned into a flamewar on the merits of wiping sitting up vs. wiping standing up or half-standing.

I had no idea people wiped standing up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Personally I'm an 'over' for functional and aesthetic reasons. I could never understand why some would be 'under's - but then again, I don't have pets/children, nor a mobile home.

<comment><USER3> As interesting as toilet paper orientation is to a community of programmers and entrepreneurs I don't appreciate your looking down on others. I know people who live in mobile homes and I don't like to see those people being looked down on for where they live (of all the things you could pick on a person for). In fact, I can't stand it.

It's bad enough what they go through from people who think they're better than they are (hint: you're not any better because your parents raised you in something more socially acceptable). It's clear that you don't know what it's like for them, but if you did you wouldn't make comments like that. If every day you heard people driving by yelling things like "trailer trash" at you then you might understand what I'm saying. Spread your subtle hate elsewhere.

Sorry to others for this long rant about a small, unconscionable remark. Condescension is a personal pet peeve.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, no need to apologize for your rant - you have the right to free speech.

I must ask though what gives you the impression that I'm looking down on others. When I wrote _"...I don't have pets/children, nor a mobile home"_ , that was merely a statement of fact. Read the article ( this bit: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation#Argume...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation#Arguments) ) and you'll see why I said what I said, with no malice nor condescension intended.

<comment><USER3> I took your remark as a statement that follows this frame: "I never understood why some people do [something I think is in poor taste], but then again I'm not [some class of people]."

From the Wikipedia article: Under in a recreational vehicle may reduce unrolling during driving.

Unless you confuse mobile homes with recreational vehicles, I doubt that this is what you intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is probably a good example for when '[Citation needed]' is taken a bit too seriously. 119 references!

<comment><USER5> It's probably a magnet for people wanting to delete it :) It's a shoddy article really and needs serious work.. I guess the cites are intended to make up for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hum, I thought I was the only one that have this problem with orientation.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad this vital issue has finally been raised in this community. I've been writing a checklist of issues to double-check before I launch my startup and almost overlooked this.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's certainly not a vital issue, but I'd say it's at least an interesting issue. I say that because it's one of those things that people take for granted. It's useful and interesting (at least it is for me!) to analyze the things that we do out of thoughtless habit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://i41.tinypic.com/20uwsg3.jpg>

However, this one has some points: <http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2009/03/great-debate.html></comment>


Ask HN: Is it OK to reverse engineer a file format for interoperability? - <AUTHOR>

Thinking about writing an app that will share a market with a widely used but very expensive piece of software. That software has a proprietary XML-based file format that I'd love to be able to open and save to from my app. Is that legal? I've seen examples like Google Docs & OpenOffice opening Microsoft Office files, but I'm not sure if that's generally the case. I've heard it's prohibited in the EU; I'm in the US. Anybody know for sure? <comment><USER2> A legal professional qualified in your state with a specialism in copyright/patent/trademark/trade secret law will be able to advise you on that.

In practice, perhaps the question you ought to be asking is more like: "How pissed off are they going to be, and what are they going to do about it?". That will depend on what you're doing, to whom, and why. Aggravating factors may include, for example, if the files tend to contain copyrighted works you don't hold the copyrights to, or if the files are scrambled or crypted; sure they _might_ use a ROT13 transform as their "encryption", but that doesn't mean they're not going to get the FBI to arrest you for getting up at a security convention and _telling_ everyone that¹.

___

1\. The Dmitry Sklyarov case, aka "one of the reasons reverse-engineers don't visit the United States". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._ElcomSoft_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._ElcomSoft_and_Sklyarov)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reverse engineering for interoperability is really quite common. I myself reverse engineered the Movie Magic Scheduling database format under contract to Graphical Planet in 1998. I had that on my resume until quite recently; no one ever gave me any grief over it.

However there are some specific legal requirements, as were detailed by the primary author of Samba, which enables one to mount and to serve Windows SMB/CIFS shares from *NIX systems. He covered those requirements at Advogato:

[http://www.advogato.org/article/302.html](http://www.advogato.org/article/302.html)

Note that the author advises that you buy a lices for that very expensive piece of software.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design)

</comment><comment><USER5> Just do it. If your app gets big enough, you've got their attention. Which means, you probably are on to something.</comment>


"Invisible Electrostatic Wall" at 3M adhesive tape plant (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html <comment><USER2> Here is a more detailed article and a nice drawing to help you imagine how the rollers were arranged.

[http://aha.miraclegreat.com/2/post/2012/05/invisible- electro...](http://aha.miraclegreat.com/2/post/2012/05/invisible- electrostatic-wall-at-3m-adhesive-tape-plant.html)

Can someone post this in the Mythbusters forums and try to get them to attempt to replicate this?

<comment><USER3> Oh yes, please.

edit: I submitted the request at [http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/show-talk/ejec...](http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/show-talk/eject-your-reality.htm).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3274335>

</comment><comment><USER5> "... fix it or sell tickets." - I'd pay a little something to play with an obviously real, but undefined effect like that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Could this possibly be the person referenced in the story?[<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-swenson/18/589/b52>] Has anyone tried contacting him to see if the story is real (and if so, if they ever figured out what caused it?)

<comment><USER7> A co-worker who had worked at the 3M plant at the time told me this story in 2010. I emailed him, he knows David Swenson so maybe I can get David's opinion on the article.

<comment><USER8> Note that the amasci.com article is about David Swenson's conference talk about the phenomenon, here's the copypaste:

[http://web.archive.org/web/19961226041803/http://www.att.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961226041803/http://www.att.com/conferences/eosesd/s7.htm)

       SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION, 17th Annual EOS/ESD Symposium
       THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1995, 8:00 am

       SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION: ELECTROSTATIC CONSIDERATIONS IN INDUSTRY

       MODERATOR: D. Swenson, 3M

       7.7 CASE STUDY - LARGE PLASTIC WEB ELECTROSTATIC PROBLEMS, RESULTS AND
       CURE, D. Swenson, 3M Company
       Tremendous static charge generation on a plastic web causes unique
       physical phenomena and special problems. Solution was simple and cost
       effective.

The real question ...was this "star trek physics," or really just a human- nerve TENS effect; temporary muscle paralysis caused by static discharges all over the victim's skin? They never threw a baseball down the tunnel to see if it halted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probably also generating a massive dose of x-rays.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/science/28xray.html?_r=0>

I wonder if there has ever been a cancer cluster found at such plants?

<comment><USER10> X-rays are only produced by the unrolling of tape in a vacuum. So presumably no risk here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://xkcd.com/242/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Rather than try to replicate a really complicated set of conditions, why not see if ionized air blown at an object in a wind tunnel causes more pressure than non-ionized air? The crux of the theory appears to be that a cyclon of ionized air was set up that was unable to attach to the sheet.

Generating a vortex of air is pretty common, a lot of industrial mixers and sifters do this. It's what inspired Dyson to make his vacuum.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've read this already 2 years ago and discussed it with our Physics prof. It's definitely wrong. Otherwise I'd like to see a proof.

<comment><USER14> Of course your physics professor (and their books) definitely knows everything in the world without needing to venture outside or do any real world experiments. And they certainly couldn't be a fragilista[1] nor could they possibly have God Complex[2].

Seeing as your professor is all knowing, maybe they could finally tell us all how lithium polymer batteries work [3]?

1: [http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain- Disorder/...](http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain- Disorder/dp/1400067820) 2: <http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html> 3: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5124170>

<comment><USER15> I have a cold fusion reactor in my basement. It extracts free energy from the vacuum and it powers my car instead of gasoline.

Since you are antifragilist and don't have a God Complex, you are well suited to invest in my project to commercialize this technology!

<comment><USER16> There is a huge difference between believing that energy conservation is wrong and believing that there could be unexplored avenues in the technological application of electrostatic forces.

<comment><USER17> I'm not a cold fusion zealot but I don't think it's correct to say that it would violate energy conservation, since they are talking about nuclear reactions converting mass to energy, just like fission and fusion. It's just that they're talking about unusual reactions that most scientists think are implausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't it seem more plausible that someone just executed a prank with a sheet of plastic, and a myth grew up around it?

<comment><USER18> I appreciate skepticism, but come on. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference?

<comment><USER8> The original report was a presentation at an ESD conference, not a rumor or FOAF.

I heard about it from a tech at an EMI testing lab in 1996, tracked down Dave Swenson's email at 3M, and posted the article on amasci.com.

Some extra info: Dave S. mentioned that the experience was a bit painful, since corona discharges were leaping from his whole body at the time. He said he was unable to turn around while near the "invisible wall," and had to walk backwards to get away from it.

Also, he described the whole plant having serious ESD hazards: tape on floor to mark pathways, and if you left the path, you might get zapped by a mini- lightning from some ungrounded machine.</comment></comment></comment>


How do you work out what server spec you need? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like you have to know a bit about everything these days to get up and running. Unfortunately I don't :)
Specifically, I'm taking about servers. I recently started receiving pubsub data feed from etsy. It averages around 250 notifications per minute. But obviously, when the USA wakes up that spikes quite heavily.
I want to be able to deal with those spikes (about 3 per day) but the rest of day is fine.
What's the best method of getting the right server configuration. My current approach is to keep upgrading until the server stops dying... next leap is:
- Processor: AMD Phenom II X6-1055T HEXA Core - RAM: 4GB DDR2 SDRAM - HD1: SATA Drive (7,200 rpm) (+500 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive) - HD2: SATA Backup Drive (+500 GB SATA (7,200 rpm)) - OS: Linux OS (+CentOS 5 64-bit) - Bandwidth: 6000GB Monthly Transfer (3000 in + 3000 out) (+100M uplink port)
Is there a better approach? <comment><USER2> You should be asking this on server fault.

<comment><AUTHOR> done-diddly, thx. [http://serverfault.com/questions/243245/how-do-you-pick- what...](http://serverfault.com/questions/243245/how-do-you-pick-what-server- setup-you-need)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You don't.

You start with a free t1.micro instance on Amazon and you measure empirically.</comment>


YC-Funded Flightcaster Tells You When Your Flight Is Delayed - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/18/yc-funded-flightcaster-tells-you-when-your-flight-is-delayed-hours-before-the-airline-will/?awesm=tcrn.ch_72j8&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=direct-tcrn.ch&utm_content=twitter-publisher-main

<comment><USER3> I can't help but imagine pilots checking the statuses of their own flights, thousands of feet up in the air, punching the gas to beat their odds.

Congrats on launching!

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a neat viral marketing / mailing list building idea for you if you like - a local radio news station here has a "weather guarantee".

They have a pool of prize money which increases daily. Every day on the radio they say what their guaranteed weather high is - if they don't hit it, they pick a name from their member database and give them the pool and start over again. Therefore you must join their database in order to win the prize - <USER2> the contest itself reaffirms the accuracy of the radio broadcast (if they are willing to be against their weather estimates they must be good!)

What you can do is have the same model with a daily flight time guarantee, and give away a free copy of the app as a prize. People who are going to buy your app will likely do it anyways, so this is a way to collect all the info of the "tire kickers" so you can slowly remind them over 3-12 months why they should buy your app. The viral part can come from getting additional entries in the pool by recommended your friends.

Just a random thought that popped in my head - something to consider while you have all this early launch hype surrounding you..

</comment><comment><USER5> I am flying this Friday so I will make sure to test it out. That's a pretty steep price for the iPhone app though... if you guys can recommend me alternative routes then that would be worth paying for, but at the current stage I don't see myself paying for an app just to check if my flight will be delayed or not.

When I was a consultant, I used to travel every week. What irritated the heck out of me is these in-route weather conditions. So for instance, if I am flying from Dallas to NY, and there's bad weather somewhere in the middle, they will cancel the flight. If you can recommend me to get on a flight that will go around the problem (such as Dallas -> Miami, Miami -> NY), then it would be really useful. But this is probably only useful for business travelers since casual travelers probably won't be willing to shell out the extra airfare.

<comment><USER6> _That's a pretty steep price for the iPhone app_

I vehemently object. This is an EXTREMELY valuable service, not a fart generator or lightsaber, and you should proudly charge $10, $15, $20, or more! You can always lower the price later but now is your only chance to establish a high perceived value for your product.

<comment><USER5> Well, I just officially tested the service.

According to FlightCaster my flight is 85% chance of being on-time, but after getting to the airport my flight is delayed. I am waiting at the gate right now, and no reasons were given by the airline.

I am sure it's not weather related since it's SF to LA... and the site still says it will be on-time. How frequently do you update the forecasts?

<comment><USER7> Hi Frocer, sorry I missed this. can you ping me directly with mroe info? bradford dot n dot cross at gmail dot com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm trying to understand how this differs from <http://www.tripit.com/>

<comment><USER9> I think tripit tells you delays when the airline/faa actually announces delays, vs flightcaster which tries to do it earlier.

<comment><USER10> Read this:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/13.html>

It's pretty rare for airlines to be honest about delays at departure time. Rather than update their online databases when they know they're running late, they wait until the flight has taken off, because then they only have to update it once. It's pretty maddening. I can't tell you how often I've been standing at a gate with a big LED sign that says ON TIME for, say, a 5 pm departure, when the current time is 5:30 and there's no aircraft in sight.

For frequent travellers this may give you enough information to get rebooked before everybody else does. For example if there's an 8AM flight and a 10AM flight, but the 8AM flight is running 3 hours late, there's going to be a stampede to get rebooked on the 10AM flight, which might only have a few empty seats. The first person to figure this out is going to get one of those seats. This app is very reasonably priced for the audience of frequent flyers who would benefit from it.

<comment><USER11> Joel - you are spot on with this... I've seen this happen so many times. They don't want people to leave the gate, so they'll trickle out delays (15mins, 30mins another 15mins).

The other one I love -- When they are late they announce it as "due to late arrival of the incoming aircraft". Not sure what this is exactly meant to mean, but to me this is "we're late".

<comment><USER12> Root cause analysis isn't really their strength, in their announcements anyway. Do they think people would get upset if they knew the core reason for the problem or something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jim-greer This sounds really cool and I will check it out next time I fly. One thing - is the patent on your patent-pending algorithm really appropriate? Necessary? I imagine there's some prior art, too, since I bet the airlines have statistical models to predict whether their own flights are going to be late based on weather, congestion, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Neat idea. I think it will be really useful if you provide a track record of what percentage of your predictions are right. Otherwise, this service is mostly going to be useful to business customers who buy flexible tickets. Someone like me, is not going to take a chance even if you say 80% probability of a delay on an economy class ticket.

<comment><USER7> It is true that avid business travelers will likely get the most "mission critical" use from our service. Nevertheless, we hope the general traveling public find value in it as well. It can be good to know this info, even if you are not going to rebook.

<comment><USER13> It can also provide a wrong sense of security which might turn out to be more harm than good for a normal customer.

Providing a track record will be extremely helpful IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just in time for Demo Day! Nice writeup.

<comment><USER15> When is demo day by the way?

<comment><USER14> Tomorrow!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Question is do you have a sustainable model, once everyone buys your app you don't a new stream only from new customers. I just bought your app ;) just wondering if I have to worry about the future of it.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure that there'll be other business models besides mobiles apps if data proves to be valuable =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool .... do you have an API?

<comment><USER18> No API yet--but stay tuned...it's coming! Thanks~ Jason (@FlightCaster)

<comment><USER19> When it comes, be sure to post it here :D</comment></comment></comment>


Does the color temperature of a computer screen affect sleep patterns? - <AUTHOR> http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3465/96

<comment><USER2> Is this really controversial? As a commenter points out, the "opposite" effect is well established. Go to Google Scholar and search [bright light therapy circadian], and skim the abstracts.

You can find papers there on color temperature affecting melatonin and core temperature, too.

Anecdotally: I'm a F.lux user and I haven't had a severe insomnia episode once since I installed it, and that it in any case reduces eyestrain.

<comment><USER3> I've been using F.lux for a few months, but had "solved" my sleep problems prior. The secret was to ensure my computer was off 2 hours before my intended sleep time. Interestingly I could sit in from of a 55" LCD television for that time period instead (with the brightness dimmed a bit.) Within two hours I would go to bed and be asleep within 15-20 minutes.

As a self employed entrepreneur since I dropped out of college some 5 years ago or so, I had immense difficulty with my sleep patterns until late last year. 24 hour cycles, waking up at midnight, every possible worst combination imaginable.

Based on my own personal experience over the years I suspect light intensity and prepping for bed time fixes 90% of the problems -- assuming you are not a user of any type of narcotics or stimulants, prescription or otherwise.

To a lesser degree changing my diet and pulling out all added sugar at 95% of dairy probably contributed positively as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use f.lux, but I wish the transition were slower; I want it to gradually change color over the course of noon or 3 pm or so to sunset, not the 20s or 1 hour choice that it currently has.

But otherwise, it's a nice program and does seem to help, although I'm sure everyone will have varying levels of success with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> While I'm sure it depends on the person, I no longer suffer from insomnia since I installed F.lux. It's free. Why not try it?

</comment><comment><USER6> I would guess it is not the "temperature" but the overall (feeling of) brightness. And that is a no-brainer for me. Of course bright light means day and activity for us.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only person to feel that f.lux is counter-productive? I'm not sure if it's me or my laptop screen.

<comment><USER8> It changes screen to screen. on my macbook pro screen f.lux produces some mellow golden (?) tint to the screen and basically unnoticeable, but I have a cheap samsung 21 monitor, and on that f.lux makes screen quality deteirorate noticeably.

Think of it like that: your lcd is certified to have a certain color gamut at 6800 kelvins. (daylight) But when you push it down to 3000K, there is no guarantee that your lcd will retain same color range - and in most cases it doesn't. That's probably why its about quality of your lcd. Most budget laptops has pretty bad lcd's, so it makes sense that your laptop doesn't fare as well.

<comment><USER7> For me, it's a case of the colour not being uniform throughout - the lower part is considerably more "whitish" than the upper part, especially with f.lux fully kicked in at night. This basically irritates the heck out of me and I end up disabling it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not entirely sold on that theory, though it does make some sense (sunset is a different color than daylight). I use f.lux because my screen looks better, and it _definitely_ reduces eye strain for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> For X11 users, there's also redshift (<http://jonls.dk/redshift/>).

I use it when using the computer at night as it makes for easier reading.

<comment><USER11> f.lux doesn't work with 2 monitors; does redshift?

<comment><USER12> Even the app-indicator version doesn't support 2 monitors? What setup is your dual monitors? I'm trying it out, I don't use gnome-panel applets, those bastardly things.

<comment><USER11> I haven't been using f.lux since I learned about the flaw - it would only work with one of my monitors on Ubuntu Maverick (or Lucid, I don't remember now).

I'm now happily using redshift and it does work with two monitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The app 'Shades' for OSX is free and can dim to warm colors, too. <http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades>

I use it to dim the LED screen of my bedside MacMini to a very faint yellowish/brown color, which is just right for a totally dark room.

</comment><comment><USER14> Curiously, a recent study found that evening exposure to LED monitors specifically affected sleep.

Here the original paper: [http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2011/03/10/japplphys...](http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2011/03/10/japplphysiol.00165.2011.abstract)

</comment><comment><USER15> See also the excellent BYM addon for Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/blank-your-mo...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/blank-your-monitor-easy-readin/)

</comment><comment><USER16> OT: when will stack exchange stop? whats next? a web site dedicated to question about buttering a slice of bread only?</comment>


What the Apple Watch Says About Apple - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/what-the-apple-watch-says-about-apple/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=technology&_r=0

<comment><USER2> "For decades, Apple has stood out in the business world for three things: taste, trust and utility."

Did we forget about a big chunk of apple history? :)</comment>


Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=1

<comment><USER2> It's because these people have no earthly idea what else to do in SL. I used to cover the second life beat for a commercial blog and I can tell you that it takes a bit of work and effort to find things to do there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Pretty interesting study of the somethingawful / 4chan crowd, and how they represent a real danger to online communities.</comment>


Killing the entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/08/killing-the-entrepreneurs//print/

<comment><USER2> This article is generally a bunch of political crap. I don't know any actual entrepreneurs who are talking about any of the things mentioned in the article. Maybe it's my bias against the Washington Times though.

Still gets an upvote for submitting the printable version. I need to do this more.</comment>


Ask HN: Am I the only one getting spammed by pro-CCP Quora questions? - <AUTHOR> I've been getting a ton of emails from Quora with the top question being about China, and specifically or indirectly about the CCP. The answers lead me to believe their is some sort of astroturfing campaign underway.<p>Perhaps I'm getting ever more of these due to clicking through to them? That's almost scarier.. <comment> noah-kun The Chinese government has enormous support from it's citizens according to multiple independent studies done by western nations. It could still be that astroturfing is underway, but there's perpetually plausible deniability because of the nature of the Internet. The CIA and US government in general has used this to their advantage to flood countries with dissenting propaganda, creating destabilization and opportunity for resource theft. Like other weapons, the Internet is showing itself to be unpredictable, and may be used against the aggressors as well as by them. Now we're seeing pressure put on Youtube, Facebook and other large networks to block out dissenting views because the ruling class feel it disrupts their control of power domestically.</comment>


Google Site Reliability [SRE] Workbook - <AUTHOR> http://landing.google.com/sre/workbook/toc/ <comment><AUTHOR> The new workbook is designed to give you actionable tips on getting started with SRE and maturing your SRE practice. We've included links to specific chapters of the workbook that align with our tips throughout this post.

[https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/how-to- sta...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/how-to-start-and- assess-your-sre-journey)</comment>


Cleverest Logo Designs - <AUTHOR> http://abduzeedo.com/logo-design-z-p

<comment><USER2> Firstly, this is a blog post from December 2009 so not quite 'news'.

Secondly, if the point of this was to help inspire people when creating their own logo's then why link to an arbitrary page in the middle of their A-Z collection when there is a specific page dedicated to this: <http://abduzeedo.com/tags/logo>

Thirdly, tangentially, what is it about the use of the word 'cleverest' that makes me cringe?!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. Well inspirational stuff is rarely new. There are lots of "best of" topics containing stuff from past. This particular page was chosen on purpose because it is the most interesting of the set. Of course you are free to browse the rest of the set.</comment></comment>


Should you cache? Should you use memcached? Should you just shard mysql more? - <AUTHOR> http://dormando.livejournal.com/496639.html <comment><USER2> I really liked this article. In my mind the general thought was. If you don't think about what you are doing when designing your application, you will run into problems. No matter what you do, you will run into problems. So be prepared to adapt to change or "go bust out the failboat and get-a-rowin'. You're screwed."

</comment><comment><USER3> Summary: memcached is not a magic bullet.

Well, if you believed it was, I guess this article is useful.

<comment><USER4> Not all of this stuff is obvious to everyone.. For example, I don't really know much about SQL optimisation, when people say things like 'Joins are bad, de-normalisation is good' I kind of just nod my head without really understanding exactly why.

I think this article helps straighten out what might be a few myths about memcached, which is helpful for scalability noobs like myself. :)</comment></comment>


Refuting a Myth About Human Origins - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.11845,y.2011,no.2,content.true,page.5,css.print/issue.aspx <comment><USER2> The online print version of American Scientist articles looks amazing.

</comment><comment><USER3> can we get a tl;dr version?

<comment><USER4> I would be interested to know where the borders lie between being intrigued enough to follow the link and being repulsed by a certain threshold of text, yet still being attracted enough to the subject ask someone to reduce it to a quote ...

<comment><USER5> [http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-shudders-at-large- bl...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-shudders-at-large-block-of- uninterrupted-te,16932/)

<comment><USER6> hehehe guilty as charged.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I Killed My Signup Form with Rails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.henriquez.net/2009/08/kill-your-signup-form-with-rails.html Even though the gradual engagement meme has been around for a while, and everyone just hates signup forms, they just seem to keep popping up like a bad habit.  My site, Newsforwhatyoudo.com was one of the guilty parties.  We saw users coming back to the site repeatedly, but not signing up.  The percentage that looked at the signup form and then bolted was uncomfortably high.  It was time to kill the signup form.  This blog post documents how we implemented gradual engagement using Ruby on Rails and restful authentication. <comment><USER2> I did something which is sort of similar for my site.

Quick takeaways:

1) You can break almost all spambots by requiring them to evaluate CSS or Javascript to avoid a tripwire. For example, I have a field on all my (publicly accessible) forms labeled "comment" and hidden via CSS. A before_filter bounces anybody who puts anything in it. Simple, took 5 minutes to implement, reduces spam registrations to essentially zero.

2) It was easiest for me to create virtual user registrations in a private namespace (trial users provide an email address, virtual users are given an unguessable email address on my domain that does not actually correspond to a mailbox) and assign them a particular limited role, which let me reuse almost all of the code for "real" trial users. This lets you upgrade people out of virtual userhood trivially -- grab the virtual user, write over two fields, save to DB. Done.

If you do it like this, and give the virtual users sensible defaults, you minimize the amount of almost-duplicated-but-not-quite code that you have to include in views. That will save you on a lot of bugs and aggravation. (Reproducing bugs for particular well-used "virtual" users is a pain in the keister.)

<comment><USER3> patio: great idea about avoiding spam bots.

We recently struggled with this on the design of the front page of an application. A similar issue we ran into is scaring people away with login/password boxes on the front page.

What does everyone think, is it better to have the login/password boxes visible immediately to save the user a click, or do what digg and twitter do to avoid scaring people about a sign-up form in the not so distant future and hide it behind some AJAX?

<comment><USER2> I think its better to do whatever the A/B test says works better for your particular users.

I burned two hours a week ago trying to test that but my CSS and lightbox implementation did not play well with each other and I eventually scrapped it. I'll take another stab at it in November -- no killing the magic pumpkin before Halloween.

I have compelling evidence that using a lightbox to "pre-sell" the form/download increases conversion rates, at least among my users. Try clicking on the giant image in the middle of my home page -- it works _beautifully_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a good summary of options for fighting form spam:

[http://www.texelate.co.uk/blog/how-to-prevent-spam-form- subm...](http://www.texelate.co.uk/blog/how-to-prevent-spam-form-submissions/)

I prefer #2 for its unobtrusiveness (as the article suggests).</comment>