Slime mold grows network just like Tokyo rail system - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/

<comment><USER2> A fun experiment with a striking result.

The environment provided for the slime molds doesn't seem to record mountains and lakes etc, so they can't be expected to choose the same system.

When we find that engineers and nature have arrived at similar solutions, I think it's the engineers that we should marvel at.

Even soap bubbles organize themselves to minimize surface area. <http://www.soapbubble.dk/en/bubbles/geometry.php> and apparently _Centuries ago, architects discovered that experimenting with soap bubbles could help them define the most economical form for the actual structure._ <http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3407500197.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071568>

Although as so often happens, the first submission sinks without a trace, a subsequent duplicate submission gets an upvote on the "newest" page, makes it to the front page and thereby gets noticed generally. This is one argument to suggest why the duplication detection algorithm should not be tightened significantly - if a link has any real merit, and it's news rather than something old that someone has run across, then it has several chances of not being missed, becuase it will get submitted several times.

Earlier submissions of the same story also sank (mostly) without trace:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071533>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071093>

<comment><USER4> The submission could also be counted as an automatic upvote, achieving the same effect, while still allowing tightening of the duplication detection algorithm. One article with two votes is better than two articles with one vote. For low numbers of votes, I guess it shouldn't matter the first few votes are old.

<comment><USER5> "The submission could also be counted as an automatic upvote"

It does already. If submit a url that is already there, it gives it an automatic upvote.

<comment><USER6> That's only worthwhile if you also reset the time decay. upvoting something old has virtually no impact on its chance of moving to the front page

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get it...

It's this just a variant on the shortest path problem. Even a bad solution is going to look similar to a real rail network. There are plenty of good, easy algorithms to solve this, much faster than waiting a day for slime to grow.

Confused as to how this got in Science & Wired. What am I missing (I didn't read the Science report, so maybe there's something there?)

<comment><USER8> It's actually a lot more like the travelling salesman problem, for which there are no algorithms (well, some heuristical algorithms).

<comment><USER6> It's actually more of a traveling salaryman problem :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Like the slime mold, the model first creates a fine mesh network that goes everywhere, and then continuously refines the network so that the tubes carrying the most cargo grow more robust and redundant tubes are pruned._

Hey, that's like how brains mature!

</comment><comment><USER10> I attended a lecture about this at Oxford. It has also been done for Britain's railway system and came quite close to the post-Beeching layout.

<comment><USER11> A recent paper uses it to model the UK Motorway network - <http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3967>

Any references to the work on using slime to mimic the UK rail network that you mentioned? The best I could find was the following from <http://www.springerlink.com/content/7tw4745823645128/>

"In practical terms such a process may also be witnessed in the evolution of real infrastructure networks, such as British railways following the Beeching reviews in the early '60s [8,9]. In these reviews, the flux along various routes was measured and routes with too low a level of traffic, mainly branch lines, were targeted for closure. At the same time, major routes were strengthened to cope with the expected source-sink relationships for both passenger and freight traffic. Interestingly, the reports focussed on efficient rather than any explicit consideration of resilience, which may explain the sensitivity of the current UK rail network to disruption."

Where: [8] British Railways Board: The development of the major railway trunk routes (1965) [9] British Transport Commission: The reshaping of british railways - part 1: report (1963)

<comment><USER10> I can't seem to find anything either. It was part of Silicon Valley comes to Oxford 2009 if that helps your search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this applicable to city planning? Constructing a plexiglass landscape in miniature, scattering a few flakes in the right places, then letting loose the mold... let nature calculate maximum efficiency for you!

<comment><USER13> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is cool, but the headline looks like something written for Fark!

</comment><comment><USER15> My, that looks like a yummy slime mold!

<comment><USER16> Aloha obneq, welcome to NetHack! You are a neutral male human Tourist. You are in non-scoring discovery mode. What do you want to zap? [p or ? _] You may wish for an object. For what do you wish? slime mold q - a slime mold. What do you want to eat? [b-jq or ?_ ]

My, that was a yummy slime mold!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the standard first hire equity + salary in a new startup - <AUTHOR>

We are in the process of hiring our first programmer. As a startup trying to keep costs to a minimum, whats the standard equity / salary our first tech hire should get? (ballpark is cool too) <comment><USER2> This post might be helpful: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=973060>

Everything is a negotiated outcome, but good engineers are worth market salary in the absence of equity.

With equity, one rule of thumb I've heard is give 1% for every $10,000 cut the person takes. This implicitly values your company at $1m, but I guess most companies don't hire an employee unless the business is worth at least that.

Another rule of thumb I've heard is $50k for 2%-4%. Somewhat supporting this is Aaron Patzer (Mint.com founder) paid his early engineers $30k-$50k for 1% to 5% equity. See [http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/08/startups-101-the- complete-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/08/startups-101-the-complete- mint-presentation/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's all over the map. Some people like equity. Some people (I'm in this camp) think early equity is too risky to compensate for the salary cuts demanded.

Say I take a $10,000 pay cut. Say your company is worth $1,000,000. That means I should get 1% right? No. I should get 1% _this year, starting immediately._ But wait. My 1% has only a very small chance over ever turning into money. That means I need, say, 5-10 percent to compensate for that. Don't know many startups willing to give someone 5-10% for a $10k salary cut? Neither do I. Maybe I'm too conservative.

Or, if you want the short answer, I'd say between 0.25% and 5% is normal to go along with a 20-30% salary cut. That's what I've seen, at least. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER4> It varies wildly.

The old rule about remembering to pay your soldiers goes. Cutting salary has consequences to your ability to attract and retain talent and equity is worth $0 until some hypothetical point in the future.</comment>


The Muen Separation Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://muen.sk/ <comment><USER2> "The Muen Separation Kernel is the world's first Open Source microkernel that has been formally proven to contain no runtime errors at the source code level."

This doesn't really jibe with seL4's claim: "The world's first operating- system kernel with an end-to-end proof of implementation correctness and security enforcement is now open source." [http://sel4.com/](http://sel4.com/)

<comment><USER3> The issue here is the spec - no runtime errors at the source code level is, as I understand, a completely different specification than end-to-end implementation correctness.

In particular, the Muen Kernel report itself [1] explains:

 _By implementing the kernel in SPARK and proving the absence of runtime errors, we have shown that the kernel is free from exceptions. While these proofs provide some evidence to the correctness claim of the implementation, the application of these particular formal methods do not provide any assurances beyond the error free execution of the kernel. Proving functional properties such as the correspondence of the scheduler to a given formal specification is necessary to further raise the confidence in systems based on the Muen kernel._

In other-words, we don't yet have formal confirmation that this thing actually does what we might expect it to - just that its execution is bug-free.

[1] [http://muen.codelabs.ch/muen-report.pdf](http://muen.codelabs.ch/muen- report.pdf)

<comment><USER4> But in the other direction, it seems that end-to-end implementation correctness implies absence of run-time errors. The seL4 authors write[1]:

> IMPLICATIONS [...] a functional correctness proof already has interesting > implications for security. If the assumptions listed in Sect. 5.5 are true, > then in seL4 there will be: No code injection attacks [...] No buffer > overflows [...] No NULL pointer access [...] No ill-typed pointer access > [...] No memory leaks [...] No non-termination [...] No arithmetic or other > exceptions [...] No un-checked user arguments [...] Aligned objects [...] > Wellformed data structures [...]

And this was already done in 2009. So I don't think Muen is the first microkernel to prove absence of run-time errors. (Maybe they claim that Muen is the first open source run-time-error-free microkernel in the sense that they did the verification after seL4, but before seL4 was open-sourced?)

[1] [http://ssrg.nicta.com.au/publications/nictaabstracts/3783.pd...](http://ssrg.nicta.com.au/publications/nictaabstracts/3783.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I would guess so, seL4 was open sourced in August 2014 and the first public preview of Muen was December 2013, per a quick check with Google.

On the other hand, I've read that if you want to do serious SPARK/Ada work, you've got to buy AdaCore's tools or benefit from their academic program. seL4's verification down to binary was done using generic GCC (a clever way was found to meet the higher level proofs with stuff generated from the binary; they first tried CompCert (a verified C compiler that is free for non- commercial use) but I gather that suffered from an impedance mismatch).

<comment><USER6> Misleading. AdaCore provides Ada and SPARK IDE's in full under GPL if you release your software under GPL:

[http://libre.adacore.com/comparisonchart/](http://libre.adacore.com/comparisonchart/)

Lots of free guides, tips, libraries, etc. You get _way_ better tools in terms of testing, inspection, analysis, etc if you buy them. No doubt. The base platform, good enough for Muen or IRONSIDES DNS, is free. You can replicate their work easily plus create safer variants of established software such as Nginx, etc.

Whereas seL4 relies on Haskell, Isabelle, several proof frameworks/tools, C, and GCC. They achieved a lot more but with a lot more tools, time, and expertise. Those of us that were interested couldn't even check the verification stuff, especially the C-related tech, until late 2014. Using them would be... non-trivial to say the least. :)

Good that they open-sourced as that will allow (is allowing) others to build on the work. I know it's already getting integrated into Genode OS.

<comment><USER5> As I was told in a HN discussion that non-educational "for GPL" version doesn't supply the same runtime, and the run time supplied is not very good. Maybe it's OK, but with all those restrictions and limitations it just didn't sound like an ecosystem I want to mess with. Plus I prefer to be able to develop and release software with less restrictive open source licenses.

WRT seL4 vs. Muen, I wouldn't be surprised if seL4 does less for you, it's only 9,000 lines of C code, and some of it is artifacts from the manual Haskell -> C translation.

<comment><USER6> Ahhhhhh. Wasn't aware of that. Will have to check with them. Muen uses the zero-runtime profile. Not sure about IRONSIDES. Far as those using a runtime, if that's the case, I'd recommend some FOSS people create an alternative one that is good. Then they get the language, toolset, etc benefits without that issue. Recreating _those_ will be much more difficult.

"WRT seL4 vs. Muen, I wouldn't be surprised if seL4 does less for you, it's only 9,000 lines of C code, and some of it is artifacts from the manual Haskell -> C translation."

That's not what I meant. seL4 is a separation kernel: they're supposed to do almost nothing. The thing is that once a modification occurs, it can invalidate the whole security claim. So, the person modifying it needs to be able to correctly use whatever its assurance depended on. That will be _much easier_ for Muen given a domain expert only needs to learn Ada/SPARK vs all that went into seL4.

Now, Muen certainly has less assurance in that it doesn't have formal models of design, security policy, etc. Most FOSS types won't do all that, though. So, just requiring a language that knocks out errors and maybe learning Design-by-Contract is a nice alternative that might get more people involved. That it's Ada... might get less people involved. Who knows. (shrugs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting work. It's what my niche would call medium assurance software: a regular development approach that selectively uses higher- assurance tech or practices to produce stuff with fewer defects or risks. Aside from issues in x86 or security policy, the other big risks it will face are how it handles error states, how much apps can affect its internals with function calls (static helps), covert channels (esp timing), and what effect compiler has on it. I recall IRONSIDES was "provably immune" to single-packet DOS and correct W.R.T. specification thanks to SPARK... until a compiler bug decided differently. ;) Ada really needs a compiler like CompCert C or FLINT ML for safety/security use-case.

Good news for people wanting to try it out is that it's been integrated into Genode OS per recent newsbite:

[http://genode.org/documentation/release- notes/15.08#Genode_o...](http://genode.org/documentation/release- notes/15.08#Genode_on_top_of_the_Muen_Separation_Kernel)

They claim it's also ready for day-to-day albeit still early so problems will happen. Patient, early adopters and contributors are target audience. Have fun! :)

<comment><USER7> I agree that the toolchain is large, unwieldy and insufficiently proven itself.

However, given that it competes with other software compiled with random (usually GCC) compiler versions (what, do you think all seL4 drivers that eventually set up DMA will be verified?), the compiler issue is not a problem unique to Muen.

Xen has the same problem (and by extension Qubes), and even seL4 has it for all purposes that exceed running the kernel and sigma0.

The big innovation here is probably the easy general availability of a practical Separation Kernel system. And the other (not quite as big, but still significant) innovation is having a Separation Kernel that you can fix yourself, if anything looks off to you: Many of the commercial offers in that space are held together by lots of duct tape, it's just hidden by means of binary-only releases, certification procedures and sales reps.

<comment><USER6> "However, given that it competes with other software compiled with random (usually GCC) compiler versions (what, do you think all seL4 drivers that eventually set up DMA will be verified?), the compiler issue is not a problem unique to Muen."

There's how good it is relative to what it competes with and how well it meets its goals. I'm talking about potential issues with the latter. And drivers have nothing to do with what I said about the kernel. There's other methods/tech for handling them.

"the compiler issue is not a problem unique to Muen"

I have a certified compiler for C. Most separation and microkernels use that. Some use a C++ subset which can be easily converted to C. I don't have one for Ada or SPARK. So, of open kernels, the problem is indeed unique to Muen. AdaCore has commercial tech to handle it in a labor-intensive way but I'd also consider making an equivalent C system side-by-side. Then, can use SPARK proofs, C verification methods (eg Frama-C, Astree), and certified translation to object code.

Meanwhile, that the very-complex compiler can destroy the security argument is worth remembering and possibly testing/inspecting for. I'm working on the concept for an easily-built, robust Ada compiler. Once I'm done, I'll pitch it to the AdaCore people to see if they'll do it or assist an external project in doing it.

"Xen has the same problem (and by extension Qubes)"

Yes, it's why I call it low assurance. I told QubesOS team, "secure" appliance vendors, etc about alternatives with low TCB and strong security. A glimpse at the market will show how many people bought that. ;)

"even seL4 has it for all purposes that exceed running the kernel and sigma0"

They admit it. They also have many parallel projects ongoing at NICTA to fix that. They solved the compilation part recently in an unexpected way. Others they're currently working on are here:

[https://ssrg.nicta.com.au/projects/TS/](https://ssrg.nicta.com.au/projects/TS/)

The seL4 team and Gernot Heiser were more clear on assumptions and limitations of their tech than most I read. There were certainly no attempts to mislead. Refreshing compared to the marketing crap I had to deal with from likes of Green Hills.

"The big innovation here is probably the easy general availability of a practical Separation Kernel system. And the other (not quite as big, but still significant) innovation is having a Separation Kernel that you can fix yourself, if anything looks off to you: "

I agree. I said the same in another comment here to 'hga.' It's why I promote and bring attention to Muen elsewhere so more people review, try and contribute to it. Medium assurance is certainly better than low and might get replaced with high given time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This relies on Intel's Vt-d , but there are some issues with Vt-d :

[http://invisiblethingslab.com/resources/2011/Software%20Atta...](http://invisiblethingslab.com/resources/2011/Software%20Attacks%20on%20Intel%20VT-d.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> x86 has some really weird ISA quirks that can lead to exceptions and, frequently, security holes. I wonder how good their ISA model is.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. They'd need to model the correct, known error, and likely error states (eg errata inspired) of the processor. After validating that model, they need to model, test, and implement their kernel operations against it. Only then can we believe its implementation will be bug-free.

At least until another flaw is discovered on Intel's side. ;)

Note: This was approach taken in the FM9001 and Verisoft bottom-up verification programs. Those were for correctness whereas Rockwell-Collin's AAMP7G processor also verified security (eg isolation). Personally, I don't trust anything on x86 as it's too flawed. SPARC would be my choice given it's cleaner, an open standard, and has OSS implementations (eg Gaisler LEON, Oracle T1/T2).

<comment><USER9> On extremely brief inspection, they avoid a bunch of the problems by not actually running user mode (CPL3) code. That means no SYSRET garbage, no weird IRET states, no SWAPGS, etc.

On the other hand, using virtualization for everything means that you pay a full host/guest switch cost every time you context switch, and that's _much_ more expensive than SYSCALL + SYSRET.

Their exception handler asm looks highly questionable, but maybe they really never have exceptions :)

<comment><USER6> The point was that they both created models of hardware, software, error states, and so on to use to ensure correctness of the software at every state. They even designed a safer, C variant and compiler to attempt to knock out that risk. Past that, they used microkernels and modular software (esp privileged) to further reduce risk + ease analysis.

So, the takeaway was that whatever code you're looking at better represent what's actually going to happen on the machine when it works and when it doesn't. Bottom-up verification methodologies like the above help to achieve that. Merely coding what you think works and proving that code has no common defects isn't enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> the site is marked as high risk >.> [http://www.mcafee.com/threat- intelligence/domain/default.asp...](http://www.mcafee.com/threat- intelligence/domain/default.aspx?domain=muen.sk)

just sayin' :) not trying to imply anythin'. apart from that my gateway doesn't let me on it :P

<comment><USER11> Same thing happened to me on the corporate network.

Not sure why this happens. I would imagine the domain was previously owned by someone that got it into the banned list? or perhaps a blanket ban for certain registrars or something like that?

<comment><USER12> It's probably because it's a "security related" product, which caused some moronic knuckle dragger to classify it as a "hacking tool." This happens a lot for things related to networking, security, virtualization, etc.

Corporate IT is a low circle of hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And here I thought this was going to be a new kernel for machine learning :)</comment>


Show HN: Cliggle – A CLI for Kaggle competitions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jkarimi91/cliggle <comment><AUTHOR> Feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks!</comment>


Fully Working Server in Abandoned Building [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlvbcZEaIB4 <comment><USER2> TLDR: Not really a server room.

Just an old pile of rust phone switch/PBX, and a computer that was used to configure it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Used original title per rules.</comment></comment>


France shuts oldest reactors, but nuclear power still reigns - <AUTHOR> http://u.afp.com/3Up6 <comment><USER2> Here in NL the tide is slowly turning in favor of adding more nuclear to the mix. It's getting increasingly clear that wind and solar alone are not going to cut it, after the low hanging fruit has been picked. There's simply no space for the required overcapacity if we want to be self sufficient.

Currently, we're getting so much of our base load from coal, it's embarrassing. We'll probably have a mix of wind, rooftop solar, natural gas and nuclear in the future. Dumping excess energy as hydrogen -> methane in our huge natural gas grid.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Macron infuriated environmental activists by abandoning a 2015 target to > reduce nuclear in France's energy mix to just half by 2025.

I'm very much in favor of preserving the environment, but I hate environmental activists.

<comment><USER4> Bill gates hit the nail on the head when he said that modern climate mis- activism has become a bigger threat to humanity than climate change denial.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a source handy? Would be curious about the context of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is completely stupid. This small power plant produced as much power in 2019 than 3400 2MW windmills, needing much more land, space and material than the nuclear power plant.

See [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1199938890142044160.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1199938890142044160.html)

<comment><USER7> I very much doubt that early proponent of fission-powered electricity in France or anywhere else had CO₂ concerns in mind, but countries who made that choice certainly ensured a much less dramatic energetic transition circa _now_.

That's my problem with anti-nuclear people: the problems of nuclear waste are largely anecdotal for now, it would only become a real concern centuries down the road (and even that's debatable), while CO₂ is rising and that's an immediate, pressing concern.

So building a few nuclear reactors now to curb CO₂ emissions is _definitely_ the way to go if we intend to keep on increasing energy levels (thus not F up the economy too much to combat climate change); whereas favoring windmill and solar _too fast too soon_ is just bad use of our short-term budgets (both in time and money): we'd better for instance invest massively in electric infrastructure to replace all trucks (eventually all vehicules, but again, urgency and magnitude set the order).

I mean, isn't it idealistic and dangerous to say 'no' to nuclear now when our immediate concern is CO₂, greenhouse effect? I'd rather see 2100 with as little temperature increase as possible with a little bit more nuclear waste (that would be of no effect to anyone), than the opposite (because the former paints a non-catastrophic picture, whereas the latter is potentially apocalyptic for some regions and major cities of the globe).

In this specific case however (France, Fessenheim and the other), these were too old reactors and needed shutdown, it was unsafe to keep them going. The last thing we need in this world right now is France failing at nuclear safety.

<comment><USER8> Actually, this power plant was old, but that was not even a proper argument to close this one. The safety assessments made on it classified it as safe, and representative of the average safety of the other nuclear plants in France. The decision is purely political, and the age is just used as a political symbol, nothing else. Otherwise, France would need to phase out the vast majority of its nuclear power within the next five years, and it would screw up the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meanwhile Ireland is desperately working to get an interconnector between itself and France because it needs France to act as the "battery backup" for all the wind energy Ireland wants to produce in the future. The last time the interconnector between Ireland and UK was broken, Ireland had to shut down a bunch of wind mills until it was brought back up. France and the surrounding countries need those nuclear reactors available in order to experiment with more "green" energy

[https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and- resources/eu-...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/eu- to-contribute-530m-to-1bn-irish-french-power-line-1.4037649)

</comment><comment><USER10> France has done an incredible job of managing nuclear. Over 75% of their electricity comes from nuclear, and they've never had a single serious incident. What about French culture avoids the problems we've had in the US, Japan and Russia regarding nuclear plant management?

<comment><USER11> Probably a willingness to do the right thing for the nation when it's not the most profitable for the company or the self?</comment></comment>


A preview of the first wave of AR apps coming to iPhones - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/a-preview-of-the-first-wave-of-ar-apps-coming-to-iphones/ <comment><USER2> Techmeme summary: _Preview of six AR apps coming to iOS 11 using ARKit, from GIPHY, Walking Dead, Ikea, Food Network, and more, and thoughts on AR controls and other conventions_</comment>


The Difference Between Ruby Symbols and Strings - <AUTHOR> http://www.robertsosinski.com/2009/01/11/the-difference-between-ruby-symbols-and-strings/ Learn about what Ruby Symbols really are, how flexible they can be and how they make your program run faster with this tutorial. <comment><USER2> Its a fine article. I always found that some people immediately "get" what a symbol is and others take a while.

The way I used to teach symbols, not in ruby, but in some "other object language" that had such animals is to have people play with their tools. In such other languages we had these visual tools to inspect and see references between objects. One of the first things you learn is to understand that objects just have "slots" which are referenced through variable names (or indexes) and those slots simply hold pointers to other objects.

Now, once you get that, you can visually explore what a symbol is. Its an "immutable" object sitting in a global table. When you inspect these symbol objects, you see they map to a unique integer value (hey cool, like constants in C!!). And so on goes your understanding...the "name" of a symbol is an array of characters. Open an inspector on the symbol #hello and the symbol #goodbye and you can discover visually that the character $e that each different symbol contains points to the same exact character object in the system. There is only one character $e in the entire VM!!

ok, I probably went too far. Anyway, the point is if you had the right tools to explore, people just need a push in the right direction and their understanding will deepen on its own. I wish ruby had such visual tools...

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post, I think more people need to post deep analysis on fundamentals like this. I've been programming in Ruby for the last 9 months, and like the blog post assumed, I had no idea what the real difference was between the symbols and strings.

Likewise, I think there are a lot of subjects like this that the majority of web "hackers" just don't understand. Awesome post and if there are other Ruby ninjas out there, please copy this style, it's really helpful to the community at large.

I would write this to you, Robert, if you had a comment section, but you don't. So I'm just going to leave it here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER4> The second benchmark isn't particularly fair. We're supposed to be testing == speed, not object creation. It should be something like:

test_str1, test_str2 = "test", "test" str = Benchmark.measure do 10_000_000.times do test_str1 == test_str2 end end.total

testsym1, testsym2 = :test, :test sym = Benchmark.measure do 10_000_000.times do testsym1 == testsym2 end end.total

Of course you might not need to create two strings, and definitely not two symbols. Somebody want to run this? (I'm on a communal computer with no Ruby.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I much prefer this multi-perspective article: [http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2007/01/20/13-ways-of- lo...](http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2007/01/20/13-ways-of-looking-at-a- ruby-symbol)

</comment><comment><USER6> Upmodded because its a very clear and thorough explanation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Actually, I would say that making symbols and string distinct is one of the worst parts of the Ruby language, along with it weird use of ascii codes for characters.

Of course, this is a feature that provides some people with some speed-ups and some pseudo-safety. But it basically goes against the advantage of modern scripting languages - the ability to program in the large, to use "integer" rather the umteen varieties of bit chunks provided by c and such.

The article explains symbols fine but I want to get to the next, better scripting language where such things are discarded.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to get technical ghostwriters? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for some writers to help me create an intro to javascript blog, they have to be technically literate but also very clear in writing. I have tried ODesk and reddit/r/forhire and am curious if there any ghost writer forums or things like that. <comment><USER2> Try Copify, more than capable of producing mid-level technical articles/blogs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I checked it out, it might work.</comment></comment>


How a Powerful Spy Camera Invented at Duke Ended Up in China's Hands - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-powerful-spy-camera-invented-at-duke-ended-up-in-chinas-hands-1528714895#comments_sector <comment><AUTHOR> Thought this was relevant after the Google Maven fiasco. Scientists really need to have ethics drilled into their heads when they are getting their degree.</comment>


SequenceL: A very simple parallel programming language - alok-g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SequenceL

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the submitter, but I work with the people who write sequenceL and can answer questions about it.

<comment> alok-g I attended a session on SequenceL today at RTECC today [1] and was fairly impressed.

Some questions I have:

1\. What are the licensing costs like for the compiler/runtimes?

2\. Do you know how it works behind the scenes?

3\. How much speed-up can be expected? I understand this is very specific to the application/algorithm at hand, and this is where #2 above helps.

4\. Are there other such languages/systems?

[1] <http://rtecc.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. No idea--I think they're still working on pricing. They're eager to work with people, so I would just contact them if interested.

2 & 3\. This is a topic for a research paper...and there have been a few if you want to dig deeper. Here's one from an ACM conference: [http://www.texasmulticoretechnologies.com/content/2004_SL_Tr...](http://www.texasmulticoretechnologies.com/content/2004_SL_Transparency_and_Multicore_Parallelisms.pdf)

If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's a summary: there's a whole bunch of stuff the compiler does when it transforms SequenceL code into C++. For example, it's numa aware and takes advantage of sse and similar types of things where possible. They've seen that if a dedicated team has been hand tuning a particular algorithm in c++ for years (the sort of thing you might see in certain industries), the sequenceL generated code will probably not beat that--but, it might take a week to develop a version in SequenceL that runs at 80 to 90% of that speed.

The rest of the time (i.e. when compared to code that has not had a dedicated team devoted to hand optimizing the c++), they've found that the SequenceL generated code runs much faster and takes less time to develop than traditionally developed parallel code. This is for a few reasons: generally, most teams won't take the time to parallelize all the parts of their code than can possibly be parallelized. Thus, they run into a sort of self imposed Amdahl's law situation--those parts that they haven't spent time parallelizing eventually become, relative to the entire app, the part of the app that takes longest to run. This problem is seen more with larger core counts, of course. Second, many highly talented engineers who are world class in their own domain are not also world class at writing multithreaded c++, and so may not have written their own multithreaded / numa aware memory allocator, or optimized the sse widths correctly for different chip generations and so on.

In the end of course, it depends on the algorithm, and delving into the paper, or even better, contacting them any trying it out with your particular algorithm, would provide the best answers.

4\. I'm not aware not aware of other such languages/systems.

<comment> alok-g Just went through the paper (relevant sections only). Have gotten a some feel for what it is doing. Thanks so much.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joining Apple, Amazon's China Cloud Service Bows to Censors - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/business/amazon-china-internet-censors-apple.html <comment><USER2> When you apply for ICP beian license at Aliyun (Alibaba's cloud), you either choose "I use Aliyun" and give them the server ID, or you choose "I use another server" and two additional fields appear: your server log in, your server password.

You need ICP license if you want to integrate any kind of service. Wechat, Alipay, other payment systems, SMS notifications etc, everything needs the ICP.

I guess AWS China also had to give up access to all servers to govt. And given the govt "professionalism" (check the China's Ministry of Information website), that's not the kind of access I'd like to give away.

<comment><USER3> Usually not having the ICP also means your site is dog slow and prone to being blocked at any moment.

Of course if your site is actually needed enough this rule kind of gets ignored. See: GitHub. They probably don't have an ICP license or plans to get one and yet it works really well in China (not even joking)

<comment><USER4> I remember Github has been blocked in the past . See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and then they realized that most tech companies rely on it.

<comment><USER2> The original block was way too wide, now they just block gist which is obviously used by dissidents to spread unlawful propaganda. The whole family of pastebin and pastebin-like websites is blocked for the same reason.

<comment><USER3> And URL shorteners. Almost impossible to find one that isn't blocked

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case you assumed that corporate responsibility is actually taken to heart by those making corporate strategic decisions, let this show you that it is not. Corporate responsibility moves are little more than good PR, a product selling point, and a way to avoid fines in some jurisdictions. Money matters more than morals. These corporations want access to the Chinese market. To gain access (and profit from) to the Chinese market, you must play ball with the state.

<comment><USER6> Maybe there's a middleground? You've still got to pick your battles and understand the scope of them. It's also entirely reasonable for a company to not to choose to follow a particular fight because it's too expensive or would have to much of an impact on the strategy of the company.

If a company decides to not fund healthcare for everyone in the US, even if that aligned with their values and CSR, there's no need to take a cynical look at that.

<comment><USER7> Aiding Chinese censorship for a quick buck is your idea of a "reasonable middleground"?

<comment><USER8> So they should have just defied the Chinese government, had all their manufacturing facilities cut off, and just closed up shop and called it a day?

Of course they don't agree with it, but they don't have the power to effectively ignore their demands right now. Yes, this sucks, but it means they get to live and fight another day, hopefully when they do have a bargaining chip.

<comment><USER9> Yes. There's no bargaining with communists, there is only wiping them from the earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's no surprise. Even if Apple or Amazon wanted to resist this, they won't get any competent support from the current US administration. The strategy for the time being seems to be "don't rock the boat" for US businesses right now.

<comment><USER11> What? Why do they need support from the adminstration. Either they do business in China, and implicity endorse all the anti-freedom, or they do not. Sure it would cost them revenue and share price. Well right and wrong are not economic propositions.

<comment><USER12> Seems like we've had these Engagement vs Isolation conversations before in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> fyi AWS China is different from aws worldwide. It has its own portal [https://www.amazonaws.cn](https://www.amazonaws.cn), different set of services, policies, etc.

Many cool fancy new features on aws worldwide is not available on aws china. Some of the differences even breaks third party libraries. e.g. some version of boto.

<comment><USER14> Does it belong to Amazon.com or does it not?

<comment><USER15> Depends what you mean by "belong to", from the linked article:

 _China requires foreign companies have a local partner and restricts them from owning a controlling stake in any cloud company_

<comment><USER14> So part of it belongs to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are they supposed to do? Either they comply or they leave the Chinese market. It's that simple. I hope people don't fault these companies for playing ball with a communist government.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps a naïve question but I mean it honestly: What relevance does communism have here? Is "communist" just being used as a synonym for corrupt or is there another meaning?

I'm not American so I suspect I don't associate communism with the same things you do.

<comment><USER18> "Communist" implies authoritarian, as in a one-party state.

<comment><USER17> Upon further reading, it seems this is largely due to the fact that previous implementations of communist society have included an authoritarian government.

I'm mainly reading the Wikipedia pages but it seems that communism in theory is actually stateless and doesn't have a government at all, let alone an authoritarian one:

"A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless, implying the end of the exploitation of labor."

"Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable to a communist system."

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

Intent is understood though, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So again, companies are fighting and vocal about "freedom", equality, lgbt rights etc only when it's convinient for them, as soon as they see that it might make them lose money - they will do whatever it takes to keep that cash flowing. Look at Tim Cook, how vocal he was in US with his LGBT support and anti-Trump position and other topics, but as soon as he sees that he can lose cash from China he does almost the same thing as what he is fighting against in US. How are these companies leaders different from those people in China who sit at a top of food chain and do same things because they worry about losing money after losing control...

<comment><USER20> Tim Cook runs a multi-national corporation. His obligation is to a shareholders as CEO. It is a simple as that.

A lot of us don't agree with these policy decisions by these companies, but there they are.

<comment><USER14> How is shareholder's interest any different from corrupted government interest? You either support freedom of information, or you do not.

<comment><USER21> > You either support freedom of information, or you do not.

You don't give a damn but pretend that you do to the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Eventually they will find out that the cost is too high and the profit is too low. The make deal with Satan

<comment><USER23> I'm sure they've spent plenty of time running the numbers

<comment><USER24> Yes, and did they take into account a backstabbing from the Chinese government (both national and local) and the stealing and then re-using of their IP for the purpose of _replacing_ them in China in due time?

They are public corporations. They probably only took into account the next 2 years of profits they could make there, put it in balance and said "yup, betraying our Chinese users as well as our principles is _worth it_."

But is it? Will it be? We'll see.

<comment><USER25> > They are public corporations. They probably only took into account the next > 2 years of profits they could make there

That's exactly how Amazon & Jeff Bezos have _not_ operated over the last two decades. See: their latest quarterly report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How is this different from companies abiding to a country's tax laws for example. If you want to do business in a country, you stick to its rules. China's rules call for censorship so companies must comply or leave. A bit too simplistic but that's how I see it.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps I am just a jaded westerner, but the ability to freely spread ideas counter to the ruling government is a fundamental right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sad the world we live in. We need the world to reach for Western standards of openness, freedom, and dignity and put people before profits. Instead, I see us altering our way of life to the least common denominator of state coercion.

</comment><comment><USER14> Should I, an employee of Amazon, quit, if I do not support this policy?

<comment><USER28> If you are software engineer, then you are spoiled for choice. When I left Bing, their censorship in China (unlike Google) was a minor reason for me leaving. So, while it wasn't _the_ reason, it did contribute to my decision to leave. And, again, we (SWEs) are spoiled for choice, hence taking issues like this into the account is certainly possible.

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y It is sad that Amazon does concessions for China while being blatantly hidered by them. For example amazonaws links are blocked by WeChat due to "This page has been reported multiple times as it rewards users for sharing on social network or following a brand." (This particular link was a direct link to a bus ticket in PDF format).

The explanation is especially shaky since the whole point of wechat is to share stuff and follow brands...

</comment><comment><USER29> Amazon is too big, they can't afford to act otherwise. We should all build medium size, privately owned companies and at least try to have a spine. The background of the problem is nicely highlighted in DHH's blog post "Enough".

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand the point of this report. Any server in China always subjects to GFW's censorship power. Or does it mean that a Chinese customer of Amazon Web Service can not rent a cloud server abroad for VPN purpose?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not surprised.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cash rules everything around me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Like dominos they bow before their God of money.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how much a publicly traded company could act upon their values, as opposed to the primary value of seeking value for shareholders. For instance, if an Apple or Amazon takes a stand and ends up having to pull out of China, would that be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit?

<comment><USER35> I haven't heard of any such lawsuit against Google.

<comment><USER36> Google wasn't giving up too much in China. The search engine wasn't getting much tractions, based on differing asthetics.

Chinese websites are far more clustered and busy - take a look at [https://world.taobao.com/](https://world.taobao.com/). I guess that it's being shifted - baidu seems relatively uncluttered, but the Chinese aesthetic is cramming as much information as possible on the same web page.

<comment><USER37> Baidu has long had an uncluttered, Google-like homepage, e.g. in Jan 2010: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100101155014/http://www.baidu....](https://web.archive.org/web/20100101155014/http://www.baidu.com:80/)

It's true that before its departure Google China was losing market share to Baidu, reportedly at least in part due to government throttling which slowed Google's service to a crawl: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6143553...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6143553/China- Google-boss-departure-reignites-debate-over-censorship.html)

Still, Google China's share of the market was not negligible. The article above claimed it had only just dipped under 30%; StatCounter (accurately or not) claims Google China was still above 40% in early 2010: [https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market- share/all/ch...](https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market- share/all/china/2010)

Either way, that's a significant fraction, more than Bing has ever had in the US. Not to mention the size of the Chinese market or future growth potential (consider what Google could have done with Android in China).

Google could have responded to the pressure by seeking to appease the Chinese government. Other companies have done so, many profitably. Google did not.

<comment> dis-sys for that 30% claimed market share, a large % of them had to search "google" in Baidu to get to google.com because they didn't know how to spell the word google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm glad everyone is so anti-censorship in this thread! Should tech companies also ignore censorship at the hands of European governments or Canada via "right to be forgotten" legislation? I seem to recall people on this site saying that it would be wrong for tech companies to resist the government in those cases. At least China isn't attempting to force censorship in other countries, unlike the Canadian government.

<comment><USER24> Google is fighting the Canadian court right now.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/google-sues- in-u...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/google-sues-in-us-court- to-block-canadas-sweeping-de-indexing-order/)

<comment><USER38> Good, but my point was that people on HN were generally in support of Canadian censorship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> To all these "you either support freedom of information or you dont" commenters:

If life was only so simple.

No sane CEO would try to fight against Chinese government risking their access to the market.

Even if the goal for the company is freedom of information, pissing of Chinese government, risking the safety of the company employees in China and getting smoked out by the shareholders is not gonna help anyone. It's much better to initially comply with their rules, gain their trust and try to change things in the long run. Might never work but still better than this "in or out" idiotism which will never work.

<comment><USER40> Disagree. In my opinion, American/other foreign tech companies have gotten a raw deal in China, with constant technology theft and hindered access to the domestic market, in addition to the usual suppression of dissent/free speech. I haven't seen any signs that this has been changing for the better, so why should American tech companies engage in China?

<comment><USER41> One possible reason is they want to keep earning report looking good (or maintain a so-called "fast growth" because the bubble is too big. Believe it or not, China has everything to fill your tech bubble despite some restrictions.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Charging to Keep Apps in Store - <AUTHOR> I'm a hobbyist developer who made three very small, ad-free apps. Apple charges $99 per year for anyone to make apps (in stark contrast to the $25 one-off fee that Google charges). Since I'm not actively working on my apps right now, I don't want to pay Apple another $99 this year. But my existing free apps will stay in the store for those who want to download them, right?
No. Apple's Developer Support claimed on the phone that keeping an existing app in the store if the developer isn't paying the annual $99 tribute would be a safety concern, "like an airport letting an unscanned bag through security". This really, really doesn't make sense: aside from the other disanalogies, if anything it's more like an airline kicking out a bag that they've already scanned and deemed safe because the owner refuses to pay them again in perpetuity.
The other justification Apple gave for the $99 per year fee was the storage and delivery costs of delivering my apps. For the record, my largest app is 40mb.
I have two suggestions for Apple. The first is a no-brainer: any authorised app should be allowed to stay in the store for as long as the platforms it works on are still supported, without the developer having to pay an annual tribute.
The second is a bigger step, but I think a reasonable one: Apple should have a free tier for small app developers. For example, it should not require an annual paid subscription to create and maintain free, ad-free apps.
Big tech companies are under a lot more scrutiny these days for abuse of market power, and this strikes me as the kind of reason why: I just don't believe that in a competitive market the equilibrium cost for a basic developer account would be anything close to $99 per year, or that Apple would kick existing apps out of its store unless the developer keeps paying every year. <comment><USER2> I think in addition to hosting/distribution costs, a reason they charge an annual fee is to weed out spammers, which I think is a good idea. The fee is low enough (equivalent to about 2 cups of coffee per month) that any serious developer should have no problem paying it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I don't want to sound hokey but... $99 might be low enough for your definition of a "serious developer" but it's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a low-income country, for example. I can make, host and distribute a website for $0 because nobody owns that ecosystem, and big companies like Github and Heroku think it's worth their while to offer free hosting and distribution to small developers -- I think Apple would do the same if they were in a competitive market, but they charge monopoly pricing because they're (currently) able to.

<comment><USER2> > _it 's not affordable for a hobbyist, a student or someone starting out in a > low-income country, for example._

These are probably not their target audience then.

> _they charge monopoly pricing because they 're (currently) able to._

iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google. That's not even remotely close to a monopoly.

<comment><AUTHOR> > iOS has a 22% market share according to the first result on Google.

that's worldwide, in the U.S. they're at 45%. And it's not a traditional duopoly in that there's huge lock-in -- I can buy Coke one day and switch to Pepsi the next (or whatever), but once a customer is on a particular phone they're locked into that platform's app store. So, yeah, I think they're exercising monopolistic pricing when selling access to their app-store.

<comment><USER2> Why does a higher market share in the US have any significance in this discussion? According to [1] the US only accounts for about 10% of the global smartphone market. As an Australian, I couldn't care less about their US market share.

And even if we go by 45%, that's still not close to a monopoly. You're not by any means forced to publish apps on their app store.

[1] [https://www.countriestoday.com/smartphone-users-by- country/](https://www.countriestoday.com/smartphone-users-by-country/)

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, ok, I take your point that the US share specifically doesn't really matter so long as Apple is pricing the developer account globally -- it definitely matters to me (in the sense that many of my users are American iPhone owners) but maybe not for the pricing analysis overall. My bad.

I still do think that Apple is employing monopolistic pricing on the app store, though -- they don't have a monopoly on the _smartphone_ market, for sure, and indeed their smartphone prices are (certainly premium but still) constrained by the prices of other competing phones. Once a customer owns an iPhone, though, the Apple app store is the only way to reach them. And Apple's pricing for developer accounts seems to reflect that - I really don't believe $99 is the equilibrium price here, nor that policies like kicking apps out the store as soon as the developer stops paying would survive in a competitive market.

I'm absolutely not forced to publish my apps to Apple, and obviously I'm taking the option not to publish them there now. And please don't get me wrong, my apps are super trivial and nobody will actually miss them when they're gone. But it does seem sad to me that both me and my potential future users will lose out (in whatever small way) because of Apple's non-competitive developer account pricing, even when I would have been very happy to pay the fair market rate for a developer account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are a non-profit organization, you can apply for a free developer account : [https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee- waiver/](https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/)

I am an iOS/macOS developer myself and have few apps in (Mac) App Store as well, I think the $99/ year serve as a motivation for me to keep on improving my app (to sell more to cover the cost), the $99/yr would probably weed out spammers as well. Try and compare how many spam apps in Play Store vs App Store.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! I'm not a non-profit unfortunately, but hopefully that can be helpful for others.

A couple of people have made this Play Store spam-apps comparison but personally I feel like the more relevant differentiator is that Apple seems much more stringent on which apps it accepts (e.g. rejecting "duplicate apps" if someone else has filled the same niche already, which Play doesn't claim to do), rathe rather the $99 charge. That said, I never actually had an issue with spam apps in the Play store -- I'm sure they're out there but my experience as a user is that if I'm looking for X then the top three results are reasonable solutions to X and I'm going to pick one of them, and never get further down in the store. Has your experience been different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What are the apps by the way?

In the pre-Apple days, mobile app makers on J2ME, BREW, Symbian etc had to give up to 70 percent to marketplaces and spend potentially up to 50 thousand dollars or more to code sign each app across multiple device types. $99 for code signing all the individual developers apps across all devices and publishing it was unheard of at the time and truly shocking compared to the old paradigm. Goolge then made it free and only later charged $25.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to look like I was hawking something so I didn't include a link but these are my apps: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri- bram/id1222415460](https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/uri- bram/id1222415460)

That's interesting, about the pre-Apple days, I didn't know that. Do you know how/why Google manages at $0 per year though (with a $25 one-off fee), while Apple charges $99 per year? It's really hard for me to believe that Apple's price would survive in any kind of competitive market, but I'm willing to be convinced.

<comment><USER5> Apple has always been a premium brand. And it is reflected in the "Apple tax" (Mac and $99/yr annual developer subscription). If you ever have the opportunity to attend an Apple organized developer event (WWDC usually), you will feel that they truly want to provide the technology, SDKs, and support to enable you and your team to build the best app experiences that you can.

For the equivalent experience that users now demand and expect on Android, it is usually much more difficult and nuanced to achieve.

Google has gotten better at treating developers with love, but it is probably not their main priority.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest my experience developing for Apple has been pretty unambiguously bad. For example, for (at least) 6 months there was a bug where users couldn't submit an App Store review unless they had a "sufficiently distinct username", but instead of notifying the user in any way to change their username the review just wouldn't submit. When I reported to Apple Support that multiple users had told me they were unable to submit reviews, Apple shunted me around from department to department and generally wasted a vast amount of my time with each department claiming it was another department's issue. To my knowledge this bug was never publicly disclosed, even though it affected every app on the store (and especially small apps that rely entirely on reviews to be noticed by new customers). And (at least in my interactions with them) Apple didn't seem to care. It sounds like your experience with them has been different, which is great, but I can't say I felt they were enabling me to build the best app I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be cool if there was a single publisher on the app store who devs could dump their free apps with and would then aggregate/split the costs between all the devs involved.

$99 might be steep, but $10? Sure.

<comment><USER5> I'm not going to read the TOS for the $99 developer subscription, and, assuredly, sharing of accounts like this is probably prohibited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope this and many other factors contribute for major PWA adoption.</comment>


How the Fairlight pirate group from Malmö, Sweden, conquered the world - <AUTHOR> http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.444716/we-might-be-old-but-were-still-the-elite <comment><USER2> Pantaloon is one of my personal heros. He used to tell his wife that he'd go to a game developer's conference when in fact he was getting piss wasted at a demoparty. Details, details.

EDIT: (I hope his wife doesn't read HN)

</comment><comment><USER3> _When I had just turned 20, I was in charge of business on four continents. What managment class would have given me that opportunity?_

This is one of those things that still blows my mind -- how people operating in supposedly "non-capitalist" enterprises still end up learning all the things that are needed to run a successful business. (And perhaps they learn it even better.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this website using frames? It is basically unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Any idiot could rip a movie and upload it to Pirate Bay, and they're even making money from it. That's nothing but commercial murder of those who actually make those items," says Pontus Berg.

"We could be accused of having acted in a legal grey zone. But for national finances, I believe it was a giant plus. The availability of demos and cracked games was very important in the beginning for the sales of home computers," says Pontus Berg.

Early-onset dementia?

<comment><USER6> Well, it's a bit self-righteous, but it shows the difference between the old scene where cracking was a technical challenge reserved for the able, and the new sort of mass-market scene we have today.

I for one always cringe at the sight of technically illiterate friends who keep up with bad sitcoms through uTorrent without knowing how the file system (even the high-level abstraction of it) works.

When we debate IP law, hackers (rightly) accuse the establishment of not knowing the technological reality of the laws they push. Judges and media corporations legislate based on poorly construed metaphors of theft and ownership. But the majority of today's file sharers have no idea what they are doing---they live in the same world as the establishment. It doesn't hurt to remember this.

<comment><USER5> There's not much difference between skilled software crackers providing free games to a bunch of clueless users and skilled encryption breakers/rippers/encoders providing free media to a bunch of clueless users.

The guy sounds like one of the hippies turned stock market drones. What he did in his youth was fine. What the damn kids are doing today is shit.

<comment><USER7> I am pretty sure you were commenting on the 'ethical' aspect but just to emphasize this: regarding the skills involved, cracking today's 'PC games' copy protections is a lot harder than ripping or encoding will ever be. The protections are constantly updated, coming with new ways of triggers and other advanced protection measures in every version, making existing tools and approaches break. It's a neverending war, crackers versus copy protections.

As far as ripping and encoding goes, there is definitely some 'skill' involved as well (especially in video ripping/encoding and ensuring the best or 'right' quality and resolution) but in a lot of cases, it is the same steps and combination of tools each time. If we're talking audio ripping, it is basically a one-click thing. You can't compare this to the amount of skills, time and hard work required for cracking.

And although today's protections are much harder than most of what crackers in the old days had to deal with, it has always been like that.

<comment><USER5> True, but the difference in difficulty level doesn't grant him the right to belittle today's forms of copyright infringement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is there a way to have multiple telephone number? - <AUTHOR>

I know there is way to get multiple email account but is there a way to get multiple telephone number?
Is there a service out there that allows it? or some vanity number or something?
I want about 100 local phone numbers. ringcentral charge fees any other way to get it free or set up sever or something?
My email is email@example.com If anyone have grandcentral account please invite me. <comment><USER2> In the trade, phone numbers are called DIDs. Once you realize that you want to buy 100 DIDs you should have an easier time finding providers. <http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/DID+Service+Providers>

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Vonage and you can have has many "virtual" numbers that you want. They can be in other cities even other countries and they will all ring to the same phone. You can operate from your basement and give the impression that you are a huge corporation with offices all around the world and country. Most VOIP service provider will give that kind of service and even more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am looking to do 100 phone number and i want it to be FREE and good.

My email is email@example.com If anyone have grandcentral account please invite me.

<comment><USER4> Why would any business want to give you a large amount of free phone numbers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's no easy way (through cell phone companies) to use multiple phone numbers for the same cell phone. I know for a fact Verizon Wireless doesn't offer vanity numbers, but I'm not sure about the other providers.

Services like GrandCentral (<http://www.grandcentral.com/>) allow you to get another phone number and forward calls to your phone and "mask" outgoing calls so it appears to have come from your GrandCentral number instead of your cell phone number. It's only in beta though and it's difficult to get an account right now.

There's also Skype. You can get an "Online Number" from them. <http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/onlinenumber/> \-- not an expert on this, but there should be some way to do call forwarding to your cell phone, but you might need a subscription.

</comment><comment><USER6> GrandCentral (grandcentral.com) allows you to get a second number that can forward to any phone, and you can selectively forward, block numbers, and use a whole host of other features.

Brring! (brring.com) allows you to get a second number that forwards to your phone, and plays 10-seconds ads that you get paid for.

</comment><comment><USER7> you could set up an asterisk server and set up as many extensions as needed. the number of simultaneous calls is limited by the number of phone lines. there is also a way to connect skype to asterisk, but i've never done it.

</comment><comment><USER8> We've been using <http://ringcentral.com/>

Its a great service and you can add additional #'s to your account too

</comment><comment><USER9> my company has a T1 with TDM voice channels on it, feeding into asterisk. (hot tip: buy the digium hardware) we get new phone numbers routed to the T1 for $25 activation and, uh, $0.15/month. (couple hundred a month for the line itself.)

as for multiple phone numbers routed to POTS lines, i don't see why your phone company _couldn't_ do it. you just wouldn't be able to tell which line the call was for.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill DIDs cost money, not a lot if you buy them wholesale, but still require a monthly payment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where can or do you buy them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is it good for? Honestly.

<comment><AUTHOR> runing a business. That why google buy the company

<comment><USER10> Could someone please describe how a lot of different phone number help you run a business?

I guess there must be a benefit - I just do not see it right now.</comment></comment></comment>