China's Xi urges development of blockchain technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-xi/chinas-xi-urges-acceleration-of-development-of-blockchain-technology-idUSKBN1X419Y <comment><USER2> According to coindesk.com, the motivation for the new law is to "encourage research and development on commercial cryptography technologies, while building up an inclusive standardized regulatory system for the market." Note the word "standardized".

But couldn't this new law potentially backfire on China's need for standardization and control as new technologies develop on blockchain?

For example, Blockstack is a U.S. company that works with blockchain (I am not affiliated with them in any way). As I understand it, Blockstack platform has the potential of decentralizing the web and providing an environment in which all information created by users is stored in their own devices, and not in some centralized, government server. I am sure technologies such as that in Blockstack can be developed in China too. If so, wouldn't that potentially undermine China's growing national surveillance mandate?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this why Bitcoin shot up 24% in the last 24 hours?

</comment><comment><USER4> Marc Z. just become consultant for Mr. Xi</comment>


How continuous deployment is done at kaChing - <AUTHOR> http://prezi.com/5zm8xplapff2/continuous-deployment/

<comment><AUTHOR> First time I've heard of this: deploys can be done by including a hash tag in commit statements, for example: "#release:UM"</comment>


Ultraviolet light to disinfect against Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqytOuYfsnA <comment><USER2> Although I can't see how wiping down the inside of a bus with a single microfiber cloth without chemicals accomplishes anything, but I hope they have the data to prove that this method works. And what about shadows and nonlinearities? All I see is a couple of point source lights with some andons and a klaxon.</comment>


DooID 3 beta - personal landing page & contact hub - <AUTHOR>

We recently released the private beta of DooID version 3 (DooID is a webapp to create a personal landing page & contact hub, first release September 09). Would like to invite the HN community to take it for a spin and get some feedback on the pros and cons ... DooID 3 splashpage: http://dooid.com/ice_beta/index.php Invite code: beta_3_HN<p>Thanks in advance for helping! Per <comment><USER2> looks like "about.me", how is yours better?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's some main differences:

\- Different design options (there's even preset headers, link styles, etc.) \- Our app is a full blown contact hub, not only allowing to display links, but all kind of on- and offline contact data (social networks, rss/ links, phone, mobile, address, email, messaging, fax ... all classified by private and business data) & downloadable as v-card. \- DooID allows selected data to be password protected (scalable privacy protection). \- Accounts include a site-version that's optimized for mobile devices (besides the desktop webite). \- Add Ons provide extra value & -customization: maps, email signature, blog widget, cv, video embed, photostream, status and more</comment></comment>


In California's rural north, there are big dreams for cleaving the state - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-state-of-jefferson-activists-20180317-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> I love Jefferson, but the reality is that half the economy up there is based on destroying the environment, and the other half is based on cleaning it up. Iron Mountain Mine is one of the biggest Superfund sites in the country, and it took almost a century to get salmon back to the upper Trinity River.

Taking the poorest counties out of Oregon and California and making them into a separate state is not a recipe for success.</comment>


The End of Sex – When evolution, human sexuality, and the Western world collide - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201910/the-end-sex <comment><USER2> I think sex now is more pleasurable and nuanced and has broader connotations than it did for past generations.

Also, there is no proof or evidence for any of the assertions made in that piece.

I don't know what to make of this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> TBH, anybody who whinges about "today not matching ancestral conditions" should be held closely to their convictions and have to die by 35.

<comment><USER4> > _...have to die by 35_

That's a myth, you know. That's the life expectancy at birth, which is meaningless since many died in childhood before modern medicine. Prehistoric peoples who survived childhood lived as long as people do today.</comment></comment>


The History of Bejewled - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-bejewled-2013-9

<comment><USER2> It's been 3 years since the release of bejeweled 3, and there is still no mobile version. The market was theirs for the taking, and they did nothing. Now they're losing it to Candy Crush. There's bejeweled blitz, but people want a full version of the game.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your first query to a new search engine? - <AUTHOR> I always ask "verilog" or "what is verilog" to get a sense of how the engine matches up to Google/DDG. I was curious about what others ask for the first time. <comment><USER2> I usually start with "cars" or "dogs"...just to get an idea of what sort of results I will get.

This will give me an idea of if I will be served ads, and if the search engine includes snippets from wikipedia, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> "flowers". It's a commercial competitive term and most ad spots would be filled (flower delivery). I expect a wikipedia entry, dictionary entry, a diverse set of results overall and ideally not many SEO-heavy pages.

"mexico". Check official websites vs commercial (travel related or SEO heavy) ratio.

"news". Well the German translation of news to check the language vs region setting. Switzerland and Austria are German speaking as well and in the past search engines would show a mix of results. These days I think IP addresses are a factor and when in Germany I wouldn't see Austrian results.

"good dick". I expect the movie, not NSFW results. (alright movie, terrible title).

Disclaimer: worked at Yahoo! Search</comment>


Advantages of monolithic version control - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/monorepo/ <comment><USER2> How big are the build management teams at google and facebook?</comment>


MongoDB CTO: How our new storage engine will earn its stripes - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/mongodb-cto-how-our-new-wiredtiger-storage-engine-will-earn-its-stripes-7000036047/ <comment><USER2> BDB... seriously?

At this point why not just:

apt-get install postgres psql < "CREATE TABLE mongodb (key varchar[1024] NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,value jsonb);"

then you get the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER3> Easy replication & sharding is appealing.

<comment><USER4> And replication for postgres is not easy? Sharding in postgres requires some plproxy/pgbouncer knowledge - but they don't cause as many problems in the future as mongodb. Me personally, when it comes to databases i go for the reliable first - then i can play with scalability.

<comment><USER5> That almost certainly implies you're not working on anything that requires horizontal scalability. That's a luxury not everyone can afford. Scalability, in almost all cases that actually require it, is the first priority.

It's like saying it's more important that the car drives reliably rather than everyone that needs to travel fitting into the car in the first place.

<comment><USER6> I think there are probably way too many people out there doing scaling before they're doing "getting things right". It's premature optimization that causes a lot of problems.

Naturally, there are plenty of people who do need to scale a lot, too, but presumably by the time they need to, they have a good idea of the problem and exactly how best to scale it.

<comment><USER5> That may be generally true but those two things are not mutually exclusive. Scalability doesn't come at the expense of getting things right, it just might come at the expense of certain features which applies to most distributed system problems.

<comment><USER7> Vertical scaling can take you a surprisingly long way

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a huge MongoDB fan, but I think it is great to see competition and evolution in this space.

From the article:

"In addition to compression and record-level locking, WiredTiger also gives MongoDB multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), multi-document transactions, and support for log-structured merge-trees, or LSM trees, for very high insert workloads"

I'd also love to see them add document joins at some point. That's a a big differentiating feature for RethinkDB, although I've found Rethink's syntax to be difficult to reason through.

<comment><USER5> Why do you consider joins a big differentiating feature for NoSQL storage solutions?

<comment><USER9> Most real world data is some mix of relational and unique / big bag of properties. The best solution is often somewhere in between (which is, for me, probably pgsql and its support of JSON, though I've achieved the same versatility with xml data types).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is a link to some more 'thorough' benchmarks that compare WiredTiger to many other database back-ends.

[http://symas.com/mdb/inmem/](http://symas.com/mdb/inmem/)

<comment><USER11> I'd say the MongoDB folks made a pretty safe choice here, since WiredTiger offers both LSM and Btree engines. I've recently completed some more benchmarks on all of the above-tested engines, and will be publishing the report soon (as soon as it's done being written...). Testing on-disk, with DBs 5x larger than RAM, at data sizes of 24, 96, 384, 768, 2000, and 4000 bytes per record. The important result to note is that LSM's high write speed advantage only exists for small record sizes, and for short durations. On long duration tests the compaction overhead stops them in their tracks, and at data sizes above 2000 bytes per record, LSM write amplification is too expensive (regardless of test duration). I.e., above 2000 byte records, Btrees are always faster than LSMs.

This result is particularly relevant for MongoDB, since a document store tends to have large records containing multiple fields, as opposed to individual values being stored as separate small records.

And in cases where that applies (large records), nothing comes anywhere close to LMDB's performance.

(A preview of the on-disk test results I mentioned was presented at BuildStuff.LT last week [http://symas.com/mdb/20141120-BuildStuff- Lightning.pdf](http://symas.com/mdb/20141120-BuildStuff-Lightning.pdf) pages 103-on)

<comment><USER12> Howard I always found your benchmarks as well as your comments and explanations of the results to be very thorough and easy to understand. So thanks for that. I wonder if you had a look at ForestDB which is also based on a B+-tree like structure instead of LSM and claims to have very low write amplification. They have published benchmarks[1] but there is no LMDB or WiredTiger included.

[1] [https://github.com/couchbaselabs/forestdb/wiki/Performance-R...](https://github.com/couchbaselabs/forestdb/wiki/Performance- Results)

<comment><USER11> By the way, for those of you who are happy with just the raw data and coming to your own conclusions, you can get the advance look here: [http://symas.com/mdb/ondisk/](http://symas.com/mdb/ondisk/)

<comment><USER11> Page now updated with formatted results and conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> But the old one is crap, right?

</comment><comment><USER14> I am glad they finally introduced LSM trees and per document locking. But I think thats too little too late :-)

<comment><USER5> Why on earth would it be too late? MongoDB is comfortably in the top 3 in terms of traction and they just fixed what many consider the primary technical argument against using it. Too late for what?

<comment><USER6> Here's my guess about some of the most utilized/popular databases:

* SQLite - it's everywhere thanks to mobile phones.

* Oracle.

* Microsoft's thing has to have a big following.

* Mysql.

* DB2 is not as big as Oracle, but IBM isn't some lightweight, either.

MongoDB gets talked about a lot, and probably used among people trying new stuff out, but I think a lot of mostly silent people wouldn't touch something like that for their important data with a 10 foot pole.

<comment><USER15> I think you overestimate the reach of Oracle. They are no where outside fortuine 500 and thats not a lot of deployments.

MySQL is most likely the most deployed thanks to the LAMP stack's proliferation across all sorts of small and medium sites. After that it really would be a toss up between MS-SQL who has traction in the SMB space due to it being used for sharepoint and exchange, and PostgreSQL

but lets be honest the most utilized database is Access.

<comment><USER16> I do a lot of work with geo-spatial analysis and often work with with various counties and municipalities in my experience everybody has an Oracle database stuffed away somewhere storing the regions canonical geo-spatial data.

<comment><USER15> Even if each town had an oracle database squirreled away ( which they don't ) That still would not even come close to just the wordpress deployments (60 Million).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have been waiting for this since a long time. Having implemented an OLTP application using MongoDB (luckily their write loads were low), I stopped using Mongo 2 years back because of the write bottleneck (it was still good for OLAP though). Good decision by the MongoDB team since they already have the market traction.</comment>


Death of the Pure IaaS Cloud: Part 2- - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/blog/2011/04/04/19-death-of-the-pure-iaas-cloud-part-2 <comment><USER2> I'm tired of hearing about the "death" of IaaS. This guy is paranoid. The reason that "PaaS" platforms are multiplying is that they are easy to put together. By deliberately restricting what the customer can do, you can offer cheaper and higher-performing services.

Vendor lock-in is a nice plus for the vendor, but that alone wouldn't drive these product offerings.

The truth is that we haven't worked out the kinks in infrastructure as a service. Only trivial designs can be implemented in today's public clouds. Judging from vCloud Service Director (or whatever Redwood is called this week), that's not likely to change in the immediate future.

Get back to me when "IaaS" products permit the kind of extensive network design customization that your managed service colo host will typically support. If those types of products are supplanted by vendors pushing PaaS, then I'll start to worry.

<comment><USER3> When you say:

"extensive network design customization that your managed service colo host will typically support"

could you give a couple of examples of the sort of thing you are talking about?

<comment><USER2> * Customer-managed firewalls

* Redundant switching/interior routing

* Private layer 2 networks

* Bring your own IP space

* Redundant exterior routing (e.g. I advertise my prefix through a new provider during an extended downtime)

* Out-of-band access

<comment><USER3> In terms of our platform:

* Customer-managed firewalls

Yes

* Redundant switching/interior routing

Yes

* Private layer 2 networks

Yes we have private VLAN functionality. We'll be expanding this to up to 8 per server shortly.

* Bring your own IP space

Yes, this needs to be manually added to our BGP sessions but isn't a problem and we do this regularly for customers.

* Redundant exterior routing (e.g. I advertise my prefix through a new provider during an extended downtime)

We have multiple redundant carriers and they failover automatically. Actually the failover happens instantaneously, even if you are actively pinging you don't even get one dropped packet :-) If you have your own private infrastructure space elsewhere we also are able to choose the preferred carrier too.

* Out-of-band access

Not sure in what context you are talking about here. If you extrapolate I can give feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you...</comment>


Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf (1930) - <AUTHOR> http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91d/chapter5.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _"Really I must buy a pencil," as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter — rambling the streets of London._</comment>


Why Lisp Failed - <AUTHOR> https://locklessinc.com/articles/why_lisp_failed/ <comment><USER2> Lisp failed? News to me. I use it every day.

<comment><USER3> This appeared as early as April 2010, according to the Wayback Machine:

[https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://locklessinc.com/articl...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://locklessinc.com/articles/why_lisp_failed/)

I developed a great new Lisp dialect since this was written.

(Though the project started around August 2009, the internals of TXR weren't externally exposed as a Lisp until December 2011.)

So the Algol family is thriving, whereas the Lisp family is dead? What do we include in either family? Obviously, Algol 68 is dead, and so is Lisp 1 and 1.5.</comment></comment>


Inline C/Assembler in Bash - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eklitzke/c.sh <comment><USER2> The insane things people do in Bash sometimes...although I don't think anything can top the x86 Assembler that was written _entirely_ in Bash:

[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug- bash/2001-02/msg00054....](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug- bash/2001-02/msg00054.html)

<comment><USER3> to call this an assembler is to not give it credit where it's due - this is not an assembler, it's much more than that.

it's a set of functions for bash that when sourced make the assembly _a valid bash script_ which then runs and _assembles itself_. this is genius.

<comment><USER4> It's using the shell's own tokenizer to parse asm! That's glorious!

I don't really understand _why_ the code works since I can't read x86 asm yet, but I think _how_ it works is reasonably clear. Each instruction has its own bash function that writes its opcodes to the output file and the asm script to be assembled is (I think) sourced directly into the running shell session.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The next step is to write a new Bash in that C, and write a C compiled inside that Bash and so on. (See Godel, Escher, Bach)

<comment><USER2> Godel, Escher, Bash?

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)

<comment><USER7> Sadly, you missed the pun

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could he not remove the temp files and use process substitution instead? (looks cleaner in my opinion)

i.e:

cc -fPIC -o $sofile -shared <(cat <<'EOF'

...

EOF

)

</comment><comment><USER9> I once built a package to allow redistribution of C/Flex/Go-scripts with just- in-time compilation ([https://github.com/radiospiel/jit](https://github.com/radiospiel/jit)) but mine does not allow to mix the to-be-compiled language into the bash script itself; so count me impressed :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to write CGI in shell scripts. OK, it was the mid 1990s.

</comment><comment><USER11> this is cool do more

</comment><comment><USER12> > Has you ever wanted to combine the speed and safety of Bash with the raw, > unbridled power of C?

Uh, no? :)</comment>


Show HN: Tweef, Instantly share individual tweets to Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yask123/Tweef#-tweef- <comment><USER2> What would this be called if it used Quora instead of Twitter?

<comment><USER3> I see what you did there...

Truth be told, it most likely would be called QuorF.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I debunk 5G threat's in my latest Newsletter - <AUTHOR> https://outsideplatoscave.substack.com/p/outside-platos-cave-4 <comment><USER2> Please don't put "Show HN" on reading material. That's against the rules ([https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)), because otherwise every post would have Show HN on it, defeating the purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is true that it is that safe all these conspiracies would end for good if a scientist would put himself and his mother next to a 5G antenna radiating at maximum power.

We do clinical trials for every single substance, as a scientist I'd like to see serious clinical trials for 5G too.

Unfortunately all we get is loose info and "according to experts", a thing that obviously feds the fears.</comment>


How We Built an iPhone App for $4873.92 - <AUTHOR> http://gifterapp.com/blog/files/bedd9a6a1425818f49ef0645cc71044c-1.html <comment><USER2> I detect the beginning of a new Internet meme: "How we did XXX for $YYYY.YY".

I don't really see the point of these articles either. Why include memory for XML parsing and the flight to WWDC? I'm pretty sure the app could have been made without those. The article is about what they spent, but it doesn't generalize in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I also like how people stopped writing software, the kind that actually takes skills and time to make (and customers to bill for), and switched to free "apps" that seem to take as much time to build as time required to blog about it.

Notice how few open source developers, those who produce tons of actual software, blog very little. That's because they're busy coding, thus not much time left to _"share their experiences while coding"._ How many active Linux kernel devs have popular blogs? Yet those are the kind of people that can actually say something interesting.

I don't hear much from devs who're working on next gen. Apple stuff either. Only "iPhone app devs" and "google engine app devs" and other "app devs"... Damn "apps"...

<comment><USER4> What's with all the hating? I can see where constantly seeing "How we did XXX for $YYYY.YY" can get a little tiresome, but they also serve a purpose. One, they're insight into what sort of expenses a venture like this takes. Sure, you have some expenses that most people would discard, but then you just get a lower number.

Two, it provides knowledge and inspiration to people out there who have yet to start their ventures. Not everyone wants to be a linux kernel coder, some kids out there might want to be iPhone software developers, and this article tells them that even a teenager can probably do it over the summer with a little sweat equity and some money saved up from a job. These kind of articles make entrepreneurship less of a mystery, and thats a good thing.

<comment><USER5> On a sidenote, a teenager wanting to be an iPhone developer over the summer would probably want to subtract a couple thousand dollars from that figure, since Apple does have a student scholarship program for WWDC that provides college students with free wwdc tickets (whether you pay for travel/housing depends on where you live/which college you attend as individual programs may reimburse you for that up to a certain amount).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm the author of this blog post, and I thought I'd respond to a few valid points that have been brought up here:

\- The reason I wrote about and actually itemized cost is because, well, you don't see much of that at the moment. People like Paul Graham say that a startup can be funded with $20000, but what does that really mean? What's the nitty-gritty?

\- I didn't include things like pencils and chairs because everyone has pencils and chairs. I wanted to touch on what and where we had to spend to get this particular app going. Your results may vary; surely if you're doing a game you'd probably need more art assets, etc. The point is not that oh, we did this for so little money, we're so great - it's a personal story of how _we_ built an app, and to embolden others that hey, it's doable. That's why I linked to the Guy Kawasaki post at top of this article - it inspired us!

\- TX is probably trolling, but I have to dispute the idea that linux kernel devs don't share their experience. Sure they do: it's in their well-written code and comments. We're closed source, but my partner will be posting about technical issues and speed wins for iPhone development soon, and there will be more to follow when the iPhone NDA lifts. Our app may seem simple, but if you could open it up you'd find an elegant tourbillon - it wasn't thrown together in the slightest.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sorry - but is this a joke?

Out of the 11 items they brought, $4873.92 overall, 8 of them, $4136.94, seems like totally unessential.

I was expecting something where the bulk of the costs consisted of salaries for X days/weeks of work. But instead the bulk consisted of a trip to the WWDC, tons of ram, and icons?

Maybe this wasn't the point of the post, but it seems like they totally missed the point of building an application...or at least the point of a "How we built X for $Y" post. But it seems every single one of those posts are totally inaccurate - one where they built one for $10k (but had 9 people working on the project!), one where they built a site for $8.75 (because that's the cost of the domain - nothing else included), and now this where they built one for $5000 (but included totally unnecessary items).

<comment><USER5> Personally having been to WWDC a couple times now, I'd think that it wasn't all too inappropriate to include in the cost. It is a very useful resource for pretty much any Mac/iPhone developer, and I know many who consider the sessions, the networking, and sitting down with engineers to talk over things to be worth more than what they paid for the conference. And to be honest, I don't think they missed the point much by including the cost of icons as well. It's part of the application. Some may do it in-house, others will pay for work. To not count it as part of the app is fairly unreasonable...what else would you be doing if you needed icons? Making your own? (Not always the best idea, and for some will waste more time for an inferior set of icons vs. just buying a decent set.) And well...if the RAM helped them be more productive, then so be it.

Maybe I would have had a separate "Optional costs, but ones we really thought were justified/important for what they gave us" category for those three that people seem to be taking the most offense from. Sure, _you_ and some others may not be interested in spending $600 on icons or $3000 on a trip to WWDC because you don't need it for whatever reason, but many do. In fact, I'd say that would apply to a lot of apps on the app store now where I know/know of the developer(s), since I saw so many of them at WWDC with MacBook Airs.

It may be inaccurate to you, but I don't think it's that far off. Everyone's different, and this is just one case I don't think is that unique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _$297.98 - Emergency RAM. For a while we had to parse a 12gb XML file. Every day. Louis got 8 more gigs for his Mac Pro overnighted out._

I'd really like to know what the hell this 12GB XML file they needed to parse multiple times was.

 _EDIT: The developer replied here:[http://gifterapp.disqus.com/how_we_built_an_iphone_app_for_4...](http://gifterapp.disqus.com/how_we_built_an_iphone_app_for_487392_none_gifter/#comment-892510*)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it was a pretty good article. If you think an item was unessential, well, you can do the math, subtract it. It was a pretty good round-up of how they did it. You may make fun of the icons, but a lot of businesses outsource these days, and they decided to outsource that. If it was something that would just have delayed them, then it was the right choice. And it illustrates just how cheaply it would be to outsource that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have to congratulate these developers for creating what appears to be a very useful iPhone app on a shoestring with lots of sweat equity.

However, when it comes down to how much it cost, like jrockway said, it's not very meaningful to others. Furthermore, I'm already sick of the prospect of the pissing contest where developers say they can develop another app for even less. Blech.

</comment><comment><USER10> I see an easy way they could of saved $3,000 right off the bat.

<comment><USER5> I've said it once here already and I will say it again. I have not come across many Mac|iPhone developers who were unhappy with what they got out of WWDC, unless all they were doing all week long was getting plastered.

It seems like a complete waste of money to some, but when you consider what you can get out of it: the sessions, the seeds, the _signing up to talk to an apple engineer about your app to get help with virtually everything_, the session videos, the people you meet...it can and is well worth the money to attend.

There are some conferences I have been to that were mostly along the lines of "what the hell is this *&#$" where I've fallen asleep and skipped entire days, and WWDC is not one of them. It's definitely an experience I recommend to developers should they be able to afford the time/money it costs to attend. I'd even know of some that would say WWDC's cost is nothing compared to what it's saved them in terms of all the things they got out of it that they used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about the time you spent not making $100+ per hour working on consulting projects. I'm guessing iPhone dev is probably $150+

</comment><comment><USER12> epic failure right here: $120/year - DreamHost: We use DreamHost for a bunch of miscellaneous services, and this also included our domain name.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a single item in that list belongs to "Development" category. But since he's writing about non-development spending categories, why not include a cost of chairs, tables and pencils?

Also, when I flag shitty content, where does this "flagging" vote go? I'm using it as a missing downmod feature.</comment>


Takata's Air Bag Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-06-02/sixty-million-car-bombs-inside-takata-s-air-bag-crisis <comment><USER2> There is little doubt these bags are dangerous and pose a known threat to passenger safety. But to call these car bombs is irresponsible. They are not purposely armed with the intent to inflict damage to people. Yes, they have design flaws which have resulted in deadly injuries. But while technically these are explosives to aid in deploying the safety mechanism, they are not bombs as most people understand things.

This is as unjust as calling people who get arrested "disappeared" with all the connotations that word has (i.e. secret summary executions). This has the same approach, a bombastic approach to headline writing. For shame!

<comment><USER3> When I read that they used ammonium nitrate first thing I thought about was: "That's bomb-material, how can you put that into a running vehicle?". One of the worst road-side accidents that happened in my country was this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C4%83ile%C8%99ti_explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C4%83ile%C8%99ti_explosion)

> The Mihăileşti explosion occurred on 24 May 2004 in the village of > Mihăileşti, Buzău County, Romania. A truck loaded with ammonium nitrate > rolled over and caught fire, and one hour later exploded killing at least 18 > people and another 13 were wounded

Notice the "one hour later" part. They are indeed ticking time bombs.

<comment><USER4> > That's bomb-material

how else do you suggest they produce enough gas within milliseconds to inflate two or more airbags ?

<comment><USER3> As I understood from the article ammonium nitrate is way more unstable compared to the other solutions. Apart from the Oklahoma terror attack and the case I mentioned there is also this ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks#Breivik_Ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks#Breivik_Geofarm)):

> The place of business was given as Åmot in Hedmark. On 4 May 2011 Breivik > purchased six tonnes (13,000 lb) of fertilizer through Geofarm at > Felleskjøpet, three tonnes (6,600 lb) of ammonium nitrate and three tonnes > of calcium ammonium nitrate. According to neighbours, all the fertilizer was > stored in his barn.[47] After conducting a reconstruction of the bomb with > equivalent amount of fertilizer on the farm in Åmot, police and bomb experts > concluded that the bomb had been 950 kilograms,[48] about the same size as > the one used in the 2002 Bali bombings.

All I'm saying is that they could have chosen another explosive-like material, not one which is known to be unstable and which has been used by terrorists to make bombs exactly for this reason.

<comment><USER5> (Note, all this is based reading, explosives are something I've thoroughly avoided, I like my fingers.)

Nope, ammonium nitrate is a secondary explosive, and as far as I know a rather insensitive one, although how insensitive would depend on what fuel you mix it with. I don't recall if it was mentioned if Takata is mixing it with one. By itself, it's quite insensitive, but in large quantities in worse case conditions has resulted in some of the worst explosives disasters: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters) Note the Texas City one was in theory pure ammonium nitrate (although I wonder if it was pure enough...), many of the others had other stuff contributing, or starting the disaster.

Don't know about sodium azide, but lead azide has been used as a detonator, and therefore a primary explosive as far as I know, in non-corrosive firearms primers for some time (although I think lead styphnate is more popular).

Ammonium nitrate is a preferred explosive component for many classes of users, military, civilian, and terrorist, simply because it's very very cheap, it's also used as fertilizer. Which of course then makes it relatively accessible to the latter class of users, but not in the ideal form, the more surface area, the higher the boom.

Which circles back to the Takata problem, they haven't been able to keep it from turning into a powder, which has the max surface area and turns it into an explosive that turns the air bag into a true, metal fragment and splinter producing bomb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > [Shigeshisa Takada] didn't mention that Takata had _tried_ to fix the > problem by changing the propellant formula in 2008.

My Acura TL is affected by this airbag recall, and it's a fairly recent 2012 model too. Whatever changed circa 2008 apparently didn't work.

> NHTSA says those companies are making 70 percent of the replacement > inflators.

When I took it to the dealership for servicing about a week ago, I also inquiried about the airbag issue. According to service rep, it's a quick 30 minute fix assuming parts on hand...problem is the 30-45 day lead time for parts, which blew my mind away considering the nature of the issue in a state well known for its warm weather and humidity. Considering the logistic predicament, I wonder how quality will be affected given the number of 3rd- party players manufacturing a complex replacement component for a proprietary airbag system.

<comment><USER7> The 2008 fix, according to the article, started in Europe and was also used in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1998 article on the Paresh Khandhadia, the Takata engineer

[http://www.autonews.com/article/19980223/ANA/802230779/slow-...](http://www.autonews.com/article/19980223/ANA/802230779/slow- starter:takatas-non-azide-airbag-inflator-took-a-while-to-catch-)

<comment><USER9> So, he basically created a very safe airbag inflator (tetrazole) and later screwed everything up by going with ammonium nitrate? WTF!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great longform article, one of the best indepth overviews of a company's culture and current controversies that I've read in awhile...and a pretty egregious controversy at that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Check your car by VIN here: [https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/](https://vinrcl.safercar.gov/vin/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this story also shows the problems with patents. If Takata was allowed to use the mixture that was "invented" by other airbag makers, would they have used their dangerous ammonium nitrate mixture?

It also shows the dangers of the drive for lower costs in companies like this. The current system is doomed to reintroduce the same problems all over again, regulation and more control will not change this.

<comment><USER13> The other side of that question is: if other airbag makers weren't able to patent the better mixture, would they ever have bothered to invent it?

I'm not implying that the answer is necessarily "no," but the mere fact that patents discouraged the use of a safer mixture in one case doesn't tell the whole story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article mentions Honda's efforts to track down owners of cars with defective airbags. Why can't state motor vehicle registries cooperate in recalls like this?

<comment><USER15> I have an 11 year old Honda subject to the recall. I'm the third owner and I bought it from a dealer with no Honda affiliation. Honda has been bombarding me with notices, suggesting that the state _has_ been helping.

What I'm more annoyed about is the UX. Honda is getting press puff pieces published about what an awesome job they're doing up to and including rental cars for people who are concerned while parts are on backorder. Meanwhile my local dealership told me that they'd drop me off/pick me up in their shuttle as long as I wasn't more than 2 miles away.

<comment><USER16> User experience is going to vary widely because dealerships vary widely.

The dealership where I bought my Honda gave me a loaner while my vehicle was repaired. I dropped my car off on the way to work, and picked up the loaner. The work was done by the time I got off work. The whole experience was painless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Takada has only $520 million on hand and is worth about $340 million

Does this mean they have $520m in cash, but the stock valve is less than their bank account?

<comment><USER18> Sounds like it. Take into account the impending fine, all the lawsuits in many countries, the family control of the firm... Takata at this point could well be worth nothing at all.

<comment><USER19> They have other product lines (the article mentions their seat belt business), but my guess would be that the airbag liabilities would vastly exceed the income & valuation of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron Very interesting read, and makes me recall back to being a kid and setting off airbags in the back yard. You could immediately tell the difference between the older propellant and the newer ones, though I wasn't aware of how poisonous it was for us.

</comment><comment><USER20> My Subaru dealership can only order 5 airbags per day. I was a couple hundred deep in the list. They said it takes 4 hours to do one, but Subaru claims 2.

I'm going to be waiting for quite a while.

<comment><USER21> 2 hours to pull it into the bay, 45 minutes to contemplate life, 15 minutes to swap the air bag, and 1 hour to day dream about an FA20 WRX STI. It's seriously so simple to swap, they are lying.

<comment><USER20> my 2005 outback has to have the entire dash removed to do it.

<comment><USER21> Passenger side I assume, that would definitely take a long time.

<comment><USER20> Correct!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://hondaairbaginfo.com/news-updates/statement-by- america...](http://hondaairbaginfo.com/news-updates/statement-by-american- honda-regarding-expanded-recall-of-takata-non-desiccated-passenger-front- airbag-inflators/)

"Automobile models and model years included in the _first stage_ of this recent expansion of the Takata non-desiccated passenger front inflator recall"

Doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy as a 2006 Odyssey owner.

<comment><USER22> Yep, talking to myself:

[http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/nhtsa- expand...](http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/nhtsa-expands- accelerates-takata-inflator-recall-05042016)

"The _five recall phases_ are based on prioritization of risk, determined by the age of the inflators and exposure to high humidity and fluctuating high temperatures that accelerate the degradation of the chemical propellant."

So I guess I'm a phase 2 or 3 kind of owner. Meanwhile, sitting at the vaunted 10 year marker in a hot 'n humid climate...

<comment><USER23> In your situation I'd probably just yank the fuse until the replacement occurs. On that car it looks like it's in the interior fusebox on the driver's side, fuse #22, "IG SRS". You won't have any airbags in an accident with it pulled, but you also won't run the risk of getting the equivalent of a shotgun blast of metal shards to the face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As I understand it, the problem is that the explosive becomes more powerful over time, _too_ powerful. Here's a wild idea --- how about "pre-aging" the explosive until it's reached basically its maximum "strength", and then filling the airbags with a smaller amount to provide the same equivalent force as before? It could save them even more... and they could spend some of the savings on making the casings stronger and thus less likely to fragment.

<comment><USER25> It is not the force that changes, it is the rate of gas generation (burn rate). You need to generate airbag gasses fast enough to inflate before your face hits the airbag, but slow enough not to tear itself apart (especially the metal forming the gas generator).

As the ammonium nitrate based gas generator mix ages, becomes less stable in that it burns faster, generates its gasses faster, and crosses the threshold between gas generation and explosion (RUD).

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

<comment><USER5> Does it become less "stable", or just much higher in speed of detonation? I don't remember reading any accounts of these airbags going off when they shouldn't have, just bad results once the system triggered them.

<comment><USER25> Stability here is being used in the chemical sense, as in "how fast it oxidizes". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability)

A gas generator (airbag inflater) does not detonate, it generates a large volume of gas very rapidly but at a designed (predictable) rate - the faulty airbags are detonating.

Spontaneous ("accidental") deployment would be the ultimate bad instability, but I don't believe this was a major problem (yet). IIRC, there was one reference to an "accidental" deployment which could be instability-related or a fault elsewhere, e.g. in the sensor/trigger circuitry.

The instability that is causing the major problems is causing faster combustion than designed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ammonium nitrate is at least non-toxic. You can sprinkle it on your soup. The exhaust gases are likewise harmless, and even have enough oxygen to keep you alive.

Sodium azide is deadly both ways. Unreacted azide is nasty stuff. Sodium makes lye when it gets in your eyes or lungs, and is also an extreme fire hazard. There is no oxygen.

</comment><comment><USER27> the article mentions 13 deaths of which 10 in the US. This seems a very odd distribution, can someone explain it?

<comment><USER5> I think tmd83 might be on to something (as well as m_mueller), the NHTSA decided in the ... '70s I think to make the tradeoff to maximally protect those who don't wear belt.

But environmental conditions might also be a factor, the higher the heat and humidity, the faster the ammonium nitrate pellets turn into very dangerous powder. And that's being used to target the limited supply of replacement parts in the US. How does Japan's population distribution and climate compare to the US?

<comment><USER28> The (very good, worthy of a read) article deals with this. It states that the european subsidiary of Takata developed a propellant based on guanidine nitrate because of concerns with the safety of ammonium nitrate, and have used that since 2008. It also states that their Chinese subsidiary used that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Would it be better to deactivate my airbag until it can be replaced, or run the risk of having this issue pop out, assuming my car is affected?

If it is worth anything I drive like a maniac.

<comment><USER30> Step 1 would be to stop driving like a maniac. Otherwise since there have been 13 deaths for millions of air bags, probably still safer to leave it activated. The chance of serious injury from your head striking the steering column is still significantly larger than shrapnel from a defective air bag injuring you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> My 2007 CR-V is affected. Since I live in the northern part of the US, my airbag isn't a priority as they're doing southern states first.

<comment><USER16> I live in one of the driest states, and my air bags were swapped a year ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Torture the data until it confesses

such a sad and tragic misunderstanding of the meaning of this phrase.

</comment><comment><USER33> One of the early criticisms of air bags in passenger cars was that they were said to protect only people who aren't belted in, with nothing but potentially-injurious effects for anyone who is.

Does anyone know if that is still (or was ever) true?

<comment><USER34> I believe that was never true for vehicle occupants in the typical ranges of height, weight, and age.

Failure to use seat-belts with earlier generations of airbags tended to lead to unbelted occupants "submarining" under the opening airbag, leading to lower body injuries, although the "submarining" jargon now appears to be applied to situation where a lap belt is wore higher on the abdomen rather than low on the hip bones, with the higher position tending to lead to abdominal injuries.

With newer generations of airbag design and other tech such as active seat belt pre-tensioners, I would be extremely surprised to find any recommendations against wearing seatbelts, except perhaps for the 1 in 100,000 cases - near-term pregnant women or persons with recent abdominal surgery.

Here's a detailed review (from the mid-90's) [http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Air+Bags/Third+Repor...](http://www.nhtsa.gov/Laws+&+Regulations/Air+Bags/Third+Report+to+Congress+Effectiveness+of+Occupant+Protection+Systems+and+Their+Use)

and more recent reports [http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Be...](http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Behavioral+Reports:+Seat+Belts)

[http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html](http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/seatbelts/facts.html)</comment></comment>


A Bridging Model for Parallel Computation (1990) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~knight/cs267/papers/BSP.pdf <comment><USER2> It can be worth revisiting these older (1990s) ideas for large-scale parallelism. They mostly died on the vine at the time, because most people only had 2 or 4 cores to play with. If you could afford a CM-5, you might get 1000 cores (but shared among your whole institution.) Now it's possible to play with a million GPU cores with a modest budget. The main constraint is figuring out how to use them.</comment>


Google Wallet Card is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/wallet/card/ <comment><USER2> They're stopping support for the Google Wallet card, which was a physical card.

It looks like the Google Wallet App is still supported. So, in that sense, Google Wallet will continue to exist.</comment>


Ex-NSA man slams Israel for strike on alleged Hamas cyber attackers - <AUTHOR> https://www.itwire.com/security/86929-ex-nsa-man-slams-israel-for-strike-on-alleged-hamas-cyber-attackers.html <comment><USER2> Everyone seems to be missing an important point here, especially for HN users. Hackers and anyone supporting them are now live bomb targets. Hackers are no longer punished by just putting them in jail. Death is a punishment option too.

In the past, they were collateral damage now they are a direct target.

<comment><USER3> It's my understanding that a hacking incident that principally contributes to injury/death can justify a kinetic response.

Hacking incidents with kinetic effects are only rare outliers today, but that could change tomorrow.

Kinetic deterrence & reprisal for hacking incidents is a legitimate option, but ripe for significant abuse if allowed without clear attribution of hack and/or link to related kinetic effects.

Much like how terrorism is(or should be) mostly a law enforcement function.

Hacking should be as well.

But planning for exceptions is also important.

Especially planning to ensure exceptions don't become the norm.

<comment><USER4> From the story here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19834802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19834802)

> They claimed it housed Hamas cyber operatives, which had been engaging in a > cyberattack against Israel's "cyberspace."

> "We were ahead of them all the time," said Brigadier General D., the head of > the IDF's cyber defense division. "The moment they tried to do something, > they failed."

> Israeli officials did not disclose any details about the Hamas cyberattack; > however, they said they first stopped the attack online, and only then > responded with an air strike.

No details, at all, except that they had already stopped the attack, and from things like "ahead of them all the time", it doesn't exactly sound like they didn't know any other way to prevent injury or death other than to level the building.

> But planning for exceptions is also important.

Just because they killed people doesn't mean that it was an exceptional case that required it, so I would start there.

<comment><USER3> I'm generally pro Israel.

But quite happy to criticise them when and where warranted on specific issues/incidents.

In this case, it certainly sounds like a very serious and incongruent disconnect between the public affairs officer for Cyber and the actual kinetic response.

The Israelis have always been pretty quick to kill or capture not only leadership, but technical talent.

In this case, if I had to guess, there was a rare opportunity to hit apex and/or volume technical talent the IDF justified by the rocket attacks and/or it's signalling that moving forward insurgent cyber will be considered a valid target for kinetic action.

It's also worth mentioning that the people targeted may not be hackers, but social media camapigners/influencers.

<comment><USER4> > But quite happy to criticise them when and where warranted on specific > issues/incidents.

It rather seemed you came up with a rationalization for the deed just because it was done. Presented with facts, you don't skip a beat either.

> In this case, if I had to guess

That's the thing, you don't have to. So why do you? And what's with the weasel words like "kinetic action"? If someone mistook someone you loved for a threat and killed them, and someone else just said " _oh yeah, they 've always been quick to capture or kill people_", and " _this may be signalling that going forward people mistaken for threat are considered a valid target for physical removal_ ", would you like that?

> _Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what > the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault. > In the West, these specialists are called "intellectuals" and, with marginal > exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self-righteousness, > however outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the > origins of recorded history._

\-- Noam Chomsky

When I said "start there", I meant start with the deed. Start with the principles, and if you would like them to be applied to you and people you love. There are things we cannot bless. We can support them, but that just degrades us, it doesn't enoble these things one bit.

> _People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of > its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction._

\-- Noam Chomsky

I rather consider Yeshayahu Leibowitz "pro Israel" \-- in a sense of supporting the heart, body and soul, not just the body come what may -- just like I would have considered Sophie School "pro Germany", not "anti Germany". Principles, and applying them equally, and not having double standards, those are real, being pro this or that is just rhetoric.

<comment><USER3> I'm not rationalising what has happened.

I'm clinically describing it.

I don't have skin in this particular "game" so I'm emotionally detached.

Feel free to change kinetic action to violence, death, or murder.

I've seen and experienced enough conflict up close and personal so I hope you don't think my remarks are flippant.

It's not my fight.

I'm simply describing what should be obvious extensions of violence by one group of humans directed at another, based on their behaviour in a new domain(digital).

Leveraging a new domain(digital) as a weapon(cyber/information operations) can expect to have weapons from across other domains(air land sea space) used to detect, deter, destroy them.

My posting doesn't equate to agreeing with all of it.

But based on consistent human behaviour of one tribe towards another, isn't shock in seeing it more than a bit naive?

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, sorry for reading it as flippant, which I kinda did.

> But based on consistent human behaviour of one tribe towards another, isn't > shock in seeing it more than a bit naive?

I'm not expressing shock. I'm expressing anger and the refusal to normalize this.

It's not like Hamas and IDF enjoy the exact equal respect in (the polite companty of) the Western world. I can mention Leibowitz, and nobody in their right mind would attempt to smear the man; but quoting him would be different, and saying it in my own words ouldn't go over smoothly _at all_. Netanyahu goes around talking about how the Palestinian Mufti gave Hitler the idea to kill Jews instead of just re-settle them, a German protester holds up a sign just _quoting_ Netanyahu, and gets arrested. It's been an unadulterated shitshow for a long, long time, and it seems that as a German citizen, I can't claim neutrality, the actions and flowery words of my government make that impossible. That goes tenfold for US citizens. That ship has sailed in my books. So the least I can and must do do is say "not in my name".

Also, Israel isn't a monolith, Palestine isn't a monolith. Individual actions and reasons for them are on a wide spectrum, and are culpable for what they do. There's warmongers on all sorts of "sides", and they use each other to justify each other. It's not human behaviour, it's corporate behaviour for lack of a better word. People do and justify things in groups they cannot justify as individuals. For me the dividing line is not between various tribes or nations, but human individuals on one hand, and _any and all_ "tribes" (that rise to the rank of nationalistic, jingoist delusion and express themselves in murder) on the other. Maybe that stuff was good for something 50k years ago, but we kind of have to decide if we want our technology, or that. Insisting to keep both together might just mean we won't have either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the article: - "The attack on this building was part of other offensive operations that took place after Hamas was alleged to have fired rockets into Israel over the weekend."

"Alleged", right, there were aliens firing rockets on Israel. There is nobody else to fire the rockets. Only Hamas has them. And placement of the "offensive" as a response on firing rockets at the Israel's civilians. Looks like this is very offensive to protect your civilians!

<comment><USER6> The rule across all media is to always precede reports of Israeli killing of Palestinians in Gaza with a number of rockets, even if 24 hours before said rockets Israel has snipered unarmed protestors attempting to practise their Right of Return as guaranteed by UN Resolution 194. Anyone who has an iota of knowledge about what's going on there knows that continuous building of settlements by Israel and the daily harassment the Palestinians have to endure is the root of the problem.[0] I truly wonder if there's anyone who isn't completely ignorant on the issue, who still buys the zionist talking points.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxJd88xkBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxJd88xkBU)

<comment><USER7> this is such a long and convoluted conflict...

israel withdrew from gaza in 2005, but kept control of access points, air travel etc making gaza a weird place, partly under israel control.

hamas (basically a terrorist org) literally took over gaza from fatah (a nationalist party) in a war in 2007. then you've got the islamic jihadis, a bonafide terror org, which started taking over from hamas, in the same gaza strip.

both hamas and islamic jihadis want the annihilation of the state of israel.

i see no end in sight to the bloodshed, no matter how many civilians die.

but i do understand why people would side with israel when it comes to gaza, and side with the palestinians when it comes to occupied territories.

<comment><USER6> "this is such a long and convoluted conflict" \- Not really, this is just a simple case of settler colonialism, anyone who claims that this is a "complex" conflict is either ignorant or deliberately trying to confuse people.

Recommended reading from Theodor Herzl (founding father of zionism) to Noam Chomsky (secular jewish intellectual) for those who are truly interested in the facts:

The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat), (1896) [[https://archive.org/details/ajewishstateana00aviggoog](https://archive.org/details/ajewishstateana00aviggoog)]

On Palestine - Noam Chomsky [[https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Noam- Chomsky/dp/1608464709/...](https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Noam- Chomsky/dp/1608464709/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=On+Palestine&qid=1557203766&s=books&sr=1-1)]

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe (jewish historian) [[https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan- Pappe...](https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan- Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Ethnic+Cleansing+of+Palestine&qid=1557203807&s=gateway&sr=8-1)]

<comment><USER8> Usually people who see things as "simple" when most consider them complex are either extremely smart or extremely shallow. Providing Ilan Pappe as a serious source tells where you are in that range.

<comment><USER9> Chomsky, being wrong more often than right, is also a buffoon though he "sounds" smart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So it's okay these days to 'label' a building filled with civilians a 'hacking' hub and blow it up? No trial. No checks. No questions asked.

Wow.

<comment><USER11> The Israel-Palestine conflict runs by its own rules, or rather lack thereof. With the exception of nuclear holocaust, if there is a line or threshold to cross, you can bet someone involved in that problem has already crossed it. It's like humanity felt obliged to have a reference implementation of all the worst behaviour it might engage in, conveniently located at the intersection of three continents.

</comment></comment><comment> rvp-x The replies are somewhat ignorant of the nature of the Hamas-Israel conflict. It assumes that the building was populated during the bombing, which is usually not the case when blowing up buildings in a civilian area. Too high risk of hitting bystanders.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's pathetic watching people from the safety of their own homes commenting on how Israel should be waging war. Israelis are being killed and if Hamas had their way they would go over the border and massacre all Israelis in sight.

No other democracy is currently fighting a war against a neighbor that's shooting missiles at them and located only a few km from 80% of their population.

Israel's use of kid gloves against the Palestinians just emboldens them and encourages more cycles of violence.

<comment><USER6> Poor Israel, can't even dehumanise, colonise a people, drive them out of their homes and kill them without being criticised. You are dishing out the same old washed out propaganda and people know it's utter bullshit. Israel is the coloniser and the oppressor no matter how hard you push your propaganda, people can see the evidence from too many sources now, even secular jewish ones.

Israeli Solider testimony [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxJd88xkBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxJd88xkBU)]

"The Lobby" \- Documentary exposing the vile and venomous smearing tactics of the Israeli lobby (undercover reporter is jewish) [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceCOhdgRBoc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceCOhdgRBoc)]

The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat), (1896) [[https://archive.org/details/ajewishstateana00aviggoog](https://archive.org/details/ajewishstateana00aviggoog)]

On Palestine - Noam Chomsky [[https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Noam- Chomsky/dp/1608464709/...](https://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Noam- Chomsky/dp/1608464709/...)]

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe (jewish historian) [[https://www.amazon.com/The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of- Palestine/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of- Palestine/dp/B077KDH396/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ethnic+cleansing+palestine&qid=1557211694&s=gateway&sr=8-1)]

<comment><USER12> We left Gaza. There are no Israelis left in Gaza. It's not occupied. Now that we can see what happens when we give the Palestinians territory, we won't be doing that again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one to see echoes of Cold War stories, with spies and spymasters respecting each other and The Game more than they do their own military personnel...? It's like Smiley had been told Karla's office was purposefully bombed.

If humans ever managed to eventually move most or all conflicts to cyber methods, would that make us more _civilized_? Are we turning war into a game of bits, or are we tainting the networked Utopia with our never-extinguished bestial instincts?

<comment> rvp-x The cold war was not honorable. You let non-US/soviets do the actual fighting. In almost every other conflict on the world, the US and Soviets were picking sides and supporting militants. Millions were killed. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars#Cold_War_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proxy_wars#Cold_War_proxy_wars)

<comment><USER11> "You" who? I'm Italian, and from a city (Bologna) who suffered hundreds of casualties as a result of being on the actual front line of the Cold War.

Of course all wars are dirty, in one way or the other; but there is a spectrum, and there was certainly an element of honour code in a lot of the spying activities going on in Europe at the time - particularly in places like Germany and England.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The official IDF Twitter account @IDF posted something rather distasteful about the attack:

"CLEARED FOR RELEASE: We thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets. Following our successful cyber defensive operation, we targeted a building where the Hamas cyber operatives work.

HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed."

Counterproductive and narrative losing if you ask me.</comment>


Macworld lays off most staff - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DanFrakes/status/509753738454528000 <comment><USER2> Today is a great time to be a writer. There are virtually no middlemen between you putting together a sentence and millions being able to read it. There are countless communities where you can find people to give you good feedback to hone your craft.

Unfortunately, that also means it's a really terrible time to be a writer _for a living._ Like every job that is (a) creative and (b) can be distributed digitally, almost all of the money is falling out of it.

<comment><USER3> > almost all of the money is falling out of it.

Well no money because nobody's paying for it,and since nobody's paying for it the content is usually average at best.

Free information is great,but let's face it,quality news cost money and time. What have we today?in the tech world? content farms (readwrite,thenextweb,techcrunch,mashable...) where writers often know nothing about the subject,or are using social justice warfare to manifacture outrage in order to generate impressions( [http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no- women-on-stage-dive...](http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-women-on- stage-diversity-iwatch) ). How can that kind of news scale? readers are not idiots. But most readers ,at the same time,refuse to pay for anything,so the money has to come from somewhere,so we get sponsorised news too...

Real journalists or writers have skills,what's missing is a plateform where pro journalists could monetize their skills to corporations directly,to write serious reports on a specific subject for instance,intelligence,sourcing,or just writing for the web(for commercial purposes,i.e. writing for content for a corporate website).

<comment><USER4> The current quality and quantity of information previously classified as "news" is far beyond what has ever existed previously. Look at any news event and compare the information that's immediately available now compared to similar news events 20 or 30 years ago. People on the ground publish pictures, videos, and reports _as the events are happening,_ and we can read reports from any source in the world translated instantaneously into our native languages. And we have access to all of this using a tiny computer that fits in a pocket.

The idea that quality has decreased is simply an absurd and obvious myth perpetuated by editors and professional writers who are unhappy that their control over the journalism and publishing industries is evaporating. Furthermore, the market has never really paid for journalism, which was always subsidized by ads of questionable efficacy and ownership by wealthy individuals.

Finally, the big secret is the a massive amount of non-fiction by professional writers is embellished, plagiarized, or outright fabricated, and there is almost no real fact-checking in the industry. The regular scandals are just the tip of the iceberg.

Journalism and non-fiction writing as they exist now are in need of a major overhaul. Thankfully, technology is creating a situation where the world is naturally moving forward.

<comment><USER5> I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Straightforward reporting is in very good shape right now, particularly due to the effects you mention.

Long form journalism and in-depth reporting is not doing nearly as well, and is not well supported currently.

<comment><USER6> Well, there are still a couple of good ones. The Economist is exceptional, but it's there. Foreign Policy is also pretty good, though it the opinions are less polished - it seems written by people who haven't had to defend their article in front of colleagues before publishing. Anyway, it's good. On the tech front there's Anandtech and partly Ars Technica. I doubt the world has seen much better journalism than those four.

<comment><USER7> And the best private blogs are really good. (Even if the average is pretty poor.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's worth noting that they let staff cover the event yesterday, and then surprised (some of) them with a layoff today. Classy.

<comment><USER9> I don't see anything unclassy about laying off workers after a big event. I'm assuming there's a decline of work after a big event, so if they're financially hurting a decline would be the correct time to have layoffs.

<comment><USER10> Yup, same thing happens to QA and Devs after big game releases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We're at the turning point where great journalists are getting pushed out of their careers because jobs are vanishing under their feet. The content model has completely changed, some argue for the better. In the long term I fear the quality of content written will suffer, article accuracy will be reduced and we'll all be reading each others blogs about medicine [insert other topics here] (without ever having studied it or any previous knowledge on the subject). The Internet of "everyone's an expert" overnight is not something I'm looking forward to. Just look at all the overnight social media professionals. Many of these people don't have an understanding of how the Internet (or email) even works but they'll throw down the hot keywords to make themselves sound important; KPI's, User experience, etc etc.

I still feel there's huge opportunity in the learning space for online education. If I was a journalist or writer with specialized knowledge in a certain field, I'd focus my attention to that and bring my friends.

<comment><USER12> Journalists job is not to know about the thing they are covering; usually they have only slightly more knowledge than the layman; their job is to have relationships with people who can give them information the public doesn't easily have.

These relationships that lead to information becoming available won't and isn't going away, the people doing the reporting (now called bloggers) just aren't getting paid (much) for it. It's now a hobby. And that's ok.

As far as writings from experts; science journals still exist and AFAIK are not hurting or are in danger of being scaled back. Maybe someone with more knowledge can speak on the state of academic journals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bigger than Macworld. IDG, the parent company, has seen better days. They killed the print editions of Computerworld and CSO not long ago.

<comment><USER14> They started with InfoWorld in 2007.

<comment><USER13> I guess my point was this says a lot more about legacy print publishing than about macs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sad day. I still have a bunch of old Macworld issues.

Though that name seems like such an anachronism. The Apple universe isn't so much "Mac" anymore.

</comment><comment><USER16> This might be a good case study for dying traditional form of online media. Credit goes to random dance of Google SERP. As per Alexa, search traffic (for macworld.com) is gone down from 50% to 30% of total traffic, in three months. Google decided to do a (un)fair distribution of traffic.

Niche content companies should remain lean to survive.

</comment><comment><USER17> What is the catalyts for this? Apple's market share is similar to what is was a few years ago. Is there a decline in ad revenues? What is the reason for this.

<comment><USER18> My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving to create [http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/)) is increased competition for readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct, especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually paying for a _print_ subscription to MacWorld?

Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the 1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.)

I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures that make it less competitive against these upstarts.

Some of the ex-MacWorld journalists who are freshly unemployed are looking for jobs, so if you know of anyone who's hiring in this area, I'm sure they'd appreciate the pointer: [https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873](https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873) [https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041](https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041) [https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936](https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936)

<comment><USER19> My only print subscription is Bloomberg Businessweek. Seeing the week's cover in my mailbox is a highlight of my Saturday. But I got three years for $20.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That sucks. I realize Macworld still exists but won't be the same. Losing a lot of great writers that I've enjoyed for years.

</comment><comment><USER21> MacWorld was such a big part of my childhood, and a catalyst for why I'm able to make a living making things on the web today.

I hope the talented writers and editors who've been laid off get snapped up quickly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why? where they in charge of the streaming yesterday?

</comment><comment><USER23> They could have shuttered the print magazine and kept the staff on to write for the website. Like all the other tech websites out there. Wonder why they didn't do that.

<comment><USER13> They are. But many of them are now freelancers instead of fulltime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hi, I just stopped by to say 'basic income'.

<comment><USER25> Hey, I just stopped by to downvote you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I did not realize that Macworld still existed.

</comment><comment><USER27> IDG is slowly dying. I don't think they'll see 2025, possibly not even 2020.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it speaks volumes to the downward trend of Apple these days.

<comment><USER29> or the _print_ business.

<comment><USER30> No no no, clearly it's all because of Apple. All other print magazines are thriving!!! /s</comment></comment></comment>


The Hilarity of Microsoft's Bedlam DL3 Mailing List - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2004/04/08/109626.aspx <comment><USER2> Oldie but goodie - thanks for the refresher</comment>


There's a secret spreadsheet where Google employees share their salaries - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/458615/theres-reportedly-a-big-secret-spreadsheet-where-google-employees-share-their-salaries <comment><USER2> This is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9906107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9906107) with a more linkbaity title.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh no, this same Twitter as a blog post format again.

I still don't understand the salary sharing appeal. The last time I shared my salary I had a falling out shortly their after with my 'friends' I shared an apartment with. I've only experienced loss when sharing my salary.

</comment><comment><USER4> Genuinely--from the point of view of a company founder--what policy or culture could you establish that prevents gender/race pay inequality? Performance- based pay sounds like it would be great for productivity, but it's easy to see how that pay gap would arise from an industry already dominated by white males, especially if people's salaries are kept secret.

Do you put more effort into bringing diversity to your management team? Do you talk openly about salaries and establish that culture early? Do you go full transparency and post everyone's salary online? Or could this be a battle not worth fighting in an early company

<comment><USER5> My guess is that it ultimately does boil down to either having a performance- based pay or equal pay. Ie I don't believe that tech companies pay gap is (mostly) a result of anything but differing contributions by the given individuals. It seems a hard pill to swallow for the PC brigade (as it implies that people are actually different in ability and work ethic) - but that doesn't mean it's not true.

If you want your company to succeed (which is probably the most important thing when you are starting out), you'd probably go for the former.

If you then get so rich that you care more about social issues at large, you can steer ship towards equality (today's article in the NYT seems to describe that about Salesforce).</comment></comment>


Apple makes more from sale of 1 Mac than HP from 7 PCs - <AUTHOR> http://mattrichman.tumblr.com/post/6844151919/a-consequence-of-losing-the-pc-wars#

<comment><USER2> I wonder how many Mac owners got upset after reading this article... :) . Is HP 7 times more efficient as a company for the end user than Apple?

<comment><USER3> WAT? Company makes less money does not translate into consumers get more value out of the product.

<comment><USER2> There is a correlation between price and value and there is a correlation between price and how much company makes....so there should be a correlation between how much company makes and value provided to a customer.

<comment><USER3> Then Apple clearly comes out head... by a mile.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Peep inside a C# Application Service  - <AUTHOR> http://themvcblog.typepad.com/programming/2012/10/a-peep-inside-a-c-application-service.html

<comment><USER2> > _When an Application Service receives control, it loads an Aggregate and > retrieves any supporting Domain Services needed by the Aggregate's business > operation. When the Application Service delegates to the Aggregate business > operation, the Aggregate's method produces Events as the outcome._

I'm genuinely curious: does anyone here understand anything about that? What do those words even _mean_? I mean, even if you assume that the capitalized words are what's being explained, what's a "business operation"?

It's writing like this that give C# and .NET their (mostly undeserved) image of overarchitected concept jungles.

<comment><USER3> Its part of DDD (Domain Driven Design) universe, an attempt to have standard patterns for large enterprisy software.

<comment><USER4> That's correct, those terms come from Domain Driven Design terminology and are not related to C#.

You can learn more about it from this book:

Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software

[http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-Tackling- Complexi...](http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-Tackling-Complexity- Software/dp/0321125215)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like this article could use explanation as it seems that many of the comments here either are incorrect or are asking for explanation. I am not the author, but I do have a fairly good understanding of what is going on here.

First off, this has nothing to do with asp.net, wcf, etc. This is really JUST about event sourcing, with a tiny bit of "application service" at the start. The application service bit is actually what you would call from asp.net, wcf, nservicebus, some message queue handler, etc.

So I think first we should define a couple of terms used in this that are "Domain Driven Design" terms that I'll flesh out a bit.

* Application Service - This is a significant process whose responsibility does not fit well onto an object. Simplistically, think about this as a cohesive business process that orchestrates various objects.

* Aggregate Root - This is an entity (something with identity, such as a key) that is the logical root of an object graph (though the graph may only be the object itself, as is the case with customer).

Most of what you are seeing in this article is known as "Event Sourcing", which is to say that the current state of an object is built up by the history of events (changes) to the object. Since this is DDD, don't think of changes as in "field a changed value from b to c", but more of logical "business relevant" events like "customer address changed".

So what's happening in this article is this:

The `CustomerApplicationService.LockForAccountOverdraft` method requests the full history of events for the customer and creates the customer instance using those events. We now have a valid customer instance.

Next, we call the `Lock` method on customer, and give it the reason supplied to the `LockCustomer` method. Here, we create a new instance of CustomerLocked, which is an event signalling that a customer was locked. This event instance is pushed into the `Changes` collection and then executed against the customer instance, which sets the `ConsumptionLocked` property to true.

So in event sourcing the objects state is derived by it's previous events, so the `When(CustomerLocked e)` method is called when the matching event is passed to the mutate method. This happens in 2 places: when initializing from previous events, and when we are pushing the new event. The CustomerLocked event is pushed to the Changes collection because the event store will append that event to the stream on commit (transaction completion).

Now, someone stated that this looks like service bus, which is correct, but slightly different. Once the changes have been committed, the event store then publishes those events, typically onto something like a service bus, message queue, etc, and that event can then be consumed by other processes interested in that event.

So, where does this get us? Is this some over-architected ivory tower software? Well, the answer depends on what is important to you. In some scenarios, this is; in other scenarios this is ideal. The answer is basically defined by what matters to the business, which will define if keeping track of the state transitions is useful to you or not.

So, what are the benefits of event sourcing? Basically, the core benefits are the following 2 things:

1\. Guaranteed correct state. Since our state is built up by what has happened, which cannot change since it _happened_ , we are guaranteed to be in the correct state. This also protects state from external changes, like integration through a the database that could put things into an invalid state, etc.

2\. By virtue of building up ourselves from our events, other things (external processes, etc) can also consume those events in various ways. This is where CQRS comes into play, or rather, why CQRS usually involves an event store for the writeable side.

So, that's a high-level overview of what's happening in the article and on event sourcing, but very simplistic overview, glossing over a lot of other core concepts.

<comment><USER6> I was hoping someone would come in and spend the time to explain this, the comments were getting pretty depressing!

Event sourcing CQRS are very interesting once you get your head around the use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ummm, what exactly is a "C# Application Service"?

This post has no introduction and dives right into the details.

<comment><USER8> Glad I'm not the only one who wondered. I was beginning to think I missed the "latest thing."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's stuff like this that gives C# a bad name. If you strip away the enterprise-y, ASP.NET stuff it's usually wrapped in, it's a fantastic language.

After having spent a lot of time working in Javascript (and node.js specifically), I'm diving back into C# in my spare time, but learning to forget all the nonsense- no factories, no web.config, no ASP.NET framework... it's great. One highlight is Nancy.fx[1], a very lightweight web framework. Setting up routes is as simple as:

        Get["/list"] = parameters => {
            return "The list of products";
        };

I'm also developing on a Mac with MonoDevelop- it's a poor cousin of Visual Studio, but it works just fine. I feel like there is a series of "C# without the crap" blog posts to be written- I hope to do so.

[1] <http://nancyfx.org/>

<comment><USER10> Asp.net webapi is quite good, I have to say!

<comment><USER9> I haven't had a chance to look at it, but have heard good things.

The sad thing is that even ASP.NET MVC- which is 100x better than WebForms- is used 0.001 as much. The same fate may apply to the Web API. It just doesn't seem like there is much interest.

<comment><USER11> Interesting — I've gotten the opposite sense anecdotally: that MVC has become basically "the way" to do ASP.NET these days.

<comment><USER9> I think the reality is as jinushaun has said it- there's a ton of legacy apps, and new development is in technologies other than ASP.NET.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Think its related to this: [http://prezi.com/v9lvosve93i3/changing-the- mindset-more-obje...](http://prezi.com/v9lvosve93i3/changing-the-mindset-more- object-oriented-view-at-the-business-domain-modeling/) Event sourcing (eventstore) is different way of modelling complex business logic in object oriented language. Where you think about behaviour and verbs of your business, not data, properties, tables and relations. Not for CRUD apps, web portals, simple web shops, CMSs and similar apps.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, I generally like Dependency Injection (except that it makes things hard to debug) The code tends to be cleaner and there's less of it. It's also easier to test.

But I really dislike reading this kind of code. It is just really hard to understand. And if it's hard to understand, it's hard to maintain.

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be some kind of ASP.NET thing. It has nothing to do with the C# language, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER12> Nope, its not related to any presentation technology or framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks like CQRS. Very useful pattern where you need to playback transactions or events for any completed unit of work.

</comment><comment><USER16> it's domain driven design, quite some new concepts ey ?</comment>


Show HN: Getting help with your ideas - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Au1D7vlsizmSdGZVaFBXNTgyQ092M3QzeVdJbW8zRFE&single=true&gid=0&output=html I keep meeting so many hackers with great ideas, and they have either a hurdle, or a lack of a path to get to where they need to go.  So I have created this form that anyone can fill in, and then share, with the hope that it will be seen by someone who can come along and help them.
I want a tool that gives a voice, a loud-speaker, to hackers so that they're efforts get recognized, and get the support they need.
Please feel free to fill in this form and then share it.
Note: the Responses page doesn't update immediately.  Google seems to republish the form every 5 minutes or so, so please wait patiently for your entry to appear.
Pete. <comment><AUTHOR> Some great feedback, guys. Thankyou for contributing and sharing. I'm happy and surprised by how well it has been received, it suggests that there is a genuine need there that needs to be fulfilled.

I figure that many people on Hacker News are probably having similar issues that they are trying to solve independently, or have already solved. If we can share our solutions, we can get to where we're going much faster. The reason this will work is because we're all in the same mindset and want to see each other succeed.

I only went with the Google spreadsheet because I was short on time. So how's about we brainstorm it a little and see what we can come up with to make it really helpful? I might export what's already in there and put into more of a web app.

So let's address some of the issues together.

1\. "It's going to fall into the background when it falls out of HN's attention."

I was hoping that if everyone shares the link on Twitter/Forums/wherever, then it would generate enough circulation to be self-sustaining.

Assuming that's not the case, how else can we encourage people to keep going back to the list and contributing/helping?

Some ideas: A. Ask PG if we can actually integrate something with HN so that people DO get rewarded karma for both sharing the link and solving people's problems.

B. Turn it into a knowledge portal where you can find out how other people solved the problem you're trying to deal with, be it technical, business, personal, etc.

C. Make it a pre-payment system whereby you MUST share the link and/or help someone with a problem before you can post your own problem up.

2\. Should the multiple choice answers be "select one or more options"?

3\. Should there be a "Bump this one up" for people who are experiencing the same problem so that the "greatest pain" bubbles to the top where it's obvious that it needs the most solving.

4\. Should there be a "I'd be willing to pay for a solution" for when you find a problem that you too are having, but the original poster said "I can pay you in Pizza/Karma"?

5\. Should there be a better interface for browsing/searching through other people's problems? What would it look like?

6\. Is there a way of making it easier to read for the people dropping in from Twitter, forums, etc?

7\. Do we want a system whereby you can post up your skills so that you can offer to exchange services/skills?

Over to you.

</comment><comment><USER2> Build It With Me (<http://builditwith.me/>) is similar to this, and I rather like it. I've found that asking someone about their idea is a great conversation starter (i.e. networking technique).

<comment><USER2> Even if you don't contact anyone, I think looking through lists like these can be a good way to practice evaluating ideas. While it lacks feedback (you never find out what, if any, of the ideas actually worked), it can get you in the habit of asking the right questions. Repeat after pg, "Who has this problem?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This can be helpful but I think the problem with this approach (and the countless others before it) is that no one will find it after couple days. People can't help if they can't find it. If you solve that problem, you got it made.

</comment><comment><USER4> This spreadsheet is a great idea!

I've added my idea, an idea that I've been thinking about since last november; wedding budget planning software. It's a great niche, the competition is fierce but utterly rubbish; there are results in the top ten which literally are html tables you're supposed to print out. I know this can be massively improved, and I have a fantastic innovative business model. I just need someone to help me with UI/UX. I don't want it to look like excel!

The spreadsheet only allowed one 'how I can return the favour' answer, so I put in 'returned services', but I also have a small budget to use, and if the idea takes off I will give a return on investment, so it's 'all of the above' really. But I thought it was safest to say that in return I can offer my help as a PHP/mySQL/JavaScript programmer or in any other technical capacity. I didn't want to mislead anyone by saying "I'll pay" when in reality I don't have a huge budget. FWIW, here's my CV: <http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/> so you can get an idea of the kind of things I might be able to help you with.

I'd love to hear from you if you're passionate and have ideas about how best to present this app. It would be great to find a co-founder, but we'll see ;)

tweet me @user24 or email email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://Weekendhacker.net> 7000 designers & developers. 160 projects. Launching web interface Tuesday.

</comment><comment><USER6> Something related:

New Startup Ideas [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag- R_ZlGO21NdE9...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag- R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWRkbjNyUGRxS2JIV3NxYVdiaXc&hl=en_US#gid=2)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great idea. I made a contribution and also tweeted. I'm monitoring the spreadsheet to see if there are any problems I can help to solve.

The more people that get involved, the more value this kind of effort has, so fill out your form, ask for help, and give help to someone else!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way - I'm completely open to advice and suggestions with this. If you think it needs extra fields, better design, better explanation, etc. just let me know. This tool is for you.

<comment><USER8> May I suggest a field for HN username?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this spreadsheet actually works, it will be a great tool. I will absolutely use it.

</comment><comment><USER10> The proposals to give Karma - how would people give people karma?

<comment><USER4> I think he means 'real' karma i.e. warm fuzzy feelings, rather than HN points.</comment></comment>


Why Disqus will be huge - <AUTHOR> http://anzman.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-disqus-will-be-huge.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not being pig-headed, but honestly, I have yet to hear a good reason why I should switch to a system where I'm no longer in control of my comments and don't get any of their SEO value.

I spent years building up my blog and its readership, I've worked really hard to get the people making the comments, and I've spent a hell of a lot of work writing the story that gets people to comment... but I don't get the Google search results, I don't get why anyone would want to part with such an important asset.

IMHO, with Disqus, the blog author always loses.

<comment><USER3> Disqus only manages other people's comments. You're the blogger so as far as _your_ comments are concerned you lose neither control or SEO value.

That is unless you were counting _other people's_ comments as yours.

Looking closer, it appears you spent "years" to build up the following 5 items in the NeoSmart files:

      Richard Stallman Attacks the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (83 comments)
      Possible Severe Gmail Security Vulnerability (Updated) (8 comments)
      OS X Snow Leopard to Use ULE Scheduler? (8 comments)
      Firefox 3 is Still a Memory Hog (86 comments)
      Shipping Seven is a Fraud. (36 comments)

A quick glance shows that there is about 4 times as much user-contributed content as the content you wrote and the most discussed posts (presumably the ones you "worked really hard" at) are flamebait, including the recent Stallman item that spilled over into Hacker News.

<comment><USER4> >You're the blogger so as far as your comments are concerned you lose neither control or SEO value.

This is very different than the current model, so you can understand why people would want to maintain the status quo. As far as SEO goes, Disqus is decidedly worse, even if it is a good idea to allow people to manage their comments.

<comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings about Disqus.

\- my JS is turned off so I can't see Disqus comments

\+ keeping JS turned off reduces a lot of Disqus blog comment noise

\- Disqus presumably hurts blog comment SEO

\+ none of the quality blogs I read care about blog comment SEO (they don't even have ads)

\+ Disqus presumably could easily add useful features later, probably faster than individual bloggers would.

\- Disqus comments are managed by one organization, with all the inherent problems (availability, security, privacy, ...)

I think I'd be more interested in them if they supported a way of pushing static HTML comment pages to third parties that both the blogger and the commenter could choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disqus is great. I switched blogging software so that I could have out of the box Disqus integration.

I hope they take their competitive advantage (they're just _a little bit better_ than the alternatives) and sustain it.

FriendFeed and others are catching up, but I suspect with their heavy hitting VCs guiding them, they'll stay ahead of the pack.

I particularly like their open attitude about downtime and service quality. When they screw up, they post about it on their blog, apologize, and explain how they're getting better. This appears to be one item in the recipe for success.</comment>