Cool URIs don't change (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html <comment><USER2> It is confusing to a lot of people, but they aren't functionally interchangeable.

Basically you have Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), Uniform Resource Names (URNs), and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). You also have International Resource Identifiers (IRIs), which are URIs with rules allowing for international character sets in things like host names.

Every URN and URL is a URI. However, not every URI is a URN, or a URL.

A URN has a specific scheme (the front part of a URI before the :), but it does not contain instructions on how to access the identified resource. We humans might automatically map that to an access method in our head (e.g., digital object identifier URNs like doi:10.1000/182, which we who have used DOIs know maps to [http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182](http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182)), but the instruction isn't in the URN.

A URL is not just an identifier but also an instruction for how to find and access the identified resource.

For example [http://example.org/foo.html](http://example.org/foo.html) says to access the web resource /foo.html by using the HTTP protocol over TCP to connect to IP address which example.org resolves to, on port 80.

An example of URIs which are not URLs are the MIME content ids used to mark the boundaries within an email (cid scheme), e.g., cid:email@example.com.

You can get more information at: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2392](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2392)

<comment><USER3> IMHO the distinction between URL and URI is similar to the debate on SI prefixes for bytes, or whether we should insist on calling Linux GNU/Linux; i.e., most people just don't care enough so these things will never gain currency.

<comment><USER4> Yep. The WHATWG recommends just using the term URL instead of URI.

> Standardize on the term URL. URI and IRI are just confusing. In practice a > single algorithm is used for both so keeping them distinct is not helping > anyone. URL also easily wins the search result popularity contest.

[https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#goals](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#goals)

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much! I needed an authoritative source to throw at people when they try to belittle me for using URL, instead of URI. To me, URL just _sounds_ better.

<comment><USER6> And it is more descriptive as well, in the context of web browser addresses: why call something an animal, when you can call it a dog?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of missteps in the early days of web technologies have made stable URLs impractical, unfortunately.

One problem is that someone decided to include file name extensions. Maybe this happened naturally because web servers made it so easy to expose entire directory structures to the web. And yet, this continues to be used for lots of other things. It is so ridiculous that a ".asp" or ".php" or ".cgi" causes _every link, everywhere_ to depend on your arbitrary implementation details!

Another problem is that many software stacks are just not using brains when it comes to what would make a useful URL. Years ago I was very frustrated working with an enterprise software company that wanted to sell us a bug-tracking system and they didn't have simple things like "server.net/123456" to access bug #123456; instead, the URL was something absolutely heinous that wouldn't even fit on a single line (causing wrapping in E-mails and such).

Speaking of E-mail, I have received many E-mails over time that consisted of like TWELVE steps to instruct people on how to _reach_ a file _on the web_. The entire _concept_ of having a simple, descriptive and stable URL was completely lost on these people. It was always: 1. go to home page, 2. click here, ..., 11. click on annoying "content management system" with non-standard UI that generates unbookmarkable link, 12. access document. These utterly broken systems began to proliferate and it rapidly reached the point where most of the content that mattered (at least inside companies) was not _available_ in any sane way so deep-linking to URLs became pointless.

<comment><USER8> >A lot of missteps in the early days of web technologies have made stable URLs impractical, unfortunately.

Preserving URLs across technology migrations is _always_ possible (assuming the old documents or at least a rough equivalent still exist in the new system), and usually not even hard, to achieve. Rewrites are not rocket science.

Assuming short-sighted developers put .php on the end of all the links, migrating to a better system can use rewrite rules that trivially remove any .php ending from a URL, or that remap old folder layouts to new folder layouts.

Even if you can't use mod-rewrite because of complexity that it can't handle, all you need is a server with a hash map (or equivalent) that responds with 301 redirects [1] from the old poorly designed link to the newer, cleaner link.

The other problem you mention (no deep linking at all) is its own form of stupidity in design, but since the deep links don't even exist, that's a separate issue.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> " There is nothing about HTTP which makes your URIs unstable. It is your organization. "

I think this could be applied to more than just how companies manage URLs.

Also, I'm trying to find a post I recently read that talked about how calling URLs "URI"s is just confusing nowadays since almost everyone still only knows the term URL, and they're functionally interchangeable.

<comment><USER10> Was it [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673058) (My url isn't your url) ?

<comment><USER9> It is indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another addition to their 'Hall of Flame' might be the British Monarchy. A couple of weeks ago, they broke _every_ existing URI when they moved from www.royal.gov.uk to www.royal.uk. Every URL from the old domain gets redirected to the root of the new site.

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Aroyal.gov.uk](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Aroyal.gov.uk)

<comment><USER12> Never fear, the Daily Mail will surely make a call to oust the Monarchy on this basis..

You'd think ICANN would have a .monarchy TLD by now

mailto:email@example.com

<comment><USER13> > _Never fear, the Daily Mail will surely make a call to oust the Monarchy on > this basis.._

On this basis? The year being 2016, and those being "blue blooded" privileged rulers is not enough?

<comment><USER12> Apologies, I wasn't trying to infer an opinion either way.

More an opinion that the decision to provide the worst possible UX has a likelihood of being highlighted by the populist media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, the link as posted here violates the guidelines. Perhaps you meant to link to

[https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI](https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI)

;)

<comment><USER15> What's weird is that the URL gives a 'mixed-content' warning in Chrome, supposedly for the logo. But in the markup, that image is reference by a relative URL; I can't figure out why Chrome is trying to load that image via HTTP...

<comment><USER16> Somewhat oddly, the relative path 301s to an HTTP address but is then changed to HTTPS via HSTS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a make-work trap for conscientious people.

If it's more efficient for your business/project to change your URIs when going through a website design, go ahead (with the knowledge that you'll lose some traffic, etc.)

Seriously, there's no reason to feel guilty over this. It's not your fault, it's the fault of a system that built two UIs into every website (the website's HTML and the URL bar -- the second of which is supposed to be useful for browsing and navigation just like the first).

If W3C actually cared about links continuing to work, they would fix it at the technical level by promoting content-addressable links instead of trying to fix it at the social level (which will never work anyway, the diligent people that care about these things will always be just a drop in the bucket).

<comment><USER15> I work for a publisher that produces several articles a day that include external links for reference. More and more I seem to be coming across cases where those links are now broken. In the near future, I will startup an automated script that checks for broken links (and I'm guessing I may have to get it warning on redirects since certain bad actors use redirects when they should be using 410).

When I have some decent results, I'll be ensuring the editorial team is aware of which sites in particular are prone to breaking links, and which they can trust. The net effect will be that we will be less likely to drive traffic to certain domains. Whether enough other people will do this to make any kind of meaningful difference is unknown, but it's certainly better to be a trustworthy site that it can't hurt to link to.

On a related note, I learnt this week that taken-down YouTube videos are a PITA. Not only do they give a 200 when requested, they also give zero results when looked-up via the youtube api. Sure, they can still be treated as a 'broken link' from our end, but it would be nice to be able to differentiate between a video that was taken down and one that may never have existed in the first place.

<comment><USER18> There's always the Internet Archive Wayback Machine "save page now" feature. Wikipedia's been pretty enthusiastic about using it to make sure that external links remain available -- and that the cited version is available.

<comment><USER19> What I want to do is make an extension that sends a request to web.archive.org/save/{URL} whenever you visit a webpage. To prevent flooding, I would make it only send a request for a specific URL once a month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember Jeremy Keith talking about this at dConstruct conference; he put a bet on Long Bets that the URI of the bet wouldn't change [0]

[0] - [http://longbets.org/601/](http://longbets.org/601/)

<comment><USER21> A bit meta but can someone tell me if Warren Buffet is on course to win his bet[0]? It's set to expire next year.

[0] [http://longbets.org/362/](http://longbets.org/362/)

<comment><USER22> There was an episode of Planet Money just a couple of months ago that says Buffett is indeed on track to win the bet:

[http://www.npr.org/2016/03/10/469897691/armed-with-an- index-...](http://www.npr.org/2016/03/10/469897691/armed-with-an-index-fund- warren-buffett-is-on-track-to-win-hedge-fund-bet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> On a related note, URIs shouldn't end in extensions (use content negotiation!), content should be readable without executing code (no JavaScript necessary), content should be available in multiple languages (use content negotiation!), and RESTful interface should offer a simple forms-based interface for testing, &c.

<comment><USER24> I've settled for "every article has an URL that looks like a folder" (including trailing slash – that particular debate is pointless), only resources like pictures look like a file with extensions.

That's easy to achieve with all CMSen, but also trivially done with a static website (the web server is configured to use index.html or whatever you like).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was recently digging through my old blog's archives, and it was appalling how many URLs from the early 2000s have completely disappeared, despite the fact that the sites which served them remain — and gratifying when I was able to reload some fringe resource from 1998 or 2003.

The Web is about webs of durable readable content, not about ephemeral walled- garden apps.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately GitHub seems to be pretty guilty of this too.

Lost count of the number of times I've clicked a link in a blog post only to end up with a GitHub 404; I'm sure it is only going to get worse.

Most annoying thing with that one is usually simply going to GitHub search and putting in the original 404'd repo name turns up the one I want.

I'm sure having the 404 serve up a "did you mean" search result would solve the issue for the most part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One downside of this: I now feel like I can't create a proper place to keep my writing or other ideas until I carefully think of a URL scheme that I can maintain for eternity.

<comment><USER27> just use random numbers.

This is meant more seriously than it might sound. But in the field of "persistent identifiers", there's a notion that languages changes over time (a common example being the word "gay"), so introducing meaning into identification schemes might not be a good idea.

<comment><USER28> Alternative why not have both? Use the meaningful url as most links, but have a randomly generated perma link that will always redirect to the same article

<comment><USER29> Or sequential numbers, if you don't need to hide anything from being discoverable that way. Or is there another downside to that?

I use "slugs" for category type nodes like "photos" or "blog", but I don't give individual "things" a slug (never liked the idea of putting the title into the URL just for SEO). And of course, everything that has a slug always also has the numerical ID and can be reached both ways.

Now that I think of it, I might add a table keeping track what nodes slugs were used for, and in case of 404 either redirect when there is only one option, or display all the nodes that once used that slug if there is more than one. Seems like that would be the next best thing to an _actually_ never changing URL, right?

<comment><USER30> > Or sequential numbers, if you don't need to hide anything from being > discoverable that way. Or is there another downside to that?

Sequential numbers either require state, which must be kept in sync (e.g. the current-highest index, or the set of all URLs used so far which you can take the "max" of); or else their discovery process is slow (i.e. keep looking up URLs until you find the highest unavailable one).

Random numbers don't need state; you can either make the space really huge, and ignore the potential for collisions; or else you can look up the generated URL to see if it's in use, and only have to perform another check in the unlikely case that it is.

Whilst it may be easy to maintain the state for sequential numbers (if, say, they already exist as database IDs), the failure mode of random numbers is better. If something goes wrong with the lookup process for random numbers, e.g. it might miss a collision, we're still protected by the incredibly low chance of collisions in the first place. For sequential numbers, we're _guaranteed_ to hit a collision in this case, i.e. if a glitch prevents the state from getting updated, the next URL will _definitely_ collide with the previous URL.

<comment><USER31> In Postgres, sequences are guaranteed to be monotonically increasing even in the presence of failed transactions. So retrieving an index using nextval()[2] will never collide[1].

[1] A malicious pedant could create situations where it wraps around or collides.

[2] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions- sequ...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions- sequence.html)

<comment><USER30> > In Postgres, sequences are guaranteed to be monotonically increasing even in > the presence of failed transactions.

Well, I was talking about what happens in case of failure; not the chances of a failure to begin with. If, hypothetically, Postgres forgot to update a sequence number, then a collision would be guaranteed, since that's a property of sequential numbering: all updates are contending for the same "next" number, and must be managed in some way. Random numbers spread across a large range, so work even without management.

Even if we ignore the possibility of bugs in Postgres, or cosmic rays flipping bits in RAM (which may have a similar probability to a random ID scheme colliding), etc. that's still only true inside the confines of Postgres.

Once data starts working its way through layer after layer of shell scripts, caches, proxies, etc. there's a lot of scope for things to go awry. Plus, since we're talking about longevity, there's no guarantee that we'll still be using Postgres in 20 years' time, or maybe we need to migrate or integrate with some other system, etc.

I'm reminded of the "one in a billion" chances that used to be claimed for DNA evidence in court. It is certainly true that the probability of two non-twins having identical DNA is that low, but that doesn't really mean much; even if the probability of identical DNA were zero, that doesn't tell us anything about the collison rate of the sub-set of bases which were used, or the error rate of the sampling process, or the mislabelling rate of the lab, or the corruption rate of the evidence handlers, etc. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's RFC 4151 to keep in mind, TagURI, a scheme for URIs that is independent of URL (but can use it too). One reason to use it would be to mark a page as being the same resource even though the domain or URL had changed.

[http://www.taguri.org/](http://www.taguri.org/)

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

I wrote a library for it in Ruby which is how I know about it.

<comment><USER33> This is a cool scheme to address the problem of URL-impermanance due to the fact that DNS name ownership/control can change over time. It allows you to specify a URL plus a date.

I wrote a short blog post about the problem a few years back, and the Tag URI scheme ended up being one of the best solutions I came across, which is how I know about it. Some links in that post and comments may be of interest to people: [https://masonlee.org/2009/08/21/is-the-web-sticky- enough/](https://masonlee.org/2009/08/21/is-the-web-sticky-enough/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the footnote was also written in 1998:

 _Historical note: At the end of the 20th century when this was written, "cool" was an epithet of approval particularly among young, indicating trendiness, quality, or appropriateness._

<comment><USER34> Nope. [https://web.archive.org/web/19990508205057/http://www.w3.org...](https://web.archive.org/web/19990508205057/http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html)

It was added sometime between Nov. 27, 2001 and Dec. 14, 2001: [https://web.archive.org/web/20011214140114/http://www.w3.org...](https://web.archive.org/web/20011214140114/http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html)

For those wondering like I was (sigh), the typos that appear in the Hall of Flame footnotes when added in early 2000 were mostly fixed sometime in 2001, the last typo "uit" fixed in 2004.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool URLs still work in OmniWeb on a NeXT with a decades old bookmarks file: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/osr/17082625625/lightbox](https://www.flickr.com/photos/osr/17082625625/lightbox)

The Mondo 2000 interview bookmarks, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER36> The example URL they list from w3.org website ([http://www.w3.org/1998/12/01/chairs](http://www.w3.org/1998/12/01/chairs)) is now broken. Great deal of irony.

<comment><USER37> It requires authentication so not broken but still a poor example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What about case sensitivity? [https://www.w3.org/provider/style/uri](https://www.w3.org/provider/style/uri) doesn't work.

<comment><USER39> What about it? That's a different URI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pre-DMCA. If this gets an update, TBL should add legal reasons and law enforcement as a reason for URI change.

<comment><USER41> I've always figured an HTTP 410 response would be sufficient for that.

<comment><USER40> I'd still consider a 410 as a broken link. The article states

> Pretty much the only good reason for a document to disappear from the Web is > that the company which owned the domain name went out of business or can no > longer afford to keep the server running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nommm-nommm Shouldn't there be some tradeoffs?

Say I sign up with service x with the name y. My URL is www.x.com/users/y. Years later I delete my account. Someone else signs up with the name y. Now www.x.com/users/y goes to someone else's resources. The old URL is broken.

The only way to prevent this is either give the user a url (that they will want to share) that is not meaningful or disallow anybody to sign up with a name that was ever in use and names are a resource that is very limited.

Neither seems ideal. I do agree on principal that URLS shouldn't change, though.

Hotmail actually has this problem, or at least they used to. They delete accounts that are inactive for a long time and someone else can sign up with that name. The new person can get email addressed to the previous owner.

<comment><USER42> >Now www.x.com/users/y goes to someone else's resources. The old URL is broken.

The URL isn't broken if it just points to a different resource.

<comment><USER15> I'd rather it broke. If someone linked to the old URL, describing it as "the profile page of an international child murderer", and I later inherited that URL by signing up for the service, I wouldn't be too pleased.

The "y" example is confusingly simplistic; the site already has a "can't use duplicate usernames" rule, so 404'ing the original URL isn't 'worse' for anyone than if the original user didn't delete their account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> _" Except insolvency, nothing prevents the domain name owner from keeping the name."_

Ah, the halcyon days of the Internet's adolescence.

This was before fiascos like Mike Rowe, of Canada, having his mikerowsoft.com taken away.

<comment><USER3> I just learned of this case. I would say he didn't have his domain name taken away, but voluntarily gave it up when he chose to settle (for an X-box...). I've always found it a disappointing aspect of lawsuits that they end up in settlements so often, this would have formed an interesting precedent since he might have had good chances of winning the case (real name, no intention of deception). Shouldn't there be some kind of rule that prevents lawsuits from being settled when it's in the public interest or in the interest of justice?

<comment><USER43> So he just wasn't "cool", and therefore, so weren't his URI's. :)

Working definition of "cool URI":

* All URI's currently resolving are "tentatively cool".

* Any URI that disappears and changes at any time isn't "cool" \--- and never was: the "tentatively cool" designation was mistaken all along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At least one of their example URLs on the page still points (eventually) to the same content: [http://www.nsf.gov/cgi- bin/getpub?nsf9814](http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9814)

Although they seem to have not learned anything, and are now using .jsp instead of .pl.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's tough!

I have a custom PHP app that includes marketing pages.

I'd like to crowbar Wordpress into the server to serve the marketing pages instead, to make it easie to change text over time.

A .htaccess set of redirect rules may indeed work, but it's hard work to keep all URLs working.

<comment><USER46> > It's tough!

It really depends on which tools you use. Yes, wp has a horrific URL routing mechanism, and on top of that can randomly redirect 404 pages by guessing the target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if TBL would have written the same article 10 years later when search engines had gotten much better.

It's still an inconvenience when a URL moves, but before the likes of Google that used to be a huge inconvenience and it would often take tens of minutes to track down the new location, now it's on the order of tens of seconds at most.

<comment><USER48> That depends very much on the content. If you only have an URL and no hint of the content or title of that page, then finding it may prove difficult.

<comment><USER49> See for example any kind of documentation for any piece of hardware that's older than 5 years. The companies change their support pages structrue so often that it's incredibly hard to track anything down.

Cynic in me thinks they're doing it on purpose.

<comment><USER50> Those are particularly nasty because model numbers are often so arbitrary that a few years down the line searching for an old model number often becomes a near impossible quest of wading through stuff related to newer models with nearly the same model number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Oh well, Hall of fame #1 leads to a 404 for both links. So, I propose that it should be fair to call it (Hall of fame #1)².

<comment><USER52> It's the Hall of _flame_. They are examples of URIs that were changed for no good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Idea that something cool would stay cool forever sounds like oxymoron.

For example, Yahoo.com has remained the URI for Yahoo's homepage and will continue to until it's the 404 page. Yahoo.com is not cool.

<comment><USER54> No, the idea is that URL that don't change are cool.

<comment><USER53> >> "No, [repeat idea]."

Is not a meaningful response to the claims I presented.

At the point that I'm able to swap two resource with another and only reason to believe that a given resource is in fact the resource I referenced is the fact that the unique identifiers are the same means it's in fact useless as an indentifier.

In fact, I would claim that the whole idea of URIs as currently used is malformed, since it fails to allow a user to be able to know the resource reference is in fact the resource received.</comment></comment></comment>


'Extreme fasting' to 'radical life extension', dark side of body optimization - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/spark-431-1.5058858/from-extreme-fasting-to-radical-life-extension-the-dark-side-of-body-optimization-1.5058860 <comment><USER2> I'm into it, we are living at the dawn of amazing technology surrounding these topics.

I consider Neuralink the most important concept company in the world</comment>


Ask HN: Apple MacBook power failure. No way to recover SSD data? - <AUTHOR> My 2015 MacBook failed to turn on Sunday evening and the data recovery diagnostics company gave me the bad news yesterday afternoon: because everything is integrated onto the encrypted logic board, there is no way to recover the data during a power failure. This is due to Apple's proprietary tech.
I find this hard to believe that the data can't be retrieved (and I have some important research I did not have time to back up over the weekend to recover). Is there absolutely no way to recover this data during a mobo failure?
I really appreciate the response (especially from any Apple engineers out there :)) <comment><USER2> I was under the impression 2015's all still had removable hard drives but after looking at the iFixit I guess I was wrong. At this point I'd think about contacting Rossmann Repair Group [0]. I've never used them or been in your position but this is the guy who is famous for repairing logic boards and other "un-repairable" components from Apple.

[0] [https://rossmanngroup.com/](https://rossmanngroup.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome thanks!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> I spoke with Rossman, they are pessimistic they can transfer the data out just by the nature of the soldered disk. I'll give them a chance anyways.

<comment><USER3> Obviously you cant "just" recover data, they will have to repair your computer first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Going to an apple store. Without saying to much that I shouldn't say, there exists a device that could power up a dead main logic board for data transfer.

<comment><AUTHOR> The geniuses I spoke to were very keen on wanting to send it in to replace. The two data recovery specialists I spoke to say it's just a crappy Apple design for the data to be unrecoverable after a power failure.

<comment><USER4> They don't do some repairs in store IIRC. Your particular model has a removable ssd drive that can be removed with a screw driver and you'll require a 12+16 pin ssd reader to read the data.

The only thing you need to know is admin password or have the recovery key for the drive if filevault was turned on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok I'll look into this, the techs said the SSD is soldered onto the logic board and is not removable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ask Apple support directly, they may have options that third parties do not offer.

<comment> m-p-3 A newer model with a 15% rebate when returning the defective one?

<comment><USER6> Yeah screw that.

I had a Macbook Pro 15" literally catch on fire and melt the keyboard. However - some time prior I had spilled a little on the keyboard, which apparently had triggered a liquid detector in the unit.

While these events were not related, Apple held on to the machine for almost two months, then told me they recognized the safety issue of my machine catching fire (while I was asleep) but because a liquid sensor had gone off - They could offer me a new machine at full retail price.

And this was DURING THE TIME THEY ISSUED A RECALL FOR THAT SPECIFIC MODEL CATCHING FIRE!</comment></comment></comment>


Psychopathy's Double Edge - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/The-Psychopath-Makeover/135160/

<comment><USER2> 'I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.'

There are many persons who concern themselves with the less fortunate but would tend to answer this question with "What?" Samuel Johnson was a very generous man, but said one should beware of these feeling people who will pay you with feelings.</comment>


Visualize $15 trillion of world trade with one dot for every $100M - <AUTHOR> http://globe.cid.harvard.edu/

<comment><USER2> Really well done. Appears to have some natural language query component as well? I went back to 1995 and was surprised to see "Cigars" as a major component which I couldn't find in 2014 data.</comment>


Clippy is the first (ONLY) web video gif maker for iOS - chen-clippy https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clippy-make-share-gifs-video/id1151562042?mt=8 <comment> chen-clippy With Clippy you can: 1\. Make gifs and clips from almost any web video, without having to download the source video first. So it takes less than a minute, and your data plan doesn't get destroyed! 2\. Make gifs and clips via the share extension, without ever having to leave the source app 3\. Use any keyboard to embed emojis and animated stickers into your gifs and clips</comment>


6 Ways to get More Bang for your Heroku Buck - <AUTHOR> http://www.stormconsultancy.co.uk/blog/development/6-ways-to-get-more-bang-for-your-heroku-buck-while-making-your-rails-site-super-snappy/

<comment><USER2> It's worth noting that while these are all very Heroku focused, the idea behind many of these can be applied to any host. Here's my non-Heroku List:

1) _Offloading Assets_ Cloudfront+S3 pretty standard for any app these days. Rackspace's cloud files is a good option as well. They also offer cloud drives that function similar to EBS.

2) _File Processing_ Cloudinary seems to be the best overall option here. Blitline.com works as well, but doesn't offer a CDN

3) _Background Jobs_ Iron.io covers this space quite well

4) _Offloading Search_ I've used Searchify on a medium sized site, it's one of the better performing APIs I've worked with.

5) _Application Cache_ Memcache(d) is the obvious choice, Couchbase server offers a quick and easy Memcached server. Memcachier and Amazon ElastiCache are valuable options

For number 6, your mileage may vary depending on your chosen language. For PHP, I prefer PHP-FPM on nginx using sockets rather than TCP.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely.

There's a tendency for people to get a server and sling everything on it without really thinking about the different aspects of serving a website. As always, it's all about using the right tool for the job :)

Heroku is a good example of this. It's absolutely brilliant for hosting application code because it pretty much eliminates all our sys-admin work, but it sucks at a lot of stuff. Unfortunately many people then complain that it's slow or doesn't scale cost effectively.

I've become a huge fan of Cloudinary over the last few months for the same reason, it gives me time to focus on things other than handling image processing.

Thanks for those pointer for other options. There are so many toys in our collective toybox that it can be difficult just keeping up with them all :)</comment></comment>


Senate Reverses Course and Advances TPP Fast Track Bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/senate-reverses-course-and-advances-tpp-fast-track-bill

<comment><USER2> To me it just seems so absurd that a massive and potentially damaging piece of legislation can be "fast tracked" at all. It is quite alarming, that instead of allowing opponents of the TPP to voice their concerns and have them heard in congress, the fast tracking is basically a message to the opponents: We don't care what you think, we are passing this bill regardless.

We are talking about an agreement that has the potential to change everything and not just within the USA, but all participating countries.</comment>


Science proves communism makes nations poorer and less healthy - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2018/04/11/science-proves-communism-makes-nations-poorer-and-less-healthy/ <comment><USER2> The title is somewhat loaded, Islam is also found to be problematic, albeit less heavily correlated. In danger of stating the obvious: the quality of life in nations that find themselves in opposition, isolation or subservient position to the major industrial hedgemons have a lower quality of life.

It's also worth noting China is not present in the basket, neither is Cuba which prides itself on its healthcare system.

It's interesting to note the autocratic nature of "communist" and "muslim" regimes with their strong personality cults. I'm not all that surprised that escaping one crappy political system, then having a puppet regime/dictator being installed by foreign imperialist intelligence, and having the economy colonized by ruthless multinationals leads to a crappy quality of life.</comment>


Overstock.com Assembles Coders to Create a Bitcoin-Like Stock Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/overstock-com-assembles-coders-build-bitcoin-like-stock-market/ <comment><USER2> This is sort of the idea I've been waiting to come out of the bitcoin universe for some time now. A decentralized stock exchange seems like an obvious killer application for bitcoin. Though, the only thing I don't like about it is counterpart. Was never a fan of them, nor open transactions...

Why go to the SEC? I feel like the advantage of doing something like this would be the ability to build a trading exchange without any authority over looking it.. I'd say that's what's wrong with the current system (NYSE,NASDAQ,etc).

<comment><USER3> I am curious how someone can come away from the last decade of Wall Street behavior and conclude the answer to the problem is less regulation.

<comment><USER4> If there were a law that could prevent regulatory capture then I would say go for it, more regulation.

<comment><USER5> With or without regulatory capture, I can't see how the problem we face is too much oversight on Wall Street.

<comment><USER6> The counterargument is that regulation hurts small players more than large ones. Citibank can afford an army of compliance officers; most of us can't.

I'm generally pro-regulation, if the details are sensible, but regulatory capture is a real problem, and it is not an unreasonable stance that the cure is sometimes worse than the disease.

<comment><USER5> That isn't really a counterargument; it's just a factoid. A counterargument would be something along the lines of "Regulation hurts small players more than large ones, and the scarcity of small players has been the biggest problem with Wall Street over the past decade because _____, therefore the problem with Wall Street is too much oversight."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given Patrick Byrne's history[1] with stocks, markets, regulators, etc. I am not surprised to see him involved in this kind of project.

[1] [http://www.deepcapture.com/](http://www.deepcapture.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great. Patrick Byrne is doing a great service here. Development of crypto-security tools being pushed by an already successful publicly traded company adds instant credibility to the project and will lead many more successful business leaders to give it closer inspection, sooner.

</comment><comment><USER9> So what happens when somebody doesn't secure the private keys to their Overstock shares well enough? A hacker steals your Overstock shares, and now they own them? What happens if someone steals the shares from the CEO? Obviously the hacker could never make use of those shares or else they would get caught. In a system like this, it can't be truly decentralized, can it?

<comment><USER10> From a technical perspective, it can. See [http://counterparty.io/](http://counterparty.io/) for a decentralized exchange in action.

Do you mean you don't think people can be trusted to keep their own shares safe? Securing a large value of cryptocurrency is challenging right now. But if you don't trust yourself to do it, you can hire a third party that you do trust to hold your shares for you.

<comment><USER9> "Do you mean you don't think people can be trusted to keep their own shares safe?" Well, to a degree, yeah. Most people don't know how to properly keep them safe.

The main thing I'm trying to say is that it's potentially easier to steal shares, and there is really no way of reversing it if it's decentralized. If you know some shares are stolen, can you invalidate them, or reissue shares? It's not really completely decentralized if you can. There is probably still a central authority for creating and issuing shares, but they will allow you to trade the shares in a peer-to-peer way.

<comment><USER11> Just thinking loosly here.

It my understanding that the decentralized part refers to the networked validation.

I.e couldn't you imagine a setup where the network collectively invalidates a set of shares and re-issue them back to the original owner. A kind of distributed jury system.

Now the problem of course is that the jury could be wrong and I have no idea about the actual implementation but it seems to me like a potential solution in the future.

<comment><USER12> Even if that's the case, how do you convince the network that the shares need to be invalidated? How do you do that in a way that can't be faked?

That sounds a lot like another set of private keys to me. We already know those are vulnerable to being stolen.

<comment><USER11> Because the protocol is transparent so you can trace what happened?

Ebay and Paypal solve 60million disputes a year using software.

[http://techcircle.vccircle.com/2011/02/08/ebay-paypal- solve-...](http://techcircle.vccircle.com/2011/02/08/ebay-paypal- solve-60m-online-disputes-a-year/)

I am not saying I know how to do this just saying that I don't think it's going to be as hard as some might thing. But sure I could be wrong.

And keep in mind. No system is perfect. Neither is the crypto-protocol. But it doesn't need to be. It just have to be good enough.

<comment><USER12> Just because you can trace how shares/money moved doesn't mean you can convince the rest of the network that the movement was improper.

This doesn't meet any sane definition of "good enough". It gives up a bunch of protections for no real gains.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps perhaps not. It seems pretty early still to say anything with certainty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A veritable explosion of innovation is coming our way. This decentralized stock exchange is just a hint of what is to come. Technologies using bitcoin, and technologies built on bitcoin, are the next thing that will change the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy we're also democratizing taxi services, but democratizing finance makes me so much more excited.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's an exciting prospect to trade financial assets on a decentralized, trustless network. Definitely the right direction.

But I'm not psyched about having to think about Counterparty's internal XCP currency, even if it isn't used for most purposes. It's an annoying barrier to have to transact in an altcoin to access certain functionality.

Other implementations use pure Bitcoin only, and are much less overwrought with complexity than Counterparty: [https://coins.assembly.com](https://coins.assembly.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite generally, Counterparty functionality that requires the use of XCP simply can't exist on platforms without their own currency. That's why it's there.

<comment><USER15> Why didn't you join Overstock, why only Robby?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The issue I see is there's no avoiding putting your trust in the centralized issuer. You can issue and trade inherently centralized assets on a global ledger, but why? What is the advantage for the common man?

<comment><USER17> I guess the benefit is that you only have to trust the issuer one time. Once the stock has been issued on the blockchain it cannot be manipulated. With a centralized system you'd have to trust the issuer/exchange on an ongoing basis. Whether this difference matters is kind of a philosophical litmus test that divides the blockchain and non-blockchain (i.e. Ripple/Stellar/OpenTransactions) camps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone knowledgeable (especially those that do not like bitcoin) weigh in as to why this would be a bad idea ?

I'm asking this sincerely, and not being sarcasm, as I don't know enough about either Bitcoin or stock market to make a judgement. And this seems ... different enough that I'm not sure my reaction should be "damn the future is here", or "what a bunch of craps".

<comment><USER19> stealth takeovers, stealth monopolies, the fact that its unregulatable and illegal as fuck under US law

<comment><USER20> One easy solution is to force key holders to de-anonymize themselves if they want to take any shareholder actions, such as voting. This wouldn't be an issue for 99% of us - just because I own a few TSLA shares doesn't mean I'm ever going to pound my fist on Elon Musk' desk and demand something - But if someone does buy up a large portion of the corporation and tries to use it to vote - they would have to declare "Hi, I am Carl Icahn, I own the following private keys XYZ and I'm demanding that we liquidate our assets and build a giant statue to the sky" or whatever. This prevents the Taliban or Chinese hackers from seizing control of a US corporation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whether Overstock succeeds in this or not, it's coming and it will be huge; I so predict.

<comment><USER22> Interesting in puttings odds and money behind that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm nitpicking, but it's bizarre to see Karl Popper being described as an "economist".

</comment><comment><USER24> With the current low price of bitcoins, wouldn't it be a good time to burn bitcoins into XCP ?

<comment><USER25> That opportunity was only available at the start of the Counterparty project. The burn-in period ended a good 6 months ago, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> check the overstock's original website, after few seconds it was evident that I shouldn't be bothered reading the article.

<comment><USER27> I'm confused by what that might mean.

<comment><USER28> I think izelnakri is saying that overstock.com is poorly made and concludes that they will not be successful in this new project. (I disagree)

<comment><USER27> Got it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The title is misleading: the exchange will actually be built on top of Bitcoin using Counterparty (counterparty.io).

<comment><USER29> Indeed, the article does mention this later on.</comment></comment>


Can three minutes of exercise a week help make you fit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

<comment><USER2> My brother was studying for a degree in Sports Science in London a few years ago and asked me to come in to serve as a guinea pig for a project he was working on. He tells me that all I'll have to do is ride a stationary bicycle in bursts of 30 seconds full out 1 minute rest, repeated three or four times. I do basically no exercise, but this sounded like something I could handle and after all I have a filial responsibility.

So I think no problem, head down to his lab, and the first sign that something is going to be rough is that his friends are there (other students/guinea pigs) joking about how likely they are to throw up this time. Apparently it's fairly common to throw up after doing the trial properly, but it just doesn't seem plausible. After all, you are only cycling for a couple minutes. Even for a lazy bastard like me, that seemed doable.

I sit there with growing concern as the guy before me finishes his run and staggers over to one of the tables and crawls upon it. He lays there alternately going bright red and white and trembling like a fish too long out of water. He doesn't speak, and doesn't respond when spoken to.

My turn comes and my brother, laughing, takes me over to the stationary cycle where he tells me it has been set to an incline calibrated against my weight/height to cause maximum stress during the all out segments.

I start peddling slowly until he shouts NOW in my ear and then I grab the handle bars and peddle for all I'm worth, elbows and knees flying everywhere. Meanwhile my brother is shouting at me like a drill sergeant and through a combination of naivety and adrenaline I make it through my first 30 second sprint without too much difficulty. At this point my legs are burning quite a bit and I'm bright red with exertion, but otherwise ok. I coast for another 60 seconds and then the yelling starts again. RIDE YOU BASTARD, RIDE!!! I give it my best, but it's a bit harder this time, my legs haven't recuperated from the previous sprint and I am even more ungainly if possible. Twice more we go through the cycle and by the last time my legs don't even seem to be responding to my brain, they feel hard liked they have been pumped full of oh I don't know, blood and acid, and have barely any power to them. My final sprint is so uncoordinated that my brother has to lean on the cycle to stop it from flopping over. Lance Armstrong's testicle was undoubtedly spinning in its grave. A group of my brothers friends cheer me on, however the guy who went before me is still absent.

Finally, I make the end of the sprint, and stagger off the bike. My legs don't work, I feel like one of those floppy inflatable plastic guys they attach to a fan and use to promote used car lots, alternately staggering around stiff and floppy legged. I don't feel too bad yet, and some sort of manic euphoria has hold of me. You see, I tell my brother, some of us are just built out of tougher stuff. He laughs in my face and tells me to go sit down in a corner. I start to repeat my claims of being fine, but suddenly I feel like the earth has dropped away and I am in free fall. He looks at me again and his smile fades and a look of concern comes into his eyes. Seriously, go sit down. Apparently, I have turned an unholy shade of green. I stagger over to a corner, now feeling like I have reached terminal velocity and sort of flump to the floor. Apparently my body is so full of lactic acid or what have you, that it is overwhelmed, and starts wondering if perhaps a good upchuck would help. At this point my vision narrows to about the size of a penny, filled with dancing patterns and lights. I don't throw up but I assume it's only because my body just can't get it together to do that. I am vaguely aware of people standing over me, concerned, calling my name, but responding to them seems like an Everest of a task so I lay there in my flump, thinking to myself: You see? I was right, exercise is a terrible terrible thing. Even 2 minutes is too much. Never ever again. I begin to vibrate softly as every muscle in my body twitches.

My brother leans down and puts his hand on my head and says: "You'll be ok. If you need to throw up, please use the bucket in the corner. Sometimes people just throw up on themselves and it makes a mess. And hey, at least now you know what it's like so it won't be so bad when you come back next week".

I suppose he must have spotted the sort of mad murderous gleam that popped into my eye, because I doubt my mangled bleat of "whaaabastardfuhnextweekafuhcrazy" through nerveless lips was all that intelligible. He laughed and said, "yeah, I have to get two sample points, a week apart! So you have to come back, didn't I mention that?"

I did go back in the end, but I sure as shit didn't pedal all out. So I'm not sure if the body got better aerobics or insulin whatevers, but the brain, the brain learned its lesson.

<comment><USER3> If you get the chance to try it again, don't just stop suddenly when you have finished the exercise, but do a small warm-down phase of very little effort. That may keep the pass-out response at bay.

I'm not sure if this is a vasovagal response or not (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasovagal_response>) but I have this response also. In fact, mentioning it to my doc won me a full cardio work-up from a cardiologist. I get the response from intense weight-lifting and anaerobic cardio exercise (like what you describe) if I suddenly stop. If, however, I keep doing very light exercise, I don't "nearly" pass out (I've never fully passed out from it, only gotten to the dim-vision gray-out/dizziness described here, so I think I was close to passing out but not exactly sure).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The generally accepted wisdom in the running community (backed up by a couple of studies, but what isn't these days) is that HIIT is great for making big gains in the short term, but that the gains will peak before a program with proper high volume base training would.

In fact, the way most people are encouraged to train is to build up to some decent mileage (at least 20 miles per week) and then mix in speed work, which varies from simply faster runs, to Fartlek (speed play), to intervals.

Knowing this, it becomes obvious why runners fall in love with speed work: they might do a "traditional" training plan and run slow, high volume for 3 months, and see minimal but steady gains. Then they do 3 weeks of sprints and make huge gains! Awesome! But those gains were a reflection of the base work. Think of it like sharpening an old, abused, rusty knife: you don't go right for the fine grit. First, you grind it down, then successively apply finer grits. The knife won't cut a tomato without the fine grits, but if you skipped straight to them, you'd be at it forever.

The other reason one should be wary of HIIT is the increased risk of injury. Especially in running, if you go from couch to sprinting, you're highly likely to be injured. It is important to run slow and often, so that your tendons, ligaments, and joints (not just your muscles and heart!) are ready for the strenuous demands of running.

Similar concepts are often spoken of in weightlifting, where you are encouraged to start with just the bar and work up.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article confuses the term HIT (high intensity training), a strength training protocol) with HIIT (high intensity _interval_ training), a cardio protocol.

Other than that, yes, HIIT is an effective cardio protocol, and much research has shown that intensity matters when it comes to cardio.

What's discounted here is the full picture of fitness and training: cardio alone isn't sufficient, especially as you leave your 20s and 30s and suffer age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia).

The pretty cool thing about effective training programs is that significant gains, and certainly maintenance of a pretty high level of performance, can be attained on fairly minimal training. Three times a week, 10-20 minutes of cardio, and 30-40 minutes of lifting (less if you stick to big compound lifts) can do a huge amount for general fitness. Some abilities take longer to train -- especially skill sports. But the body is amazingly adaptive to constructive stress.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps this isn't the correct forum, but quick question.

For 2 months I've been doing 50 minutes of cardio M-F at 6AM before breakfast, before work. So far I've lost about 12 lbs, but most importantly my energy level and focus throughout the working day is vastly improved.

I would like to incorporate strength/weight training into my routine. What would be the best way to go about this? Do I have to stop doing the cardio? Can I do both (as I would prefer to)? Can you point me to some good routines to get started? I posted on /r/fitness but didn't really get any valuable responses.

<comment><USER5> Dittos on the fittit faq: <http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/Fitness>

Another good basic primer: <http://www.liamrosen.com/fitness>

If you're looking for a good solid strength program, buy Mark Rippetoe's _Starting Strength_ and do the program.

A slightly more varied, and less hardcore program is in Schuler & Cosgrove's _The New Rules of Lifting_. I find the texts complementary. SS has the better (IMO) beginner's program, TNROL has more complete information on overall fitness and diet.

SS is also going to benefit more from access to a proper gym with power cages, chin bars, and bumper plates (ideally). TNROL can be done largely at home with fairly a bit of equipment.

Once you pick a program and start doing it, re-read the FAQs and basics, then post any specific questions you've got to a decent forum (/r/fitness is pretty good).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if burpees could be qualified as an intense exercise. 1 minute exercise and 1 minute rest that goes on for 10-20 minutes and it gets me sweating like a pig.

I highly recommended it for people with lack of space or exercise equipment

<comment><USER8> Bastards, we did when I was at school. Squat-thrust, press-up, star jump, shout "bastard!" and do it again.

<comment><USER9> Ah yes, I can remember in school having to do something like that to the point where we were all throwing up. I think that was just the warm up...

Even though I attended a humble Scottish state school, a lot of the time our PE sessions seemed like something from an episode of Ripping Yarns.

Happy days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use the tabata protocol <http://www.intervaltraining.net/tabata.html> a fair bit, either on the rower or doing a squating type excercise with fairly light weight (thrusters work well). It's truely horrible and, for a four minute workout extremely effective!

<comment><USER11> The study/science behind the Tabata protocol is pretty fascinating: [http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/effects- of-...](http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/effects-of-moderate- intensity-endurance-and-high-intensity-intermittent-training-on-anaerobic- capacity-and-vo2-max.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are other HIIT techniques, [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- intensity_interval_train...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- intensity_interval_training) and I gather a common problem with the model is that you have to squeeze the real intensity out of each session, which can be hard.

It's also interesting to read about the genetic test for aerobic fitness progress. I wonder will the future allow better tailoring of health care where genetic evidence helps people get far more precise nutritional and exercise profiles? For example, if you are a non-responder you might be hurt by too much exercise, which is non-productive and which makes you hungry.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you want to try HIIT I suggest you do it properly, timing your exercises and really giving your all. I haven't stuck to them (have a more comfortable alternative), but when I tried Tabata I was stunned by how much it can take out of you. I actually couldn't finish a full round of exercises - which if you read the description sounds laughable - a mere 4 minutes. And I am reasonably fit btw. It's completely different from other exercises you may consider "high intensity".

</comment><comment><USER14> There was also another recent article in the NY Times about HIIT.

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/how-1-minute- interv...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/how-1-minute-intervals- can-improve-our-health/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm intrigued by the 'non-responder' genetic predisposition: does this mean that no matter what form of exercise he does, and no matter how much, his fitness will NEVER improve?!

<comment><USER16> No, they just respond more slowly. That study had people doing four hours of exercise a week. That is not very much. A lot of people would exceed that in one training session (e.g. someone training for an endurance event like a triathlon). Furthermore, there are more facets to fitness than endurance. Strength, flexibility, balance, and so on are all important to fitness, whether you define fitness in terms of quality of life or athletic achievement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My experience with HIIT has been jogging/running outdoors. It works fantastic until you injure yourself - and you injure yourself pretty quickly if you don't flat-out sprint that often.

Do they have a 'HIIT mode' on exercise equipment yet? Attempting to do the intervals on stationary bikes or treadmills while mashing the down button after a sprint is difficult.

<comment><USER18> I am not a fan of flat out sprinting on treadmills because it seems scary, but all the ones I've used definitely have an option to stop/slow down after a set period of time. Here's an example manual: [http://www.bhnorthamerica.com/BHFH/reso/bhf/ownersmanual/Tre...](http://www.bhnorthamerica.com/BHFH/reso/bhf/ownersmanual/Treadmills/P350.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Any_ exercise will make a difference to a sedentary lifestyle. But is anyone training for Marathons with Tabata? Of course not!

</comment><comment><USER19> A rare example of a question-headline where the answer isn't "No", but "Maybe."

<comment><USER20> It's also not 3 minutes, but 12 or 36 (not entirely clear).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you want to try some HIIT training (not running based)check out: <http://www.maxcapacitytraining.com/>. Pretty simple Web App, but it works. I'm currently on day 5 and enjoying the program.

</comment><comment><USER22> According to the article, it's 12 minutes per week.</comment>