Luminus – A Clojure Web Framework - <AUTHOR> https://luminusweb.com/ <comment><USER2> "Reagent is the recommended approach for building ClojureScript applications with Luminus."

Reagent is nice, but if you want global state management, re-frame adds most familiar concepts from redux but without as much boilerplate: [https://github.com/day8/re-frame](https://github.com/day8/re-frame)

<comment><USER3> re-frame still adds way too much boilerplate for my tastes, especially on solo projects. I personally greatly prefer to use reagent directly over using re- frame.

<comment><USER4> Yes. I now use Rum + Datascript + core.async for event sourcing. Here is the entirety of my reactive event-loop handling, inspired by Tonsky's Cat Chat ([https://tonsky.me/blog/datascript-chat/](https://tonsky.me/blog/datascript- chat/)):

        ; One Macro in events.clj:

        (defmacro go-loop-sub [pub key binding & body]
          (let [[db-bind & bindings] binding]
            `(let [ch# (cljs.core.async/chan)]
               (cljs.core.async/sub ~pub ~key ch#)
               (go-loop []
                 (let [event# (rest (cljs.core.async/<! ch#))
                       ~db-bind @yourproject.data.core/conn
                       ~(vec bindings) event#
                       result# (do ~@body)]
                   (when result#
                     (yourproject.data.core/transact! yourproject.data.core/conn result#)))))
                 (recur)))))

        ;; Usage (at top of core file)

        (defonce conn (d/create-conn schema))
        (defonce event-bus (async/chan))
        (defonce event-pub (async/pub event-bus first))

        ;; For each event you want to dispatch on:

        (go-loop-sub event-pub :todo/add-item [db {:as data :keys [text]}]
          ;; Query db here. Any tx-data you return will get transacted.
          [{:db/id -1
            :todo/text text}])

        ;; To display some reactive queries in DataScript:

        (rum/defc root-component
          < rum/reactive [conn]
          (let [db (rum/react conn)
                todos (d/q '[:find ?todo ?text
                             :where [?todo :todo/text ?text]]
                           db)]
            [:div "Todos: " (pr-str todos)]))

That's it. You don't need re-frame.

<comment><USER5> I use those same 3 in a similar way, it's great. I do really appreciate the design of the effects/coeffects concept in re-frame, I often use that concept. I just don't find I ever need re-frame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fulcro is also worth a look. I've been using it for a few projects and have been happy with it so far.

<comment><USER7> We just re-evaluated our choices and selected Fulcro. Below is a slightly edited version of how we came to this conclusion.

As a business building an extremely ambitious product on a tight budget, we want to be able to:

* Focus as much time and thought on building features that bring value to our customers, rather than, for example, building a bespoke protocol between the browser and back-end if a better alternative is available.

* Share early iterations of our application with everyone in our organization easily. Capture feedback and push out new iterations quickly.

* Be able to support new customers immediately. Our feature road-map will always be in constant flux, but at no point should our ability to make changes with confidence be compromised. In addition to feature development, tests and automation must be priorities. Our development and production environments must match.

* Be ready to onboard new team members. "Works on my laptop" is never acceptable. Enough of our application must be documented and automated so that anyone with a technical background "reasonably proficient" in our work can contribute without requiring hand-holding. Or course, we'd never turn down a request for help.

Our requirements are:

* Clojure, Clojurescript, and Datomic are immutable choices. We love these solutions for their simplicity and expressiveness. We believe these are the best choices available for achieving our long-term business goals.

* Be measurable. Our work should be guided by data not guesswork.

* Be testable. The entire application should have 100% test coverage as measured by its acceptance or integration tests (not unit tests). Changes should be made with confidence.

* Be performant. As builders of both the front-end and back-end components, we should encourage cooperation between them, not purposefully isolate them. Our customers and the end-user experience should be our priorities, not artificial divisions between software components or technical teams. Each component of the application should cooperate to support progressive enhancement where every URL is a real URL that, when requested, returns a server-side rendered page view. Further actions by the user result in browser-side changes through API calls and minimal component updates.

* Be pragmatic. We should be eager to innovate when the need arises. However, we should be humble enough to understand that sometimes, as software developers, we can become enamored with new toys that are entertaining, and possibly educational, but offer little business value. We should choose existing solutions to our problems that are acceptable enough over building our own solutions simply because we want to. For example, a standards-based protocol, like [https://github.com/edn-query-language/eql](https://github.com/edn-query-language/eql), that allows clients to craft their own queries with little to no server-side updates is preferable to our current bespoke solution.

* Be documented and supported. Our choices should have active, helpful, and inclusive development communities built around them.

Our choices are:

* Rum, [https://github.com/tonsky/rum](https://github.com/tonsky/rum)

      Rum is a solid piece of software, created and maintained by @tonsky, that
      provides a minimal wrapper around react for creating client-side components,
      and supports server-side rendering. Although rum does not provide a protocol
      between client and server, nor a client component state-management solution.

* Reagent, [https://github.com/reagent-project/reagent](https://github.com/reagent-project/reagent)

      Together with Re-frame, https://github.com/Day8/re-frame, this is by far the
      most popular choice for building reactive client components in
      Clojurescript. These do not include the server-side solutions we need.

* Hoplon, [http://hoplon.io](http://hoplon.io)

      Hoplon was created in-house at AdZerk, and later spun-out as an open source
      project. Hoplon is a complete solution although it uses a less intuitive
      spreadsheet-like method for building applications with little obvious
      advantage, and would not be compatible with Datomic without considerable
      effort.

* Luminus, [https://luminusweb.com](https://luminusweb.com)

      Luminus is a complete solution like Ruby-on-Rails, and is tightly coupled to
      SQL. Like Hoplon, Luminus would not be compatible with Datomic without
      considerable effort.

* Pedestal, [http://pedestal.io](http://pedestal.io)

      Pedestal is supported by Cognitect, the custodians of Clojure and the
      creators of Datomic. Except Pedestal is best suited for building server-side
      APIs, and applications that need to stream data in "near real-time" to large
      numbers of concurrently connected clients.

* Fulcro, [https://fulcro.fulcrologic.com/](https://fulcro.fulcrologic.com/)

      Fulcro is based on Om.Next, provides both front-end and back-end components
      that work well together, includes tools for building and debugging both,
      supports server-side rendering, and is supported by a diverse
      community. Paid commercial support is provided by the core developer team at
      Fulcro Logic.

* Datomic Cloud, [https://www.datomic.com](https://www.datomic.com)

      Datomic Cloud is a special version of the Datomic database that is tightly
      integrated with AWS. Datomic Cloud includes a set of Cloud Formation
      templates for running Datomic in AWS, and taking advantage of AWS specific
      features, such as auto-scaling groups and load-balancers for distributing
      traffic across a cluster of Datomic peers. Datomic Cloud also includes Ions,
      https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions.html, to help run Clojure functions
      as AWS Lambdas. Cognitech claims Datomic Cloud is a suitable framework for
      building complete applications. Unfortunately Datomic Cloud alone is
      insufficient. Datomic Cloud lacks a framework for building and testing
      client-side applications, and a protocol for interacting with Ions.

<comment><USER8> Did you consider re-frame?

<comment><USER7> Yes, we considered both reagent and re-frame together. Around the time om.next was announced myself and a handful of others built a commercial product based on reagent, re-frame, and om.next. I only have good things to say about them, but there's a lot that they don't do and Fulcro's client-side solution is equally pleasant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're interested in this, check out the book about web development in clojure[0] from the author of luminus, I haven't yet read it all, but I really liked the first few chapters.

[0]: [https://pragprog.com/book/dswdcloj3/web-development-with- clo...](https://pragprog.com/book/dswdcloj3/web-development-with-clojure- third-edition)

</comment><comment><USER10> I tried using Luminus once and got super super super super super confused since I am new to Clojure development. I ended up learning the basics with Ring, Compojure, and Component.

I felt like learning these things separately vs. learning something like Luminus was way better to understand what was going on "under the hood". I bet if I went back to try Luminus now I would enjoy it but from my experience it was not very beginner friendly.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to build simple/basic routing + RESTful services I suggest: [https://github.com/ertugrulcetin/patika](https://github.com/ertugrulcetin/patika)

Disclaimer: I wrote it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this new? Or are there some new features? When I was writing Clojure a few years ago I thought that Luminus was the name of the framework of choice then.

<comment><USER13> I don't really think Luminus is really a framework, it is more like a template to get started with a curated list of libraries that has changed over time.

I believe Luminus has had some pretty major changes over the years such as changing the default webserver, routing library and dependency injection system.

<comment><USER14> Yup, Luminus is really just a curated (and occasionally updated) set of libraries put together by [https://github.com/yogthos](https://github.com/yogthos)

Most Clojure devs find frameworks in the traditional sense quite limiting. Fulcro is probably the most framework-like thing in Clojure-land at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The other template i like is chestnut [https://github.com/plexus/chestnut](https://github.com/plexus/chestnut)

</comment><comment><USER16> Another backend mini-framework is Roll.

[https://github.com/dimovich/roll](https://github.com/dimovich/roll)</comment>


Hokusai: Old man, crazy to paint (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/culture/look-closer/hokusai-old-man-crazy-to-paint <comment><USER2> The 19th century printmakers like Hokusai are well known in the west. But not enough is known about the post WW2 modern masters like Kiyoshi Saito and his compatriots. I have a handful of prints from the late occupation that are wonderful. Check them out!

[https://www.asianartscollection.com/p/1/Bunraku-by- Kiyoshi-S...](https://www.asianartscollection.com/p/1/Bunraku-by-Kiyoshi- Saito/102)

<comment><USER3> Awesome. I don't know much about Japanese prints, but I've enjoyed a couple of David Bull binges recently.

[https://youtu.be/3zV9SMeuegw](https://youtu.be/3zV9SMeuegw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The description of the second picture really confused me. Why would a road from Edo to Kyoto be called "Hokkaido Highway"? Turns out, it isn't. It's called "Tokaido Highway".

<comment><USER5> Tokaido is quite fascinating to me. A 500km long path, primarily traveled on foot even in the 19th century because there weren't many horses or carts. The rich were carried in hammocks by a team of 4 people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a recent short documentary about Hokusai: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTnZN08CQdI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTnZN08CQdI)</comment>


Uber co-founder buys LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/02/los-angeles-mansion-sales-homelessness-increase <comment><USER2> I don't understand the constant outcry about Uber drivers getting low pay. Nobody puts a gun to the head of the drivers. If it doesn't make financial sense to work for them, then don't. Go work at McDonald's or somewhere else that is always recruiting. If someone offers to pay you $1 an hour then you say, no thanks. You don't work for them and then complain about poor pay. Vote with your feet.

<comment><USER3> They can totally afford cake too. Nothing to complain about.</comment></comment>


Schroedinger-like PageRank wave equation could revolutionise web rankings - <AUTHOR> http://arxivblog.com/?p=558

<comment><USER2> The paper is unconvincing. Sure, there's some mathematical similarity between Pagerank and the Schroedinger equation (they're both just eigenvector problems anyway, as I understand it) but they haven't really demonstrated that bringing in the QM formalism actually assists with calculating anything.

The "X could revolutionize Y" headline is even less convincing.

<comment><USER3> 'Revolutionize" may not be appropriate, but I still think the paper is a good post. For anyone with a math/physics background, this is the perfect 3min. introduction to the page-rank algorithm.

<comment><USER4> You think? I'd have thought that anybody with a good math background would better served by something like the "$25B Eigenvector" article focusing on the Linear Algebra aspects of PageRank ([http://www.rose- hulman.edu/~bryan/googleFinalVersionFixed.pd...](http://www.rose- hulman.edu/~bryan/googleFinalVersionFixed.pdf))

<comment><USER3> ... and the $25B is a good 6+ minute introduction to the page-rank algorithm. The difference between the two perspectives is that the $25B paper treats PageRank as a general eigenvalue problem, while this one treats it as a very specific eigenvalue problem that has been analyzed to death by every student of QM or numerical analysis... including the associated perturbation theory, stability, preconditioning techniques, etc. As a result, the paper is very easy to scan. It is not a magnum opus, but it is cute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think internet marketing is going to get very hard in the future. Folks will have to focus on adding value in order to get recognition.

<comment><USER6> > "Folks will have to focus on adding value in order to get recognition"

No way! You mean people will actually have to add value to get people to pay them, like most businesses in history have had to do?</comment></comment>


Europe's space program heads to Jupiter - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15924892,00.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm really excited about this, and proud to be European. There's neither an obvious economic benefit from this mission, nor some military advantage. It's just pure science. Go ESA!

<comment><USER2> As a (somewhat proud) European who loves pure science and space, I'm sorry to say I think your points are too accurate, put another way: is a waste of government's money when most EU governments are drowning in debt and really can't afford it.

Europe would be much better served by encouraging the kind of entrepreneurial space industry represented by SpaceX than handing more money to the European aerospace/military pork cartel of EADS and friends.

<comment><USER3> "drowning in debt"? Nothing changed from ten years ago, except for Greece. And everybody knew that, when they entered the Euro, they were not ready and that some major crisis would happen down the road. Now they have to transform their society into a firstworld country, that's hard, but long-term very beneficial. All going well, so far.

But I agree that the EU space program should follow the US example of privatizing standard stuff. But in Europe we have the problem that nations are still stupidly putting their national interests over the common European interest. EADS is one result of that sort of behavior. Imagin the European version of SpaceX was for example French: all other large countries, especially the UK and Germany, would want production facilities too. A innovative small company would die soon, crushed by political pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Historians will look back at this time as a fundamental shift away from America as the leader of scientific exploration. It's a shame Europe is leading the search at the microscopic (LHC) and macroscopic scales (this), and we're considering reducing funding for NASA when their budget is already puny. Not to make this political, it just sucks.

<comment><USER5> It's not a zero-sum game, and I think you need to get some perspective. It's great that the ESA is sending a probe to Jupiter's moons, and I'm totally excited about it. On the other hand, NASA currently has:

1\. One spacecraft at Saturn (Cassini)

2\. One spacecraft en route to Jupiter (Juno)

3\. One spacecraft at Mercury (MESSENGER)

4\. One spacecraft at Vesta (Dawn)

5\. One spacecraft on its way to freaking Pluto (New Horizons)

6\. Three missions [I think] still in operation at Mars (Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Opportunity) with a fourth on its way.

7\. A few other comet/asteroid missions I've lost track of, plus

8\. A bunch of other stuff, with the big highlights being Hubble and Kepler.

NASA's "already puny" budget is three times that of the ESA and easily exceeds the rest of the world put together, so one really can't complain _too_ much.

That's not to pooh-pooh the ESA, by any means, they're doing some good stuff. But they have a long, long way to go before they catch up with NASA.

This will be the first non-American mission to the outer solar system, incidentally. NASA so far have sent eight. (Two Pioneers, two Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons, Juno.) All but Galileo are still in operation.

<comment><USER4> Most definitely true, but do you believe we are currently at the forefront of scientific exploration as we have been for the past few decades? I believe a shift has occurred, we are still the 800 pound gorilla but in 50 years, that may be a different picture. That's what I care about, the fact that our lead is waning and we're not doing much about.

If we were truly still leading the way, the supercollider we had plans for that was 3 times as powerful as the LHC would've been funded, in the 70-80's. I can't argue that point effectively though because I have read that project was plagued with issues and most likely wouldn't have been an effective use of funds, but we could've focused on fixing those issues or finding a scaled back project instead of letting it die, and leaving it to the EU.

<comment><USER6> You aren't giving enough credit to engineering. Science is all well and good, as is basic research, but honestly engineering is what carries the day.

People who fetishsize -~=!SCIENCE!=~- and ignore the sheer quality of engineering that the US produces are frankly fools.

I don't mind losing big projects like the supercolliders or even the goofy NASA stuff if it means that we can let the funds end up in the hands of lean, strong, and awesome engineering teams.

Besides, your supercollider builds no homes, makes few jobs, and really is just a chance for a lot of particle physicists to stroke off on things that aren't really useful to most of mankind. Sorry, but your "science" is super fringe.

<comment><USER7> Can't tell if trolling... Or genuinely ignorant. The super-colliders are incredible feats of physical and software engineering, and you guys are building them too! The positive spin-offs are far greater than the stuff that makes it in the headlines of the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 2022? 2030? :-(

While I'm really glad they do it and go there, I am not sure if this is the right way. If anything was to go wrong, then the complete mission is lost. And that would be terrible considering the timeframe of 20 years.

ESA should follow the SpaceX approach of sending several "mass produced" spacecrafts, or at least follow the Mars mission modell and send two. That was also done in the 70s with Voyager and others.

</comment><comment><USER8> ... in a decade. Hopefully.

<comment><USER9> These things take time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oddly enough, the caption _"NASA had plans to send a spacecraft to Jupiter but later dropped them"_ accompanies a picture of Juno, the not-cancelled NASA spacecraft currently on its way to Jupiter.

The "cancelled" mission is actually the EJSM, which last I heard isn't quite cancelled, nor was it ever firmly planned. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EJSM/Laplace>)</comment>


Ask HN: Faking your resume to acquire projects - <AUTHOR> It has been two months joining a company as a fresher. I was pulled into the project within a month. I am comfortable working as a shadow for the project. Recently I as well as others with 1-2 years of experience were asked to prepare a resume which is to be sent to clients for acquiring few projects. Even though it has been just 2 months, I was asked to showcase myself as a developer of 2 years of experience. I promptly said I cannot do that. They accepted it, but then submitted my resume to the client not only as a developer of 2 years of experience but also with fake projects that I had never worked on. They told me this is how other companies also work and there is nothing wrong in "pumping up" the resume. I again went to the HR and said I can't be a part of this process, as my conscience does not allow me to do that. They were polite and accepted my reasons. But I could see that they are really not happy with what I did. I have just started my career and not sure what will be the consequence of my decision. I am willing to lose this job instead of faking my resume.<p>Did anyone has been in this situation? How things went by when you refused to do such kind of unethical activities? Did you get punished indirectly? Is it a common practice in all companies? <comment><USER2> I'm guessing you're in India? This is such common practice that as a CTO I've been forced to blanket ban working with Indian firms. This is one of the least dishonest things they do, some of the other stuff I could tell stories about is far worse.

You're doing the right thing, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished for it in the short term. Hopefully someone recognizes your integrity in the long term and you are rewarded accordingly but there are no guarantees.

<comment><USER3> Same deal. My personal favourite is always the difference between the actual technical interview passer, and individual doing the work. I know of many companies that blanket ban India, Ukraine, and Belarus because of this.

<comment><USER4> What is it about these countries that makes people that way? There are plenty of other poor countries where this doesn't happen as much. What about India, Ukraine, and Belarus makes people think it is okay to be dishonest?

<comment><USER5> My guess is a history of scarcity of resources. When there literally isn't enough to go around, you'll cut in line, lie, cheat, defraud to get ahead.

I remember someone from Brazil once telling me that if you get swindled, society looks at you as a sucker who clearly deserved it, not at the swindler as a bad person.

<comment><USER2> This isn't quite right, since there are many poor or poorer countries where this isn't the case. However it does seem more common in poor developing countries so I don't doubt it's a contributing factor.

<comment><USER6> It might be partly the other direction, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I heard it happens sometimes with intermediates for contractors too. A contractor friend gave the following advice.

Take a copy of your resume with you, the real one and go to your first meeting alone. Get them to talk about their stuff before handling your cv, act interested ask follow up questions and push on it. Then when it comes to your CV act surprised when they talk about stuff you didn't do. Tell them you have your cv as given to the intermediary and compare notes. Tell them you are disappointed with wasting their time but that the job looked really interesting. Most times the company is happy to find out their intermediary is shit and sometimes offers to take you on on trail basis.

</comment><comment><USER8> You already know it's wrong, as evidenced by your post. I'm not going to be the one to tell you to quit, because I don't know where you work, or who you work for, or how easy it would be for you to replace the check, how many mouths you have to feed, etc. It's enough that you get why its the wrong thing to do. If you had to keep taking pay from this company for awhile I don't think anyone would blame you.

</comment><comment><USER9> In some industries this is such common practice that it's expected, and requirements are upscaled to account for it.

To the point where my organization issued a RFP asking for "engineers with 15+ years of experience" in something that did not exist five years prior. I asked the obvious question and was told "that's the only way we'll get anyone competent."

I left that job.

</comment><comment><USER10> This happened to me when I worked at TCS right out of college. I did the same thing as you and brought my case to HR and they didn't seem to care. When the client interviewed me I was very open about my actual skills and told them when something was just not true when they'd reference a lie on my resume that the company fabricated. Nothing negative ever happened to me during my employment there but I immediately started looking for another job.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Is that TCS in India, US, or elsewhere? I am still there in the US, also directly out of college, and hadn't heard of that happening here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can Indian companies actually just hire competent devs rather than trying to push their devs to misrepresent their experience level, please?

It's really doing a disservice to Indians who are actually competent and giving companies that employ Indians a bad name...it's not good.

<comment><USER2> Part of the issue may be brain drain. Really smart hard working ethical developers often leave India.

<comment><USER12> I don't blame them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It demonstrates a company with a lack of integrity. In my experience such companies end up losing and their poor ethics smear the reputation of people that worked there. It sounds like you have a choice to make.

</comment><comment><USER14> You might also wish to post (anonymously) to [https://workplace.stackexchange.com/](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for referring. Will post there too.

<comment><USER14> I think this is it? [https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/137096/my- empl...](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/137096/my-employer- faked-my-resume-to-acquire-projects)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have been there, even when I was not in India then and not a 'fresher' as well.

I had just completed my Masters program from a well known university and was in the job hunt phase. I was contacted my multiple 'consultancies' that offered to tailor my resume to the needs of 'prestigious' clients and get me the position.

They were planning to show 7 years of work experience - I was just over 5 years out of my undergrad - which included actual 4+ years of experience, a nice break and then a 1 years Masters program.

I could not fathom how they would fake my resume to show the 7 years experience, but they were very confident about it. I was amused at the practice.

I was at the risk of having to leave the country if I could not secure a job over the coming months, and would have student loans to deal with as well. Despite this, I could not digest the idea of having a fake resume that I will have to carry for my entire professional life.

IMO - Do not do this if your moral compass does not allow it. You will be better off in the long run. (:fingers-crossed)

BTW, I am Indian and was in Bay Area when this happened (2014) and the 'consultancy' was also local.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing your experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They did that to me at least once. I found out when the customer asked me for some certification. It was infuriating, because I was the only one not lying: the customer wanted to present me to their clients as their employee, when I was actually a subcontractor, so they didn't even complain to my bosses.

I don't know what I would do in your position. I have almost 25 years of experience and won't lie ever. If I can't get some job, I'd look for another one worse paid.

</comment><comment><USER17> Quit and look for a more honest company. The kind of company that would lie in this way to get business is the same kind of company that would lie to you about their financial situation or throw you under the bus and lie to a client about your role in some problem. Plus if their behavior eventually does catch up with them you won't want to put the time you do spend there on your real resume, so better to cut your losses now than waste a couple years.

</comment><comment><USER18> Your story feels very similar to this thread on reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/axqkcq/i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/axqkcq/i_was_recently_hired_by_zytech_a_consulting/)

Maybe you can find some answers there ?

</comment><comment><USER19> The company you joined -- it's BrighterBrain, isn't it? This is not common practice in the USA or Europe, but BrighterBrain (f.k.a. Unbounded Solutions) is one of the few outfits scummy enough to try to get away with it. Ditch those scumbags at your first opportunity. Even if it's not BrighterBrain, you're working for scum.

</comment><comment><USER20> Find somewhere else to work

</comment><comment><USER21> If they do it anyway, you probably can't reasonably stop them short of quitting. Quitting likely would be best, but maybe you can't afford to right now.

If it comes up while talking with a client, I would just tell the truth about the specific part they are asking about and mention that there must be an error in the document they were given. That is what I've done when I found that recruiters added lies to my resume in the past. I don't think anyone ever held it against me. I take my own copies of my resume with me, but I'm not sure if that applies in your situation.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was asked to use very exaggerating adjectives about my abilities on a resume, mainly because I would be able to gain those abilities fairly easy and the "customer" was more focused on buzz words and years of experience than real talent.

It was a large public tender, we were a big team (of mainly unexperienced engineers), we won it and we did a really good job.

It was probably unfair competition to lie on the resume - but I think my employer knew better what they needed, than they did themselves, so we gamed the tender.

<comment><USER23> I don't understand that "you were asked to" do it. Who asked you?

<comment><USER22> My employer at the time - a large international consulting agency. We were given a list of technologies that we were required to mention on our resumes with the instruction "If you have heard about it, you are experienced, if you have worked with it you are either very experienced or an expert". It did feel wrong writing that resume but tbh I do not think we were overselling our abilities much - only the experience part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's a real disconnect in some cultures between what they say and do. Instead of fostering long term mutually beneficial relationships (as they say they are focused on), it is all about screwing the opponent. There is no shame in doing it. The only shame is in being caught. It's easy to see what holds back certain economic systems with such malfeasance.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, in a the same field (IT) it is common for companies to sell computers with pirated Windows, used parts as new, etc. In the small town I live in, know of five companies (two out of business) where this is common practice. I t think it's IT people taking advantage of non-IT people.

</comment><comment><USER26> Good job. Don't worry too much. There will be no consequences for you in the long run. Honesty also makes you stronger. You will just find a employer who will do things honestly. But do read algorithms and coding questions thoroughly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Thanks for emphasizing on learning algorithms and coding questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > again went to the HR and said I can't be a part of this process, as my > conscience does not allow me to do that.

Technically, you were not a part of this - some salespeople lied to the client and your company got the contract. You did not partake in this. If you want to only work on contracts that were won 100% ehtically, you probably should open your own company, as, from what I've seen, you won't find much companies (in the "generic software development" market) doing that. Or, more realistically, work for a company that writes software for its own use and not for clients.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Is it a common practice in all companies?

quite common in indian firms.

I've never seen this outside indian consultancies/bodyshops. But I don't know for sure.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ive consulted for a few years in the US, never had this happen to me or heard it happening to fellow consultants.

</comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, who cares? You're not hurting anyone. Unless you feel you won't be paid appropriately, this isn't illegal or even THAT unethical. If anything, you'll learn something new and come out of this with some really good knowledge.

But if you really want to quit over this: listen to your instinct. I wouldn't, but that's me.

<comment><USER31> > this isn't illegal

It's literally fraud.

<comment><USER32> it's a lie/deceit, but I'm not convinced it's fraud. fraud is:

> intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person > to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the > other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting > injury or damage.

Everything is fine until "resulting injury or damage". You'd have trouble proving that a guy who falsely said he wrote parallel FizzBuzz with REST API on a 500-client kubernetes rack caused you any harm.

<comment><USER31> > upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage

If he gets a job the wages are damage to the employer.

If he gets an interview the time spent interviewing is damage to the employer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What it's like to work at Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/15/what-its-like-to-work-at-facebook/

<comment><USER2> Part of "move fast and break things" is a willingness to take big risks. The walls here at Facebook are lined with posters that say things like "What would you do if you weren't afraid?". Far from this being a meaningless platitude, Facebook is constantly willing to make massive changes to their product and potentially alienate users. It's quite a contrast to companies like Amazon and Microsoft which only experience change in a slow, evolutionary, and risk- adverse manner.

<comment><USER3> All companies take risks, including Microsoft and Amazon. I could argue Microsoft has taken numerous more high profile risks then Facebook has. Beacon vs. Zune, Facebook Messaging vs. Microsoft Communicator.

There is nothing special about the risks that Facebook takes.

<comment><USER4> Facebook is special because if Facebook breaks the site for a release or two, it doesn't really matter, since the product is not business-critical to users (Microsoft software) and has a moat protecting against immediate revenue- losing defection (Amazon shopping).

At most large companies, if they break their main product (Vista, or a site outage), they will lose a lot of revenue.

<comment><USER5> More importantly, Amazon deals with real stuff. As in, if something goes wrong, real physical things and/or other people's money go missing. What're the consequences if Facebook status update gets dropped?

I say this all the time, Facebook's experience (and Google's, and whoever's) is simply not relevant unless you do what they do. All the people who would love to work at FB would be up in arms if their bank was run like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think that it's really interesting that all companies that experience explosive growth, harp about their mantra to "keep the startup environment", but 99% of them fail, because they eventually give power to the _management_ and not the engineers.

<comment><USER6> It's a false dichotomy. Engineers are people that do engineering work. Managers are people that manage projects and people. Even if you're from an engineering background (like a lot of the senior managers at Google) once you start managing people, you're a manager. It's not a matter of giving power to "the management," it's that by definition managers are the people that have power.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the engineers that generally come up with solutions, which management can't see or does not deem important because they are generally too far removed from the problem. Which is why having managers wield what gets done and what does not leads companies to operate in a very non-startup way regardless of how hard they try to avoid the inevitable.

<comment><USER7> Engineers ideas are not necessarily ranked by business value when you have more than just a few customers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CL Studio Live - GPU Accelerated Video Effects - <AUTHOR> http://codelaboratories.com/forums/viewthread/382/ We are working on a new project using Windows 7,  DirectX 10.1 and DirectCompute. Would love HN's comments on the software, pricing and concepts. <comment><USER2> interesting product. How does it differ from vvvv or pd/gem, aside from the price?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use the latest MS APIs (DirectX 10.1, DirectCompute and .NET 4) to get the best native performance targeting modern Win7 PCs. Overall our product is aimed to simplify the complexity in applications like VVVV or PD, which are very powerful however have a high learning curve and less inviting that a nice vector based GUI system.</comment></comment>


Seventeenth-Century Tunnel in Mexico Preserves Pre-Contact Artwork - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.org/news/8134-191024-mexico-tunnel-images <comment><USER2> Here's a good article explaining in detail these dike and other water control systems engineered by the Mexica. Really impressive.

[https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/water-in-valley- of-...](https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/water-in-valley-of-mexico)

Also explains why Cortés destroyed them: it was to destroy their fresh water supply during a siege.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where are the Images?

<comment><USER4> There is one image at Mexico News Daily:

[https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/archaeologists-find- tunnel-...](https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/archaeologists-find-tunnel-with- pre-hispanic-images/)

This is almost just blogspam except for the additional archology.org link at the end:

[https://www.archaeology.org/issues/138-1407/features/2173-me...](https://www.archaeology.org/issues/138-1407/features/2173-mexico- city-aztec-buried-world)

IMO the link should be changed to the Mexico News Daily article.</comment></comment>


Where I Went Right – Insights into the careers of celebrated innovators - <AUTHOR> http://labs.theguardian.com/where-i-went-right

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a Guardian labs site claiming to "inspire a new generation using unique insights into into the formative moments in the careers of some of the world's most celebrated innovators".

It appears to work in Firefox but not Chrome and comprise interviews with Tim Berners Lee, Ranulph Fiennes, Alice Roberts and Maggie Aderin-Pocock.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think caused your startup's hockey stick growth curve? - <AUTHOR>

This question obviously only applies to those who have founded or worked for a startup that has achieved the proverbial hockey stick growth. Was it a feature addition that led to it, or a particular marketing tactic, or new personnel onboard, etc.? <comment><USER2> Background: I was part-owner of a company that sold last year for 8 figures. It was primarily a professional services firm with software that drove our competitive advantage. Most of our projects ranged in price from 20k to over 200k.

For us it was taking an open and educational marketing approach online. Even though it may seem obvious for many of those in the technology and B2C worlds, a very large proportion of B2B companies do not believe they can generate leads online. Even if they do realize this, they typically approach it by only talking about how great their product is with language that simply doesn't resonate with the potential buyer. Prior to implementing these strategies we generated business by cold calling and other outbound marketing techniques. We were able to get to a point where 80% of our revenue was coming from our inbound marketing. This led to a great "hockey stick" pattern on our revenue chart and our eventual acquisition.</comment>


Claude Shannon's method for formulating and solving problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/engineer-claude-shannon-problem-solving-process-2017-7 <comment><USER2> Step 1: Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Step 2: Fill your 'mental matrix' with solutions to similar problems.

Step 3: Approach the problem from many different angles.

Step 4: Break a big problem down into small pieces.

Step 5: Solve the problem 'backwards.'

Step 6: If you've solved the problem, extend that solution out as far as it will go.

<comment><USER3> _Shannon 's six secrets: Simplification. Analogy. Reframing. Abstraction. Division. Inversion._ \- Claude Shannon (1954), a modern summary.

... added to my fortune database @ [http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

<comment><USER4> Cool collection! Thanks, added to my shell startup :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Source of article: [http://www1.ece.neu.edu/~naderi/Claude%20Shannon.html](http://www1.ece.neu.edu/~naderi/Claude%20Shannon.html)

It's a transcript of a speech Shannon gave on creativity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very good. Reminds me of the book "How to solve it" by Polya.

I also like the Feynman problem solving algorithm:

1) Write down the problem.

2) Think very hard.

3) Write down the solution.

<comment><USER7> Came here to say this. Reading Polya now and there are lots of parallels! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the original article: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/engineer-claude- shannon-proble...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/engineer-claude-shannon- problem-solving-process-2017-7)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't change that, but the mods might notice and do it for us. Thanks for the detective work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favourite of Shannon's theorems:

Shannon's Juggling Theorem

(F+D)H=(V+D)N

F is the time a ball spends in the air (Flight)

D is the time a ball spends in a hand (Dwell), or equivalently, the time a hand spends with a ball in it

V is the time a hand spends empty (Vacant)

N is the number of balls

H is the number of hands

([http://lkozma.net/blog/shannons-juggling- theorem/](http://lkozma.net/blog/shannons-juggling-theorem/) for more details)

</comment><comment><USER10> Would like to know how quickly Shannon cycled through these steps. The "fill your mental matrix" may suggest some for of priming or unconscious process taking place, perhaps over night, or over a walk? My experience is that ideas take time to bloom.

</comment><comment> shady-lady Waiting for kindle version to drop on Amazon UK ([https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented- Informat...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented- Information/dp/1476766681))

How much do the rights actually cost? As in, is it feasible for me to purchase these rights and sell Kindle edition myself?

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice list of tricks. I always try to remember one simple truth of problem solving and creativity: our minds can create nothing. All we can do is find connections between things. We consider it genius when people make a great leap of a connection, but that is usually achieved by the hard work of finding the right inputs. Shannon understood that as well as anyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> Putting Claude Shannon in an ordinary grad student's shoes, what fills me with sheer unmitigated terror is: if that's what was my masters thesis, what could I possibly do after that, that is significant in comparison, that would qualify for a PhD dissertation. Stuff for nightmares and cold sweat. Surely not for the real Claude Shannon

</comment><comment><USER13> I was surprised at the recent surge in articles about Claude Shannon. Taking a closer look, I can see a brilliant case of how good marketing works. Most of these articles have been written by same authors who wrote the biography of Claude Shannon. Although, he is a respected figure but his reverence—or, better say, popularity—is nowhere near a famous businessman like Steve Jobs.

These articles work as a trigger to get interested in Claude Shannon and then, the book itself. And I am sure it's working. I am almost tempted to buy the book. Like many people, I certainly detest many marketing tactics but this is an example of one that has been done right and is even helpful.

<comment><USER14> Also, I got an email because at one point I had tweeted about Shannon:

 _Dear Sam,

I hope this note finds you well. I noticed that you had tweeted in the past about James Gleick's book "The Information." As it happens, that book inspired a book I've just finished: the first-ever full length biography of the late Bell Labs engineer Claude Shannon.

The book was recently published by Simon & Schuster. I figured I would reach out, given your interest in Bell Labs. We were fortunate to have worked with Alice Mayhew, the editor behind A Beautiful Mind, Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, and other books in that genre.

I think you'll enjoy the book and hope you get a chance to check it out!

Jimmy

\--

\--

My new book, A Mind At Play (Simon & Schuster), is available now. It's the story of Claude Shannon, one of the founders of the information revolution—and one of the reasons we can exchange these emails._</comment></comment>


There is No U in CRUD - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/jlhcoder/there-is-no-u-in-crud <comment><USER2> Although I don't necessarily disagree with DDD, I think this article starts out with an odd premise--namely, that DDD is necessary simply because a scaffold system generated a controller that lets you update every attribute of a model, including one that should be _read-only_.

I've never once created an API that allowed such a thing (updating model attributes willy-nilly), which is essentially just a weird datastore. Instead of updating an account's balance directly via the /accounts/1 endpoint, you should instead associate the account with a transaction model, and create transactions (debit or credit) via /transactions that are then used to calculate the account's final _read-only_ balance.

This seems more like a data modeling problem than a CRUD problem, and it makes the article's premise seem forced. I mean, you don't see Stripe letting me update my available balance directly, instead I have to use charges, invoices, and transfers.</comment>


Book Piracy as Peer Preservation - <AUTHOR> http://computationalculture.net/article/book-piracy-as-peer-preservation <comment><USER2> In my country you can download any pirated game, movie, tv show, ebook or music legally and store it for 48 hours but you can't share it/upload it. And i am doing it with one exception. There is a company CD Project RED that made Witcher series and even that their games are without DRM (that is their choice - "we can't force you to buy our game but we can convince you") i am buying their games and i will buy them in future also. I could just download and do not pay for it but their product is so good, their policies, customer care is just great. I can see they have put their heart and souls into this games, they don't force you to buy with DRM that's why they get my money. They sold 10 mil copies of Witcher 3 without having any DRM. If you make good product you don't need to worry about piracy.

<comment><USER3> CD Project is perhaps the best video game company ever. They have earned all the praise they get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used an App on my old iPod to BUY and read the first in a series of books.

I then tried to purchase the second volume, only to have the transaction declined because I don't live in North America.

I wrote to Penguin USA to complain about this, pointing out that the book I wished to purchase was freely available on download sites so Why were they refusing to sell it to me?

Their response was that I should find a US book store online, place an order for a physical copy and then either wait around 4 weeks for it to be delivered via surface mail or pay a premium price (more than the cost of the book) to have it delivered by airmail.

The fact that I actually specifically wanted an electronic copy for its convenience and immediacy was just ignored.

A downloaded copy does not deprive anyone of the original possession. The only issue in these cases is the legitimate right to be recompensed for that copy. However, if the owner refuses to exercise that right, how can downloading a copy still be considered "theft"?

<comment><USER5> "I wanted to buy copy a famous painting from the museum for the market price but they did not agree to sell it to me because they don't ship to my state. So I drove there and took it when nobody was watching. How is that not a theft?"

That's pretty much what it boils down to.

<comment><USER4> Don't be ridiculous. A better analogy would be that the museum sold JPEGs of a work of art you wanted to use as a desktop background, but refused to sell one to a different state. So instead you downloaded a copy of the photograph.

<comment><USER5> And you think JPEGS are free? It takes hardware, software and some skills. Someone needs to spend time creating them. They have the right to refuse to sell you whatever they created. That refusal does not negate their right to their work.

<comment><USER4> You're still missing the point.

They refused my money.

They were happy for me to buy the work second-hand and ship it at great expense (and environmental damage) across the world to my home where I could have then scanned it into an electronic format.

All with NO further recompense for the author.

All I wanted to do was pay the author for their work in return for a downloaded copy of the next volume, just like I had bought the first volume, and just like they were happily selling it to other people.

Instead I was redlined on the basis of my nationality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Article from 2014, which looks at people engaging in digital book piracy not as thieves but as modern-day librarians or collectors, who are focused more on preservation than providing easy access to the materials. Mainly, the authors write about various online libraries and how they're organized, with a small amount of technical details.

I found it a somewhat interesting article, but I'd hoped they'd go a little more into the ethics of it, and also give more of a view from the perspective of the various stakeholders they mention (publishers, authors, etc.).

<comment><USER7> There was a very nice spanish community that would scan/ocr books and convert them into epubs. They had very high standards and their forums were full with epub documentation, best practices, boilerplate/skeleton files, scripts, etc. To the point their curated epubs were better than those of some publishers.

It all died when one of the founders was arrested.

Edit: it seems my information was incorrect, the site's owner sold it and the new owners wrapped the download links with malware and closed the forum. Users left and the site closed.

<comment><USER8> Sounds awesome. Any links to remaining documentation?

<comment><USER7> I just googled and it seems like the users have moved over to [https://www.epublibre.org/foro/](https://www.epublibre.org/foro/)

On the front page it shows a warning about how applications for editor are closed due to having too many. So it seems the community is still alive and well. Here's their documentation as an epub (in Spanish): [https://www.epublibre.org/libro/detalle/2398](https://www.epublibre.org/libro/detalle/2398)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a huge amount of books/music/movies/games that I have no means of obtaining legally. There's also tons of stuff I don't have convenient way to buy (e.g. no way I'm paying full HBO NOW subscription for watching a single TV show). We are 16 years into 21st century now, it's about time for big-name producers to stop calling people "thieves" and offer them an acceptable service instead.

<comment><USER10> Listen, you have no right to someone's else own work. If you don't want to pay HBO NOW to watch a single TV show. No problem. If you do however pirate their show, then that's stealing and the owner has a right to call you a thief. If HBO decides to charge $1,000 per episode, that would be very outrageous, but that still doesn't give anyone the right to steal their show. BTW, I know the pain, I really want to watch Showtime's "Billions" but I'm not willing to pay $12.95 for one month to watch it. I pay for Netflix and all my shows is restricted to Netflix, youtube and what's on TV.

<comment><USER11> No, it isn't "stealing". You're not depriving them of the content, you're copying it. And you're not even depriving them of the price they charge to access that content, _unless_ you would've bought it had it not been available through piracy. And that's I think really the exception, not the rule.

I know I download a hell of a lot of movies, tv shows, etc. that I would definitely never watch if they were not available easily like that.

As for the moral aspect of this, I personally consider that the advantages to society provided by the free, widespread availability of cultural material far outweighs the inconvenience to content distributors & creators; moreover, I consider downloading content 'illegaly' like that to be a form of social protest; to be practiced until their outdated, absurd model changes. Part of this is certainly me rationalizing my behaviour, but I genuinely believe that most of it is not.

And when content is available without any form of DRM and with a minimal amount of intermediaries, I always pay for it (a good example is games through gog.com). Personally, I'll stop downloading illegaly when all content is available like that. And no, netflix doesn't cut it; I want the _same_ , convenient service I get through piracy: a mkv/mp4/whatever without any form of DRM that I can store, read on any of my devices, copy, backup, etc.

<comment><USER12> Curious that this argument only ever applies to the intangible bit patterns that define creative works, but never to the equally intangible bit patterns that define money.

If I copy the numbers in a very rich person's bank account to my bank account, I haven't stolen anything from them. All I've done is made a copy of some information.

And yet one kind of copying generates rants about the cultural value of free distribution, while the other generates nothing but fear and horror.

It's all very strange. And not particularly thoughtful or consistent.

IMO either you have a free economy, in which case you make every damn thing free, or you accept that rules of ownership are necessary and that the output of labour has value independent of the ease with which it can be copied.

Claiming that rules of ownership are irrelevant for IP you personally want from others, but very important for IP you personally want to monopolise, is the very worst kind of special pleading.

<comment><USER13> _either you have a free economy, in which case you make every damn thing free, or you accept that rules of ownership are necessary and that the output of labour has value independent of the ease with which it can be copied._

Rules of ownership are necessary for rivalrous goods, and not for others. Citing Thomas Jefferson,

 _" He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me._

 _That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. "_

<comment><USER14> Jefferson's talking about memetics -- about the spread of ideas and ways of thinking. I don't see how IP law interferes with meme competition; and I don't see how meme competition justifies pirating entertainment (which requires large investments in visuals, audio, acting or voice-acting, computer programming, and so on, all of which the spread of ideas doesn't need).

<comment><USER13> The argument he used works for any non-rivalrous good, even if his specific concern at the time was with memetics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since it's down here the cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VukgERl...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VukgERl4Q0AJ:computationalculture.net/article/book- piracy-as-peer-preservation+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=ch)

</comment><comment><USER16> One sees this kind of thing within niche P2P communities. For example, on a popular BitTorrent tracker dedicated to music, one often sees indie artists "leak" their content. Consequently, the artists receive more recognition and appreciation for their work. I'm not claiming that piracy is victimless, nor that P2P sharing is more beneficial to the preservation of arts/academia than it is harmful. There is, however, some degree of promotion and conservation that occurs through sharing.

<comment><USER17> I have a friend who doesn't only preserve media, but also makes it more accessible. Specifically DVDs of the non-english sort are digitized, translated, and subtitles added, without removing any of the existing content. If there are space limitations, existing content is slightly compressed (for example audio commentary tracks). Additionally great care is taken to strictly adhere to (or even make adherent to) industry standards, so the resulting files, when burned to any dvd, will work with any player regardless of age or compatibility.

Some would call it piracy.

But effectively media from the 80s and earlier, that would otherwise become completely unavailable, or rot, becomes preserved and available for many generations to come.

<comment><USER18> I absolutely love that, and hope that I can one day contribute in a similar way. It's a shame that these people get clumped in the same camp as that college kid who watches bootleg theatre films just so they don't have to pay for an admission ticket. There is a community that attracts these people: [https://www.reddit.com/r/datahoarder](https://www.reddit.com/r/datahoarder)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, said friend has long overtaken those and is working with way more professional and safe storage solutions than anything i see browsing over that reddit. :)

Though that's secondary to the focus on quality and value of the material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the most fascinating aspect of this article is the conflict between preservation and curation. The world of books is no different than the world of content online: it's mostly low-quality and not worth the reader's time. The authors' observe that for book preservation, building a curated library of high-quality texts demands a certain amount of exclusivity in who's doing the curation. At the same time, this exclusivity increases the centralization of the repository and makes it more prone to being taken down if hosting copyrighted content. Whereas a distributed library reduces the exclusivity, but also reduces the overall quality of the library because anyone can contribute to it.

They cite Wikipedia as an example of these competing qualities, where user- contributions declined as stricter quality controls were put in place. I've watched this debate over what qualifies as "notable" for Wikipedia rage for years now, as the community tries to strike a balance between hosting an expansive encyclopedia with one that hosts relevant content that isn't watered-down with too much trivia.

I'm curious what others think about this conflict? Will algorithms and machine learning one day curate out the literary gems for us?

<comment><USER20> To me it depends on the meaning of where they are applying quality.

For _content_ to be preserved I would personally hope that the direction is more on the preservation angle, personally.. There is very little cost for storing information these days, so there's no real reason to me not to cast a wide net on exactly what content is archived. There is no single good definition of "quality content" after all; even the works considered "top quality" can shift over time, plus there are people out there who really get into niches that a group of curators seeking "top quality content" might miss. (Some of these niches after all _deliberately_ include kitschy or trashy "low quality" content.)

From what I gather from the article, the barrier was more on the technical side of preservation. This is easier to see: the "barrier to entry" is more making sure an e-book isn't fuzzy low-resolution junk, or making sure the e-book has correct title, author, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have family members who are writers. By association, we know many writers. They are in a dilemma. From talking to them, I think they agree, in principle, that books ought to be "distributed, [...], spread abroad, given to all, given cheaply, given at cost price, given for nothing." They are book-lovers in essence.

In reality, most writers can hardly make a living from writing. Their book deals are essentially decided by if the book will sell. For published writers, the biggest factor in publishers' minds is the selling history of her/his previous books. So writers are trying all the means to boost the sale of their books. As far as I know, most writers hate book tours, public readings, etc. They will, however, fly 10 hours to another city, give two readings, each of which may have only 10 people show up, so as to sell several copy of their books, as long as the publishers can cover the travel costs. Most writers are poor and can't afford the travels at their own expense.

So writers really want people to buy their books, not to become rich, simply as a way to support, so that they can afford to write. Writer friends buy each other's books once they are published, as a means to support, both in spirit and in finance. I remember once my family member gave a reading to promote her newly published book. After the reading, a writer friend came to say bye to us, empty-handed. She didn't say anything, but with a very apologetically expression. We know she was having a hard time financially. That expression really hurts.

The financial burden hits hard when writers have family and children. The majority of writers hate teaching, as far as I know. Whenever there is an opening position in a college's writing program, there would be hundreds of applications, including some well-known writers, even although they are aware that teaching will take a big part of their time, their energy from them to work on their own novels, their own books. It seems the cost of context switch between teaching and writing are very high for most writers. A well-known writer, whom I believe most educated people should at least have heard of, can't work on his own books at all when he is teaching. So he has to negotiate with the college to teach only one semester per year, so he can write in the other semester without teaching obligations. I wish his books have higher sale number, so that he can get higher book deals. Thus he doesn't have to teach.

<comment><USER22> Today must be a golden age for writers. Many local libraries are struggling. With the historical source of free books in peril, writers can once again prosper!

Most fiction writers don't face a piracy problem, they face a marketing problem (nobody knows their book exists) and an economic problem (there is an abundance of supply of novels).

Every new novel has to compete not just with novels released that year, but with all novels still in print. In that way it is unlike most other markets. If you make soap, you only have to compete with the soap manufacturers of today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Doom, has Denuvo DRM, a very heavy-handed DRM, that is a bit buggy, and has been locking legitimate costumers out of the product, and also blocks many common uses of PC games (Denuvo blocks running the game with custom DLLs, including using Wine, and graphics-altering wrappers, and also blocks any modding that affect the game in-memory binary in any way)

I made a post on Steam, about it, avoiding commenting on piracy, saying only about the problems Denuvo creates for legitimate costumers.

Quickly, got accused of being a pirate.

So I just went ahead, and admitted that I actually own pirated copies of Doom 1 and 2, and explained why, and how I got them (it was very expensive and hard actually), got piled-up by people using many of the most absurd arguments I ever saw, but that I guess are result of never seeing how life in the third world works.

For example, many people asked me if I would steal a car, I replied that yes, if I needed one urgently, I would, gave for example if my mother needed to go to the hospital immediately, I would happily steal a car and drive her there.

Lots of people then replied I am evil, because they would just call 911... and that any argument about third-world emergency services was a lie. (while today we have on the headlines, Brazillian police kidnapped New Zealand Jiu Jitsu champion in Rio de Janeiro and stole 2000 BRL from him, and now he is requesting protection from the NZ embassy).

Also another argument I saw a lot, is that "if you really want it, you work to get it", I mentioned for example a poor kid that might work reselling trash from landfill would want pirated photoshop, and pirated photoshop books, to get a better life working with photoshop.

Lots of people told me that this kid should just get a better job and buy photoshop, or that should work harder to get money to buy photoshop with the current job...

I concluded that many people that defend DRM and is very strongly anti-piracy, don't know how the rest of the world works, that people that are strongly anti-piracy, lived lives where their suggestions: "just move out of the shitty country", or "just get better job", or "just save money", or "just ask help of the government", as things that work, and don't know how it is to be stuck in a country where calling 911 is a good way to get killed, instead of getting help.

</comment><comment><USER24> Book piracy as a way to get free stuff instead of paying for it.

These rationalizations for ripping people off are pathetic; just admit you do it because it's quick, easy and there's little chance of getting caught.

You aren't a freedom fighter, and if you actually paused the trackers long enough to think about what you're doing, you'd have to admit to yourself that what you're doing is simply wrong. At least be honest enough with yourself to admit that.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a really big problem in Australia and not just for written media but also digital content such as TV/Film/eBooks/Audiobooks

I WANT to obtain ebooks / to series etc... in a way where the authors get paid but they're either inflated in price due to the USD, not available outside of the USA, not available without some sort of awful DRM that prevents me from using a device or my choosing to read / play them on or are low quality.

IMO Amazon are the worst offenders for this, they make ebooks far more expensive then physical books and yet still plaster them with their restrictive DRM on top. A lot of their library is unavailable outside the USA or if it is - comes at a great cost. On top of this, while their ebooks readers are great I've found I really need the higher end models with the high DPI screens which are /really/ expensive outside the USA and reading on a LCD screen is just too hard.

HBO go isn't available in Australia so that's our.

I currently pay for and subscribe to:

\- Audible (highly overpriced, limited content available in Australia, about to cancel)

\- Netflix (well priced, good quality, poor interface and limited content available in Australia)

\- Apple Music (well priced, good quality, poor interface although the latest betas on iOS 10 and iTunes are much, much better)

\- Spotify (Overpriced, medium quality, good playlists / sharing features)

The cost of all these services plus the devices to use them with and the connections for them really adds up. I wish someone / the govt could just act as an international media aggregate and you pay a subscription based on what kinds / levels of content you want and they provide it from various upstream sources in standard formats (never going to happen I know).

In the past I've tried:

\- Safari books online - cancelled due to extremely high costs and very restrictive DRM

\- Paktpub subscription (Can't remember the name) - overpriced and quality varied greatly

\- Scribd - overpriced and very hard to get what you want in Australia

\- Stan - overpriced, poor interface, no 4K support

\- Quickflicks - overpriced, poor interface, no 4K support

... and many others

After all this, just like with licenses software, it would actually be easier for me just to torrent (or whatever) the thing I wanted, but as I said I want to give money to the people that create and maintain the content.

The only media provider that does his well in my opinion is Bandcamp, ok they have no subscription model because that's not their thing, but I have spent more money on bandcamp than I ever did on CDs or Vinyl, and the artists get more of a cut.

</end rant>

</comment><comment><USER26> I was struck by the use of "shadow library". It makes me sad to think of a world where the library experience is analogous to the buy drugs experience.

</comment><comment><USER27> Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe: [https://www.lockss.org/](https://www.lockss.org/)</comment>


Tail-Risk Analysis in R: Part I - <AUTHOR> https://www.capitalspectator.com/tail-risk-analysis-in-r-part-i/ <comment><AUTHOR> Part II here: [http://www.capitalspectator.com/tail-risk-analysis-in-r- part...](http://www.capitalspectator.com/tail-risk-analysis-in-r-part-ii- extreme-value-theory/)</comment>


Show HN: Quick chats with experts, pay what you want, food money for your skills - <AUTHOR> https://app.xtensio.com/folio/tesc62bt <comment><USER2> > If your work isn't ready for people to try out yet, please don't do a Show > HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then.</comment>


Here's a problem I need solved ... - <AUTHOR>

In less than two weeks I'm going to be giving a talk in New York.  On the evenings of the 6th and 7th I need a hotel in New York that's not too expensive (by local rates), close enough to the subway (or other transport) to be able to get around, in a reasonably sane place, reasonably close to Penn station (if that's hard to get to by subway (which would be hard to believe)), clean, and quiet.
I, however, have next to no knowledge of the layout of New York, its stations, its facilities, its districts, or its dangers.  Yes, I can learn all of this from the web, but how long will it take?  My guess is hours to try to find a reasonable deal, which is therefore not worth finding because it has cost me more to drive to the gas station than it has saved on the price of the gas.
Someone with a very small amount of local knowledge could solve this for me with almost no work.  If someone were coming to my area I could give them near complete guidance in less than 5 minutes.
Is there a web service to do this?  I can go to hotel web sites, but that doesn't tell me about the situation, transport, area, or anything.
What would you do? <comment><USER2> What about Trippy.com or Virtual Tourist?

If you log into Trippy using your facebook login it finds people in your social graph that have been, stayed, lived in the place you are visiting. It allows you to ask for their recommendations.

You'd probably be more inclined to trust friends comments than those from strangers.

The only advice I can provide re: NYC is that Penn Station is the stop for Madison Square Garden and is only 2 stops down from Times Square - 42nd Street station.

So really that area doesn't really fit into being quiet or sane! Good fun though.

You could cut out Subway travel altogether and stay close to where you're giving your talk. Least then if you have any free time after you're in the heart of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trippy may have turned out to be useful. Turns out I "know" two people on Facebook who may have the knowledge.

Of course, they might not, since locals don't always know about hotels and the like, but it's a start.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Given that you have a bit of time, enough for some back-and-forth, how about a forum?

<http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-york-city/>

Now, aggregating that data to make it fast for future people (while being forward about the age of the data) might be an interesting business.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask if someone on HN who is local will email you (or call you even). I went up to Boston once for a conference and drove through New York and it was a nightmare. From the hotel in Boston, I called someone in the DC area that I was stopping off to see on my way back and she very briefly gave me instructions on how to get from Boston to her place without going straight through the middle of New York city. She was appalled that I had done that to begin with. The trip back south was far more pleasant and faster. Than she gave me a day tour of DC when I briefly stayed with her and I probably hit a lot of the highlights in a very short time without having to do any research whatsoever. Having never done the tourist version of DC, I don't actually have any basis of comparison so I probably don't really appreciate or understand how good I had it.

For that matter, the entire trip to Boston had been facilitated from the get go by similar personal connections, much of it through people I only knew online before actually meeting them on that trip. I got a speaking gig to bring down the cost of the conference and probably all kinds of other help that I couldn't possibly recall after so many years. I was only a homemaker doing volunteer work and trying to get what I needed to help my special needs kids. It got me cross country and all that, on a stringent budget.

Best of luck.

EDIT/PS: With today being Thanksgiving in the US, this is one of the worst possible days of the entire year to ask on the internet for this sort of US- centric assistance. You might try again either tomorrow (Friday) or next Monday/Tuesday. (My recollection is you are British or something. My apologies if I have misremembered and thus inadvertently insulted you.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was my initial inclination to ask directly and openly for advice, but the last time I did that I got a slew of replies telling me it was off-topic, the item got flagged, and I got nothing useful. This despite it being a question about technology.

Having said that, I really do think that this is something that could be really useful. It probably already does - as an example Trippy has been suggested (which I'll now investigate) - and if it doesn't exist, it should. I would certainly be more inclined to trust the comments of someone from HN than to trust random comments from people with no obvious shared interests or abilities. It's tough to know what this thing would look like, but it seems an opportunity. Maybe the forums (also suggested elsewhere) is the best it can get.

I've put a few other feelers out to see what I get, and we'll see what transpires by the weekend.

And I'm not British, but I am based in the UK - good call.

<comment><USER4> I've seen this type of idea come up elsewhere, though I don't recall the exact specifics. I don't think it really works. What you want is based not just on expertise but also on trust (of a sort that has to run both ways -- not just you trusting them) and that is based on community and familiarity. I recognize your name as someone who is a meaningful, regular (polite and well-behaved) contributor and thus a legitimate member of the community. And I don't participate that much and don't pay as much attention to names as I probably should. If I recognize you and think you are a decent person, odds are very high others here do too. You might try checking profiles to find out who is in New York or check HN Office Hours or other HN related resources.

My long standing experience on the Internet is that very intellectual sites like HN which do a decent job of fostering community are The Place To Go for stuff like this, even when it is "off topic". HN is probably your best bet for getting what you need -- or, more accurately, the members of HN are probably your best bet, as the competence here runs fairly high and your name is known. Since this site isn't designed or intended to act as a forum in the same way a lot of discussion boards are, you just may have to be a little creative in tapping into this network.

Again: Today is just about the worst day possible to pursue this. I think only Christmas would be worse. This entire four day weekend may be slow as this is the biggest travel holiday of the year. So you have four days to do some research and thinking and figure out how best to tap into what you need.

Best of luck.</comment></comment></comment>


Most Influential People In Open Source   - <AUTHOR> http://www.mindtouch.com/blog/2009/10/27/most-influential-people-in-open-source/

<comment><USER2> Seems like a strange list, but I don't know how they are measuring influence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mentions: ... , Steve Ballmer, ... .</comment>


Can an Argentine startup reinvent governance through a smartphone app? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/designing-an-operating-system-for-democracy/374526/

<comment><USER2> This is the github link of the project: [https://github.com/DemocracyOS/app](https://github.com/DemocracyOS/app)

The initial implementation seems to be around discussing bills.

From the FAQ: "citizens can present projects to be debated, and representative present for debate those bills currently in debate in Congress. DemocracyOS has three basic actions: "get informed," "join the conversation," and "vote.""

How can an identified user remain safe? How can anonymous users be trusted?

</comment><comment> sorin-panca If a problem is debated and the problem has 3 solutions, a, b and c; and a representative sees that a is supported by 23.8% of people he/she represents, b is supported by 3% and c is supported by the rest he/she would be stupid to pick b, so he would definetely pick c.

But then again, if the representative is just a messenger, he could be replaced by a device.

</comment><comment><USER3> As [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058496) has now been posted to point to the actual project, we'll demote the current article.

</comment><comment><USER4> probably not

<comment><USER5> I upvoted you but I think you may be discounting "reinventing in a negative or ineffective manner" as potential outcomes.

The comparison to Wordpress is certainly frightening when one considers the ramifications of failures in security or anonymity. The whole article is rather breathless and trite:

"must sign up using a national ID card and a second piece of identification (early plans to use Facebook as a means of authenticating users' identities were dropped over concerns about making the platform overly reliant on a U.S. tech firm). And how a person votes on the platform is not secret."

<comment><USER4> "Still, for all the publicity Mancini and the Net Party have received, participation on the platform is low—debates on legislation rarely attract more than 100 voters—in a capital city with some 2.5 million eligible voters and an Internet penetration rate of 70 percent'

I just lack faith in technological solutionism. If there is an issue everybody felt important people would've found ways to fight for it. Even take it to the streets.

Sometimes I fear of "Like button" democracy more then I fear corrupted officials.</comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: Pearlo.co -- Storytelling as a Strategy for Process Improvement - <AUTHOR> No-code, Cloud-based tool allowing non-technical users to model/improve process flows via Natural Language Processing
1. The user tells the story of the current process and how it works
2. The tool creates a model based on this story
3. The model comes with (a) an assigned score to let the user know how well the current process works and (b) a set of recommendations to improve this process
explainer graphic:  http://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/ebd81b77-aa9c-4cd7-952b...
It is like the difference between getting out a paper map and a ruler and a pencil to document the roads one needs to take in order to get from one place to the next VS yelling "Siri, where's a Starbucks" and spending time and creative energy on other things while the tool does the think-work. The tool will be subscription-based with the first model offered for free. The subscription is $1600 per year and gives the user access to model improvement capabilities, best practices in the industry, white papers and other useful templates and use cases, etc. The users realize that each model is a living organism that can remain in queue and be revisited at any time (https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/GW43FI8MS#/screens/99...)
My primary competition is non-consumption. Firms (especially fast-paced tech firms) will just bootstrap a solution using MS Visio or some other simple software application with no business intelligence behind the drawings. In other cases, firms spend a lot of money on consultants or on robust software and a team to learn how to use it. They often get lost in the process of process improvement with very little impact on the bottom line.
My solution democratizes the process improvement activity. Anyone can use it and get quick ROI in the form of scoring (how is our process structure?) and a set of recommendations (how can we improve our process structure?). My solution is no-code and harnesses the power of storytelling via natural language processing.
People don't want to hunker down for a 5-12 month process improvement engagement from which they emerge with a binder of great drawings and technical documentation to accompany those drawings. They want to visually represent the way they are doing business, show it to the whole team, get consulted on out how to improve current operations, make those improvements as quickly as possible and move on to the next area of the business that needs improving. Fast. Easy. Visible Improvement. <comment><AUTHOR> It is like the difference between getting out a paper map and a ruler and a pencil to document the roads one needs to take in order to get from one place to the next VS yelling "Siri, where's a Starbucks" and spending time and creative energy on other things while the tool does the think-work.

The tool will be subscription-based with the first model offered for free. The subscription is $1600 per year and gives the user access to model improvement capabilities, best practices in the industry, white papers and other useful templates and use cases, etc. The users realize that each model is a living organism that can remain in queue and be revisited at any time ([https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/GW43FI8MS#/screens/99...](https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/GW43FI8MS#/screens/99659199))

</comment><comment><USER2> To me, a large part of process improvement is statistics, statistics and more statistics. I don't understand how storytelling alone, just as creating Visio diagrams alone could come up with a regime that allows one to measure, analyse, improve and control a system.

"My primary competition is non-consumption. Firms (especially fast-paced tech firms) will just bootstrap a solution using MS Visio or some other simple software application with no business intelligence behind the drawings. In other cases, firms spend a lot of money on consultants or on robust software and a team to learn how to use it. They often get lost in the process of process improvement with very little impact on the bottom line.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your comment! You are right, there is a mathematical component to process improvement which makes the proposed solution possible. Storytelling alone cannot foster improvement, however, storytelling is all the user will need to know how to do. By simply explaining the story of how the process currently works, the user can enlist the software to (1) translate the story into a process model using natural language processing to workflow diagram. From there, (2) artificial intelligence based on best practices and other process improvement business rules can determine how efficient that model (based on the original story) is. Then, (3) a recommendation or set of several recommendations for how the user can update the story/process can be given by the tool.

I talk a bit more about how the two (storytelling and artificial intelligence) can play a very big role in process improvement and business process management in this article:

[http://bpm.com/bpm-today/blogs/1066-can-artificial- intellige...](http://bpm.com/bpm-today/blogs/1066-can-artificial-intelligence- ai-administrate-the-process-improvement-activity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) I have absolutely no idea what this is. The explainer graphic didn't help.

2) As lots of VCs, including those running YC have said, the team is much more important than the idea. Who are you and why should anyone bet on your success?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your question.

The product helps to "democratize" the process improvement activity so that any stakeholder can work on improving process efficiency even if he/she has no knowledge of process frameworks or methodologies or notations. It is storytelling supported by technology to help improve process and workflow. If a person can tell the story of how the process currently works, the product can model that process and give tips on how to improve it.

I've worked for about 18 years as an enterprise architect and process improvement professional and have found that the traditional approach to modeling and improving process is tedious, prolonged and not as flexible and meaningful for most people. I have a PhD in Business with a focus in information systems innovation. I have a wealth of case studies for firms operating below efficiency due to poorly architected processes and have done extensive market research to validate the need for low-cost, no-code, high-ROI solutions in process flow improvements.

The idea involves some natural language processing and artificial intelligence components and I've been working on traditional consulting projects to help gather business rules that can inform the code development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The second link is "no longer valid."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for letting me know. I'll check into that to get a corrected link for my clickable prototype. Until then, here is a high-level explainer video... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7QmHojsXQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7QmHojsXQ0)</comment></comment>