Applications of NLP at Quora - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.quora.com/Applications-of-NLP-at-Quora?share=1 <comment><USER2> I was a little bit disappointed with the content feed.

I was getting spammed by the same authors (I eventually blocked some authors which was a shame), or by the types of questions I didn't find interesting.

When I picked a category as general as Food, I would constantly get questions and answers that weren't interesting and I couldn't find a way to say that it wasn't interesting.

Eventually I left, although I've made hundreds of comments, questions and answers. Just didn't enjoy the time there anymore.

It would be nice if there was some effort on personalizing. Currently, everything mentioned seems to be about content and not the user.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved GonzoHacker's explanation of Quora: "It was going to be something huge and it ended up a well moderated subreddit"

[https://twitter.com/GonzoHacker/status/721131562679422976](https://twitter.com/GonzoHacker/status/721131562679422976)

</comment><comment><USER4> I keep reading NLP as Neuro-Linguistic Programming which has the same acronym... NLP is looking trendy at the moment on HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> Although they seem to be very interesting problems, they are merely NLP but AI problems. Quality is intrinsically subjective and what Quora needs is the community, or a very opinionated AI.

</comment><comment><USER6> Excited to see some real code/techniques that Quora is using in future posts. I'm just getting into NLP (reading the NLTK book).</comment>


Show HN: JSON-Menu, transform json data into a beautiful dashboard for your mac - <AUTHOR> https://jsonmenu.com/ <comment><USER2> You should check out vega - [https://vega.github.io/vega/](https://vega.github.io/vega/)

It is an extensive grammar for visualization.

Also - [https://github.com/vega/voyager](https://github.com/vega/voyager)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an Electron App FYI. I tried it, and even the initial open of the menu (which shouldn't need to load any remote data) had a delay of a few seconds with just a white box.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool! Do you have a mailing list to sign up for the Windows build announcement?</comment>


Asymptotically Approaching Useful Developer Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://advice.cio.com/developermetrics

<comment><USER2> "We're putting new cover sheets on all of our TPS reports now before they go out, didn't you get the memo?"

Joking aside, it's not an easy problem. I would have liked to hear more about the nitty gritty details of what these new systems are supposed to be measuring.

At a more general level, it's a manifestation of the principal-agent problem (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem>) which is caused by information asymmetries - the programmer knows more than the boss about what's really going on.

Compounding the problem is that even the programmer can't predict "black swan" types of issues that come up and blow things up in a big way.</comment>


Why you shouldn't marry before you are 27 (Game Theory Explanation) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gametheorystrategies.com/2011/07/14/why-you-shouldnt-marry-before-you-are-27/

<comment><USER2> > _If there are a number of potential girlfriends, using the letter 'n' to > represent the number, then he should reject the first n divided by 'e' (e is > a key number in mathematics and has a value of about 2.72). He should then > accept the next girlfriend after that who is better than all the preceding > ones. If none of them are better than all the earlier ones then he ends up > with the last girlfriend._

This doesn't explain why this formula should be used. It explains how to apply the formula given the figures.

Surely the "better" part is the most complicated part to analyse. Also, to what end, you shouldn't marry before you're 27 to ... what? Have the longest marriage, be most fulfilled, parent the best children, make the most money?

The assumption of availability makes the whole thing pointless IMO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this assume, that all available girls are available for the whole experiment duration?

Because if "better" girls are "taken" earlier, then it can explain preference to marry earlier seen in real life.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great article. Can we get the derivation for this stuff?</comment>


The Fallacy of Chesterton's Fence (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://abovethelaw.com/2014/01/the-fallacy-of-chestertons-fence/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr author agrees with Chesterton.

This article uses the word "fallacy" really oddly. I was expecting criticism of Chesterton's fence parable, not just a repetition.

<comment><USER3> I agree, and it was really a letdown. I was curious what would be the best argument against Chesterson's fence in the abstract (obviously arguing against it in specific cases is done all the time).</comment></comment>


Tech behind Klout.com - Node.js and Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://corp.klout.com/blog/2011/10/the-tech-behind-klout-com/

<comment><USER2> _Plus, using JavaScript on both the server and the client made writing multi- purpose code very straightforward._

You really don't want to mix server-side and client-side code. Although I use the same library (mootools) on both the server and client, I keep the code separate. The only exception has been a class that I wrote to dynamically generate PDFs. That has been useful both in the browser and on the server.

<comment><USER3> Why not?

As always, this is a huge "it depends". Take game development for example, it's very common for huge overlap between client code and server code, both often written in the same language for this reason.

<comment><USER2> > Why not?

Because server code and client code do very different things. Once you start using node.js you start to feel that real hard. Server code is accessing the database, client code is rendering to screen, etc.

Mixing that is always a bad idea, even in games. You'll end up with spaghetti code.

You will also probably have different guys working on server stuff and client stuff. Keeping it separate will make things easier there too.</comment></comment></comment>


Running Hadoop On Ubuntu Linux (Single-Node Cluster) - Michael G. Noll - <AUTHOR> http://www.michael-noll.com/wiki/Running_Hadoop_On_Ubuntu_Linux_%28Single-Node_Cluster%29

<comment><AUTHOR> Ofcourse, theres the super easy Cloudera distribution, but i found this tutorial to be more informative, as you understand the steps in installation better.</comment>


Top 20 US Cities for Tech Startup Funding - <AUTHOR> http://learn.onevest.com/tutorial/4017420020911965678/top-20-us-cities-for-tech-startup-funding

<comment><USER2> Four out of the top six are in California. Also, the difference between San Francisco (1) and San Juan (2) is ~6 BILLION dollars. It really is good to be king.</comment>


Show HN: Turn any website into an API (for those who miss Kimono) - <AUTHOR> https://simplescraper.io/ <comment><USER3> This is very cool! I love how you brought back the original Kimono UI with the checkmark and Xs for adding and removing data tags.

We built WrapAPI ([https://wrapapi.com](https://wrapapi.com)) back in the day, before we ended up starting Wanderlog ([https://wanderlog.com](https://wanderlog.com)), our current travel planning Y Combinator startup. This definitely is still an unsolved problem.

However, from a business point of view, we found that it was rather difficult to make a business out of an unspecialized scraping tool. The Kimono founders expressed a similar sentiment: ultimately, scraping is a solution looking for a problem.

Developers can often roll their own solution too, which limits your customer base and how much you can charge. Instead, vertical-specific tools that target particular industries seem to be the way to go (see Plaid as an example!)

Alternatively, you have to be good at Enterprise and B2B sales. This is a product that you need to get the word out, get a champion, and do customer success on since it has a substantial learning curve. We were not, so that was why we chose to focus on other projects to start out

Best of luck, and feel free to get in touch if you'd like to chat more

<comment><USER4> Curious, what comparison are you making with Plaid here?

<comment><USER3> Plaid, Yodlee, and others abstracts away extracting data from various banks and financial services providers, so they're providing a solution built on top of the same data extraction techniques that this tool uses

<comment><USER4> Oh, interesting. I thought they just provided secure authentication to an app's end users' bank accounts for things like payments (an alternative to someone like PayPal doing two microtransactions, then having you confirm the amounts as a way of validating it's your account). It's not like Plaid is scraping financial data though, right?

<comment><USER5> Scraping is incredibly common with banking apps like that, because many banks do not have APIs (and are only changing slowly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I posted this in a comment thread the other day and (to my surprise) it got a positive reception so added a few more updates and decided to post it proper.

The idea is to be able to choose a website, select the data you want, and make it available (as JSON, CSV or an API) with as little friction as possible.

Kimono was the gold standard for a while so did yoink some of their ideas, while doing some other things differently.

Still needs some work but as an MVP would appreciate any feedback. Cheers.

<comment><USER6> >would appreciate any feedback

Any option for a firefox build?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, working on it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't feel it is right to describe it as "turns a website into an API", rather "gives scraped data through an API".

"Turn website into an API", for me, evokes the image that I can automate (say) placing an order in Amazon as an API, or paying my bills automatically. It includes scraping, of course, but requires a lot more (mechanize/twill/selenium/phantom/etc power).

There was a company called Orsus that did exactly that. Last I heard about them it was the year 2000.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea but I was skeptical as to how well it works and noticed the video on the main page of your website which scans coinmarketcap seems to be wrong. It gets 200 cryptocurrency names but only 100 prices which means only the first result is correct.

I have a similar idea that I'm working on, your site is definitely bookmarked and will try the extension later.

<comment><USER9> Also interesting that this main example is also a violation of coinmarketcap's terms. They have a paid API.

<comment><USER10> If i use my pen and notebook to write down all those values, am i also in violation of those terms?

If they don't want their data to be scraped, it is up to them to secure it.

<comment><USER9> The argument you're making here is 'I don't believe in copyright'. Which is fine, but doesn't really negate my point.

<comment><USER10> It's a moot point. I very much believe in copyright, but you can't just put info in the public domain and yell, "Take a look but don't remember/retain it" in the name of copyright. If I redistribute it or reuse it for commercial purposes without your consent then maybe there is a case. But if I am just scraping it, i.e remembering it... Come on now.

Otherwise everyone who gets the lyrics to copyrighted songs or memorizes them and sing them in the shower is also in violation of copyright. Which would reduce the whole copyright thing to ridiculousness.

<comment><USER9> All I said that it's against their term of use. I didn't try to make a point about whether it _should_ be or not. If you are curious about it, and whether using pen and paper is allowed, take a look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is it about this service as a business model that prevents it from taking off? I've known at least two YC startups that tried to build businesses around this idea.

I think one or both were acquired and immediately shut down, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

<comment><USER12> I'm the founder of parsehub.

We are doing well and are independently owned.

I think there are 3 things that contribute to this:

1\. It is very easy to make a prototype that looks "magical" but very hard to build something that works in real applications. There are an enormous amount of quirks that a browser allows, and each site you encounter will use a different set of those quirks. Sites also tend to be unreliable, so whatever you build has to be very resistant to errors.

2\. There is a technological wall that every company in this space reaches where it is not yet possible to mass-specialize for different websites. So even if you're able to build a tool that works very well on any individual website, the technology is not there yet to be able to generalize the instructions across websites in the same category. So if a customer wants to scrape 1000 websites, they still have to build custom instructions for each website (5-10x reduction in labor vs scripting) when what they really want/is economically viable for them is to build a single set of instructions that will work for all similar websites (10000x reduction in labor vs scripting). This is something that we're working on for the next version of parsehub, but is still a couple years away from launch.

3\. Many of the YC startups you hear about have raised funding from investors and have short term pressures to exit.

The combination of the three makes it very tempting to give up and sell.

<comment><USER13> #2 is what would transform this from a nice niche tool, to something very valuable. In the ecommerce space, tracking competitor pricing is a great example of this type of thing. I can also see use casese for recipe's, finance, healthcare, you name it. Those b2b use cases are worth real money.

Just curious, in your experimentation, have you found it necessary to train a new model for each "category"? Or have you found a way to generalize it?

<comment><USER12> Training a new model for each category is already possible today, but doesn't achieve the goal (mass-specialization).

The problem is that when you pre-train a model, you can only solve for the lowest common denominator of what every customer might want.

In ecommerce, for example, you might pre-train to get price, product name, reviews, and a few other things that are general to all ecommerce. But you won't pre-train it to get the mAh rating of batteries, because that's not common to the vast majority of customers (even within ecommerce). It turns out that most customers need at least a few of these long-tail properties that are different than what almost every other customer wants, even if most of the properties they need are common.

And so the challenge is to dynamically train a model that generalizes to all "battery sites" based on the (very limited) input from a customer making a few clicks on a single "battery site".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hi, is it possible to make it compatible with firefox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, in fact I'll do it this weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe a better business model is to offer this as a service to site owners who are not tech savvy. Site owners then have the ability to offer an API to new customers making it a win / win. Site owners can now offer an API (free or paid), and API consumer can rely on getting data in the future.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just gave this a shot on the ISO website to get a list of country codes[1], but it seems the selection algorithm breaks down when there's no specific classes applied to elements, as every td.v-grid-cell is selected, which is all of them, instead of the values of the alpha2 column for example.

This seems hard to solve entirely programmatically, maybe having a way to be more specific by providing a selector yourself or selecting multiple entries and having the plugin figure it out could add a lot of utility in such cases.

[1] - [https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search/code/](https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search/code/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I believe this could be a good solution to turn legacy software into an API. The "generated code" should be a reverse proxy, not a scraping lib.

Also, scraping a website to use/copy it's data is illegal in my country (Belgium). I'm not sure this tool itself would be.

<comment><USER18> nothing can stop it. lots of belgian sites are scraped everyday across the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a reason this doesn't spit out some python or JavaScript code to scrape the same info out?

This just seems to add another dependency to whatever I'm developing. Plus, it sends data through a server I don't control. (I assume)

<comment> petr-nagy Did you read the website? It says "Scrape locally or create recipes that run quickly in the cloud."

Also, what use could website spitting essentially the same python/js script over and over have?

<comment><USER19> I must have skimmed past that. Whoops. I avoided trying it out because it's not available on firefox, so I couldn't correct my assumption by testing it. Also, couldn't easily find copy of the extension source and gave up.

The site/extension basically has to do that each time it _scrapes locally_ (or use generic parametrised scraper) If you wanted to use it in an API, my impression is that you can run it in chrome as an extension you need to get from the chrome store or tunnel your data through a third party server. Is that wrong?

Can you scrape data locally without running chrome/the extension? I can't tell from reading the site, sorry. (if it's actually there, please link an anchor tag to it or something please)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like this.

Please consider adding the ability to script clicks on elements, e.g. buttons.

I manage a site where we load a subset of articles on initial page load and then have a "Load more" button that executes Javascript to load another batch of articles. Getting a list of articles from our CMS is a bit of a hassle so being able to scrape it easily instead would be ideal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, right now you can select a Pagination element that the app will use to load the next page / new data.

If the site's publicly accessible and you're able to share, send the details to mike @ simplescraper.io and I'll get this working for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does this work with authenticated pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - you're able to save data behind a login using the point and click functionality as it extracts whatever data is loaded in your browser ("local scraping").

And no - if you choose to also create a cloud recipe that runs on the server, the remote browser instance won't be able to access data behind a login.

It's possible but I'd rather not store third-party credentials for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is super cool. I really enjoyed and missed the kimono workflow. Automating something like this with browserless.io would be really fun (I run that project). Extensions is one of the things we're looking to support.

Anyways give me an email at joel at browserless dot io if you ever want to chat

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers Joel. I have most of your blog posts on Puppeteer bookmarked - <USER2> helpful and well written.

For sure, once the app is a notch more tried and tested I'll get in touch. Appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Awesome! One question I have after reading the page is - what is the pricing plans concerning credits? (for automated scraping)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now it's free and will be until it's stable. Starting price will be about $25 for 4000 scraping credits, 200k API calls and data storage.

This will likely change as I have more stats and feedback on usage and expenses. But the goal is to offer a price point that's fair and low relative to other options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Kimono was cool, nice to see another option. I still have a Kimono t-shirt in a drawer somewhere.

<comment><USER25> _Kimono t-shirt_

Hmm, definite missed merch opportunity there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How to use the 'pagination' feature ? The help guide doesn't even mentioned it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, yes the guide still needs work. Here's what you gotta do:

\- Click the pagination icon and then click the pagination element (usually 'Next' or an arrow). The icon will turn green

\- Click 'view results' and then choose to save the recipe

\- Select the number of pages you'd like to scrape

\- Run your recipe and it will scrape those pages

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks good, could this be integrated into n8n.io to be used to drive a workflow?

</comment><comment><USER28> Firefox add in please.

</comment><comment><USER29> if you can add RSS feed response that would be great

<comment><USER30> If you need data from a website that updates on a regular basis there's a recent Show HN I've seen that does exactly this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398524)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> OT: or just use puppeteer, not really hard, for free and you can rule the world</comment>


Drag-drop deshredder for Instagram challenge - <AUTHOR> http://timruffles.github.com/image-deshredder/

<comment><USER2> It's a nice interface, but I'm a little confused about your column adjacency cost function. In particular, why sum only the bottom quartile of pixel distances to get column costs?

</comment><comment><USER3> OT: Redirecting IE users to the Chrome download page with a pithy JS popup isn't not winning you any brownie points.</comment>


Type Hints Are Scary - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@acboulder/type-hints-are-scary-f52d07a36a31 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm exploring using Python with pylint and mypy "cranked" to the max.

I really like the lightweight syntax Python has vs C# or Java for example, especially for classes and free functions. When adding type annotations in Python 3.6 then analyzing with mypy I think I'm getting most of the benefits of a static type system.

Plus mypy has a couple cool features like Union types.</comment>


Show HN: A Bag of Resistors - <AUTHOR> https://emsal1863.github.io/bag_of_resistors/ <comment><USER2> A bag of resistors. I remember those. We all bought at least one.

We also bought a bag of capacitors.

They'd last us for a couple of years. The hardest part was sorting them so we could find the one(s) that we wanted at the moment.</comment>


Celeste is hard, but its creators are smart about difficulty - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/26/16935964/celeste-difficulty-assist-mode <comment><USER2> I just bought this game because it looked really fun [0]. I've only spent about 20 minutes on it but it feels well made and certainly is challenging!

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHLizp8fARo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHLizp8fARo)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been following one of its creators on Twitter[^1]. It's been incredibly inspiring seeing this game come to fruition from humble beginnings.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/noelfb](https://twitter.com/noelfb)</comment>


Nvidia Ampere GA102 GPU Architecture [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/geforce/ampere/pdf/NVIDIA-ampere-GA102-GPU-Architecture-Whitepaper-V1.pdf <comment><USER2> The A100 whitepaper "spoiled" a lot of these factoids already. ([https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/Data- Cent...](https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/Data- Center/nvidia-ampere-architecture-whitepaper.pdf))

The new bit seems to be the doubling of FP32 "CUDA cores" (I really hate that word: when Intel or AMD double their CPU pipelines it doesn't mean that they're selling more cores, it means their cores got wider... anyway). A100 didn't have this feature (I assume A100 was 16 Floating point + 16 Integer "Cuda cores" per CU like Turing. Correct me if I'm wrong)

You don't need to read the whitepaper to understand that NVidia has really improved performance/cost here. The 3rd party benchmarks are out and the improved performance is well documented at this point.

The FP32 doubling, is one of the most important bits here. But fortunately for programmers, this doesn't really change how you do your code. The compiler / PTX assembler will schedule your code at compile time to best take advantage of that.

The other bit: larger L1 / Shared memory of 128kB per CU, does affect programmers. GPU programmers have tight control over shared memory, and is very useful for optimization purposes.

\</comment><comment>----

GDDR6's improved memory bandwidth is also big. "Feeding the beast" with faster RAM is always a laudable goal, and sending 2-bits per pin per clock cycle through PAM4 is a nifty trick.

Sparse Tensor Cores were already implemented in A100, and don't seem to be new. If you haven't heard of the tech before, its cool: basically hardware accelerated sparse-matrix computations. A 4x4xFP16 matrix uses 32 bytes under normal conditions, but can be "compressed" into 16 bytes if half-or-more of its values are 0. NVidia Ampere supports hardware-accelerated matrix multiplications of these 16-byte "virtual" 4x4xFP16 matrixes.

I swear that RTX I/O existed before in some other form. This isn't the first time I heard about offloading PCIe to the GPU. Its niche and I don't expect video games to use it (are M.2 SSDs popular enough to be assumed on the PC / Laptop market yet?). But CUDA-coders probably can control their hardware more carefully and benefit from such a feature.</comment>


Asshole Driven Development and others (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://scottberkun.com/2007/asshole-driven-development/ <comment><USER2> The post is pretty good but the comments following are gold.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Headphone Recommendations For Around $100 US? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all.
My wife and I decided that for our anniversary this year we'd both get $100 to spend on whatever we want. I've wanted a nice set of headphones to use when coding/mowing/etc, but have yet to purchase any because I do not know which to buy.
A couple of guidelines: I like noise canceling, but that usually pumps up the price and I hate when headphones require an extra battery. I usually prefer over-the-ear headphones to earbuds, but I won't rule earbuds out.
Kind of an oddball question, I know, but the fact is that I respect you all's opinions quite highly especially when it comes to which tech to buy.
I appreciate any assistance you might provide! <comment><USER2> I went to an audiologist and paid $100 to have molds of my ears taken. A week later, I had a set of ear plugs with filters in them to block out most frequencies. I bought them for flying, and now that I have them, I would rather miss my flight than fly without them. If you're just looking for the noise silencing aspect of headphones, I'd highly recommend a custom plug.

For music, I have a pair of Shure E2Cs. They not only block out sound really well, but in my opinion produce very good sound. One big advantage of in-ear design like this is that you can significantly lower the volume of your sound source, which will keep your ears happy and healthy. But not everyone feels comfortable with the in-ear style. When I bought the Shures they were @100; today the Shure SE210s are available for $100, but I don't know their product line very well, so I don't know the difference, say, between the SE210s and the cheaper SE110s.

Also note that with most of the in-ear headphones, you can take them to an audiologist and get custom plugs made, as well. It's probably not worth it to buy a $100 set of headphones and then pay an extra $100 to get custom molds, but if I were purchasing a higher end set of Shures (or a similar product from Westone or Etymotic), I'd get the molds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Former sound engineer here.

The best large diaphragm in your price range is the Sony MDR-7506. It's a stunning headphone for the price. Almost every professional recording studio I know has a couple from that product line on hand.

As others have pointed out, there are a couple of good earbuds in your price range, but this runs against your preference. Earbud sound depends a great deal on fit, and it's harder (==$$$$) to get good bass reproduction on something that small than it is to get it on an overear pair.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I was living in California for the past 4 months and picked up these for $99 bucks on Amazon. Came the next day. My friend bought some expensive $300+ noise canceling Bose ones. I think placebo effect made them sound marginally better than my already awesome headphones. After about a month, i listened to his again and there was distortion or some lack of clarity in the sound. To this day, my Sony MDR-7506 Professionals have served me very very well. Crisp, true sound.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR7506-Professional-Diaphragm- He...](http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR7506-Professional-Diaphragm- Headphone/dp/B000AJIF4E)

Seems to be even cheaper now, sitting at around 80 bucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Etymotic ER-6i will hit your price exactly, but you can find them for less if you look hard enough.

They are earbuds, but they are amazing. They don't noise cancel, they noise isloate. I wear them in NYC, and whether it's a loud subway, a bus, or a jackhammer, I can keep the volume way low, and still hear the music. It's also great for your long term hearing health since you will keep the volume way low. Before I got them my iPod was at 75% volume. With them, anything over 25% is too loud. Perfect for mowing the lawn, though.

There is one con with these and that is they are fragile. The buds themselves will never have a problem, it's the cord and TRS conenctor. They will break at some point, but Etymotic is very good about giving you an RMA repair/replacement even after warranty is expired. I got tired of that, though, and I soldered on my own connector that was far more durable.

<comment><USER6> I love Etymotics, and I would recommend also considering the more recent HF5 earbuds. You can often find them for $99, and they have the same drivers that are found in their $200+ ER-4Ps. I think the HF5s have a more clear and accurate sound (although they do produce slightly less bass).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the Grado Sr-60 or Sr-80, but two caveats: 1) they're open-backed, so not great in noisy environments; and 2) they tend not to be as well-regarded for classical music.

<comment><USER8> Seconded, I've owned both SR-60 and SR-80 headphones and love them. They are open-backed so would not work well for mowing, but they're fine if you're in a lab or airport.

I'd suggest earplugs over headphones for mowing, unless you're trying to lose your hearing (or have a really quiet mower). =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sennheiser HD280pro. Nice sound, and completely sealed. A dream to use on planes. -32dB isolation is more than what Bose promises with noise cancellation. I've seen them around 80 on sale.

<comment><USER10> I code almost all day wearing a pair of these. Without music playing, they mostly block out a conversation on the other side of the room. With music, the outside world is nonexistent. The biggest downside is a weak plastic headband casing. There's a strong metal band inside, but the plastic casing will eventually crack (it happens to most owners -- might be dependent on head size). That said, I wrapped mine with clear packing tape a couple years ago and they've been fine since. They're comfortable enough to wear for an hour or two on, 15 minutes off, repeat.

Another great sounding set is the Audio-Technica ATH-M50. I bought my brother a pair for $100 new on eBay. They're more durable than the HD280s, and fold up better for portability.

Avoid the HD202 unless you have small ears. Also avoid anything from Grado; they're totally open (lots of sound leaks in and out), and are mostly appropriate for rock (they have a very "colorful" sound -- not at all faithful to the source material). Don't go anywhere near Bose. You'll get a lot better sound for a hell of a lot cheaper from just about anything made by Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, Beyerdynamic or AKG.

This is a great source for info: <http://www.head-fi.org/forum/> Try not to get too sucked into the hi-fi tomfoolery though, for $100 you can get a great set of cans, and a laptop or mp3 player will be a sufficient driver. A lot of the higher-end gear will require an amp to sound decent, and there's some wickedly diminishing returns once you pass the $100-200 point. There are a lot of conflicting reviews on that site, but there's seems to be a general consensus about certain models (the ATH-M50 is widely respected, for example).

[For the best noise blocking (aside from in-ear), you want a set of closed "circumaural" (around the ear) headphones. Open-back cans don't block any external sound, so you have to crank up the volume to drown it out.]

<comment><USER10> Another headphone to consider is the AKG K81 DJ, for around $60-80. It's a closed supra-aural design (sits on your ear). I haven't tried them personally, but I've heard they sound fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shure SRH750DJ headphones. They are a little more expensive than you are looking for, but they are over the ear and provide great isolation (Just as good as in ear headphones for sure). The sound quality, especially bass response, just absolutely destroys in ear buds (and I had more expensive Shure in ear buds before that).

Stay away from anything by Sennheiser or Bose. Bose is crap, and Sennheisers are nice, but just overpriced. For comparison, my Shures plugged directly into iPod (shitty built in preamp) vs. Sennheiser HD650s ($500 headphones) WITH a $275 preamp (so my $140 setup vs an $800 setup), my Shures won by a slight margin.

If not these, anything Shure.

</comment><comment><USER12> I got Senneiser HD 202 over the ear headphones and they sound phenominal and block outside really well. I was skeptical b/c they are only $30 at Amazon, but have 4.5/5 stars with 1000+ reviews. You could get three pairs!

<comment><USER13> I have a pair HDR 65s that I have had for about 3 or 4 years. Amazing headphones. +1 for Sennheiser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I use Shure SE110s and love them, great noise blocking. I describe them as earplugs with crazy good speakers. I purchased them for ~$100. However, they are earbuds and the way you wear them tends to rub on the back of your ear at times, definitely not a deal breaker. I wear them at least 2 hours a day, and that's my only complaint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Like I said I'm not dead set against earbuds, especially if they come alongside a great recommendation. I'll look at these, thanks!

<comment><USER15> +1 for quality earbuds.

The noise isolation alone an in-ear headphone can provide gives them a major leg up.

There are some great ones out there (like the Shure.)

<comment><USER16> +1 for Shure SE110's. I prefer to listen to music from speakers, but late at night when I'm getting into a project I use the SE110's and really enjoy them. My ears don't really get 'fatigued' from wearing them for long periods of time like some other headphones I've used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought a pair of Shure SRH440 over the ear headphones six months ago, and have been extremely happy with them. I bought them based primarily on the Amazon reviews which frequently said they sounded as good as headphones costing 3 times as much. They're studio headphones, block sound really well (though they're not noise cancelling) and the sound quality is amazing for the price. They were $95 when I bought them (list is $125), but when I just checked Amazon, they're down to under $70.

[http://www.shure.com/americas/products/earphones- headphones/...](http://www.shure.com/americas/products/earphones- headphones/headphones/srh440-professional-studio-headphones)

<comment><USER18> I just bought these the other day, highly recommended. The bass is punchy and full, the highs are crystal clear the only complaint I have is that the mids aren't as good as they could be. However, for the price and the quality of construction they are a great deal :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently got a pair of MetroFit 220 by LE which can be found for around 80$. ([http://www.ultimateears.com/_ultimateears/store/products/met...](http://www.ultimateears.com/_ultimateears/store/products/metrofi220.php)) Which I like alot. They are buds, put they come with 3 plastic ear pieces of different sizes so you should be able to make them fit. I got these over an active noise canceling one since all the noise canceling ones I have used (and it could just be the ones I used) seem to let out alot of noise when noise canceling.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a pair of Grado SR225s that are fantastic, but they're only good when I'm at my desk. For travelling I used to have a pair of Bose QC2s that I got as a gift. Due to the terrible head strap design they broke after 2 years of moderate use. I now have a pair of Audio Technica ANC7Bs that are exactly the same as the Bose, and have a better strap, that I picked up for $140, and they're down to $120 now on Amazon. Apparently the first version of the headphones was so similar to the Bose QCs that they got sued and had to change them slightly.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have these guys:

[http://www.amazon.com/AKG-Acoustics-K-240-Studio- Headphones/...](http://www.amazon.com/AKG-Acoustics-K-240-Studio- Headphones/dp/B0001ARCFA/ref=pd_cp_MI_1)

they are wonderful. Great sound and very comfortable. You could keep them on all day and ears won't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER22> Another sound engineer weighing in - AKG makes some great headphones. You'd be hard-pressed to find a studio without at least a few pairs of AKG 240's hanging around. I suspect they're a bit over $100 regularly priced, but a good sale should get them closer to your budget.

I love my 240s...

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been using the TripleFi 10vi from Ultimate Ears (<http://is.gd/cpZjf>) and they're superb... currently they're priced around $200 but Amazon seems to have deals where they halve the price now and then so keep a look for that...

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a relatively recent article with a summary of in-ear headphones....

[http://gizmodo.com/5033455/ultimate-cut+the+crap-in+ear- head...](http://gizmodo.com/5033455/ultimate-cut+the+crap-in+ear-headphone- battlemodo)

/edit to fix the link

</comment><comment><USER25> >My wife and I decided that for our anniversary this year we'd >both get $100 to spend on whatever we want.

No offense, but do you have to wait for a year to get to spend 100$ for whatever you want ? Man, you make me feel bad.

</comment><comment><USER26> Ultimate Ears SuperFi 3 Studio Noise Isolating Earphones

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B5XU06>

</comment><comment><USER27> I like my Sennheiser HD595

<comment><USER27> I should add that these are non-noise canceling and aren't great with lots of noise. Look for closed headphones if you want noise blocking (but not noise canceling).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> audio-technica ATH-M20 ; < $30. Buy 2 or 3.

</comment><comment><USER29> in-ear: Klipsch s4i: control iphone too.

<http://www.klipsch.com/na-en/products/image-s4i-similar/></comment>


Big-Bang Disruption - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2013/03/big-bang-disruption/

<comment><USER2> If it's not big-bang like described here, it's not really disruption IMO. There's a difference between evolution and revolution.

One is taking little steps that the incumbent can see as they come, and thus the game is a balance between nimble/fast and resourceful/slow. A gap-spotting game: who fills each niche in the industry first?

The other is as he alludes to: collateral damage from a wrecking ball. Someone invents a pocket sized device that has GPS and can download maps. Not because they were trying to do that, it just happened. Now nobody ever needs a GPS device anymore. Or a paper map.

<comment><USER3> When your battery runs out, you'll wish you had a paper map.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but my kids won't. They've never seen one.

<comment><USER5> Even old busted partial tech is better than a black LCD or even with bad reception, since you don't even know when you'll have bits of data. I'm starting to think that our 'old' world is actually a massively distributed, redundant, fault tolerant information system, just not an electronic one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to access the Darknet. The safe way - <AUTHOR> https://torgeek.pw/how-to-access-the-darknet-the-safe-way/ <comment><USER2> > I see this questioned regularly, and yeah it is generally a good idea. If > you have a VPN provider that you trust to not keep logs, it can be a very > good addition for your security setup.

Therein lies the problem. You can't trust VPN providers.

[https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29](https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29)

<comment><USER3> Cryptostorm are a decent VPN as they claim no logs are kept, however even if this is not accurate, their payment/token system allows you to access the service without linking it to you via a payment mechanism. To further cloud things you can pay with Bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> Cryptostorm (I love these guys) refuse to answer how they are in legal compliance with Canadian laws, which require VPN's to keep logs (they're Canadian fyi).

Best case scenario: They're an illegal operation who's defying local laws.

Worse case scenario: We're being lied too.

<comment><USER5> Their alleged owner Douglas Spink and his inability to stay out of jail for 'Zoophilia brothel offences' is the icing on the Cryptostorm cake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the advice is okay, the title is a huge turn off. There is no such thing as the Darknet. Please stop referring to the TOR network this way. It is harmful to the community and encourages journalists to write about TOR in a negative way!

<comment><USER7> I have a negative view of the Tor network, actually the name I use is indeed Darknet (or Deep Web).

My take is that it is valuable to use Tor to (try at least) to escape companies tracking and government spying.

But to visit any website only available on Tor network is not worth any effort on my part, as I have no doubt (currently) that it is all about illegal porn or illegal drugs and sinister scams.

Anyone care to give some counter argument to why this Tor Network deserves a positive light?

<comment><USER8> "s I have no doubt (currently) that it is all about illegal porn or illegal drugs and sinister scams."

You have come to your conclusion based upon nothing more than feeling, because if you had done any searching at all you would understand the answer to your question.

Everyone has heard the metaphor about leading a horse to water. In this case, it's more like the horse refuses to even be lead to the water but wants someone to go get a bucket of water and bring it to them. No one should or is gonna do it for you, especially since you have demonstrated a clearly exemplary amount of laziness in both effort and thought...

tldr

Tor sites != illegality

tor != darknet/deep web (eg, the darknet/deep web is much broader than just tor...)

<comment><USER9> To me, deep web means any website not indexed by major search engines... most of the deep web is accessible using a standard browser if you can find a link to it (many times, those links can be found by using the search engine of that website because most of their pages are not indexed for whatever reason)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nation state agencies just go to upstream providers and grab traffic metadata there, your VPS/VPN not keeping logs won't help against a targeted investigation. Even just downloading Tor or Tails gets your IP "task queued" according to Snowden leaks.

You would want to both obtain and use Tor nowhere near your meatspace identity, pref with different hardware than you usually use, and leave your phone at home if protection from tracking is your highest priority.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not everybody is living in the US tho.

Most countries can barely force any other country to give out consumer data from local companies. If you do not live in a five eyes state we can safely assume that nobody will target you that way for Tor browsing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And Whonix atop of Qubes would probably be an overkill atm.

[https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Qubes](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Qubes)

<comment><USER11> Why do you think so?

<comment><USER10> I meant an overkill as an excellent solution atm (sorry for not being precise - non-native here ;)

<comment><USER11> That's OK. :)

Then I believe we agree on this. I think many people would do well to include some overkill, in cases like this, to adjust for the risk of underestimating the difficulty 'killing' the problem.

To be fair, Qubes is arguably not really ready to be put into the hands of a casual computer user without specific threats yet. But for those who can handle it it seems like the most accessible option I've heard of for keeping the underlying system safe and preventing unmasking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Accessing Tor "safely" is something over and above accessing the normal internet safely. Advice like "don't open PDFs" isn't very helpful. Nor is "don't use javascript" or "don't log into social media." Such inactions don't help you access anything safely, they help you not access things in the first place.

(1) Use a secure OS. Unless you are security guru, that should be some flavour of linux. A liveUSB of Tails is pretty idiot proof. It worked for Snowden.

(2) Don't run any web browser, tor or otherwise, under any sort of elevated privilege (ie not while admin).

(3) Understand how to verify a website's certificates. You can indeed log into social media safely via tor (ie your password won't be harvested by the exit node) if you know how to verify the website.

(4) Don't take anonymity casually. Understand why you are using Tor, what you are protecting, who your adversary is, and develop relevant procedures. Don't rely on easy checklists you find at Tor-for-Dummies.com.

<comment><USER13> > Use a secure OS... A liveUSB of Tails is pretty idiot proof.

That implies Tails is very secure. Why is that? Is it because it has never been hacked before or has Tails been shown to be virtually hacker-proof? As someone non-technical I might be misunderstanding something. If so, can you clarify that?

Thanks.

<comment><USER14> Tails is intended to be run on a USB drive. This means you can take nearly any computer, boot to usb, and have a operating system designed for security running in the computer's RAM. Many claim that this does not leave a trace of your activity in the computer itself.

It also comes with tor browser, electrum bitcoin wallet, and some GPG utilities preinstalled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Your operating system could be infected, or leaking information otherwise.

"otherwise"? Is that code for has Windows 10 written on the box?

<comment><USER16> Microsoft backported a lot of the logging and tracking to Windows 7 and 8 as well. Not all of it, but enough to consider any computer running fully updated Windows to be user-privacy compromised.

<comment><USER17> Why does MSFT gets away with this. This is so evil. MSFT appearently spends a lot of money on paid commenters and lobbyism in general. Thanks god that XBoxOne, WinPhone are real flops - most aren't that stupid, for end users MSFT & Win are a burned brand names.

<comment><USER16> > Why does MSFT gets away with this.

Go to any store, anywhere. What computers are they selling? Maybe Chromebooks, which are showing to be wildly popular. But they also get returned a lot. Why? Because the user expects X software to run on Y computer, and do not even know what an operating system is because we idled in complacency on Microsofts desktop monopoly for twenty years. Take note of how Walmart sells Ipads but not Macbooks.

The only alternative to Windows is ChromeOS. Which is not an alternative for even half of Widows' use cases, since there is no native application support and its app-store restricted. Half of Windows appeal is the lack of application lockdown to a store, albeit MS has tried their hardest with their Windows Store to stop that.

OSX is not an alternative, Apple Stores are fairly few and far between, and the cost of a Mac is prohibitive, and it would have the exact same software incompatibility problems as Windows. And modern OSX is code signing applications and is, for consumers, even more restrictive and draconian than Windows is - do you _want_ your potential software users on iOS or OSX? I certainly do not, because that gives Apple absolute power to stop my software at their whim, or never approve it in the first place.

Ubuntu (or any desktop Linux) is also not an alternative, because, simply, its not there on the shelf next to Windows or ChromeOS. If Macs are inaccessible due to price and location, Ubuntu does not even exist - and it literally does not, given its market segment size. If Canonical wanted serious desktop adoption they would have to throw ludicrous money getting Ubuntu computers in front of potential users to purchase.

So of course MS gets away with this. Nobody is trying to stop them. And I doubt Xbone is a flop - it has sold 15 million units, half of the PS4 but still well on track to outsell the original Xbox in its lifetime, which only moved 24 million units in 5 years. I am insanely against consoles as a platform and pray they die finally and give consumers their hardware back, but that seems like a distant dream as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If anyone is interested, we (www.secfirst.org) just launched an Android open source app called Umbrella, which has lessons like this, along with a ton of other digital and physical security stuff. Everything from secure email to dealing with kidnap:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella)

<comment><USER19> why does this app require access to my current or saved locations?

<comment><USER18> Actually it doesn't if you are using the lessons and checklists etc. It only applies if you want to use the feature that allows you to input your location and then pull updated physical security country data feeds from the UN and Centre for Disease Control.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for clarifying. It was an all or nothing option for me - i.e. if I denied location access I couldn't use the app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article has several mistakes and typos. I find it actually hard to enjoy reading it, and it also seems very superficial. Am I the only one to feel this way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this feedback. I usually dont write, it is just a topic where i felt that could need some noob friendly coverage and just started writing. If i even proceed i will look into someone that proof reads my blabber. It is also not my first language.

(i am actually even surprised about the interest)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd actually recommend a SOCKS5 Proxy over a VPN.

> The SOCKS server does not interpret the network traffic between client and > server in any way, and is often used because clients are behind a firewall > and are not permitted to establish TCP connections to servers outside the > firewall unless they do it through the SOCKS server.

</comment><comment><USER22> Dont look at the comments in this blog post...

</comment><comment><USER23> Quite a let down article.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have Tried. There are only drugs, underage photos, scams, fake passaports and so on. What's the point of Darknet besides illegal activtities?

<comment><USER25> This is a very poor answer and, while I'm pretty sure that you're just trolling, Tor is important enough that your 'claim' really needs to be rebutted.

Consider a service like SecureDrop. Armed with SecureDrop, journalists and dissidents/whistleblowers can communicate in a more secure way.

Or, consider a publication like Propublica. They set up a hidden service so that they could talk about censorship in China...and hopefully allow Chinese citizens to read it without ending up in serious legal trouble.

Statements like yours are the problem and I seriously hope that you take the time to educate yourself. Ignorance may be funny to you, but it makes it more dangerous for legitimate activists and journalists to use Tor.

<comment><USER26> I've always interpreted "darknet" to mean the content itself, rather than Tor. That would make the parent comment's question entirely reasonable, without saying anything about the usefulness of Tor.

<comment><USER25> That's a good interpretation and I'd do well to keep that possibility in mind. Sorry if I came across as too aggressive.

Based on the context, I assumed that the parent was talking about needing Tor to access the Darknet. If that's the case, the parent would be talking about Tor hidden services. While there are some really shitty hidden services, there are also some amazing applications - SecureDrop is one example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well at least they didn't give away the real Darknet

<comment><USER28> Calm down Saville

<comment><USER27> Cute</comment></comment></comment>


BusyBox Drops Systemd Support - <AUTHOR> https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=BusyBox-Drops-Systemd <comment> vezzy-fnord Discussed in detail here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483780)</comment>


Why your website forms suck (and why that should worry you post-Covid-19 world) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sky-ledge/why-your-website-forms-suck-and-why-that-should-worry-you-post-covid-19-world-d06bd5a36155 <comment><USER2> So it's forms + ability to automate stuff based on response? That's pretty cool.</comment>


Biohackers starting new lab in Oakland - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1836537355/counter-culture-labs-your-biohacking-and-citizen-s

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm part of the team so ask away! We're working towards having a larger BSL-1 (bio-safety level) lab for work with safe and well-known organisms and a smaller BSL-2 lab for stuff like growing certain environmental isolates and even some types of human disease work.

We're also working on software to increase the transparency of our research, such as this tool to instantly share hand written and recorded voice lab notes using open standards: [https://github.com/CounterCultureLabs/dumpscribe](https://github.com/CounterCultureLabs/dumpscribe)

</comment><comment><USER2> What kind of projects are happening there right now?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're engineering yeast to produce a vegan source of cheese protein and in the long run make Real Vegan Cheese: [https://realvegancheese.org](https://realvegancheese.org)

We're now hosting Bay Area Applied Mycology (formerly Bay Area Radical Mycology) and they have been using the lab for both genetic identification and microscopy identification of mushroom species.

We also have lots of events coming up such as Introduction to protein crystallography and Introduction to Synthetic Biology: [http://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture- Labs/#upcoming](http://www.meetup.com/Counter-Culture-Labs/#upcoming)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a great idea. We need more Biohacking labs to help citizen science projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Any non-bio stuff going on at CCL?

<comment><USER5> Yes! We intentionally left "bio" out of the name, because we do want to be more general than that. We have people playing around with acoustics and optics, there's a Tesla coil and Geiger counter under construction, and I would love to play with some low-melt alloys. Plus there's tons of hardware hacking as well - especially repairing old or building new lab equipment.

It's probably fair to say that Bio is our main focus, but it's definitely not the only thing we do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool!</comment>


Code Academy: Clearing the Air - <AUTHOR> http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-air/

<comment><USER2> I have to say their behavior is unappealing to me as well. Not only that, but it tarnishes my impression of YC. Naughtiness is one thing. Lying and trying to take people's name from them is another. I sincerely hope this kind of thing isn't informally encouraged at YC.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't buy it. You don't name yourself CodeCademy if you know you have a competitor named Code Academy. You do it because you like the name. You think it's edgy or hip or something.

I don't think they knew about each other until recently, when the names had already been established.

Sure, the users confuse them. (Which is why CodeCademy isn't a good name... You can't say it without people inserted the 'a' mentally, so they'll never get it right if they learn about it verbally.) But that doesn't mean they did it on purpose.

And let's be honest: It's a really obvious name for a school where you learn to program.

<comment><USER4> You do if you're expecting to push the person out of that name space due to better SEO, buzz, etc. (Burn karma burn)</comment></comment>


Inkless metal pen will write forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com.au/inkless-metal-pen-will-write-forever-339346586.htm <comment><USER2> A case study in solving a problem that doesn't really exist? Maybe this is just me, but it seems mean time to lose a pen is much smaller than the amount of time it takes to run out of ink. And replacement is hardly a pain - it's not onerous to keep a few spares around (and necessary anyway, again, because the damn things get lost)

<comment><USER3> Ok, so I'm going to have to disagree here about solving a problem that doesn't exist.

There are a number of problems with the standard ballpoint and fountain tip pens:

* They can ruin a pair of pants (or the inside of a purse). This is especially a problem with the "clicky" pens, as an accidental activation means that anything the tip touches gets a constant flow of ink.

* There are a number of situations where they do not write well, or reliably (and not just gimmicky answers like "in space").

* They do run out of ink; I have had several pens run out. This is not because I'm supernaturally good at holding on to things, but because I do a reasonable amount of hand writing.

I'm not saying the solution is necessarily a gazillion-dollar writing instrument / fashion accessory, but just like fancy features start out in the Mercedes S-class and then make their way to cars mere mortals might own, hopefully if this technology is truly viable we'll be finding it on drugstore shelves a decade or so hence.

<comment><USER2> I'll admit to being hyperbolic in "doesn't exist".

My actual point being: Even when I was writing a lot (note-taking in university), a nice-ish $2 fine-point pen solved my problem pretty well. The issues you cite are all real problems, but they're all pretty minor. All of those problems are/were waaaaaay down at the 'negligible' end the 'problems whose solutions would make a measurable improvement to my life' list.

So, to be precise: this isn't solving nonexistent problems, it's solving insignificant problems.

<comment><USER3> For you, maybe.

I'm apparently kind of a spaz when it comes to pens. I have to buy pens with caps, because my clicky pens always activate in my pocket and then literally ruin my pants by barfing ink all over them. It's also a huge pain when I've been out in the cold, or the pen has been upside-down in my pocket and the ink flows away from the tip, or there's some rubbish stuck in the nib and the pen just doesn't write consistently. And I don't run out of ink all that often, but the pens I use are opaque and so I don't know it's coming until I go to write one day and nothing happens.

In the grand scheme of things compared to things like world hunger and tribalism in Africa, yeah these are pretty insignificant, first-world problems. But in the writing implement space, they're legitimate.

So no, we're not curing cancer or anything here. But I bought the $29 one from a few years ago linked in the article, just to see if it will work out for me. Worst case, I'm out a few bucks and I leave a negative review so the next person maybe doesn't make the same mistake. Best case, I've upgraded my everyday carry and possibly saved some of my pants from an inky death.

And that, to me, would be worth thirty bucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "As you write, tiny amounts of this metal are deposited onto the page."

Does it also have regenerative qualities that continuously replenish the metal that is deposited onto the page? If not it's an open-and-shut case of a journalist blindly parroting the _marketing definition_ of "forever".

<comment><USER5> I think the idea is that it's such a small amount relative to the size of the source, that you wouldn't notice a difference over some ridiculously long period.

I could be wrong though!

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Their other pens sell for $2046.45 & $1773.59 (US Dollars). I can only imagine what this will sell for. I'm pretty sure that even if I had more money than I knew what to do with... I still wouldn't pay $2000 for one pen.

<comment><USER6> The other one that article referenced is only $28 and looks to be pretty much the same: [http://www.vat19.com/dvds/the-inkless-metal- pen.cfm](http://www.vat19.com/dvds/the-inkless-metal-pen.cfm)

EDIT: And now they are all sold out. If only I had signed up for their affiliate program...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a pencil that wears down very slowly and doesn't erase?

<comment><USER8> Looks that way. Possibly it's essentially the same thing as this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Jac-Zagoory-Beta-Inkless- Pen/dp/B005GL...](http://www.amazon.com/Jac-Zagoory-Beta-Inkless- Pen/dp/B005GLYHLG/)

EDIT: Not quite. Apparently the tip of that pen is lead, while the one in this post is some kind of alloy. Same idea, though, I imagine: soft metal that rubs off much like a pencil.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't have to be particularly soft. _Coin silver_ wire (2mm to fit standard draughting leadholders) is "normal" for the silverpoint drawing technique, and there wouldn't be a whole lot of sharpening involved if super-fine cross- hatching wasn't one of the expectations ("scumbling" a duller wire will also achieve shading).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> reminded me of this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverpoint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverpoint)

Given they say

"Each pen will be sold with a notebook made of "stone paper"" I suspect, just like silverpoint, it doesn't work, or doesn't work well, on any random surface.

</comment><comment><USER11> Inkless metal pen will write until the tip is all worn away. FTFY.

<comment><USER12> Forever isn't very long, then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We'll I clearly don't speak for everyone, but I think an ink less metal pen that writes forever and looks like that is pretty cool.

<comment><USER14> I've had a pen like this before. It was not practical, the tip becomes very round very quickly and it requires a significant amount of downward pressure to write. Furthermore, the pen doesn't write very well on anything but paper on a hard surface. Just a word of caution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In other words, it is a well made pencil.

<comment><USER16> That can't be erased. So really it's more like a pen.

<comment><USER17> A metal grease crayon?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a pen like this - Uses some sort of graphite-metal alloy. They are no replacement for real pens, or even pencil. You end up writing in what looks like faded pencil, not to mention there is a significant amount of friction between the tip of the pen and the paper, which makes it awkward to buy.

Don't feel bad about passing on these - Waste of money. Especially when it's wrapped in $$$$ worth of markup.

</comment><comment><USER19> Last time I checked, to powder stone took more than 0 Joules of energy. Unless this powder was transported back in time from gigayears after the last sun burned out in this universe and entropy is near max, to now, to make this pen. In which case, it would be an stupendously awesome pen, and I'll totally buy one.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would this work in space too?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen)

<comment><USER21> I actually bought one of these. They work well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the description of pen at [http://www.vat19.com/dvds/the-inkless-metal- pen.cfm](http://www.vat19.com/dvds/the-inkless-metal-pen.cfm)

        Warning: Not intended for children (due to small amounts of lead in the tip)

Doesn't sound like something I'd want to use too frequently.

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't worry that much about it. A lot of electrical cords have tiny amounts of lead in them too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Forever" is a long time...

</comment><comment><USER25> > Each pen will be sold with a notebook made of "stone paper", an eco- > friendly, water resistant and durable paper made from powdered stone.

How on earth (pun intended) is powdered stone eco friendly? At least trees actually grow back...

</comment><comment><USER26> Awww, I was kind of hoping it would somehow take small amounts of dead skin from whoever was holding it, and then somehow turn it into graphite...

<comment> chris-martin How about a photosynthetic process that makes graphite from atmospheric carbon dioxide?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It may well cost the better half of $2,000 but damn it looks nice. No wonder Ferrari uses them.

<comment><USER28> I don't understand. Does Ferrari lack sense, or are they giving them to valued customers, or what?

<comment><USER29> The company that made this pen is normally a car design firm whose clients include Ferrari.

<comment><USER30> Pininfarina actually does the industrial design for quite a few products besides cars. I've even seen their name on video projectors.

Same with Porsche Design.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Big Data, Trying to Build Better Workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/technology/big-data-trying-to-build-better-workers.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> A couple of concerns:

1\. At what point (if any) does high-resolution employee data and its analysis become subject to regulations on health information privacy?

2\. How do we control the risk that data-driven employee management may introduce some practices with unforeseen and systematically bad consequences? Can we expect that businesses will use the best available designers and interpreters of psychological measurement instruments? How relevant is the current state of that art to this purpose?

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't seem that they're trying to actually _build_ better workers, just that they want to select against poorer workers. I'd be more interested if someone tried to teach people the traits that make more effective workers rather than just using this data as a selection tool

<comment><USER4> By selecting the right candidates for the right traits (traits previously unquantifiable and untenable before Big Data techniques) these companies might eventually, in the long term, build better workers. For example, if the selection criteria for a career as a developer favours people capable of getting a Computer Science degree, then more people who want to be developers will get CS degrees. But in reality, getting a CS degree does not always equal good developer. Assume there are some people without CS degrees, but with the skills and behaviours and personality more suited to developer work. These people would be better hires. Selecting for those criteria would not only allow your company to hire better developers, but would (like selection for CS degrees) encourage emerging professionals to develop the desirable traits and skills defined by the selection criteria. (In some weird social darwinist way, that I myself am not entirely convinced of.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm reminded of this exchange

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4848454>

</comment><comment><USER6> First of all, this sounds horrible.

Second... this: _It adds a large dose of data analysis, a k a Big Data, to the field of human resource management_

Genuine, actual data scientist here. We need to talk.

 _FOR FUCK'S SAKE_. That is not what Big Data is! Big Data does not mean "data is important". Of course it's important! No, Big Data means that the size of the dataset is part of the problem, requiring approaches to computation that were previously on the fringe, such as non-relational databases and advanced distributed computing techniques, with all the concurrency fun that these needs provide.

Also, if I hear one more person call him- or herself a "data junkie" I will fucking lose it. _Data_ is a pain in the ass (ever clean gigabytes of the stuff?) Sure, it's great to have it and you can do some really fun stuff once it's clean, but man...

<comment><USER7> good interfaces on data are rare</comment></comment>


Working for Bitcoin: Update - <AUTHOR> http://ncarlson.com/post/5493803214/bitcoin-experiment-first-job-offer <comment><USER2> It would be kind of a cool experiment to try to get everything past the first $5000 in client work (or whatever covers living expenses, taxes, savings, and beers in your area) per month paid in Bitcoin.

There needs to be a really easy way to do it though for clients who don't understand the concept, maybe some kind of service where a client can pay with credit card and it converts to Bitcoin and sends it to the recipient's account.

Maybe an alternative would be to just make a policy to buy Bitcoin with whatever you get over your quota each month.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what's needed most at the moment is an easy way for US dollars to be exchanged for Bitcoin. This _was_ easy enough when Mt Gox was accepting Paypal.

However, now that Paypal has suspended Mt Gox's account, anyone wanting to work with that exchange now has to jump through additional hoops by opening up a Dwolla or Liberty Reserve account. Personally, I found these sites to be rather shady looking.

<comment><USER3> Dwolla looks shady? Seriously? <http://www.dwolla.com>

Incidentally, they are FDIC and NCUA insured: [http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-deposits-are-protected- by-...](http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-deposits-are-protected-by-the-fdic- and-ncua/)

<comment><AUTHOR> > they are FDIC

My question would be, are individual Dwolla accounts protected on a per depositor basis? Or, is it just Dwolla Corp's own bank account which is protected under FDIC. Their website doesn't make that clear.

It's entirely possible that user funds are stored in a bank account, owned by Dwolla, and that bank account is FDIC insured. If that's the case, then that bank account is only insured up to $250,000 USD.

<comment><USER4> > My question would be, are individual Dwolla accounts protected on a per > depositor basis? Or, is it just Dwolla Corp's own bank account which is > protected under FDIC.

The former. If it were the latter, then writing "Dwolla Deposits Are Protected By The FDIC and NCUA" on their web page would be fraud.

<comment><USER5> I'm almost certain you are wrong about that. Dwolla is not listed in the FDIC database.

<comment><USER3> "Dwolla Deposits Are Protected By The FDIC and NCUA"

Yes, every dime you have in your account is protected by the FDIC and NCUA. The same way that amounts in your PayPal balance are protected.

[http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-security-and-partner- overv...](http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-security-and-partner-overview/)

<comment><USER5> OK, I'm glad that _their_ banks are insured, but if Dwolla goes bankrupt are you sure I'll get my money back? I'm not.

PayPal does the same thing, but at least they're upfront about how it works: [https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/travelers- ou...](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/travelers-outside)

And I don't keep money in my PayPal account either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few weeks ago 1 bitcoin was only 0.8 US dollar. Now it's 8.

My 0.05 BTC is now worth 0.4.

Should've gotten more.

<comment><USER7> It's down to 6.5 now in the last couple of hours. Very little volume was required to drive it down so much (10s of thousands of USD). BTC isn't even vaguely stable, in either direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this becomes common, it will certainly be a test of bitcoin's legal status. Seeing how the IRS and Social Security calculate what taxes, if any, you have to pay will be interesting...

<comment><USER9> There is a good chance it would be treated as another foreign currency. So, you would file in USD using a current conversion rate.

[http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=130524,00....](http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=130524,00.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the best way to exchange my bitcoins for USD?</comment>


Automated encrypted swapfiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.braxs.net/?p=28 <comment><USER2> This seems a bit convoluted and fragile.

I agree with the sentiment to use swapfiles rather than swap partitions -- the flexibility is appealing (though in practice I rarely need to change the dimensions of mine) and the lack of measurable difference in performance over partitions removes any arguments in favour of dedicated partitions anymore.

But on my secure systems everything other than /boot is encrypted on, so I get encrypted swapfiles just by creating them as /swapfile.x -- I have a saltstack recipe that creates these on new installs automatically now, too, and that doesn't need to be changed for encrypted or non-encrypted root file systems.

The automatic creation of these (and decommissioning them later) based on ephemeral memory usage requirements is an interesting idea, and it's a shame the author hasn't gotten to that point yet. I wonder how useful that'd be in practice, though, especially in an era of 'disk is cheap'.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a second I thought it was going to be a short article about installing OpenBSD which encrypts the swap by default since version 3.9 (released 2006). It also encrypts different areas of swap with different keys and, when a particular area isn't needed anymore, the key is erased.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're using systemd you can do this by setting up /etc/crypttab[1] which has a similar format to fstab. For example, here's my swap line:

         eswap   /dev/mapper/vg0-swap    /dev/urandom            swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256

[1] [http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/crypttab.htm...](http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/crypttab.html)

<comment><USER5> FWIW it's not specific to systemd -- I've been using /etc/crypttab for full- disk encryption (LUKS) for a few years on Ubuntu. The file is consulted when building the initrd, to build in whatever magic is needed to decrypt the disks at boot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another alternative: Self Encrypting Drives (which can be managed on Linux with hdparm).

I'm using this currently on my XPS 13 (2015). Works great. However given the architecture of SED and its implementation in this case, it's not as trustworthy as LUKS, for example.

For general laptop security not involving government intervention, I consider it good enough.

<comment><USER7> You can't believe how much insecure they are. [https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/65642245191255244...](https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/656422451912552449)

<comment><USER6> I can believe it. On the XPS 13, even when modifying or NULLing the master password on the internal sata drive, the unit's BIOS will reassign the BIOS (UEFI) admin password as a valid SED drive password, with no user intervention.

It's really just an 'in case of (casual) theft' level of encryption as far as I'm concerned. Good enough on the systems I'm using it on. For everything else, there's LUKS.</comment></comment></comment>


Webmin 1.890 Exploit – What Happened? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmin.com/exploit.html <comment><USER2> Just look at their security track record. Nothing beats webmin. It's just the worst. I would never install that crap anywhere.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=webmin+exploit+perl](https://www.google.com/search?q=webmin+exploit+perl)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Because the timestamp on the file was set back, it did not show up in any Git diffs."

Wait, really?</comment>


A Strategy for Jury Nullification Victories in Georgia - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2018/07/18/a-strategy-for-jury-nullification-victor <comment><USER2> Good on Catherine Bernard in thinking outside the box to fight for the common- man committing victim-less crimes. No one should have his life ruined for smoking pot and most reasonable people recognize such (i.e., in the USA a criminal record is basically a hex for life with, among other things, a majority of companies maintaining zero-tolerance hiring policies for applicant's with a criminal record).

The ignorant judge that punished her for legally advocating for her client's rights should be removed from the bench.

"'He [the judge] told me I couldn't say it, so of course I continued to say it,'" she told me of her references to the state constitution and the power of the jury."</comment>


Anonymous activists release PCAnywhere source code - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-threats/2012/02/07/anonymous-activists-release-pcanywhere-source-code-40094993/

<comment><USER2> Btw, one of the 0days is in ./pca32/trunk/Source/Servers/awhost32x/.

;)</comment>


An update on Redis Streams development - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/116 <comment><USER2> I believe Redis has a great developer experience. It's easy to get set up and use. When I see the work on Redis streams, I think its going bring a much better getting started experience for developers that want to start using evented architectures. This might be a turning point where we see more developers and applications utilizing those types of architectures. In the end, this might give Apache Kafka a run for its money, or not, who knows. I've tried using Apache Kafka and it can be a bear to set up given its dependencies and to administer.

Put another way, I think Kafka solved a problem for enterprises and was a tops down approach to the problem. Redis streams is a bottoms up approach to implementing evented architectures. Maybe there's room for both products in the market?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your interesting POV on the Redis/Kafka intersection on this. What could be interesting is that while Redis Streams _are certainly_ totally inspired from Kafka streams, it's just a conceptual thing, so the two things can act in very different ways in practice.

For instance just imagine that I never touched a Kafka system in my life, never used it, don't even know the API, I only read all the documentation they have on the site about the design, to get the higher level picture and combine this with my own ideas about fixing the fact Redis was lacking a "log" data structure.

Pub/Sub + other data structures were not able to provide time series and streaming, but yet Redis streams remain an ADT (Abstract Data Structure), while Kafka is a tool to solve a very specific business case. So the applications have some intersection, but are also very very apart.

For instance you can create infinite small keys having streams, so Redis is good for many IoT usages where you receive data from many small devices. Redis Streams also stress on range queries, so that you can combine the time series with millisecond-range queries.

However, yes, the fact that I added also consumer groups is a way to put this "80% streaming" into a more usable streaming systems more similar to Kafka, for the use cases where:

1) The memory limits.

2) The speed.

3) The consistency guarantees of Redis make sense.

However at the same time, it was a great challenge and pleasure to do what I always try to do, that is to create an API for developers thinking like I'm designing an iPhone, and not some terrible engineering thing which does what it should but is terrible to use (I'm not referring to Kafka that I _do not know_ ). So I really hope that what you say "easy to setup and use" will be what developers will feel :-)

<comment><USER4> I'm a big fan and I hope you see this comment before the edit window passes (unlikely, unfortunately):

You need to get yourself some whitespace in this reply!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Done :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must admit, for the past couple months I've been digging for status info about Redis Streams. They would fit a use case we have perfectly, but we use cloud providers for Redis so manual compilation with modules isn't possible.

Really pleased to see that I'm not the only one digging for info and that work is ongoing.

<comment><USER3> Thank you, I believe it's my fault that many potential users remained wondering. Sometimes I forget that the world is not inside Twitter... and I should instead blog more and tweet less, both for myself, because writing a blog post gives me much more sense to accomplish something, and for people interested in Redis that will find information more readily, and also searching via Google and so forth.

<comment><USER4> Why not both?!! (summarizing tweets occasionally)

Perhaps a resurrection of the Redis Watch newsletter is in order! Are there any existing alternatives?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this impacts the plan of releasing Disque as a plugin in Redis 4.2. I always thought that Disque could have a great impact in the field of job queues.

<comment><USER3> Hello, no change... The original plan was:

4.0 (done) ->

Streams back ported to 4.0 (Work in progress) ->

4.2 (or 5.0) with Disque + Cluster improvements + Modules improvements, ...

It's just a renaming:

4.0 + Streams backported is now called 5.0

What was to be 4.2 is going to be called 6.0

Why I'm choosing to go for integer numbers? Because I believe that things like 4.2 should be for minor improvements, mostly operational, but to add the first data structure after ages deserves 5.0, similarly to have a reshaped Redis Cluster + Disque deserves 6.0, and I get myself confused as user of other systems when they advance like 1.4, 2.3, 2.7, ... It's simpler to talk about Redis 4, Redis 5, Redis 6, ...

<comment><USER7> Hi, since you're here just a quick question not really worth a Github issue - what is the reason for the 1-second resolution in the DELAY parameter in Disque and will that ever get more fine? We currently use Bull as a job queue on Redis and the delay is a key and visible part of our application, so that alone kind of eliminates Disque as a consideration for us.

<comment><USER3> Hello, thanks I'll take this in mind. The resolution could be made to be accepted in milliseconds, and it should be simple to honor it with an error for example of 50 milliseconds or alike, but to get true 1 ms resolution requires non trivial changes to the system that must act like a real time scheduler in some way...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any examples of good web APIs that offer something like a unified log as an abstraction? I'm not looking for systems, but actual companies that have some kind of "streaming" data feed where you can (re)connect to an endpoint and say "give me everything from [logical] timestamp X". Ideally one where you stay connected and get longpoll SSE/WebSockets/MQTT-style streaming responses.

I kind of want the opposite of webhooks.

<comment><USER9> There are certainly "client oriented" (as opposed to webhooks) push APIs out there. However, such APIs that let you specify a starting position to read from are rare.

Sometimes APIs will give you tokens to use for resumption (e.g. SSE event IDs, or any long-polling API), but typically these are for a time-limited session rather than a stateless query against any point in a long-lived log.

Years ago, services like Friendfeed, Livefyre, and Convore had stateless long- polling APIs that returned a log of data, I believe. These kinds of APIs seem to have fallen out of fashion, though. There are still stateless long-polling APIs, but most of the ones I'm aware of don't return logs of data. For example, Dropbox and Box will let you query for a change notification against a starting position, but then you have to fetch the actual data separately.

That said, just because streaming APIs that let you set a starting position are rare doesn't mean they're impossible to make. My company ([https://fanout.io](https://fanout.io)) has built tools to help with this.

Edit: since you asked for a real example, Superfeedr is one such API: [https://documentation.superfeedr.com/subscribers.html#stream...](https://documentation.superfeedr.com/subscribers.html#streaming- rss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great to see. We actually ended up using Redis for our event stream after trying Kafka and the rest. Using the list extension module multiple list pop functions lets us get to 2gbps of throughput on a single redis node with AOF persistence. Using streams would make things even simpler and faster.

<comment><USER11> Did you have issues with Kafka? Curious to hear because I'm about to try and start using it for something at work.

<comment><USER10> It's just much more work to install and maintain Kafka, and it has issues with load balancing and recovery due to the design tying cluster ownership to partition data. With AOF persistence and a replica, Redis is durable enough for us and extremely fast with no maintenance.

If you absolutely need Kafka then it's still a good option, although I'd recommend looking at Apache Pulsar [1] for a better design. It separates storage and compute for better performance and scalability while giving you features like per-message acknowledgements.

1\. [https://pulsar.apache.org](https://pulsar.apache.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could someone ELI5 what's a redis stream ? I thought that pub/sub mecanisms were some kind of a stream already.

<comment><USER13> Redis Pubsub is fire-and-forget, so if you aren't listening when a message is fired, you'll never receive it. Redis Streams store messages, so you can connect and read all the messages since you last checked. It's a similar model to Kafka.

<comment><USER14> I've not been following Redis a lot, so this one is new to me. I read antirez's original Streams blog post[0] but it feels like it's missing some stuff--is it known out there how this interacts with Redis Sentinel or, separately, Redis Cluster?

[0] - [http://antirez.com/news/114](http://antirez.com/news/114)

<comment><USER15> In the Redis sense, streams are just a new data structure (value type of a key), so there shouldn't be any special concerns with regards to Sentinel, partitioning and/or clustering in that sense.

<comment><USER14> That is my intuition, yeah, but that makes me pretty worried about hammering hot keys and the like with regards to Cluster.

I also don't mind running Kafka, though, so I may not be the target audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the blog post, it sounds like the RDB format will break. Is there any means to upgrade from the current unstable RDB format to the v5 one? Obviously there are no consumer groups in unstable now, so in theory reading from a v4 RDB should not be hard..

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's a question from an old Redis hater (the note is important, since my question is going to be slightly biased - I disagree with a lot of core decisions behind Redis):

How is this going to be different from Kafka? And I don't mean implementation details, because these are always fun read. Kafka is on the market for ~7 years, during which it has proven to be oh-so-fast and pretty durable.

Oh, and while I'm at it. Here's another problem Redis geniousl added: a GIL. GIL is a great idea, but comes with huge tradeoffs. David Beazley spent years showing how many tricks you can play upon yourself with GIL.

So ... now you have Streams and GIL together. And you already have dicts (you call them hashmaps). I have a feeling you're trying to implement Python. If so, it's done. But come on, 3.6 is cool. And we're kinda solving the GIL problem. With PyPy. Which will blow your mind.

<comment><USER3> So yes, that's it. The Redis hidden agenda was to compete with Python (to be honest not a big secret... you can see that Redis works internally as an interpreter in a pretty obvious way), and now that you uncovered it, I'm going to say it aloud: we are going to exit in a few months with a new package system we are working at for 5 years at this point, based on the blockchain (proof of installation), which will kill NPM completely, so with a Python killer + an NPM killer we'll see what mind will be blown.

<comment><USER17> Chapeau bas. But apart from my rather obnoxious joking - how the whole Stream and GIL interoperate. I mean, this is technically a complex problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Azure now offers 12-months free tier account - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/ <comment><USER2> In the last couple of years, I'm surprised how far Azure as come especially in relation to automation/IaC.

I remember sitting a basic "build stuff on Azure" course maybe 4-5 years ago and 90% of the course involved sitting there clicking on stuff in the portal. Just recently I re-did the same course (someone else was paying, and I fancied a week away from the office, hence my second attendance...) and the focus of the course had switched from 'Next next finished' to using Powershell, DSC, scale-sets etc to automate as much as you can.

I realise Windows/Azure isn't everyone's cup of tea on HN, but you've gotta give MS credit for going down 'the right' path here. Still a ways to go though, especially in comparison to AWS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't accept my Entropay (prepaid) card. Don't want to link real credit card for this.</comment>