Dplython: Dplyr for Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dodger487/dplython <comment><USER2> This is an interesting project, and it's illuminating to see what it takes to emulate some R features in Python (custom infix ops, non-standard evaluation, dataframes as namespaces/envrionments, etc.)

But I feel like it would be better to use method chaining for the piping of transformation rather than overloading dunder method operators. It would preserve one of the nice things about dplyr -- composing complicated transformations from a simple vocabulary, but more pythonic. This is a relative weakness I see in the design of pandas and would love to see ported over.

But also, dplyr is a thing that really goes beyond pandas. It's really an elegant, SQL-like DSL for transforming (mostly) arbitrary data. In this way it's more like LINQ than a specific implementation/API of a data structure.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like both Dplython and pandas-ply are missing one of (what I think is) the core value propositions of dplyr: the ability to use the same abstractions on local data and on remote data, with execution against the remote source happening lazily such that the entire table doesn't need to be downloaded in order to run a filter locally.

(Of course, I may be biased in that I work on a commercial product which also has this characteristic.)

<comment><USER4> Dplython developer here... Definitely a big and important next step. I wanted to get some feedback on the in-memory case first.

<comment><USER5> Blaze has already spent alot of time on this usecase and seems quite promising for a whole host of other reasons. Perhaps it would be best to combine forces?

Also see this:

[https://github.com/blaze/blaze/pull/484](https://github.com/blaze/blaze/pull/484)

<comment><USER4> The idea of putting the column names into the namespace is very interesting, and blaze looks pretty promising overall as a way to connect to big data sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Piping in R is actually from [https://github.com/smbache/magrittr](https://github.com/smbache/magrittr) and not Dplyr and is actually inspired from F#.

"R package to bring forward-piping features ala F#'s |> operator."

<comment><USER7> At least from a historical perspective, dplyr introduced the `%.%` at a time when Hadley was not aware of the existence of magrittr; later, it became clear that the work had already been done, so dplyr was retrofitted to use magrittr and %>%, which was easier to type because you don't have to let go of the shift key..

That said, the hoops you have to jump through when interfacing with stock R code and dplyr make me think that having an operator that is less generic than `%>%` makes sense -- `X %>% foo()` is equivalent to `foo(X)`; except if it isn't -- `X %>% plot(x~y, data=.)` is not equivalent to `plot(X, x~y, data=.)`. And sometimes you need tricks like `X %>% { plot(.$x, .$y) }` to work around the nonobvious behaviors.

I find most impressive the work that this project did to emulate the lazy evaluation that is a hallmark of dplyr. I wasn't aware that python had anything like this ability.

<comment><USER6> Well Python and Panda has been making an R equivalent for a while now, Pandas. Pandas and other work has made a Python a good choice for doing data science work (Though I prefer R and started in Python years ago). The Pandas and Python Data Science developers have been awesome. Now the Python Community not so much (In regards to flaming R).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like Hadleyverse is spreading! Honestly, I think his contributions have led the way for R to being the leading language in data science.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was not aware it is possible with Python; but now I see: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33658355/piping-output- fr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33658355/piping-output-from-one- function-to-another-using-python-infix-syntax)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm hugely excited by this.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the Ruby on Rails Plugins you can't live without?  - <AUTHOR>

My list<p>* will_paginate * Authlogic or restful_authentication * thinkingsphinx * exception_notifier <comment><USER2> will paginate & authlogic definitely.

HTTParty is a gem if you work with outside resources.</comment>


Facebook recruiters, please stop the spam - <AUTHOR>

First of all, I am not a developer. This is obvious from my LinkedIn profile.
Second of all, we have raised $6M in venture funding and we have a sizable team and customer base. What kind of person would I be if I were to quit my job as CEO and work at facebook?
Facebook, I know everyone is struggling to recruit engineers, but spamming the valley probably isn't the best strategy.
On 11/5/12 10:39 PM, XXXXXX wrote: <comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
Dear Justin,
I know that you are currently not looking, but I would love to talk to you more in-depth about where you are in your career, what type of growth opportunities you have, and the type of development you are most passionate about. Your entrepreneurial background in developing amazing user facing products end to end makes me feel that you would be a good fit for our engineering team.
We are looking for innovative developers that will come up with the next great idea for Facebook to help us connect the world. By design we run very small teams, and on average there is about 1 engineer for every 1.25 million Facebook users. We encourage our engineers to try to break things and be innovative. The company is growing rapidly and this position will offer explosive growth opportunities.
At this time I am only asking you to have an open mind and to talk one of our senior leaders to see if Facebook would be a better opportunity for you. After the conversation you can move forward with the formal interview process, wait until timing is right, or decide that Facebook would not be a good step forward for you in your career. Either way you will not burn any bridges for future consideration. You have nothing to lose and potentially a better career to gain.
Let me know when would be a good time we can talk, and thank you in advance for your time.
A </comment><comment><USER2> 7.9 percent of your fellow Americans won't go to work tomorrow due to unemployment. And you whine about being approached by a well-paying company like Facebook?

Stick your head out of the valley once in a while wont you, I think you will grow with the experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> I generally don't mind getting recruiter mail, if it's from a senior enough recruiter. I have my own startup, so there are only a few ways I'd consider leaving (Apple's iOS/OSX security tech czar, or a SpaceX astronaut :) ), but even otherwise, it's nice to know what companies are hiring, what the general market is like, and to know recruiters and open positions to refer friends to. Also, it's a good way to find recruiters to hire.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't "mind" getting recruiter mail either...In fact, I do a lot of sales/outbound myself, so I can appreciate their job. However, recruiters that blanket everyone on LinkedIn (without even looking at their profile) are a different story.

<comment><USER4> Right, what you sometimes do is recruiting.

What this guy is doing is just wasting your time. He doesn't even have a job for you, he wants you to apply. If you wanted to do that you already would have done it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't take this too personally. If you are any good, you will get plenty of spam like this. Ignore and move on. Look at it this way. Now you know one direct recruiter at fb.</comment>


How to get native-like scrolling in UIWebView - <AUTHOR> http://arbor.posterous.com/the-holy-grail-of-iosery-native-like-scrollin

<comment><USER2> The results here are a dramatic improvement over the normal web view. Another option for mobile web developers is to use the -webkit-overflow-scrolling property (with overflow: scroll;)</comment>


Show HN: Monsterz puzzle game - <AUTHOR> https://varunrau.github.io/monsterz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Thanks for checking us out! The game is similar to the popular card game SET. It's built entirely in React Native!

<comment><USER2> [https://www.setgame.com/](https://www.setgame.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Wow!</comment>


Step-By-Step Landing Page Copywriting - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/step-by-step-landing-page-copywriting/ <comment><USER2> This is not copywriting, this is landing page design (from the POV of a designer, and not marketer). I'm also wary of this data, because he does not include testing. The way you design a landing page is very different from this one when you incorporate testing from the start.

Edit:

If you want to see a really good landing page, go and visit posthaven's page (<http://posthaven.com> I think). Its just perfect. You actually feel the need to pay this people money.

<comment><USER3> You must be joking. It may convert like hell, I don't know, but - oh my, is this page... ugly. All the mixed fonts and barely readable colors. They aren't even consistent in using underlines and colors for links. Total mess if you ask me. Wouldn't even consider becoming a customer looking at this LP only.

<comment><USER2> Who cares if its ugly? Does money in the bank become any less valuable if it came from an ugly landing page?

<comment><USER4> Not at all. But you don't establish that A) the landing page in the post doesn't create money, NOR B) that the landing page that "makes you feel" does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate the depth and detail of this, thank you for posting it. However, I think it would be more effective if broken up into steps by _section/facet_ of the landing page, rather than a giant description of "Round Two".

Of course, when it comes to editorial content, the sections/facets/headlines aren't entirely orthogonal...changing the content of one headline means you might rearrange a lot of other content. However, I think this makes it even more useful to break things down by iteration of each facet: e.g. Hero- headline v1.0, Hero-headline v2.0, etc., and show (briefly) how that impacts the other decisions you make down the page.

Of course, this is a lot more work, both in writing and in production, to put out.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Your funnel has a hole in it."

Hopefully it has two ... a big one at the top and a small one at the bottom.

The funnel metaphor has always thrown me off. IRL I don't pour stuff into a funnel and expect less than 100% of what I've poured in to come out the other side.

Why has funnel become a synonym for filter?

<comment><USER7> It's more that without the wide mouth at the top, the narrow pipe at the bottom would miss a lot of fluid. But yes, it's really more a sieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get the ConvertKit pricing: Preordering 3 months for $93 a month for $281. 3 times 93 is 279. The other prices are also off by one or two. Maybe I have OCD, but somehow that really confused me.

<comment><USER9> Oops. I rounded off the change... 25% off of $125 is $93.75 (I wrote $93). $93.75 * 3 months = $281.25. But you're right, that is confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very useful post. I put the tl;dr version the author wrote on tldr.io [http://tldr.io/tldrs/51238dc4b3a7a6ca1000002f/step-by- step-l...](http://tldr.io/tldrs/51238dc4b3a7a6ca1000002f/step-by-step-landing- page-copywriting)

</comment><comment><USER11> Let me be blunt: this is a confused mess.

<comment><USER12> Care to elaborate? I think that's more of a judgement call than any sort of fact. I have to assume what you're talking about (which makes me wonder why this is the top comment) is the screenshots within the post. That could go either way. For a second I was engrossed by them and almost thought I was looking at the actual page but it's not so bad that it warrants being called a confused mess. The images were necessary to get the point across and things were separated enough so you knew what you were looking at. Nathan has a unique design style that both his blog and the ConvertKit landing page share elements of which is why I can see people getting a little confused but in the end, it's just a blog post, dude. And it's well designed on top of that. Not everything on the internet is perfectly suited to your tastes, lay off.

<comment><USER13> > things were separated enough so you knew what you were looking at

Until I noticed the low-res quality of the screenshot I didn't know what it was. Lossy images in 2013; great first impression.

> Nathan has a unique design style

I'll keep my opinions on that to myself, but when someone writes two books on design and hawks them on HN, people tend to be more critical of your work. I think it says something about someone's expertise when at least two of the HN posts on his products had people confused about design choices and what they were supposed to do on the page.

> And it's well designed on top of that. Not everything on the internet is > perfectly suited to your tastes, lay off.

Design isn't someone's aesthetic or someone else's taste, it's the ability to communicate. This page is confusing a lot of people, so by definition, it is not well-designed.

HN also advocates raising one's prices to imply value, and I think that's why this and other posts have had people questioning the price points for the content. Additionally, I don't think "Good question. Not sure." is good copy for when I can expect a product I've paid for.

<comment><USER4> > Design isn't someone's aesthetic or someone else's taste, it's the ability > to communicate. This page is confusing a lot of people, so by definition, it > is not well-designed.

I don't really have a dog in this race but I am a designer and I am a writer, and hey, deconstructing sentences is fun.

Starting at the top:

> Design isn't someone's aesthetic or someone else's taste, it's the ability > to communicate.

This is not an accepted definition. In fact, it's a huge bone of contention. Exhibit A: the yearly surge of near-infinite "What Is Design!?" "Design Is…" articles.

But let's pretend it _is_ a canonical definition and then talk about _what that would mean_ :

> it's the ability to communicate.

How do people communicate? They can only communicate if they hold things in common. Example: a language. What else? Belief systems. Culture. Background.

Are aesthetics personal? Can different people hold different aesthetics? Can a mismatch between their aesthetics, like a mismatch in language or belief, cause a communication rift?

Yes, yes it can. Ergo…

> Design isn't someone's aesthetic or someone else's taste,

… is wrong.

If you don't think it's not, you've never tried to design something modern and sleek for lawyers… or tried to persuade somebody who loves floral wallpaper to side with Adolf Loos.

"Things that look better, work better," research has shown… but did they test it on people outside the culture that created the object tested? What is "better," exactly?

This is why knowing your audience's taste (beliefs about aesthetic) is critical to communicating effectively and, ergo, why aesthetics are a huge part of design.

> This page is confusing a lot of people, so by definition, it is not well- > designed.

Let's take the two assumptions here:

1\. This page confuses a lot of people 2\. That means it's not well-designed

Even if you accept 1 as true, that does not lead to 2 as neatly as you suppose it does. What if it confuses people who are not his audience in the first place? What if it confuses people who aren't really interested in conversion rates, but simply interested because Nathan Barry is becoming an HN darling? Casual surfers, you might call them.

If casual surfers are the only ones confused, then does that mean the page is not well-designed?

What if what you consider "awkwardness" in the design actually _attracts_ other people who _are_ in the author's target audience, while _repelling_ people who are the internet equivalent of windowshoppers?

Is that not the definition of well-designed?

Finally, I think what you meant to say is "This page confuses a handful of people who are commenting on HN" which is not the same as "a lot of people."

<comment><USER14> _I don't really have a dog in this race_ This isn't very honest considering that you are the one giving Nathan the advice in the article. And he is creating ConvertKit while part of your 30x500 launch class, Correct?

From the article: "As you'll see, I had a huge amount of help from Amy Hoy. Throughout the process she gave great advice on copywriting that I'd like to share here."

<comment><USER15> Amy: I don't really have a dog in this race.

MJR: This isn't very honest considering that you are the one giving Nathan the advice in the article. And he is creating ConvertKit while part of your 30x500 launch class, Correct?

Nathan is /not/ and has never taken 30x500. (I'm alumnus from way way back, and alumni get to attend all succeeding classes, so you have to take my word for it.)

So in that sense, Amy doesn't have a dog in the race, which she would were she partnering with Nathan on the product. She may have a tiny mouse, however. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> so this is somewhere between aweber and hubspot? Whats the unique selling prop about this project? I agree- I scan this thing and it confuses the hell out of me

</comment><comment><USER16> The discount pricing isnt clear enough

</comment><comment><USER17> It was interesting to see his process and see what changed/stayed the same from beginning to end

</comment><comment><USER18> What is discipline called? Online marketing? I'm interested. This article was excellent.

</comment><comment><USER19> You have got to be kidding me. Excuse my French but this is an epic ripoff. A quick Google search and a free Evernote account and in a half hour you can get a monster swipe file filled with choice copywriting tutorials and examples.

There is real gold out there for free, and if you absolutely must spend your money frivolously, there are copywriting books on the Kindle for under $5 that will give you everything you need and more.

<comment><USER12> Let's be clear here - this is a rip off _for you_. I understand where you're coming from as someone who has seen people try to sell info-products on things I'm an expert in and know I could get for free however it's easy to forget the kind of mindset someone who would buy this has. In fact, I'd say many of us used to be the ideal customer for this type of product but as we've grown these formerly complex ideas are now almost just common sense to us.

This just isn't for you but I can see it having tremendous value. I work as a sole developer in a marketing department where I need to be an expert in web development _and_ marketing. I have a lot of experience with landing pages (I usually create like 3 a day at least) but I'm still interested in the product and here's why:

The valuable thing about this is that it's a product that's been thoughtfully organized and crafted by someone with a good reputation that I trust and who has proven to most of us I think that he's definitely credible on the subject. I could find the free stuff if I wanted to but having it all organized, curated, and formatted for me plus the actual product he'll be launching saves me tons of time and effort. I could spend the equivalent of $300 worth of my time to get the information myself or I can send Nathan my $300, save that time, and become an even more effective marketer faster, which then gives me time to not only make back what I spent but turn a profit too.

Edit: Grammar.

<comment><USER19> Yes, there will be those at a particular time of need that would buy a single apple for 100 dollars because of extreme scarcity.

In this case however, there is already an abundance of _superior_ quality ripe fruit in the orchard waiting to be plucked. And it's free.

<comment><USER20> I find your reaction odd. Like, I'm sure Nathan would be willing to refund the money you didn't actually spend to read this article that you found to be such a ripoff that it's equivalent to a $100 apple.

<comment><USER9> Of course! All my blog posts come with a full money back guarantee for all the money you didn't spend...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


There was no wave of compassion when addicts were hooked on crack - <AUTHOR> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/there-was-no-wave-of-compassion-when-addicts-were-hooked-on-crack <comment><USER2> Nope, there was a wave of animosity. Many U.S. states passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws. In 1991 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state law that gave life for possession of less than 1.5 lbs of cocaine.</comment>


Ask HN: What are we doing wrong now that will be painfully obvious in 100 years? - <AUTHOR> A lot of examples from the past show that people love to hurt themselves with their lack of knowledge: - bloodletting was a popular medical procedure up to 19th century - adding radium to toothpaste, hair creams and even water in the early 20th century And from much less distant past: - smoking - greenhouse gas emissions<p>What are we doing wrong now, which the general public isn't aware of currently? <comment><USER2> > What are we doing wrong now, which the general public isn't aware of > currently?

Industrial animal farming. Deforestation and greenhouse gases from it are destroying the planet when you don't need meat to be healthy.

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

> "The livestock sector is also the primary driver of deforestation in the > Amazon, with around 80% of all converted land being used to rear > cattle.[37][38] 91% of land deforested since 1970 has been converted to > cattle ranching.[39][40]"

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

> At a global scale, the FAO has recently estimated that livestock (including > poultry) accounts for about 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas > emissions estimated as 100-year CO2 equivalents.[57] A previous widely cited > FAO report using somewhat more comprehensive analysis had estimated 18 > percent.[8]

That's not even getting into the cruelty of slaughtering 70 billion a year (vegetarians are not exempt from this - farm animals are slaughtered when they can't produce any more milk or eggs). Most western countries would be appalled at eating dogs and cats but because it's cultural to eat cows, pigs and chickens for example, the cruelty of slaughtering them is normalised, ignored and casually joked about.

</comment><comment><USER3> The existence of the military and state sanctioned murder squads. [https://www.radford.edu/gmartin/Immoral%20to%20serve%20in%20...](https://www.radford.edu/gmartin/Immoral%20to%20serve%20in%20military%20paper.htm)

At the moment, it seems that the vast majority of people carve out a special ethical exception for the military but I suspect this will change over time. Many futurist/sci-fi dystopian scenarios have the general shape of the Terminator movies with autonomous killing machines roaming the planet. If these proliferate, perhaps the terror of that reality will bring into focus the immorality of using force to achieve geopolitical goals. And it feels like we're getting uncomfortably close to that future.

[https://twitter.com/DocBunker/status/1270390796978536450](https://twitter.com/DocBunker/status/1270390796978536450)

[https://www.ausa.org/publications/mission-command-and- armed-...](https://www.ausa.org/publications/mission-command-and-armed- robotic-systems-command-and-control-human-and-machine)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, the military is a necessary evil right now, but it could be disbanded if we learn to solve conflicts the proper way. I see robot vs robot battles as and intermediate step in this direction.

<comment><USER3> "The purpose of the military is to _kill people_ and break things."

\- Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Republican Candidate for US President

I don't think robot soccer is going to be the intermediate step since the threat of human death and the follow through on that threat is an essential feature of the war machine.

As difficult to get belligerents to agree to ethical rules of engagement, which would be a requirement for war as robot sport, we can't ignore the rise of asymmetric warfare and warfare via proxy through militias and unofficially backed terrorist organizations. These are often used by states as loopholes to get around treaties and international law. Are terrorists and militias going to be adhering to something resembling Asimov's laws of robotics when deploying their autonomous weapons?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The disintegration of the nuclear family due to sociological and technological forces.

For a preview, look at the black community where over 7/10 kids are born to single moms (for comparison, this number was below 3/10 in 1965).

</comment><comment><USER5> > bloodletting was a popular medical procedure up to 19th century

You know a funny story about this, is that bloodletting (phlebotomy) is the standard medical treatment for iron overload and hemochromatosis. A hereditary condition that affects as many as 1% of Northern Europeans.

Even for those without hereditary hemochromatosis, there's evidence of pernicious health impact from iron levels even on the high-end of normal.[1] Regular blood donors have much lower incidence rates of disease as varied from Alzheimers to colon cancer. This is especially true for those who are carriers of the hemochromatosis mutation, which is as much as 10% of Northern Europeans.

[1] [http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new- cholesterol](http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol)

</comment><comment><USER6> We are not teaching our children Philosophy; most importantly, Epistemology. We are teaching children to know things, to judge others on what they "know" and think because of what they think they know, and giving them the false confidence of true belief without the caution of self-doubt.

</comment><comment><USER7> For interest, bloodletting might have some good health benefits and be due for a comeback... or encourage blood donation.

[https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-potential- benefi...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-potential-benefits-of- bloodletting-yes-bloodletting/)

</comment><comment><USER8> making schooling not about actually useful information and skills, and maybe focused based on aptitude early on

this might depend on the country, with some being better, or a lot better than others

for example, in school, my teachers taught me useless trivia about Historical figures (some of which I later learned could be fictitious), I was also "taught" how to use sandpaper on an ornamental piece of wood (instead of learning how to use the tools to cut wood to make something useful, like a chair or a table)

wasting time on those useless things, instead of first aid, handling money (basic financial information, like savings accounts, how interests can work for you, or agains you, loans, etc.), laws (as in, what's legal, and illegal, and why), knowledge that should be universal, like the declaration of human rights

I also think shielding children from "bad language", and the knowledge of sex, and death does them a disservice, but I don't have an alternative that could be at least seen as reasonable

also, religion, at least the way it's "introduced" on chilren (forced on them, really)

</comment><comment><USER9> Infant circumcision (common in the US).

<comment><USER8> this, holy cow, this is certainly uncouth

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think disconnecting will be a considerable part of the future when AR and VR or whatever will be around is a huge thing. It is already a thing now. Some people assume you write them back in Whatsapp in minutes.

With health, I think the gut will play a significant role and also psychology. So many symptoms people develop have their roots in psychological problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> The addiction to news/social media is similar problem, like smoking, but destroying brain instead of lungs.

Good point with mental health, maybe we should make psychological checkups common thing, like health or dental checkups, every year or so and not when we're sick.

<comment><USER11> Apps that are _designed_ to be addicting. We'll look back on that as evil insanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would like to point out that we're still allowing 18 year olds to pick up smoking, and we're still emitting greenhouse gases.

I think driving is one thing humans will clearly not be doing in 100 years and it will be considered incredible that we put up with the human toll (injuries & deaths) that it caused.

<comment><USER13> Wasn't the legal age for smoking just bumped up to 21 in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Working 8 hour days, 5 days a week.

</comment><comment><USER15> Putting sketchy fire retardant materials in everything. In the broader historical context we're still coming out total fire safety negligence. The last century has been a battle to get fire codes up to a reasonable standard, but now that momentum has brought us into overcompensation where novel hazards are being created.

</comment><comment><USER16> Bitcoin. And even using any form of currency for basic needs.

Imagine if there were 'stores' that had all the basic product needs for free.

There would be no point for anyone to have extra and the open market value would be 0.

</comment><comment><USER17> Travel visas based on country of origin - which is really a proxy for race.

</comment><comment><USER18> Usage of Oil and Gas Which feeds religious fundamentalists

<comment><USER19> You're allowed to say Saudi Arabia, this isn't Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Incredibly high debt to cash ratios.

</comment><comment><USER21> Putting profits over people.

</comment><comment><USER22> too many tools, too much politics! like other animals we should have kept it simple, KISS.

</comment><comment><USER23> Today, the location of your birth is the dominating factor in what life you will be able to enjoy and how much will you be able to contribute, ethnicity, religion, and other common bases for discrimination pale in comparison.

The current citizenship system makes no sense, economically or morally. Why should the place of your birth or the citizenship of your parents should mandate which countries you are allowed to visit and in which markets you are allowed to participate?

If the trajectory of liberalism continuous its march (a consistent trend for hundreds of years, but not a certain one), then the citizenship system that we as a world have crafted will be either replaced by a more sensical one or entirely scratched (i.e. open borders). I hope that this happens within my lifetime.

<comment><USER24> I can't see how that would be possible, unless every country is equally wealthy and all wars and conflicts cease.

What's anyone's incentive for staying in Syria, Iraq, Cuba, or Ukraine when bad things happen? What is going to keep people in their birth place, when they could earn orders of magnitude more in other countries?

Then again, the far reaching implications of extensive automation could lead to this. We'll see!

<comment><USER15> A captive population is part of what creates an incentive to seek power through violence. If people have freedom of movement, it's much harder to subjugate them by holding land. Part of why ISIS was able to scale so effectively was by capturing economic output. If people were able to flee it might have a quenching effect.

<comment><USER25> > A captive population is part of what creates an incentive to seek power > through violence.

I'd say it is almost the reverse; the desire to establish a captive population is what leads one to seek power through violence.

> If people have freedom of movement, it's much harder to subjugate them by > holding land.

If you hold land by force, you can thereby deny people freedom of movement in any direction. That's actually the _only_ way to deny people freedom of movement, whether you concentrate on the inbound direction (as many countries do whether or not they also care about the other direction) or the outbound direction (Cold War East Germany, for a well-known example).

<comment><USER26> The problem isn't that they were held (ISIS didn't have resources for such large scale operation), but that no place has accepted them.

<comment><USER25> "No place accepted them" is also largely denial by force (both at boundaries and in the interior of they manage to evade it at boundaries), just from the other direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> monetary policy

</comment><comment><USER28> Trash, literally waste processing

</comment><comment><USER29> We're starting to see some big cracks in the armor of democracy (polarization and entropy) and capitalism (inequality) so perhaps iterations or complete substitution of these pillars of modern life should be expected sooner than later

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, the thing we allow few hundreds of people rule whole countries seems ridiculous even now.

<comment><USER30> TBH, it won't be any different under socialism. In fact it will probably be the same a-holes.</comment></comment></comment>


Agilewords: Simple, Collaborative Document Review - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/collaboration/agilewords-simple-collaborative-document-review/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if the backend is powered by EtherPad? Anyone know?

<comment><USER3> No it's not. We use Microsoft .Net framework on the backend for documents processing.

Fabrice Agilewords founder</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you market yourself at your mid-30's? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Hello folks,

I have a weird situation and if you don't mind, I would like to ask for your advice.

I'm having hard time getting hired, both onsite and remotely.

To be honest with you, I really suck at marketing myself.

I'm a Computer Scientist and I had worked in IT for 11 years and currently I'm unemployed for 3.

So far I have been in Tech Support my whole career life with an exception of 2 years as Web Developer.

Every time I would attempt to start as a developer, I would get either rejected or labeled as overqualified.

One possible interpretation could be my age; I'm 36 years old.

What confuses me the most is that when I interview for an opened position, they would let know that I'm a senior developer on a personal level.

To answer your possible question as of why they would reply in this way, let me tell you what (I think) I know and what I like doing during my free time:

Others enjoy solving crossword puzzles and sudoku, playing MMORPG games, and go out for a beer; I love playing with programming languages, libraries, and frameworks.

What languages do I like fooling around?

      * shell scripting - automations, automations, automations!
      * C - One day I will acquire Fabrice Bellard's 1 millionth of expertise and start doing incredible things like him. I'm looking at you Tiny C Compiler!
      * C++ - I can't wait to see modules in actual use with C++ in combination with Concepts. It's a hard language to fully understand, but it worths the effort.
      * PHP - For WordPress, its fork [ClassicPress], and Laravel. I did not like Laravel for some reason; it's alright though, but I prefer Django and Flask.
      * Python - Cython language, Django, Flask, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, web scraping...so many things to list here that I find interesting!
      * Perl - don't ask me why, but I LOVE this language's syntax. I don't use it that much though, but one day I will build a project to keep my head spinning.
      * Nim - If you like Python's elegance, LISP's macros, and C's performance...well, there you have it!
      * Lua - I haven't played a lot with this language, but it's so easy to use. I keep my eyes on Titan and Pallene programming languages which are AOT compiled sister languages to Lua.
      * Ocaml - I want to learn a functional programming language to keep my head active. I plan to play with Haskell too for the sake of mental "physique".

There are so many things to list here that I'm really interested in.

What I lack is specialization and I'm doing my best to remedy this.

I can't stay unemployed forever and be forced to depend on my family at this age.

Can anyone help me figure out ways to stand on my feet?

Cheers.

<comment><USER2> Go BS your way into a Wordpress job, and find side gigs. Alternatively, rely on your family for a bit longer, and build a product. You have the knowledge necessary, so get in gear, do what you have to, and kick some ass.

<comment><USER3> He should honestly start a job board just for 35+ year olds looking for tech work...</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Veruca.io a Search Engine for Recruiters - <AUTHOR> https://veruca.io <comment><USER2> Can we use it to find recruiters and preemptively block them?</comment>


UX/UI Book Club: Read a Book-a-Month - <AUTHOR> https://www.memorisely.com/book-club <comment><AUTHOR> I joined this Remote book club at the start of the month. We read a new design book every month and jump on a zoom call with the author. It's pretty fun and free to join.</comment>


Viral hepatitis: A silent epidemic killing more people than HIV, malaria or TB - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07592-7 <comment><USER2> Viruses that cause hepatitis actually embed themselves WITHIN LDL Particles (the "bad" cholesterol) to transport around the body. In doing so, they hide from the immune system.

APOE it turns out, the Alzheimer's gene, ALSO predicts your risk for liver cancer ...... because this is the gene that the virus binds to while assembling into the particle. Hepatitis virus infections are strongly associated with heart disease!

[https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the- me...](https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/cholesterol-have-we-shot-the- messenger-a3f5dfeba09)

<comment><USER3> FYI, 23andme provides an Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease report[1] based via the ε4 variant but does not test for a person's full APOE genotype.

[1] [https://you.23andme.com/reports/ghr.alzheimers/](https://you.23andme.com/reports/ghr.alzheimers/)

<comment><USER4> Now I'm scared; 23andme reported that I'm at risk for Late-Onset Alzheimer's. What lifestyle changes can I make to reduce the risk of liver cancer?

<comment><USER5> take a daily herpes antiviral [https://www.healthline.com/health- news/evidence-of-link-betw...](https://www.healthline.com/health- news/evidence-of-link-between-herpes-and-dementia) and reduce your alzheimer's risk by 90%

<comment><USER6> Hey, I've been taking acyclovir for decades. Maybe I'll luck out. But at least, I avoid the excruciating sores.

<comment><USER4> Are you taking acyclovir solely for Alzheimer's prevention?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weird notes on HBV:

\- More contagious than HCV or HIV, apparently can even be spread via saliva. Potential infections can happen from uncleaned tattoo guns, razors used for shaves, unchanged soaking water/bowls and cuticle scissors at nail salons, unwashed hotel sheets/towels/robes, etc

\- 5-10% of immunized people don't develop enough antibodies to protect against infection

\- Remains contagious from 7 days to a month outside the body

\- Can be killed by boiling, but 1:9 bleach solution requires up to 20 minutes soaking (hydrogen peroxide is quicker)

<comment><USER8> > can even be spread via saliva.

While possible, is extremely unlikely. For it to be spread by saliva a) the saliva of the infected person would have to contain blood (e.g. bleeding gums) b) come into contact with an open wound in the other person (also has a cut or cold sore etc)

<comment><USER9> Not extremely unlikely given that most saliva swapping likely goes on between partners who kiss on a daily basis and hence are extremely likely to have at least one interaction where both parties have a combination of cuts, bleeding gums, cold sores or similar.

<comment><USER8> It's complicated. The level of infectiousness to others varies depending on the state of the virus in the person who carries it. People with a chronic infection (long term) typically have low level infectivity. So it would be a very unlikely combination of factors coming together for transmission to occur that way.

<comment><USER7> It's still 50x-100x more infectious than HIV, because of the very high concentrations of it in bodily fluids. This combined with its very long lived potency out of the body makes for much easier infection.

In theory, you could drink from a glass and leave the virus in saliva on the rim. If nobody cleans the glass, and five days later someone with bleeding gums drinks out of it, it's still infectious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm glad awareness is increasing. These asymptomatic viruses are so scary and probably make it trickier to diagnose and help people, let alone at scale.

I wasn't diagnosed with Hep C until my mid-20s even though I was likely born with it - it was just sheer luck I found it before living a few more decades until surprise liver failure. I hate to think of the many who might be in a similar circumstance.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a white, western male in my late 30's with a chronic Hep B infection, picked up as a child living in Africa. The only difference it's made in my life is having to have some awkward conversations with prospective intimate partners, having to get regular blood checks (every 6-12mths), and not being able to join the military.

The good news with Hep B is a) there is a very effective vaccine against it b) if you pick it up as an adult you have a good chance of getting rid of it. The bad news is there is no cure for chronic infections and the risk of liver disease is greatly increased. As the article mentioned, in recent years there have been breakthroughs in treatment of Hep C leading to a cure so I'm hopeful there will be a cure for Hep B in my lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER11> What happened in Canada? You see charts like this with sub-Saharan Africa and Mongolia are lit up and that's no surprise, but then Canada shows up and you wonder what happened. They scored worse than the US at a healthcare metric! They scored worse than _Mexico_.

Is this one of those things where the Indigenous population has a real problem that is skewing the numbers for the entire country or did the government not believe in the vaccine for some reason?

<comment><USER12> I don't know _what_ is going on but I have a guess.

I live in Canada. We see these 'Hepatitis vaccine' posters at every doctors office/clinc. They are all related to "going on vacation somewhere warm".

So the implication is "Caribbean vacation = hepatitis".

There were even TV commercials that tried to show "unexpected places you could get hepatitis from", from the ice-cube, from the sand on the beach (showing a cut foot), from a nail salon, etc. Just to try and raise awareness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hepatitis rates among First Nations, Metis and Inuit are apparently significantly higher than hepatitis rates among other Canadians.

<comment><USER12> That does sound plausible.

Free health care? Sure! Drinkable water? Fuck no!

The only good thing you can say about Canadas treatment of it's First Nations is that we haven't recently given them small-pox filled blankets.*

*that has been caught on film and verified by 300 independent labs.

<comment><AUTHOR> A not insignificant contributor to the higher levels of hepatitis is intravenous drug use. You could also depress yourself to no end if you reviewed the levels of suicide amongst indigenous Canadians. It's genuinely shocking.

[https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/indigenous-suicide- preve...](https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/indigenous-suicide-prevention/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> WTF. I am a hepatitis B and Hepatitis D chronic active patient.

There is a plethora of medication for hepatitis B treatment and cure. There is a cure for Hepatitis C as well.

But there is no cure for Hepatitis Delta yet. Even Pegylated Interferon works on about 20% of the patients and that's with dual therapy alongside Telbivudine. Of course after treatment you relapse.

[http://replicor.com/science/hepatitis-d/](http://replicor.com/science/hepatitis-d/) [http://replicor.com/science/hepatitis-b/](http://replicor.com/science/hepatitis-b/) [http://replicor.com/patients/](http://replicor.com/patients/) [http://replicor.com/pipeline/](http://replicor.com/pipeline/)

</comment><comment><USER14> :( literally going through this right now with my mother

</comment><comment><USER13> O am an active chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis D patient (27 years old).

I was checking this the other day: [http://replicor.com/](http://replicor.com/)

Based in Canada BTW.

</comment><comment><USER15> Incidentally, if you live in SF, it's worth getting the vaccines for hepatitis A and B as an adult.

<comment><USER16> If you are living anywhere it's worth getting vaccines for hepatitis A and B.

<comment><USER17> Hep A is a waterborne disease. If you live somewhere with proper sanitation and don't have contact with sewage you are at low risk and the funds for the vaccine are better directed elsewhere.

<comment><USER18> San Francisco residents have extra contact with sewage than the normal person because the feces and urine that are everywhere.

<comment> black-tea Why is there faeces and urine everywhere?

<comment><USER19> Large homeless population.

<comment><USER20> _and_ a lack of public toilets. People are people — we generally would rather go to the bathroom in private if it's an option. Homeless people don't shit in the street because it's their first choice.

<comment><USER21> You can thank Richard Stallman and the toilet communism brigade.

[https://stallman.org/pay-toilets.html](https://stallman.org/pay-toilets.html)

<comment><USER20> Can I? How much do you think someone who shits in the street today is willing or can afford to pay for private toilet infrastructure? I disagree with RMS about a lot of things, but I don't see how this would be solved without public spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tangent: The headline brings up an interesting thought.. I wonder what anti- vaxx people will do when a new scary virus emerges. Something actively and aggressively flying through the population.

So much of the anti-vaxx mindset is supported by herd immunity. But when a scenario finally happens where herd immunity is compromised.. It'll be interesting to see how the vaccination discussion plays out.

 _edit_ : The downvotes must indicate that this is too off-topic, so sorry for the post :). I just had the thought and wanted to see your opinions on it. Appreciated.

<comment><USER23> Maybe this is too off topic for here but I have always wondered why people are so angry at Anti-Vaxx people?

Yes... the compromise our Herd Immunity, but don't they also serve as a "Canary in The Coal Mine", risking their own health so that the human genome can keep battling with and evolving natural defenses against disease?

<comment><USER24> Because they aren't the canaries at all. Instead they volunteer their kids (and the kids who interact with their kids) as the canaries.

<comment><USER22> Furthermore, they risk infecting others who, through no fault of their own, _rely_ on herd immunity. Such as those who due to allergies cannot take a certain vaccination, or who did take it but it was ineffective. Herd immunity protects more than just the ignorant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 'Tootsie Pop' Model for Unsafe Rust Code - <AUTHOR> http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2016/05/27/the-tootsie-pop-model-for-unsafe-code/ <comment><AUTHOR> There has been a lot of discussion (and critique, and confusion) about using "unsafe" in the comments of HN threads concerning Rust. One should remember that using "unsafe" is NOT inherently a bad thing – Rust builds on a model that allows doing tricks with unsafe code and then wrapping all the magic behind safe interfaces, abstracting the unsafeness away.

However, it's true that there is still no consensus what exactly is allowed with unsafe and what's not. A parallel to this would be a confusion whether pointers of different types are allowed to alias in C – it's undefined behaviour, despite being counterintuitive to many.

But there's an ongoing effort to define and formalize the Rust memory model, which would provide an end to this debate. Recently, there has been also discussion that it should be not only defined, but also more intuitive than C's one, for instance. Undefined behaviour shouldn't be allowed to take you by surprise too easily.

<comment><USER2> In what way is Rust suitable as a systems language if we don't have a picture of what unsafe code is or is not allowed?

At least in C there is a consensus about what works and what doesn't -- i.e. pointer aliasing is technically undefined behavior but the modern compilers let you get away with it. In Rust there doesn't even seem to be a consensus about how the compiler should work.

<comment><USER3> > pointer aliasing is technically undefined behavior but the modern compilers > let you get away with it

This is _exactly_ the kind of situation Rust wants to avoid.

<comment><USER2> Okay, and that's fine if Rust doesn't want to be used for making kernels, programming language runtimes, etc. You know, systems language stuff.

<comment><USER3> This is ill-informed and dogmatic bravado. It has no content. Please don't make comments like this in the future, they are an invariably negative contribution to the conversation. You do not understand the post you are commenting on, which assumed a level of understanding of Rust that made it a poor fit for this venue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think anyone outside the US knows what a tootsie pop is.

<comment><USER5> Sounds broadly similar to a chocolate eclair:

[http://www.chocablog.com/reviews/cadbury-chocolate- eclairs/](http://www.chocablog.com/reviews/cadbury-chocolate-eclairs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently a "tootsie pop" is an American sweet (candy) which has a hard centre and a soft middle. The allegory is that having a hard fixed API with a dangerous/unsafe centre is the way to wrap unsafe code. Though why the article wasn't just titled "how to wrap unsafe code in Rust" is unclear to me.

<comment><USER3> This post is not about 'wrapping unsafe code' \- in fact, its not even about writing Rust at all. Its about trying to delimit the scopes in which the compiler will perform optimizations based on invariants that are guaranteed in safe Rust but can be violated in unsafe Rust. This is a post about the design of the language, not of code in the language.

The name was chosen because it was the metaphor the author thought of; as a bonus, you've learned something about another culture. Tootsie pops (the most common lollipop in the United States) have a privileged place in American pop culture because of this commercial: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6rHeD5x2tI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6rHeD5x2tI)</comment></comment>


Making $25k/month selling chocolate dicks - <AUTHOR> https://www.failory.com/mistakes/dick-at-your-door <comment><USER2> Makes sense in the Instagram-optimized commerce world we live in now. People will pay a premium if something makes a good Instagram post (I would put a chocolate dick in this category).

Walking around NYC (maybe less so SF for now) I saw many restaurants repaint exterior walls with angel wings, quotes, neon lights, etc. that were all meant to entice people to take pictures and tag the location on Instagram as a marketing tool. Maybe semi-depressingly so if you're going into e-commerce or otherwise selling some physical good your first marketing question should be "will this look good on Instagram?"

<comment><USER3> In popular cities with famous landmarks, there are many "tours" (and Airbnb "experiences") that consist of simply a photographer taking pictures of you in front of these famous landmarks, ostensibly for Instagram. They often differentiate themselves based on the Instagram cred of the photographer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i've always wondered, is it in anybody's interest for these revenue numbers to be correct? both the business and the indiehacker clone website know a bigger number is a better story.

<comment><USER5> Yes something I always wonder and assume many large numbers are [excessively] exaggerated. I'm surprised this concern doesn't crop up more here. Someone usually brings it up, but not as much as I'd expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little late to the party, but i was just told this has been shared on Hacker News.

My name is Adam and I am the creator of Dick At Your Door.

Happy to answer any questions people have. Apologies if my formatting is poor. I'm unfamiliar with the forum.

Glad you all have gotten a laugh!

<comment><USER7> Isn't having only this option sexist? Where's the "Pussy at your door"? (though understandably that might be confused for a kitten adoption service)

<comment><USER6> We tested it out and it didn't really sell.

Puss at your door doesn't really roll off the toungue as well

<comment><USER8> "Puss at your place"

There you go haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the service years ago that you could send dog shit to someone. There were three levels, all the way up to a dump from 'Buster'.

<comment><USER10> For some reason I doubt that Buster is a dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Further proof you can make money literally doing anything if you are persistent and able to learn along the way.

<comment><USER12> I really liked this article, and I thought it really embodied a "hacker" ethos, in doing something originally for personal enjoyment, then realizing it had potential and growing it into a business.

I also really liked this paragraph from a business perspective:

Lastly, this product is viral in nature. People think it's funny to post about sending a chocolate penis to someone in the mail. Because most people are not sending it to themselves, we always include an offer code and a way to get to our site in every order. It is a literally a direct marketing campaign paid for by our customers.

<comment><USER13> They should include a fast path to buy (at a modest discount) and send a dick back to the sender. It has to be enough such that the recipient has some pleasure of knowing that they paid less for their dick

<comment><USER14> Discount Dick-Counter (Sung with the Mattress Discounters jingle[1])

[1] [https://youtu.be/G_2l0XWxP-w](https://youtu.be/G_2l0XWxP-w)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have they pursued a relationship with Spencer's Gifts? Because that's where I would have expected to find this product.

<comment><USER16> Would you eat something that you bought from a Spencer's Gifts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would love to send a chocolate dick to a company I previously worked for.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I'm sure multiple delivered in a bag would do fairly well.

<comment><USER19> I don't know. I mean, the gesture is clear, but at the end of the day, all you've done is spent a lot of money to send them a delicious (if admittedly risqué) chocolate treat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what am I doing wrong, 25k is a good chunk of change

<comment><USER21> It's likely gross sales and there are multiple employees.

<comment><USER22> and this might be their best holiday month

<comment><USER21> Very true. It is sad that anyone could forget about August and the month-long celebration of chocolate penises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >we can't find ways to market to the people who don't know they need to buy a chocolate dick

Can confirm, I didn't know I needed this service.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had difficulty sourcing chocolate penises for a gag Easter egg gift. Ended up buying a homemade one off eBay just wrapped in cellophane. I thought it'd be a great business idea – no overhead and not holding unsold stock.

</comment><comment><USER25> Y Combinator's motto is: "Make Something People Want"

I guess it speaks for it self in this case...

</comment><comment><USER26> This is not the first time I have read a story about someone sort of stumbling into a viable business. I'm jealous of that aspect, though I don't think I would want this exact business.

</comment><comment><USER27> For the friend who has everything.

</comment><comment><USER28> I will create a business called "Eat Your Face" by printing a mold of your face and send it over to you. I wonder if that gets $25K a month. Actually, you know what, I will look into this business. I will copy.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was expecting fabrication of custom dicks ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> Best headline in HN history

<comment><AUTHOR> Not affiliated with this company at all, but I'm really happy this is my first front page submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm offended. Remove this at once dang. This is gender stereotyping and misogyny. We don't need this kind of harangueing in here.

<comment><USER32> If you insist, here is the female version:

[http://www.lagustasluscious.com/shop/bluestocking- bonbons/fu...](http://www.lagustasluscious.com/shop/bluestocking- bonbons/furious-vulvas)

<comment><USER10> That is more of an attempt at the female version, best of luck to them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazing, just read this story

</comment><comment><USER34> Does that make them "Professional Dicks"?

<comment><USER23> Is this some kind of bust?

<comment><USER28> Meltable. Careful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky > Disclaimer: Products on this site are intended only as gag gifts for adults.

[https://imgur.com/a/Td9vl1f](https://imgur.com/a/Td9vl1f)

You should remove the picture of children placing an order for your chocolate.

Edit: That's disgusting!

<comment><USER35> Why remove the picture? It's hilarious.</comment></comment>


Proper is Shutting Down October 29th, 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://properapp.com/proper-updates/proper-is-shutting-down-october-29th-2014/#.VCww0SldXCw

<comment><USER2> Any plans to sell the software or open source it?

I see a lot of potential there for a project management tool that might apply to other markets.</comment>


Plants die when placed next to wireless routers - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524598/Experiment-finds-plants-die-placed-internet-Wi-Fi-routers.html

<comment><USER2> Yet another FUD piece from the Daily Mail: a newspaper whose mission seems to be categorizing everything into a "cures cancer" and "causes cancer" pigeonholes (note that in DM's case, these are NOT mutually exclusive). [http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/](http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/)</comment>


Xcode 8 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ <comment><USER2> "Developing and running your app on your Apple device is as easy as entering your Apple ID into Xcode preferences. Apple Developer Program membership is not required."

Is this a recent change? Sounds like a boon to indie devs.

<comment><USER3> It started last year with Xcode 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is one extremely annoying change regarding provisioning for iOS: you now need to manually set a 'development team' for each single app target, and there is no default. You'll have to set one. This is annoying for projects with many app targets (I have projects with 10..20 app targets). There's no way you can distribute source code (either with Xcode project files or cmake build files) which just compile and run out of the box. You first need to go into into the settings and set the development team for _every single target_. And if you recreate the Xcode project files with cmake you need to do it again. How this should work with automated builds and continuous integration servers is beyond me.

<comment><USER5> What is an app target?

<comment><USER6> "The deployment target setting specifies the lowest operating system version that your app can run on. For example, the lowest available setting for iPad apps is iOS 4.3."

from

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/ID...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/ConfiguringYourApp/ConfiguringYourApp.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012582-CH28-SW21)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The new automatically managed code signing generates all the assets you need > to properly sign, provision, and run your apps on a connected Apple device. > Simply choose your team and Xcode does the rest

I really hope so, that's easily the most annoying part of the app development experience. The fact that I have workflows and code from 2012, predating both swift and ARC only makes this worse

<comment><USER8> They've made this promise before, and it's already supposed to be working (iOS Team Certificates, etc.). So whether they got it right this time and it actually works... we'll see

<comment><USER9> I've had so much trouble with xcode automatically adding "xcode managed profile: *" a million times in the developer portal, even despite me having configured an app-id-specific profile (for custom provisioning profile settings such as push notification certificates), and then having it pick the wrong team and/or provisioning profile causing push messages to break, so I've stopped logging in to xcode completely. It's not so bad managing provisioning profiles in the dev portal when you get the hang of it. Unfortunately xcode removed most of the GUI for managing installed profiles, but the fastlane tools (including "sigh manage") help a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do they still force you to upgrade the entire OS just to use an IDE?

<comment><USER11> Nope. Xcode 8 is supported on El Cap and Sierra. not sure about Yosemite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> just fyi, swift 3 is now supported in xcode 8, there are quite a few changes that i've noticed when trying to convert:

1\. you probably shouldn't convert to swift 3 yet, x8 allows you to use swift 2.3 which is safe for now, deprecated later meaning later releases of xcode (8.1, 8.1.1, 8.2, 8.3, 9.0?) 2\. if you have unchecked-in git changes, make sure you commit/push before "converting" as converting will make all sorts of changes to your code including cocoapod dependencies like Alamofire, etc. i did a 'pod update' to see if that would help, to see if dependencies like Alamofire converted their code to swift3, but doesn't seem like it from a cursory glance. i think that responsibility should be on the pod owners, not for you to do in your workspace. 3\. once you convert to swift 3 the only way to get back to a swift 2.3 is to rm the entire project, clone from a remote git repo. at least that's if you're not already swift 3 compatible.</comment>


Show HN: Gymphy – Create Free Shareable Workout Plans - <AUTHOR> http://www.gymphy.com <comment><USER2> Great work! You've come up with a fanatic streamlined UI for both entering excercises and doing workouts.

You know you've hit on something great when everyone's reaction is to ask for more features. Here's my wishlist:

* Custom excercise names (so that your autocomplete doesn't have to be comprehensive)

* A timer during the exercises that are timed (I find it annoying while I'm in the gym to constantly set alarms for every exercise in every set and I can't always easily see a clock)

* Ability to add descriptions ("Remember to keep your back straight", settings on machines)

If this is open source, I'd be happy to contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Some great ideas! Going to add the ability to add custom exercises, this shouldn't be too hard.

I'm currently building the timer, it should have been done by now, but proved a little tricky :(

Descriptions on each exercise! That's a great idea! Like notes or tips.

Love it, thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> * Quick Update * I have added a Timer. You can check out the following workout as a quick example: [https://gymphy.co/r14-jNiBG](https://gymphy.co/r14-jNiBG)

Would love to hear your thoughts / feedback :)

</comment><comment> Chiba-City Great idea and great general model as a recipe or planning tool. The possibilities seem endless - adding structure (popular sequences of groups of exercises, complements or foci, etc.), adding voting, comments or open signup to plans, adding consequent metrics, expectations or cautions. Time reasoning and sequencing are hard for people. Workable representations can be challenging too. This excites the imagination in other application eras. Great stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

The possibilities are endless, need to take small steps and build one step at a time ;)

<comment> Chiba-City I was not saying it was lacking those features. Feature plans are aces up sleeves for new releases. Multi-release planning turns out to be a great way to "time box" the current release.

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies, I misunderstood. I have now added the ability to edit exercises and breaks within the create screen.

In the process of adding a button on the 'View Workout' screen to copy and edit the workout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, it's added now :)

You should be able to edit workouts, exercises and breaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the concept. No login, super simple to use and well defined use case. There are a bunch of obvious features you could add like a timer or the ability to edit a workout, but I appreciate that you decided to get people using it first. I need this kind of discipline. Congrats and good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your kind words! Timer and edit workout features are coming soon. Browse workouts page and user logins are in the near future. :)

<comment><USER4> The design is lovely. Simple and elegant at the same time.

<comment><USER5> I second this. My favorite part is the icons. They're great in both form and color scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really handy, my workout partner and I currently just share a Google Sheet.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool concept. UI is nice, and the explanatory video makes it pretty clear how to use the app without any frills.

What tech stack did you use to make this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

I used React, Redux and Firebase :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should share this on /r/fitness on reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> On it, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really wish this one is open sourced

<comment><USER10> Would love it!

OP please open-source it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> no swimming? instant fail.

<comment><USER12> You usually swim in the gym?

<comment><USER13> Some gyms do have pools. I don't swim when I go to the gym, but some people must. I imagine pools at a gym would be better for trying to get in a workout than a public pool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just thought of this a few days back ! Shopify for personal trainer and workout programs .

You can evolve the product to have a chat messenger, video chat, billing,etc.

You should apply to YC with this.</comment>


An Alexa Holdout Wants to Know Who's Listening - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/business/echo-alexa-amazon.html <comment><USER2> If it was totally open-source, if I could easily make it run a different binary, and if I could change the wake-word, it might become appealing.

Unfortunately, Alexa, Google Home/Assistant, Cortana, and Siri each fit none of those requirements.

I hear Mozilla is working on a speech recognition library. That might be workable.

It's crazy to me how much trust some people have in these systems. People on the whole seem to have totally given up on the idea of digital privacy, and I find that very concerning.

<comment><USER3> It's the Privacy v. Convenience trade off. The conveniences are promoted, the privacy implications shrugged off, and in the end you pay someone money to invade your home 24 hours a day.

It's a simple but scary formula that doesn't make me optimistic for the future.

<comment><USER4> Ah yes, the terrifying privacy implications of Alexa. Now Google _and_ Amazon know I check the weather every morning.

Oh, the dystopia.

<comment><USER5> They also know the argument between you and your partner, the private secret a friend asked you to share with no one, when you're not going to be home, etc. etc.

<comment><USER6> Is there actual evidence of this? Tell me: do you also decline to have a cell phone in your pocket?

<comment><USER2> I want actual evidence _of the contrary_.

With a closed-source platform, I can't have that.

I have a cell-phone in my pocket, and I _am_ concerned about the privacy implications. Android _is_ free software, but the driver blobs are not. I do hate that I am compromising for that. Hopefully, there will be more affordable options like the librem phone in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've stopped buying devices that require some nebulous "cloud connectivity" to function. It's no longer an exchange of value that benefits me. My personal data is valuable and I see no reason to just hand it over to companies for no compensation. That's what you're doing when you use one of these cloud connected devices. You're giving up real value to gain nebulous value. At least that's how I see it--you might disagree and that's OK.

Particularly annoying are those devices that _should_ be able to function without phoning home via an internet connection:

Security camera? Shouldn't need to phone home. Camera should turn on and stream directly to my display device. There's no need to connect to the mothership.

Thermostat? Shouldn't need to phone home. Device should let me control the temperature of my home and respond when I command it remotely. No need to connect to the mothership.

Media player? Shouldn't need to phone home. I have a library of files I'd like to play and don't care for any online services. No need to connect to the mothership.

I used to have a rule: If I don't have root on the device it goes on the guest network (no internal network access, only Internet). I still have that rule, but it's time to up the rule to "no internal or external network access without root".

<comment><USER8> You are exchanging your data for convenience. Or in the case of Gmail, you are exchanging your data for a service/product. In the case of your Safeway card, you are exchanging your data for discounts, in the case of your credit cards you are exchanging your data for a loan.

So no, you aren't "handing it over". You are being compensated in one fashion or another. Maybe that's not a good enough trade for you, and that's totally fine, but claiming there is no exchange of value is just nonsense.

<comment><USER9> None of those are the examples OP was talking about. What value are you getting by having the thermostat connect to Google's servers rather than connecting to it directly? What do I get by letting Google see inside my house with a security camera that I couldn't get by connecting to the camera directly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is how my better half and I feel about these things. Not only is the idea of having a likely-always-on microphone in our most private space unsettling, the trade-off isn't even worth it for us. But, frankly, neither of us can think of something that would be so Earth-moving as to warrant sticking some perpetual ears all over the place.

I don't care if I go to a friend's house and he or she has an Alexa or Home or what-have-you. Their house, their privacy, their rules. But we're keeping them out of ours.

(Yes, both of us have disabled Siri and the utility of a mobile phone existing and being indoors with us is higher than the seemingly unlikely trade-off of Apple listening all of the time. "Unlikely" because that's not their business model, so far as I can tell, while All Data Collection Everywhere Always does seem to be the case for Google and Amazon.)

<comment><USER11> But they aren't 'always listening' \- except for their wake words (yes, I know it's technically possible they really do, and smuggle the data out along with legit requests, but it seems unlikely). So for example the article's author can rest easy if he listens to Barbra Streisand (on vinyl!), Alexa won't be any wiser. Google and Amazon have somewhat different imperatives, Amazon would like to figure how to sell us more things (happily placing orders via the Echo is off by default) while Google would like to figure out how to sell us to more advertisers... (so far blocking keeps that mostly at bay)

<comment><USER12> Even if manufacturers behave nicely, there is still the possibility that the devices are eventually somehow compromised by bad actors and used nefariously.

For example, the CIA developed and deployed a program to use the built-in microphone on Samsung "smart" TVs to spy on targets, even when it looks like it's off: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14841556/wikileaks-cia- hac...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14841556/wikileaks-cia-hacking- documents-ios-android-samsung)

<comment><USER13> I would hazard a guess that compromising your phone or laptop to record everything all the time would be easier than an echo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems insane to me that Amazon wants me to pay them money to put something in my home that will make it far easier to order things from Amazon. That's not even considering all the valuable data they are mining from all the Echo units out there. They should be paying ME for this privilege.

<comment><USER15> I doubt that shopping is on the top 5 uses. It's not really compelling given there are so many variations of product color, size, etc.

It's better to think of it as a new UI that's always on but without a physical device you need to touch.

<comment><USER16> Think about ordering food and groceries.

<comment><USER15> I can understanding putting a 'bookmark' on something (add to a shopping list), but food/groceries I don't think makes sense unless you're ordering something _highly_ regular with no customization potential and you it's 100% clear how it's going to get to you (timeline, costs). It makes sense for Dominos, but do I really trust it to get the 0% yogurt who's brand I forget in the exact size I want, for which if you ask me the # of ounces I'll look at you blankly?

Also keep in mind it's not a 'conversation' interface... it's query/answer. It also doesn't allow me to do multiple things at once, so if I were to inspect my fridge and order a bunch at once it'd go like this:

Me: "Alexa"

Alexa: "<ding>"

Me: "Order a honey crisp apple medium sized"

Alexa: ".... ok ordering you a medium sized honey crisp apple"

Me: "Alexa"

Alexa: "<ding>"

Me: "Order peanut butter ummmmmm norm-"

Alexa: "... what kind of peanut butter do you want? You can say <18 options>"

... it's a pretty crap experience compared to instacart on your phone, which is worse than instacart on your desktop, which is worse than being inside the grocery store on your way home from work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an interesting way to frame things. An "Alexa holdout". This implies that the person who does not want an Alexa is some strange outlier. That everyone else is already doing it, and if you don't want to do it, you're weird, and what's your deal? We need to write a whole newspaper article about this weird person who doesn't want Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the idea of having something like the Star Trek computer at home. I can ask it questions, instruct it to do things, and so on. I get the allure, at least in theory.

I've got Google, Apple, and Microsoft phones around, but none are set to answer to wake words. Cortana on my laptop is as shut-off as possible. They all need to be manually-initiated. Transmitting voice without taking a direct, physical action is basically where I draw the line. After all, typing something into a search engine needs a sequence of specific actions. I think that the extra barrier provides the psychological comfort I need.

It's easy to sound like a luddite nutter worrying about some vague conspiracy. On the other hand, it feels like a lot of companies are getting good practice at boiling frogs, slowly re-framing what most of society thinks of as its comfort zone, concerning technology like this.

<comment><USER18> Something I've been watching that might interest you is Mycroft ([https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)). It's free software and open hardware version of the echo, etc.

<comment><USER19> Needs to phone MyCroft homebase for setup (didn't look hard enough to figure a way around that), and uses Google's STT.

Privacy...not attained.

I shouldn't have to ask Google to open a local file for me.

<comment><USER17> > Needs to phone MyCroft homebase for setup (didn't look hard enough to figure > a way around that)

I think part of their documentation said that you can skip that part, if you want. Ah, found it. Their github Readme has a section titled "Using Mycroft Without Home": [https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core#using-mycroft- with...](https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core#using-mycroft-without-home)

Apparently, various groups are using some open speech engines (CMUSphinx and Kaldi) to work on internationalization support: [https://community.mycroft.ai/t/are-there-any-plans-to- move-f...](https://community.mycroft.ai/t/are-there-any-plans-to-move-from- google-stt-to-something-like-kaldi-or-cmu-sphinx-while-openstt-is-in- development/1494/4)

> Privacy...not attained.

> I shouldn't have to ask Google to open a local file for me.

I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm conflicted about Alexa. I keep it muted most of the time. It is also plugged into a smart outlet that switches it off every night and wakes it up every morning. I still can't shake the feeling of being listened to. Aside from the initial excitement, now all i use it for is turning on and off smart things and playing occasion music from spotify. I might just get rid of it soon.

<comment><USER21> Toss a network sniffer in and see what traffic is going from the echo device out and when. Probably won't see the contents in a meaningful way, but will be able to see how much and when.

Open it up. Check to see if there is a signal from the microphone to the main board when the mute button is enabled. Or trust one of the tear down videos. [https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5lc5q5/effectiv...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5lc5q5/effectiveness_of_mute_button/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I value privacy and I am troubled that it feels strange saying that.

Is there an example in human history of a people giving up a fundamental right such as privacy for their short term gain? Did the Romans face a similar temptation? Are we breaking new ground or are we walking into a swamp?

</comment><comment><USER23> If anyone here has a popular podcast, they should include the phrase "Hey Alexa, order me a JET 26x80 Geared Head Engine Lathe 4-1/8-inch Bore." It's supposedly the heaviest thing you can order with free shipping.

[https://www.amazon.com/26x80-Geared-Engine- Lathe-8-inch/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/26x80-Geared-Engine- Lathe-8-inch/dp/B0064BFJ3W/)

<comment><USER24> Why is the White House looking into airline bag fees, instead of making this sort of activity illegal?

<comment><USER23> Which activity: free shipping on a multi-ton lathe, people saying specific phrases on podcasts, or other people buying devices that can order stuff for them based on voice commands? Where is the source of the rot?</comment></comment></comment>


Coq: Certified Programming with Dependent Types - <AUTHOR> http://adam.chlipala.net/cpdt/ <comment><USER2> I found [http://adam.chlipala.net/cpdt/html/Hoas.html](http://adam.chlipala.net/cpdt/html/Hoas.html) to be very useful. It looks like it was once a chapter of the book, but was replaced by the final chapter [http://adam.chlipala.net/cpdt/html/ProgLang.html](http://adam.chlipala.net/cpdt/html/ProgLang.html)

I found the first version much more useful so I'm posting it here for others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Worth noting, lest the name scare you away from a great computer science achievement:

[https://coq.inria.fr/news/114.html](https://coq.inria.fr/news/114.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> From the Intro, the prerequisites:

"I try to keep the required background knowledge to a minimum in this book. I will assume familiarity with the material from usual discrete math and logic courses taken by undergraduate computer science majors, and I will assume that readers have significant experience programming in one of the ML dialects, in Haskell, or in some other, closely related language. Experience with only dynamically typed functional languages might lead to befuddlement in some places, but a reader who has come to understand Scheme deeply will probably be fine."

Then it is not for me, I am still struggling with Haskell.

<comment><USER5> I learned ML -> Coq -> Haskell. Still working on getting really good at Haskell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The code appears to be presented in a mix of fixed-width, proportional, italic, bold, and sans-serif fonts, with a bit of colour thrown in. I don't think that's particularly readable...

</comment><comment><USER7> So would a bog standard web developer gain anything by learning Coq? Or is it something just for academics?

<comment><USER8> If you're just plugging together library components to produce regular CRUD sites, then it won't have any direct relevance. Hopefully those components will have strong types to make sure they're being used in valid ways, but that's about as far as it's worth going.

If you're building those libraries, then you might want to use some clever type system tricks to bridge the gap between a friendly external API and an internal representation with strong guarantees. Some of those clever tricks might be done with dependent types, and you might use Coq to do them.

If you're building core infrastructure stuff, like crypto libraries, communication protocols, data storage/retrieval, language interpreters, etc. where something as trivial as an off-by-one error might cause large problems, then you might benefit from using Coq to formally prove that your implementations satisfy their specification.

<comment><USER7> I see. Quite often regular CRUD sites have business logic in them. Stuff such as Tax software has very rigid logic - the stronger guarantees you can make as to their correctness the better.

So would you actually write the library in Coq - or do you somehow use Coq to prove that your eg. C++ code is correct?

I've not come across any libraries written in Coq yet.

<comment><USER8> > Stuff such as Tax software has very rigid logic - the stronger guarantees > you can make as to their correctness the better.

> So would you actually write the library in Coq

It depends how complex the algorithms are. You would need to write a specification* _and_ an implementation; there's not much point unless the specification is much simpler than the implementation. For example, if the specification of the tax software says things like:

        If the FOO is less than 1000, then BAR is 12. If FOO is greater than or equal to 1000 then BAR is 20.

Then there's not much point using Coq: the specification is basically a step- by-step description of what to execute. All you need to do is rewrite it in a machine-readable form. You're just as likely to make mistakes translating it to Coq's specification (type) language as you are translating it straight to, eg., Haskell.

If the specification less algorithmic, then it might be useful. For example, if it dictates things like:

        The sum of FOO and BAR should never exceed BAZ.
        QUUX can increase or decrease by 10% each year, providing that the difference between year N and year N+5 is less than 5%, and that there are no consecutive increases of length 3 or more.

Then you might consider implementing the core calculations in a language like Coq. Once you've proven your algorithms correct, you can "extract" them into some other language, eg. in Haskell, and call out to that from your regular code.

> or do you somehow use Coq to prove that your eg. C++ code is correct?

That's far too difficult at the moment. You could use Coq to prove the correctness of some algorithm or protocol or whatever, in an abstract form, then go off and implement that algorithm in C++. You would have no guarantees that the C++ is correct (ie. whether it implements the algorithm/protocol faithfully); all you would know is that you're not wasting time trying to implement a flawed algorithm :)

* Well, you don't _need_ to write a specification, but there's no point using Coq otherwise ;)

<comment><USER7> Great explanation. Many thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's the best (and only) intermediate level Coq book around.

<comment><USER10> Does Software Foundations assume a less or more advanced background from its readers?

<comment><USER9> Software foundations is very introductory level text on Coq which is very accessible for people without formal proof experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I assume that this wasn't originally created by an English-speaking dev team? Or at least a very serious and formal one?

<comment><USER10> The language and ideas behind it seems pretty serious. But they might consider pissing off particularly prudish Americans to be a bonus.

<comment><USER12> A few timid speakers will mispronounce it like "coke", but everyone knows they're saying it wrong.

<comment><USER5> It's pronounced identically to "caulk", though, not "cock".

<comment><USER13> In my idiolect, those two words are homonyms. When I worked construction, you couldn't ask someone for caulk without raucous laughter.

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/caulk](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/caulk)

this link seems to agree, with the word represented in IPA as [kɔːk]</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startups: Give Your Family Stock In Your Company - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2011/08/startups-give-your-family-stock-in-your.html

<comment><USER2> This is posted with the largest disclaimer of I am not a lawyer ever

But I have always been giving the impression that investors prefer as a clean cap table as possible, particularly I remember one talking about a deal falling through because they had to collect 30+ signatures from various investors and friends and family rounds.

<comment><AUTHOR> A clean cap table is preferred, but e.g. 2-3 small gifts is fine. I would not advocate starting to give equity to 2nd cousins etc. :)

Maybe another option (more overhead) would be to set up an LLC for the family and gift the stock there...</comment></comment>


The Julia Language is Here to Stay - <AUTHOR> http://crt.blogs.realtor.org/2014/02/06/the-julia-language-is-here-to-stay/ <comment><USER2> I'll believe it when I see more posts about programs being made with it than posts about how it is good.

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't exactly blogspam, but it's an extremely low quality article with little evidence or new thought. It's basically a small handful of unsupported paragraphs, with almost no information content, and a few shoutouts to the realtor group this guy works for.

<comment><USER4> It's also pretty incorrect, because Julia is much more appropriate as a Matlab replacement than an R replacement.

Matlab and R aren't even close to the same thing, so not sure where these statements are coming from.

Julia does seem great, and I hope it replaces Matlab, if only because it's open source. A faster and more consistent R would be nice, but there are other people working on that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand that Julia is fast and designed for computation. Does it have other uses such as web, network building or games? If you aren't a scientist is there a reason to get excited about Julia?

<comment><USER6> Well, it borrows a lot from python, has lisp-like macros, and has pretty good FFI to C. I don't think it has any network building or game libraries. There might be some web packages. It is mainly geared towards scientific computing.

<comment><USER5> Julia is a young language, so I'm not surprised about the lack of libraries. I am wondering about the future... is it, as a language, capable of these things?

<comment><USER6> As far as I know, it should be capable of these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who else read that as 'Julian Assange Here to Stay' ?</comment>


New Tonga island 'now home to flowers and owls' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47153797 <comment><USER3> The flower is most probably Beach Morning Glory, _Ipomoea pes-caprae_. Pes- cabrae means literally "goat's foot" (shape of the leaves) so is also called Goat's foot creeper and bayhops.

A good early coloniser and stabilizer of sand dunes in that case. Is not transported by animals as is said in the article; the plant is salt tolerant with floating seeds, able to cross the ocean alone with the sea currents

Ipomoea are normally poisonous (not eaten by most animals) but this species has some medicinal uses. Used as poultice from Brazil to Australia to alleviate cuts, it seems.

There is a second species also. Monocot in this case. I'm not able to identify it with that photo but Spinifex would be my first try (even better to fight against erosion and keep the soil in place).

Fascinating history.

<comment><USER4> "Ipomoea are normally poisonous ..."

Note that Ipomoea batatas is sweet potato is a staple throughout the world and is very delicious, especially the purple-skinned, cream-fleshed variety. The young leaves can also be cooked and eaten.

<comment><USER3> Yes, is an exception to the rule, hence the "normally".

Convolvulaceae is a sister family to Solanaceae, and share their fondness for making some pretty evil alkaloids. Ipomoea (and other related genus) work often with lysergic acid derivatives. From LSD to vasoconstrictor or even gangrenous substances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For fans of new islands, Surtsey (date of birth 1963) is another example, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surtsey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surtsey). The speed at which life colonised the island is quite amazing.

<comment><USER6> "An improperly handled human defecation resulted in a tomato plant taking root which was also destroyed."

<comment><USER7> One of my sister in laws is a civil engineer who does a lot of work with sewage treatment plants. She has commented that apparently tomato seeds can survive almost anything.

<comment><USER8> That's not special to tomato seed. In fact, fruits being eaten and seeds defecated by animals in far out lands is why seeds are _in_ the sweet, tasty, sugary fruits for the most part!

<comment><USER7> I get what you're saying, but apparently there _is_ something special about tomato seeds. It's not that they're surviving a digestive track (by design) or my compost pile (something almost nothing else does...not a single squash, cucumber, okra, peach, apple, etc., etc. has done), they're surviving a sewage treatment plant. Bioreduction and chemical treatment. So...tomatoes are pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > and is already nurturing pink flowering plants, sooty tern birds, and even > _barn owls_

I was surprised to learn recently that Barn Owls are one of the most prevalent avian species across the whole world:

>> The barn owl is the most widespread landbird species in the world, occurring in every continent except Antarctica. Its range includes all of Europe (except Fennoscandia and Malta), most of Africa apart from the Sahara, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia, many Pacific Islands, and North, Central and South America.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_owl#Distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_owl#Distribution)

<comment><USER10> What do they eat? Other birds? Or does the presence of owls indicate the presence of small rodents?

<comment><USER5> Mostly small mammals but also small reptiles and insects. In this case I think it is likely to be the latter.

To give you some idea of how widespread this species is, there are Barn Owls on the Desertas Islands, (SE of Madeira), [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertas_Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertas_Islands). These islands are as dry as the name suggests and are little more than rock with short grass. There is a plentiful supply of (introduced) mice and lizards however.

For a species that (supposedly) does not disperse very far from their natal area, [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/German_Lopez- Iborra/pub...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/German_Lopez- Iborra/publication/319964607_DISPERSAL_AND_CAUSES_OF_MORTALITY_OF_THE_BARN_OWL_TYTO_ALBA_IN_SPAIN/links/59c3d74aaca272fb3f2887d7/DISPERSAL- AND-CAUSES-OF-MORTALITY-OF-THE-BARN-OWL-TYTO-ALBA-IN-SPAIN.pdf), they certainly get around.

Next stop Antarctica.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It'll be interesting to see if vegetation takes hold quickly enough to prevent rapid erosion.

<comment><USER12> Seems like that won't be the case. Article mentioned that the island was eroding more quickly than expected due to rain.

<comment><USER13> There's currently not much vegetation, so "It'll be interesting to see if vegetation takes hold quickly enough to prevent rapid erosion."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What would be the argument against helping flora and fauna a bit? to seed plants to that island, that are native to the surrounding Tonga Islands - <USER2> helping its eco system speed up development a bit?

<comment><USER15> Mostly that it ruins the opportunity to study how this happens naturally.

Also it's kinda silly. There is no shortage of natural nature.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't say no shortage, with rainforests and forests being depleted in the tropics around the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Says the animals likely came from 'nearby islands'. But the Sooty Tern flies halfway around the world, routinely. Maybe just a throwaway remark, but those birds can come from anywhere.

<comment><USER18> Is that the African, or European Sooty Tern?

<comment><USER19> African Sooty Terns are non-migratory.

<comment><USER20> I see. And what is the air speed velocity of an unladen African Sooty Tern?

<comment><USER21> I think I know where this is going, and you're going about it all wrong.

You see, it would have to weave the coconuts together with saliva and fiber strands from the husks, like a floating nest-raft. Then it would have to ride the southbound East Australia side of the south Pacific gyre to the Antarctic circumpolar, get off at the northbound Benguela side of the south Atlantic gyre, cross west on the equatorial currents, and catch the northbound Gulf Stream side of the north Atlantic gyre, and bear left at the North Atlantic Drift. Then it would have to bear right at the Outer Hebrides, shoot between Orkney and Shetland, and try to make landfall at Norfolk. It could raise its wings in favorable winds, or flap around a bit in still air. Certainly doable for an experienced seabird.

<comment><USER22> Surely it would stop for a bit in Shetland to take in the scenery, go to a festival and a few gigs?

<comment><USER21> Too many gannets. They wet their nests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This island is contiguous with an old island, so it's a definitional matter if it's new or an expansion of the old one.

</comment><comment><USER23> If such an island appears outside of any country's territorial waters, who gets to claim ownership of the island?

<comment><USER15> Depends on how much oil there is.

<comment><USER24> or guano

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how much time until the ocean dumps some plastic waste on those beaches

<comment><USER26> Looks like there's trash on the beach in the last photo in the article.

full-size image: [https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/wp- content/uploads/s...](https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/wp- content/uploads/sites/257/2018/12/P1030688.jpg)

<comment><USER27> But that's the crater in the middle! So that must've been there when it erupted. Though it could have washed in with a big wave.</comment></comment></comment>