Ask HN: How to turn off my desire to be seen? - <AUTHOR> I find myself not wanting to do things if there isn't an audience for it.
I don't feel like blogging since no one visits my blog. When I consider traveling, my first thought is that I'll take pics and share it with friends to show them that I'm having a good time. If I go running, I feel like converting my interest in running into a meetup group consisting of fellow runners.
How do I do things for my personal pleasure, not for an audience?
Did a fallen tree make any sound? <comment><USER2> I was surprised to read this post because it echoes my sentiments down to the T. Another one is when I learn or read anything, I almost reflexively think about how I might dispense that information in front of an audience (friends, a crowd) and "sound smart". That impending validation feels good. The only saddening conclusions I've come to are that "all I want is attention" and "I'm narcissistic".

<comment><AUTHOR> After I asked this question of HackerNews, I went off to medium.com to read about art because they say art can save the heart.

One thought exercise on creativity showed me for a brief second what intrinsic reward looks like. I'll try to find that post and share it with you. To summarize,

1\. Imagine a red apple. It's your own red apple.

2\. It floats in space in front of you not tied to the ground or the sky.

3\. Add yellow streaks of ripeness to the apple.

4\. Now change its color to a color never before seen in an apple

5\. Give the apple a texture.

6\. Give it a finish.

7\. Buff it or scuff it, it's your apple.

I did this exercise yesterday and when I woke up this morning, my apple was still with me. Though no one knew it existed, to me, it felt very real, very mine. I felt proud of that apple.

As of this moment, I enjoy my little blog with zero daily visitors and monochromatic layout just as much as I love my imagined purple apple. So what if no one knows that my apple (or I, by extension) exists? I'm just glad I made it and it's there for me to remember.

This may dissipate in the next hour but until then, I created something for its own sake, not because I got kudos for it.

E1: dropped a double word

<comment><USER3> Sincerely, thank you. I actually do this thing a lot, and one of these little ideas (usually artistic) can last from a day to about a week maybe. It is my own little idea that I will just appreciate and it stays good or it goes away. Maybe I start to judge it but the net yield is happiness in my own space. I like making art but have realized conceptualizing it or visualizing it gives me my own existence that I get to 'exclude others from' if I want to see it that way. I find this habit can often lead me to not make the actual art but I am in the process of realizing that is actually the beauty of it.

I also do this through art history, too. This has am interesting angle to it. I habitually look for unconventional interpretations of art history but any will do. I often find little pieces of art history that I relate to a lot, or have personal theories of. Maybe others would think similarly but I don't know that and it doesn't matter. These relations are between me and a bunch of dead people and the lineage of the human mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try keeping a personal journal that you don't intend to show anybody, try meditation. Consider retiring some of your social media accounts.

Stop caring so much about who visits your blog - turn it into something that you can use to keep track of all the cool stuff you try - make it a tool you can reference, keep snippets there, little tutorials for yourself, etc. If nobody else ever reads it, at least it's useful for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> When it comes to blogging, you should always act like you have an audience, even if you don't. Just write and write and speak your mind. Talk to someone as if they are so interested in what you are going to publish.

I started a website called Confessions of the Professions ( [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com)) a few years ago.. and my only visitors were my mom and my girlfriend. I didn't care.. I remember loading up WordPress Jetpack and my visitor count was around 10 a day... then it increased to 35. I just kept at it.. kept writing blogs, kept soliciting for people to write for me, posting sometimes up to 3 or 4 times a day.

Eventually, I would lose interest... and about the time I did that, people started emailing me asking me if they could contribute.. and I happily agreed. Every time I start to lose interest.. I get dozens of emails with praise and asking if they can contribute an article.

My visitor count ranges anywhere from 500 - 1000 visitors a day. I get universities and well known companies asking if they can contribute. I work with a lot of marketing agencies and consultants who have clients and are looking for a niche website to publish on.

Honestly, it keeps me going even when I'm ready to give it up. It motivates me and revitalizes me back into my own passions and desires for keeping the website going... we all have to go to work... and I am curious about what everyone is doing and the struggles of everyday.

But it all started with no audience and an assumption that people might read it, could read, and would be interested in reading it. If I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now.. I totally would do it again... the website has helped so many.

So just keep going! No matter what! You never know whose reading! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the answer but I want to point out that I'd rather just write because I enjoy writing, not in the hope of finding an audience. My frustration is that I don't find writing intrinsically rewarding.

I think that can come about if I write a deeply felt blogpost whose very existence touches something fundamental in me.

<comment><USER6> I do a lot of blogging. For me, it works best to find an intrinsic motivator. (But do always keep in mind that it is posted publicly. Writing for yourself in public is an interesting challenge.)

My most successful blog started as a means to keep track of information for myself. I abandoned it for a time, but it was getting organic traffic. I resumed developing it.

 _Blog_ is short for _Web Log._ Blogs began as personal journals or diaries that were publicly shared. If you want to track certain kinds of information for yourself, like a food journal in support of pursuing healthier eating, that can have intrinsic value without an audience. If it attracts an audience, cool. But it does not require one to be valuable to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First off, it is completely normal to feel this way. I think you're at the point where you're truly discovering who you are as a person. Do you feel a great sense of unhappiness when you say you only do things if there's an audience?

The aha moment for me was when I started diving into philosophy and in particular, Buddhist philosophy, in search of learning more about life and about myself. I've been practicing Nichiren Buddhism, where the belief is that our lives represent a tarnished mirror and it is only through life experiences where we polish ourselves to reveal who we truly are.

Perhaps this is the beginning of your very own journey towards discovering yourself that would lead to doing things that you do find personally pleasurable.

</comment><comment><USER8> First, I'm happy to see you're on your journey to self awareness. Second, accept your condition, enjoying attention is a human condition. You are human! Now keep asking questions. What kind of person would you like to stay/become next?

</comment><comment><USER9> Delete Facebook/instagram, do the things you love, discover that things you love are better without having to periodically sacrifice them to zuckbot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I've been off FB, whatsapp, instagram, twitter, g+ for a while now. Even when I was using those platforms, I was a very sporadic user so I'm pretty sure I was never "addicted" to the notification icon.

Yet, there is this sense that things not seen by others is not worth doing.

<comment><USER10> Its called been a perfectionist. Reality is its better to launch a sub par product and tweak than try to launch the next Facebook.

Its also better to understand that you don't run for fame or other people. You run for health... or find your own motivator.

Problem is we get ppl claiming to become famous/rich/successful over night with their awesome idea/plan... however this is Marketing, Ego-driven and often short lived (fad).

Ive realised building a long lasting brand/product is hard... and SLOW...but it can happen. Start something and keep adding to it. Same goesnfor weights, dieting or whatever. Start and keep on plodding.

Dont do anything firnthr benefit of others and dont compare yourself to others. Just try to make sure YOU are progressing vs your previous self. If you're bored then its not what you really bwant to do. When you find something you enjoy, you will persist.

Also depression and anxiety cause us to lose interest so go outside and walk every day... meditate. Take care of #1. The rest will come and fall into place

So just start doing stuff...

#iknownothing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I too have this problem, I wonder, however, whether HN is a great place for such discussion. Not that it is off topic, but HN is a place that increases this feeling by creating an all or nothing atmosphere. There is no way to be seen just a little.

\---

Did the tree hear itself fall?

One of the first successful AI experiments was a computer in a booth at a fair. The computer had a genetic algorithm which would draw two pictures. The viewer was to decide which picture was better and select their answer using a set of buttons. The mutation of the algorithm which drew the "better" picture then "survived" till the next round. Despite the fact that the algorithm started by drawing random noise, it ended up creating symmetrical, abstract shapes with some aesthetic quality. The AI could not paint, but was it intelligent? It was able to create things, but it was reliant on the judgment of others to tell if they were good.

A person with no taste of their own, who is unable to judge whether they like something or not, and who is at the mercy of the input of others to decide their direction is quite similar to this genetic algorithm.

We need to learn to be able to experience things, and decide for ourselves whether we enjoy them or not in order to be able to create anything at all.

Do you have a sense for this?

I do.

Do you hear yourself? Do you see yourself? Do you SEE the product of your labors and enjoy them, or at least have an opinion on them? Or do you need others to see and hear for you?

\----

Impetus: Do you actually want to do the things you do? Or have you not found anything that you're truly passionate about yet?

I can see and hear, but I still lack impetus without the input of others. Indeed, I find that I can become so empty when I imagine that I am truly alone, that I can just lie on the floor and not move.

However, there are many people who successfully live alone in nature. True hermits. I believe that the difference is that you can "hear the music" you can "see the artwork" but if you don't enjoy it, then what's the point? In this post-industrial world, our cities and the buildings in which we live are so devoid of beauty that the passion is sucked from us.

\---

To whom does the voice in your head speak?

I often suffer from the problem that the voice in my head is always planning a conversation, or a speech, I struggle to think to myself. To talk to myself. I have been practicing this though, by using a program which records my voice and plays it back to me. I intentionally say embarrassing things that I would not want to publish. I ensure that I'm alone so that I can practice speaking to myself. I find that it does help, though it has not cured me.

<comment><USER11> Just for interest, I uploaded the script that I use to "talk to myself" here: [http://ipfs.hobbs.cz/ipfs/QmTToAExveJ7cdR7oMShovunMmN8RtUC1L...](http://ipfs.hobbs.cz/ipfs/QmTToAExveJ7cdR7oMShovunMmN8RtUC1LP8dGmB8BYv4R)

You need sox and python3 for it to run [http://sox.sourceforge.net/](http://sox.sourceforge.net/).

You launch it with

./101things --delay=30

When it beeps, you start talking. After you have said 101 things to yourself, in between each track it will play back one of the things you said. I found it really boring to have a conversation with myself in the moment, so I try to say things that would be of interest to my future self, like 2 hours from now. It is a very strange experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that you're using ipfs. Didn't expect to see it in the wild.

I'll try your experiment with my phone's memo app.

<comment><USER11> I use ipfs, not out of some sort of edginess or hipness, but because it is literally the easiest way. I just run one command, ipfs add -w file/folder and it is online ;) Faster than scping something to the web server and having to enter the old password, remembering where to put it, ect. ;)...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please write shorter emails - <AUTHOR> http://five.sentenc.es/ <comment><USER2> I think this is the opposite of how I prefer things. I much prefer higher- content, lower-iteration-speed email. Someone sends me 3-5 paragraphs that clearly and thoroughly explains an idea, and I respond within a few days with a response that I've had some time to think about (bonus: this exchange is now preliminary documentation). Trading 5-sentence emails is way too much iteration overhead imo. If I need that kind of communication, I'll get on IM or meet in person.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've employed this technique for the past year and I have found it effective and efficient.

It has forced me to write more concisely and directly the same point in which I was "wordy". There are always times when deeper/richer context is necessary, but that should be the exception to the rule - less is more. When I'm receiving 100s of work emails per day, I would rather read an email written like it was from Ernest Hemingway than Kurt Vonnegut.

You can convey a lot in 5 sentences, as I just did.

<comment><USER3> "Ernest Hemingway than Kurt Vonnegut"

I think you're trying to make a 'smart' reference but are confused. Overall, Vonnegut was generally at least as, or more concise; there is an entire page in _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ dwelling on the sweat on someone's brow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was referring to Hemingway relying on Kansas City Star style guide, where he began his career:

<http://www.kcstar.com/hemingway/ehstarstyle.shtml>

[edit] which is quite different than how Vonnegut writes

<comment><USER4> I think you managed to demonstrate precisely why concision is overrated. In your quest for concision you used an obscure reference to a facet of an author's literary career most of us were unaware of, thus completely obscuring your point and requiring further clarification.

<comment><AUTHOR> _When I'm receiving 100s of work emails per day, I would rather read an email written like it was from Ernest Hemingway than Kurt Vonnegut._

That's not what I'd call "quest for concision". It was a light-hearted comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please have an attention span greater than that of a 4yr old.

I'd rather get 1-2 lengthy emails from someone, explaining all the details I need on a topic rather than have to have an IM-like exchange via e-mail to pull that information out of them.

Sure, maybe I won't respond immediately, but when I do, if you've given more more information to work with, then my response is, in turn, also going to be more well thought-out and useful.

Otherwise, well, garbage in, garbage out, and it just wastes everyone's time.

<comment><USER6> I agree - with the focus on "details I need _on a topic_ ". One topic/subject per email.

And if I had one "email wish" granted - it would be that people use a descriptive subject line and change the subject when the topic is changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, wait. The solution to inboxes taking too long to empty is _to cause more emails to be exchanged_? Sure, each one may take less time to deal with, but it still adds up. And which is more of a drain: 5 larger emails, or 25 short ones? And keep in mind the woeful state of email threading across multiple servers.

As to using _terse_ emails with people who get a lot, by all means, do so. It lets them read instead of skim, possibly missing important parts, and at worst is a better use of their time.

Personally, I tend to write large emails in two parts: a super-summary at the very top, labeled as such, so it can be quickly categorized and dealt with appropriately. Following that, a full explanation of whatever I think they may want / need / find interesting.

Where it can't be easily separated, I bold + slightly color key words so one can at least skim and _only_ consume those words and likely understand the problem in its entirety. That tends to get reserved for the multiple-printed- page length emails, however. And runs the risk of seeming like you're "shouting" if you don't clarify before-hand somehow.

</comment><comment><USER8> The other way to think of emails is as datagrams. Sometimes you'll get a reply, sometimes you won't. Or, from the other side: sometimes you'll be able to answer, sometime you won't. Don't feel bad about the latter case. If you don't hear back after a while and you really really need an answer, simply resend.

People go through email bankruptcies a few times a year. It's safer to assume it is an unreliable channel.

<comment><USER9> I wish that more people understood how unreliable the whole system is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please write _better_ mails, especially professionally.

There is a mail disease that is common in the tech workplace, everyone merely adds their own 2 cents onto a large (and important) email thread, forwarding it around and giving every recipient the same problem: reproduce the relevant context by reading the entire thread again (including every single false path) and hope you come up with the same context as everyone else.

Corporate tech email would be a million times better if people spent a lot more time summing up the current state of affairs succinctly and laying out assumptions explicitly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I usually prefer making it smaller. As much as possible, I try to write the content in the subject, to make it easy for the receiver to decide if it is important enough to reply or not. I do write longer mails when necessary, but I find that the short version suffices in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this is the opposite of what we need. Twitter and other things that encourage us to consume only bite-sized information (like <http://tldr.it/>) are basically making everyone dumb (or at least giving us ADD). The skill of articulating a complete and well supported or explained thought is critical in almost every line of work, but following things like this we train our own mental bandwidth for long-form stuff out of existence.

Detail is critical for understanding, analysis, and response. Teaching people to operate without it is dangerous.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree with the fact that we're becoming more dumb or increasing in incident of ADD; however that doesn't make a case for writing effective emails. In that case you should blog to practice your thought articulation and critical thinking.... However, I think writing concise emails, direct to the point, sans fluff is good for effective communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author goes too far.

Sometimes emails need to be longer than 5 sentences because they need to convey more than 5 sentences of information. I can't tell you how many 1-2 sentence e-mails I receive every week where I have to ask the sender what they're talking about. This is a waste of my time.

If an e-mail is very long, however, it should include a brief introductory paragraph summarizing its main point and action items so the recipient can figure out whether or not he/she actually needs to read the whole thing. Sometimes the main point and action item summary is enough.

</comment><comment><USER14> Most of my emails are short. When I must write a long one, it's usually because it includes technical content. In that case, I do this:

Bob,

I discovered why the frobnostication terminal was slow and submitted a fix. It will be QA'd tomorrow. Please find the technical details below.

Regards, tophat02

<A bunch of newlines so Bob can see it's a short email with some appendix-type stuff below>

Now here's where I get into the technical details of the blah blah blah. This can span several paragraphs if I want. I don't worry about because I know Bob got the point up there -^

</comment><comment><USER15> I like this site, and its goal, but I would never cite it in my signature like some people do. That strikes me as preachy.

</comment><comment><USER16> While cogent, complete emails are desirable, in my experience people never respond to anything in an email past the 1st paragraph. So the rest of the comments/inquiriers have to be repeated, resulting in long pointless email threads.

Please Respond To The Entire Email is my entreaty.

</comment><comment><USER17> I guess _three_ didn't take of? <http://three.sentenc.es/>

<comment><USER18> Nor two: <http://two.sentenc.es/>

<comment><USER7> How about the utter failure that was <http://one.sentenc.es/> ? Doomed by failed pluralization :'(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about six-minute.sentenc.es/?

</comment><comment><USER20> "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." --Pascal

</comment><comment><USER21> In other words, don't be superfluous.

<comment><USER22> Be concise.

<comment><USER23> Omit needless words.

<comment><USER24> .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's shaking? Earthquake detection with submarine cables - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/using-subsea-cables-to-detect-earthquakes <comment><USER2> I was recently talking with someone who manages seismic data, and using fiber optics to collect seismic data is really taking off. The amount of data you get is orders of magnitude more than a traditional station. They had a problem, as custodians of seismic data, of someone trying to give them a new data set that represented 10% of all their historic data.

It's kind of crazy how easy it is to drown in data.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was involved with a job using a Fiber based perimeter fence intrusion detection system back when this was a new thing and the sensitivity was its main problem due to false positives. You needed to rezone and adjust thresholds in zones based on wind direction etc. Still it is a great tech & nice to see it applied at this scale for pure science. BTW my understanding is the idea was first commercialized by oil and gas to discover real-time conditions down a drilling well head.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a really neat trick, and incredibly beneficial if it gets matured to the point of a production-capable alerting system!

Question for anyone familiar with this type of work: would nearby submarine traffic be detectable using this technique?

</comment><comment><USER5> "To create a robust earthquake monitoring system, researchers need advanced mathematics and data analytics, where advanced computing systems like Google Cloud can be instrumental."

Great article with the most tenuous tie-in ever. The authors were probably thinking, "Look at all this great science, and holy cow this is a global sensing device! ... oh wait we work for a corporation we better plug one of its services somehow."</comment>


Show HN: Urubu – A micro CMS for static websites - <AUTHOR> http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello:

I created this project because I needed a generator for a static website - <USER2> just a blog.

To accomplish this, the website structure matches the source structure exactly. In a subdirectory, you use the index.md file to specify the content, either explicitly by listing it, or implicitly by specifying the ordering key and direction. A blog would be reverse order by date, but any other scheme is possible.

In addition, this structure makes it possible to refer to other pages in the project using a wiki-like syntax. Basically, Urubu resolves the Markdown syntax for reference links over the project, instead of just within a page. This is a unique feature afaik.

Furthermore, there is support for tags, search, and templating constructs within pages. And it works well with Bootstrap.

It works great for a number of sites that I manage.

Interested to hear your feedback!

<comment><USER3> This is very similar to Hugo [http://gohugo.io](http://gohugo.io), my current website solution. The content organization is virtually identical. The approach of viewing a website as more than a blog is the same. Hugo also benefits from tons of themes, a large community and a ton of additional features.

<comment><USER4> Or nanoc and yekyll if you look into the Ruby world. I think everyone chooses a static site generator in their favorite language anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How exactly does one specify / configure which content fields exist on a page? The problem I run into with most static site generators and flat-file CMS's is that even the ones claiming to "not be for blogging" still assume a very blog- like "one main content area per page"... which just doesn't fit the use-case of most sites I've built.

Didn't see anything in the docs about defining the content fields per page/template type, so figured I'd ask.

<comment><USER6> Check out lektor (getlektor.com). It allows you to define your content fields in ini files- [https://www.getlektor.com/docs/models/](https://www.getlektor.com/docs/models/)

I have been using it on a side project for the last week and I really like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I might have used this if I knew about it 2 months ago. Instead I built this: [https://github.com/muellermichel/guetzli](https://github.com/muellermichel/guetzli)

How do you handle multilanguage content? Also, may I suggest implementing autopulling on github webhooks (if you haven't already)? It's a great way to keep a site in sync with what people push to a repository or even edit in the github web interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> No multilanguage support.

I do use autopulling for some websites, works great indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea that it is not for blogs, wiki links and focus on navigation. That is great.

On the other hand, it seems to require a lot of configuration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Compared to others, I believe configuration is minimal. Also, there is a companion site to get started immediately, and update as you go:

[http://urubu-quickstart.jandecaluwe.com](http://urubu- quickstart.jandecaluwe.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pelican is another Python-based static site generator with a large userbase[0]. It has these features plus a few more years worth of development, in many cases adapting from an original author's narrow set of use cases to fit more general needs (that seems like how these pieces of software tend to evolve). It has a kind community, lots more good development plans, and many useful plugins. I believe a lot of people pass it by, simply because it still needs some help putting its best foot forward[1].

0: [https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/](https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/)

1: [https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/1065#issuecomme...](https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/issues/1065#issuecomment-73397069)

<comment><AUTHOR> A showstopper feature for me is that it should be straightforward to use the tool to write its own manual. Surprisingly few static generators, including Pelican, do that however.

But Urubu's manual is written using Urubu: [http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/manual/](http://urubu.jandecaluwe.com/manual/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Urubu is also the 10th album of Antonio Carlos Jobim, one of my favorite > song composers.

As a Tom Jobim fan, this warmed my heart. Thank you.

But, I still prefer Stone Flower [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Flower_%28album%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Flower_%28album%29)

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://music.jandecaluwe.com/bossanova/chega-de- saudade.html](http://music.jandecaluwe.com/bossanova/chega-de-saudade.html)

<comment><USER10> Awesome guitar technique!

And you like Bach too? Man, you know something about good taste!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Main question: how is this better than Hugo (really simple one-binary application), and how is this better than jekyll?

Just saying that it is not "just for blogs" doesn't really explain how it is better for a use-case. Maybe pinpoint the issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> My main use case are technical-oriented websites.

So I need to support content like a manual, a faq, news, feature requests, essays, and yes, also a blog. I also want good navigation support, and an easy way to refer to other project pages. Furthermore, I want programmatorial flexibility, which because of my background means Python and Jinja2 templates.

I wrote this because I didn't find an existing solution that met those requirements. I am not claiming it is "better" in a general sense than anything else - I think it all depends on your requirements and background.

<comment><USER12> _> I need to support content like ... feature requests_

How do you accept feature requests with only a static backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> The sites are typically in a git repo, so content updates are through commits or pull requests.

For an example of feature requests that are ordered by status and number, see [http://dev.myhdl.org/meps/](http://dev.myhdl.org/meps/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does this compare to Jekyll?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is heavily inspired by some Jekyll features, and I have tried to add recognition for this in the docs. However, it is not blog-oriented and it is in Python ;-).

The distinguishing feature is that the the website structure matches the source structure exactly, which enables a number of other features such as flexible ordering and wiki-links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Urubu is used in Brazilian Portuguese as synonym for ugly

<comment><USER15> Yeah, and not only. Urubu is the brazilian name for the black vulture [1], a scavenger bird commonly seen when there are dead animals.

Urubu as an insult can also mean two things: first, as they eat corpses people presume they are smelly themselves hence people can be called one as an insult for smelly; then, as they are black, it can also be used as a racially charged insult.

But they are also a synonymous for doing something without effort as they fly for hours using as little energy as they can, gliding in circles in the hot air drifts.

They are also portrayed in fiction as a street smart hustler, preying on the innocent protagonists, like Buzz Buzzard [2], named in Brazil "Zeca Urubu".

A majestic bird, if you ask me, and I doubt naming the CMS after it would carry any negative connotation.

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

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Buzzard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Buzzard)

<comment><USER8> Majestic? It's a black chicken that eats garbage in the streets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why Python 2.7?

<comment><AUTHOR> Urubu is for Python 3 also, from a single codebase. The regression suite currently tests for 2.7 and 3.4.

Update: I see where the question is coming from - the Quickstart site suggest 2.7 only. Thanks - will update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great work, nice documentation!</comment>


Show HN: Amazon Price Monitor (weekend project) - <AUTHOR> http://giacomoballi.com/amazonMonitor <comment><USER2> Please kill this popup:

> Howdy!I notice you're probable living outside the US.Unfortunately at the > moment the service only checks Amazon US... Sorry!

Yes, I know I'm not in the US, and if you only check Amazon.com, that's fine - just show that you're checking 'Amazon.com'

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for feedback! It was just a quick add when Ik noticed a ton of people from the UK trying to use it. What would be a better way to communicate until other countries are supported? --most people don't make the connection that when I say only "Amazon.com" it refers to the country (i.e. not other retailers).

<comment><USER2> Perhaps a banner at the top of the page saying something along the lines of "We only support Amazon.com (US) at this time."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If your affiliate account doesn't get shut down I would love to know how you got through the process.

I did a similar thing, and they shut it down every time someone made a purchase because I wasn't providing "original content". Despite my complaints that there are/were plenty of people not providing original content they said those affiliates were grandfathered in. It was an incredibly subjective process that I eventually gave up on out of frustration

<comment><USER4> I had the exact same experience with a price comparison site for a specific type of product. Got the same rejection + reason even after I spent time writing original overviews and articles about the products in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is it any different than Camelcamelcamel?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe it's more straightforward and feel like it wasn't always reliable. Perhaps delays in their notification system, not sure.

<comment><USER6> I haven't had any issues using Camel Camel Camel for the last few years.

Additionally, I usually go there for price _history_ when trying to figure out if now is a good time to buy or when trying to figure out what a good price threshold is to receive alerts. Without historical price info it's hard to know what a good "max price" is to set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> if you are thinking of monetizing this, you may run into trouble emailing links with affiliate tags (see the Associates Program Policies [0])

you might be able to circumvent the problem by linking to your site for some kind of landing page, and then linking off to amazon with an affiliate link.

[0] [https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies](https://affiliate- program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies)

<comment><USER6> FYI, camelcamelcamel gets around this emailing users link to a special page on their (camelcamelcamel.com) site that is just a redirect to the product page on Amazon. Users see a brief message "Thanks for using Camel Camel Camel" or something shortly before being redirected.

<comment><USER8> Unless the user takes a concrete action to confirm the redirect, that is not allowed. Under Disqualified Purchases:

> (e) any Product purchased by a customer who is referred to an Amazon Site by > a link that sends users indirectly to the Amazon Site via an intermediate > site, without requiring the customer to click on a link or take some other > affirmative action on that intermediate site (a "Redirecting Link"),

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, this is a quick project I wanted to share. Made it for myself but then tweaked it a bit so other could use it too.

Pretty simple goal: amazon price is checked regularly and you receive an email when it is below whatever you set the trigger.

Obviously there are many additions I have in mind but will only put more time if people want me to. Works fine as-is for me.

Let me know what you think or if you break it! :)

<comment><USER9> Are you web scraping the html or are you using Amazon's API[1] with an AWS developer access key?

[1] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/EX_...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/EX_RetrievingPriceInformation.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Official API, no scraping.

<comment><USER10> Don't you need to be an affiliate bringing them a decent amount of sales before you get access to that. Usually there is a rate limit that makes it impossible to keep up with all their prices. How did you get around that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey! The URL[0], shortens to the last part automatically[1], then complains "Enter a URL" when I click on Go

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-27-Inch-LED-Lit- Monit...](https://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-27-Inch-LED-Lit- Monitor/dp/B00P0EQD1Q/)

[1] B00P0EQD1Q

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for letting me know! Just read the comment and have made quite a few fixes since then. I doubt it's still an issue but if you have time, I'd love to have confirmation. Thanks!

<comment><USER11> Still breaking!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey man, if you can't/won't design the page, just use Bootstrap. It works great and takes you 2 seconds to add.

I was sad when ebay bought decide.com so they could kill it. Check out the wayback machine for some ideas about the interfaces they used :)

</comment><comment><USER13> So I embarked on a weekend project to teach myself node.js. It lasted a little longer than weekend project. Regardless I have some nodejs experinece and 150k amazon products. Eventually, I will move it over to Angular2, for some more coding experience. Right now it's on Codeigniter/Bootstrap.

The problem isn't as much as a coding problem, but more of marketing problem. I'm starting to think that getting people to click is more difficult than coding, lol. It does make money, but could make more.

Any growthhackers out there, would be happy to talk.

[http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Deals](http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Deals)

<comment><USER14> Your data is not live see [http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Product/Wireless/Samsung-O...](http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Product/Wireless/Samsung- OEM-Wired-35mm-Headset-with-Microphone-Volume-Control-and-Call-Answer-End- Button-for-Samsung-Galaxy-S7-and-S7-Edge-Bulk-Packaging-White)

<comment><USER13> Ugh... Caching error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am getting an HTTP ERROR 500.

<comment><AUTHOR> Left an extra bracket in there while fixing other stuff. Thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> AFAIK, Amazon's privacy policy does NOT allow you to do web scraping from their website. Read the policy carefully.

<comment><USER17> Is this doing that? If so, does the privacy policy even matter if no one involved has agreed to it?</comment></comment>


Spotify crashes when opening app on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/breaking-spotify-down-music-streaming-22334221 <comment><USER2> Facebook SDK issue. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23790089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23790089)</comment>


Barman backup and recovery manager for PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://www.pgbarman.org/

<comment><USER2> I've never used Barman and would love to hear more from people who have used it.

I've used WAL-E[1] in production for almost a year now. It was painless to setup and configure and has been working flawlessly for the entire time. I've had to do database recoveries, point-in-time recoveries, and database upgrades, and WAL-E has worked through all of them.

[1]: <https://github.com/heroku/WAL-E>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> While looking beyond a pg_dump-style approach to backup/recovery, I was considering <https://github.com/heroku/WAL-E> and discovered Barman. It's also open source, and looks like a strong contender.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another option which I've been looking at is pg_rman ( <http://code.google.com/p/pg-rman/> ) .

It's several years old, from NTT, and with a BSD license. It seems a bit simpler , and lists a couple of useful features such as compression and backup maintenance which don't seem to be in barman yet.

Also, from looking at the barman FAQ : "We are currently seeking sponsors willing to fund the addition of this feature to the open-source version." is something it would be nice to get clarification on, in case some features in the future only go into a closed version.

<comment><USER4> As core team member of Barman (and manager), I want to start answering from the bottom of your request. I actually thank you for giving me the chance to answer to this question and to talk about Barman in general.

2ndQuadrant has adopted the open-source business model, and we have a long history of contributions to the PostgreSQL project and its evolution (I encourage you to verify my words). This applies to satellite projects too, including repmgr (High Availability) and Barman (Disaster Recovery). With Barman we have a precise statement: it has to be open-source and to remain open-source, under GNU GPL 3. Being a business, we need to fund the development of features through our consulting services in Disaster Recovery or through feature sponsorships. But our intention is that everything will be released open-source (otherwise, why bother releasing this software in the first place?).

On a more technical point of view, one of the main characteristics of Barman is that it does not require to be physically located where the Postgres server resides. It performs remote backup (if you can, you can do local backups too, but I prefer sharing nothing between a backup server and a production server - points of view?). If you think about it carefully, this also gives more flexibility in terms of architecture, especially in large master-slave scenarios (you do not need to install Barman on every Postgres server or share the same file system, for instance).

Barman can compress transactions/WAL files (bzip2, gzip or custom) and has a parallel management of the WAL archive and periodical backups (I suggest you read this article where we describe the association between a WAL segment and a backup <http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/management-wal-archive-barman/>).

Currently it does not automatically compress periodical backups, but gives a clear and simple interface to archiving (to give you an idea, we have a customer that regularly - every week - transfers on tapes a 6TB database with Barman). Current development version has already hooks for pre and post backup operations. Next boundaries will be incremental backup and retention policies (what you probably call backup maintenance) - as I said, depending on fundings we receive.

Another important aspect of Barman is that you can have a backup server managing multiple PostgreSQL servers, from one single place, and having a catalogue of periodical backups.

Then ... I'd say remote recovery, data directory and tablespace relocation during recovery, Point in Time recovery, diagnostics, etc.

If you have more information, you can join the IRC channel too or the mailing list (details on www.pgbarman.org).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the update on the licensing.

Barman does have a lot of great features, and hopefully I will be able to try it out on a test system sometime soon.</comment></comment></comment>


Disable JavaScript in Google Chrome – How to Do It – Miami Morning Star - <AUTHOR> https://miamimorningstar.com/2019/05/31/disable-javascript-in-google-chrome-how-to-do-it/ <comment><USER2> IMO, every browser should handle JavaScript the way it handles cookies. The user should be allowed to:

1\. run all JS regardless of source

2\. reject all JS from sites other than the ones they're visiting

3\. run all first-party JS and allow third-party JS from trusted sites

Would this make things harder for adtech? Yes, but nobody is paying me to care about advertisers or publishers.</comment>


Sales Co-Founder Wanted/ Needed - <AUTHOR> Hi All! SOOOOO I am the founder of Notehouse - www.getnotehouse.com, software for everyone who takes notes on humans. In exciting news, after a private and public beta we launched in July and now have users (!!!) and revenue (!!!) without spending a single $ on marketing (woot woot). I have offshore folks doing development and I love them (happy to make a referral) and I have a graphic design team with an adorable marketing campaign who I also love (also happy to make a referral) but now need to get serious about blowing this up WHILE ALSO realizing I am not particularly interested in sales (oops! Important :)). SO. Looking for a sales co founder who is down to work for equity stake, who loves GETTING SHIT DONE, and who has experience with all this. Remote is fine. Part time to start ramping up as we grow is fine. Help! Thanks <3 <comment><USER2> This sounds interesting; does this work like a CRM for people management (networking) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Basically a CRM for people who think humans are people not products! I am a non profit lawyer who worked with immigrant kids and realized how many orgs don't have kickass software because it's 1) too expensive 2) too complicated 3) focused on a sales pipeline. So I made a version myself! Folks who are really digging it include; social workers, school counselors, lawyers, case managers, etc.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: 10 year old girl with creative stop motion art wants to program a game - <AUTHOR> At my son's birthday party today, a friend's daughter said to me 'you know how to program games and apps. I have some ideas and I want to program a game'. She showed me some really wicked stop-motion video she created with hand-drawn graphics (sharks hunting sharks underwater). I asked about her primary goal - it is mobile phones (1), tablets (2), PC(3), not consoles. Her dad would set up a Linux PC for her, though she can use her mom's Windows PC, too.<p>Any people with experience here - what would be the easiest way for her to start? <comment><USER2> Commercial with free versions: Game maker, Multimedia Fusion, Adventure Maker, Engine001.

Free: Tululoo Game maker (outputs to HTML5), Game Editor, Wintermute engine, Adventure Game Studio.

Programming languages: Browser Basic (Outputs to Html5), MonkeyX (desktop and HTML5, paid for other platform targets), BlitzBasic, BlitzMax, FreeBasic, QB64, Gideros mobile.

[http://www.tululoo.com](http://www.tululoo.com)

[http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/](http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/)

[http://fbide.freebasic.net/download](http://fbide.freebasic.net/download)

[http://www.qb64.net](http://www.qb64.net)

[http://www.blitzbasic.com](http://www.blitzbasic.com)

[http://www.monkey-x.com](http://www.monkey-x.com)

[http://giderosmobile.com](http://giderosmobile.com)

Other game creation resources:

[http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html](http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html)

[http://freegameslist.weebly.com/game-creation- tools.html](http://freegameslist.weebly.com/game-creation-tools.html)

A really good sprite editor:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixelaria/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixelaria/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps something web based like this? [https://ceilfire.com/editor](https://ceilfire.com/editor)

At the end of the day she's going to need to learn some basic programming, Scratch is the default recommendation but I like to recommend Ruby Warrior: [https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior#/](https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior#/) I think a 10 year old would get that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_\(programming_language\)), although I'm not sure if there is a phone/tablet version?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think she is into the output. 15 years ago I would have said Macromedia Director. I don't know what the equivalent would be nowadays.

<comment><USER3> If she does have access to a tablet [http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/](http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/) is worth checking out too. (though `distribution' isn't a thing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something like rpgmaker maybe?: [https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/](https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/)</comment>


Why Is It Rocket Science That Laws Should Apply Online Too? - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/why-is-it-rocket-science-that-laws-should-apply-online-too-110402/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> To quote Bruce Schneier:

"trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." ( <http://www.schneier.com/essay-126.html> )

And that is what scares the current content industry. And that is why they want such draconian laws applied to the Internet, when such laws, as the author of the subject article accurately points out, would never fly in the non-internet realm.

<comment><USER3> > [...] such laws, as the author of the subject article accurately points out, > would never fly in the non-internet realm.

The logical conclusion is that the non-internet realm is actually enough to make copyright unenforcible.Suppose the internet has been shut down. I can still hand my neighbor a USB stick. I can still snail-mail my buddy an external drive.

The intellectual "property" lobby knows that. That's why they wanted to push something as ridiculous as the SSSCA. For those too young to remember, here's the gist of it: _"It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies"_ More here: [http://xenon.stanford.edu/~ruchika/dmca/theFairyTaleGetsWors...](http://xenon.stanford.edu/~ruchika/dmca/theFairyTaleGetsWorse.html)

<comment><USER4> "Suppose the internet has been shut down. I can still hand my neighbor a USB stick. I can still snail-mail my buddy an external drive."

As I see things, there's an important difference there.

Just like home taping didn't kill the record industry, and videotapes didn't kill the tv/movie industry, sharing usb sticks or hard drives with your circle of friends isn't going to kill any creative industry either.

As is common with computers, the sheer difference in scale of digitally sharing over the internet _does_ make a difference.

With physically sharing storage media, there's a small but not zero marginal cost each time you share something. A few bucks worth of usb stick or a few tens of dollars worth of hard drive, which you no longer have use of while your friends has it or it's in transit. That's going to practically limit the sphere of your sharing - think about your own social graph, how many of your "facebook friends" would you actually send a drive full of tunes or movies to? I know the subset of my friendlist that I'd go to the trouble to send a few bucks worth of usb stick is a reasonably small portion of the people that Facebook calls "my friends".

That's a _very_ different thing to what happens when you dump your entire media collection into the /torrent directory on your always-on campus network connected machine. The internet enables zero marginal cost sharing, which inevitably leads to orders of magnitude wider sharing. I suspect the Dunbar number of ~150 real social connections is the very top end of what most people would consider to be a sensible sized physical-media-sharing-network, and realistically most people would probably stop short at 10 or 15 individuals you'd expend the effort to share with if sharing required you to actually send real-but-small-cost atoms to do it.

(curiously, or perhaps obviously, these suspicions about sharing network sizes closely map my personal experience ~30 years ago with sharing compact cassettes and vinyl LPs in highschool in the early/mid '80s. There were 6 or 8 people who I'd lend/borrow LPs between, and perhaps a dozen more that I'd lend or copy tapes for.)

<comment><USER5> The record industry rose up to solve a problem: artists needed their music recorded and distributed. Those problems are solved by computers and the internet. It's so cheap to record an album these days its ridiculous, as opposed to 40 years ago when you needed half a million dollars just for a tape machine. The overhead to make music has gone down, and so should the price to listen to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I might have missed it, but did he specify _whose_ laws should apply?

Say I send his postcard from Sweden to America, and it goes via China. Whose laws apply?

<comment><USER7> Wherever the letter is at the moment the laws of that country will apply.

<comment><USER8> I can't really argue that that doesn't make the most sense, but, at the same time, I also find it kind of scary. In essence, I obviously choose the start and end points of the transit, but I have no control over where my packets go in between.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bandwidth is so cheap that data/IP are effectively non-scarce. We've never before written laws governing the exchange of non-scarce goods. So the old laws often seem not to fit.

<comment><USER10> What's the betting that when replicators like reprap get good/useful, traditional manufacturing industries will try to get them banned?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, basically, they want privacy laws online to work similar to privacy laws offline--so that they can ignore copyright laws online that they would not be able to so easily ignore offline?

<comment><USER12> No, not quite. They/we want the same kind of justice so our fundamental expectations or rights preserved -- and if that does not suit copyright, then it is _copyright_ that must give way.

Of course it may not be easy to square the two. But the relative priority really ought to be rather clear. Copyright as it is is only a _particular_ choice, but matters of personal freedom are things we take to be deeply rooted, and not submissive to merely commercial expediency.

<comment><USER13> Copyright is actually more deeply rooted in the Constitution (of the US) than those other rights; the Bill of Rights happened later, after all.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause>

<comment><USER14> Not exactly. The Bill of Rights was added later to explicitly identify a number of the most important rights of the people. These were originally implied; everything not mentioned in the Constitution is a right of the people.

<comment><USER13> >everything not mentioned in the Constitution is a right of the people.

Prior to the Bill of Rights, that was not the case. As I mentioned elsewhere, the "everything else is a right of the states or the people" clause is in the tenth amendment.

Edit: AND in the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

<comment><USER14> Yes, the 10th Amendment makes explicit the fact that all rights not mentioned in the Constitution are inherent rights of the States and the People. This was implicit before the Bill of Rights, but it lead to a lot of confusion. At the time, most governments had all rights implicitly with a sovereign, and the people only had the rights that were explicitly granted to them. Our founders intended to flip that relationship, but since many people didn't get it, they had to add the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately many people still don't get it, despite what the 10th Amendment says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "These are civil liberties that our forefathers fought, bled, and died to give us."

The poster is Swedish. Sweden's last war was fought in 1814 to occupy Norway. Before that it fought in the coalition against Napoleon so that it could demand Norway in the peace settlement. Previous to that Sweden fought in the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 to maintain and extend its Baltic empire and in the 30 Years War to defend Protestantism in Germany and to seize the basis for said empire.

I suggest that the existence of civil liberties and democracy in Sweden has more to do with peaceful activism and good government that with bloodshed and violent struggle.

<comment><USER16> haha. bashing the swedes for their neutrality. classic

<comment><USER17> ... I believe you are thinking of the Swiss.

<comment><USER16> no, the Swedes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have to say, I'm not smart enough to understand this "rocket science." Laws exist because they accomplish the goals that we as a society want to accomplish.

There's nothing intrinsically valuable about writing your name on a certain piece of the envelope - it just helps us accomplish our goals of privacy, etc. If changing technology means that we need new laws to accomplish our goals then there's nothing wrong with that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Because exchange of information over the internet fits more existing models than mail delivery, that's why it's a hard question to answer. It's a bit like mail delivery, but also shares characteristics with radio and television broadcasting, manufacturing, and distribution.

<comment><USER12> There is some truth there, but let us be clear about something:

The hard question to answer is how best to arrange cultural production. The easy question to answer is whether we should surrender fundamental expectations/rights to a few corporate interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This analogy seems a bit poor, The laws preserving the integrity of postal service in most countries stem from the fact the government manages the post.

If the government managed the internet to the same degree perhaps the analogy would hold. The question this begs is: Do you want the government to run the internet versus provider companies?

</comment><comment><USER21> This guy's obviously never tried posting anything to Italy.

</comment><comment><USER22> //Independently discovering all music and movie under

//a Tera-byte of data

for(int i=0; i < 2^(1099511627776x8); i++){

Node *binary = convert_to_binary(i);

write_raw(binary);

send_email_to_friends("I own number: %d".i);

}

Implicitly, they are claiming they own a number.

<comment><USER11> No, that is incorrect. The number produced above is not a copy of any copyrighted work. You would in fact be free to distribute it with no risk at all of liability for copyright infringement. Let's call your number S.

Yes, somewhere in S is a bit string that happens to match the bit string of almost any particular encoding of almost any particular movie or musical performance. If you just distribute S to someone, they have no way practically, or even reasonably theoretically, to actually find those strings.

Now, if you gave a copy of S to someone AND told them "start at offset X and take Y bits and save these as a file with the extension .mp3", and the result of that matched a particular copyrighted piece of music then guess what-- copyright infringement (depending on how you found X and Y). Specifically, if the procedure was to start with the copyrighted piece of music and somehow search the string for it to determine X, then distributing (X,Y,S) would be copyright infringement.

No one is claiming, even implicitly, to own S.

<comment><USER23> Indeed the number itself does not necessarily infringe copyright.

A really simple example is to imagine giving the number "N" encoding a movie in divx format to someone in the year 1995, since they have no means of converting the number to a continuous stream of video and sound (a video animation), the number is useless to them.

On the other hand, you can give them _the same movie_ encoded in an older format (mpeg2?); this will be an entirely different number "Q" bearing almost absolutely no relationship to "N", but it will still be the same movie.

The presence of different encoding formats is a proof that copyright does not restrict what _number_ you reproduce.

This could be kinda worse though, because it could imply that copyright restricts the distribution of ideas.

<comment><USER24> The various numbers that represent the work in different formats would all be related through a single mathematical property (in that when they are processed with various algorithms, the results are all approximations of each other). It's turtles^Wmath all the way down.

<comment><USER23> Not necessarily so.

Consider a loss-less encoding represented by A: it can be encoded in a lossy- manner in two different ways, one would produce B, the other would produce C.

Without know what A was, there's no way to link B to C.

Consider also that different versions of the same movie could different (hard- coded) subtitles, extra/deleted scenes, different resolutions, etc.

If you consider all the different permutations of the movie and then consider that each one can be encoded in many different ways (lossy encoding), you'll see that there's no single number that can be said to represent the movie.

<comment><USER24> I didn't say there is a single number, I said they all share a similar mthematical property: when processed by there respective algorithms, then processed again by another complex algorithm (you), they are seen to be related.

If we have a lossy encoding so poor that you can no longer recognize it, then I'm fine with saying it is "no longer that movie".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I got confused with the title. Why is "IT" or "IN" Rocket....?

<comment><USER26> It's not rocket, it's rocket science. I.E. a complex or difficult mental exercise or field or study, used frequently in an ironic sense to suggest that a task should be easy or simple because it is not rocket science. (definition from wikipedia)

<comment><USER27> Why do people use this tired old cliche. Surely it's not heisenberg debugging to come up with something other than rocket science (or brain surgery?)

<comment><USER28> Because people don't know what "heisenberg debugging" (or whatever you use) is? After all, your primary objective is not to be original, but to be understood.

<comment><USER27> Point taken. What people should say is "it's easy" or "it's not difficult".

<comment><USER24> Continue with that line of reasoning very far at all and you'll be left with something that lacks any flavor or passion. Something very close to Newspeak.

What people _should_ say is what they _already_ say. English doesn't have a central authority, it's defined by common usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Analogies with the past are not a good guide. The internet is nothing like the previous broadcast/communication mediums. Imho, we don't need to look back into the old practices to create the laws of the digital realm. This is uncharted territory . People need to step back, look at the broader picture and figure out the new laws that will allow having a functioning economy in the online world. In the process, the current content industry will have to die, sorry

<comment><USER29> The partial truth of this leads to some major fallacies. There are some things that good techies understand, like abstraction, that lead to more general solutions. Laws on the books tend to be tied very closely with specific implementations. Here's an example that's been with us for a long time: junk fax laws v. spam emails. Junk faxes and spam are essentially the same problem, but with different coefficients in the equation. What spam is _not_ is a whole new problem never before encountered, requiring novel and special legislation. By treating each technological innovation as completely unique, each "solution" takes a NIH approach. This also provides a yet another venue for special interest groups (MPAA, RIAA, et al) to advocate their agendas _on every new issue_ even though the core ideas have already been explored.

Yes, the internet has given us true revolutions and more will come. But not every issue is a unique special case, but rather many are new twists on old themes.

<comment><USER30> Good point and rundown of the situation but I'd say the expectation of a new approach to law appearing will only be fallacious _if we let it be_ by accepting the way things are going.

 _Laws on the books tend to be tied very closely with specific implementations._

Yes, the law as it currently exist is based on being able to preserve "differences that don't make a difference". It's developed incrementally, inductively and by analogy. The phenomena of generic information, of information that isn't tied to a physical manifestation, is anathema to the whole English Common Law tradition, the basis of our system of laws. Is a string of bits a song? a device for circumventing security? Hate Speech? Protected Speech? The law as it exists needs to answer this and yet can't answer this because the law needs a context and the free flow of information implies there no set context.

And so the legal system is going to be either be further and further removed from reality or institute an entirely totalitarian system to maintain its expectations.

Because generic information really doesn't consist of a series of "new devices" and "new contexts" but rather is a single, abstract and indivisible process; _either every unique string of bits is free or it has an owner_ \- which is it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > When I write a letter to somebody, nobody has the right to intercept the > letter in transit, break its seal and examine its contents unless I am under > formal, individual and prior suspicion of a specific crime. In that case, > law enforcement (and only them) may do this. Of course, I am never under any > obligation to help anybody open and interpret my letters. It is perfectly > reasonable to demand that this applies online as well.

I would be willing to bet that 90% of the readership of TorrentFreak have run wireshark at one time or another.

<comment><USER32> I would argue that unencrypted communication is the equivalent of sending a postcard. There's no envelope or anything protecting the contents, so it's hardly a crime if someone happens to see the contents while it's in transit.

If you don't want someone to see what you wrote, encrypt it. And yes, this will take a massive amount of user reeducation.

<comment><USER33> There is a difference in passively trying to intercept unencrypted communication and accidentally seeing a postcard in transit. It is illegal to look in someone's mailbox and it's illegal to remove contents from someone's mailbox to possibly read mail even without opening it. The points of contact for a postcard are minimal and generally would only be by employees of the postal service. I would argue that snooping on unencrypted communication would still be a crime because the user made a passive decision to do so.

(I'm not preaching what to do or not to do - I'm no angel and have done my share of deeds - but this is to point out what it really comes down to when you compare analog and digital actions...)

<comment><USER34> I would say using someone else's network is like giving them your mail to put in your mailbox 'cause you're lazy. Using an unsecured public wireless connection is like shouting to a friend across the park. The problem really is that people think of a line to the internet as just a line to the internet, no matter where it comes from or who it goes through, not considering that some of their communications are public

<comment><USER33> Your focus is on public networks though. While the ratio of unsecured private networks are slowly dwindling, there are plenty still out there. It could be argued that it's the owners responsibility to secure the network, just like it's their responsibility to lock their doors at night - but there are plenty of people not tech savvy enough to know how to do this - or to even distinguish that leaving your network open is equivalent to leaving your door unlocked and possibly wide open.

The problem is - are they wrong in assuming that their personal network should not in normal circumstances be invaded? Just because we know there is a risk of someone entering our house far easier if we leave the door open, they should not in normal circumstances be entering without obvious intent to do something, anything. The same could be said for someone going on to an open network. While it's easy enough to join said network to just use free WiFi, one could also be snooping on communication, or other possible actions on the person private network.

My point really comes down to reasonable expectation of privacy (with possible complete ignorance on such matters) from the network owner, and the possible intent of the person on the network. While it might seem like nothing, I think it's an important topic if we are discussing analog laws in a digital world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's a bit like a drug-dealer saying 'why shouldn't I be able to ship drugs drugs through customs? - I know the drugs are illegal, but my crates are supposed to be private anyway.'

<comment><USER36> The author claims a right he doesn't have (a right to private correspondence). Something I've never seen mentioned anywhere before. I know most war time letters are censored, and I've never seen rights activists even mention (let alone protest) that.

Your ISP analyze packets, sometimes deeply. Google opens your mail to look for spam (does this violate the spammers right to private communication?). Norton opens your email attachments, and it might be mandated by your employer. A post office might scan or open suspicious packages to ensure they are safe for the receiver. These all involve 3rd parties analyzing and modifying messages.

<comment><USER37> As far as wikipedia can be trusted, there _are_ explicit rigits to privacy & secrecy of correspondence [1] in western countries.

The examples you give fail flat out -- mechanical sorting & filtering of email, without any direct human intervention -- has no way of breaking privacy. No person learns anything private, and nobody will ever get pestered by the spam filters of google or other such.

Also, there's no crates of illegal drugs there being moved around. There is opaque electronic correspondence. Paper correspondence is by default secret, unless interceped by law enforcement officials under court order. No provisions out there for private parties for wildcard checks if their rights are infriged somehow by paper mail -- and you can be sure every now and then somebody slanders someone in paper mail. Rumors and whatnot.

The point of the article is, why are there blatant double standards when it comes to electronic correspondence?

EDIT: also note the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States>

In short, ``[[SCOTUS interpreted the Fourth Amendment]] to count [[also]] immaterial intrusion with technology as a search''.

\----

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I believe offline laws should not be applicable to online till a credible face recognition software is developed. e.g. <http://www.riya.com/></comment>


Automated Investigator - <AUTHOR> http://www.gperco.com/2014/04/automated-investigator.html <comment><USER2> Seems like something out of Black Mirror. I like the hand just slapping him for no reasons :D</comment>


Apple File System - <AUTHOR> http://www.russbishop.net/apple-file-system <comment><AUTHOR> _" Although APFS does checksum metadata blocks it does not do anything to provide resilience for data blocks. That is a huge omission in a modern filesystem, a point I tried to politely but forcefully make in the File System Lab directly to a responsible engineer."_

<comment><USER2> A curious omission, same with snapshot shipping. You'd think that Apple of all companies would be behind those and tie them into Time Machine.</comment></comment>


I Tried Linux as My Main Dev Environment but Was Forced Back to Windows - <AUTHOR> https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/i-tried-linux-as-my-main-dev-environment-but-was-forced-back-to-windows <comment><USER2> Maintainer of a project in the linux audio space here. The simplified view is that for pro-audio pulseaudio is the enemy. It is not built for low latency, it is a complex beast to tune, it can be opaque to debug, and some defaults are not ideal (e.g. resampling behavior). If you are having problems with xrun like events then I would start by trying to reduce how much involvement pulseaudio can have on the pipeline.

In many cases linux audio can just work, but when it doesn't the debugging process can end up getting somewhat involved. There are a few places where you might have some luck with more detailed debugging like the linuxmusicians forum, the linux-audio-user mailing list, or one of several IRC channels on freenode (e.g. #jack ).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the interesting thing though. According to Jack I have no xruns with 512/2, but the pops remain (but only on Linux because using the same hardware, same USB ports, etc. on Windows has no pops).

I'm just recording my voice in 1 line of the Scarlett, so 50-100ms of latency is no problem.

You ever hear of a case where pops were coming in quite often but it wasn't related to xruns reported by Jack?

Thanks for the heads up on #jack, I didn't even know they had an IRC channel, but in theory I should be able to pull this off without Jack too since I'm not doing anything fancy (such as redirecting sound through a DAW)? Still, pops happened without Jack too.

<comment><USER2> Having pops without jack indicates that either some other software layer is choking (e.g. pulse if the audio is still routed through it) or a hardware issue. You indicate that the hardware is without issue elsewhere, so that leaves the linux ALSA driver/driver settings, pulse (if it's interfering), jack, or the recording app. I do recall some mentions of a few of the Scarlett devices having quirks in the past, though I haven't personally been all that involved in those discussions.

If jack or the recording application (connected to jack) were causing the issue then you should see an xrun reported from jack which makes me think that there's the possibility that it's being unexpectedly routed around via pulse (which can cause all sorts of shenanigans) or it's a know ALSA level driver quirk with respect to the device. The latter is unlikely as you're indicating that this is a USB device (IIRC the firewire ones were the more fussy ones). Even if you're not striving for low latency I would recommend some of the audio communities as they're likely to have stressed the same device a fair bit and may have encountered similar issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Is there any chance the Windows driver has some special sauce to deal with hardware defects that alsa / pulseaudio aren't aware of? Maybe some crazy edge case defects (since it's not affecting everyone with a Scarlett).

I think I am still using pulse mainly because I installed qjackctl and pulseaudio-module-jack, but my audio devices according to pavucontrol were Jack, but it's still being routed through pulse right?

I Googled to the end of the world on this device with Linux but came up empty handed. It was just a few success stories.

<comment><USER2> Typically that approach setups up jack as the primary device user and pulse as the secondary. Your setup involves a usb audio device in addition to what I assume is some builtin audio device on your desktop/laptop. JACK's server only takes full control over a single device, so it's possible that JACK took over something other than your Scarlett leaving a different routing mechanism to shuttle data from the Scarlett to it.

As that's a mouthfull, what may be happening is:

Dev A <-> JACK <-> Pulse <-> Dev B

If that's happening then you'd want to switch the setup to:

Dev B <-> JACK <-> Pulse <-> Dev A

or

      Dev A <-> JACK <--+--> Zita-ajbridge <-> Dev B
                        |
                        +--> Pulse

Per the windows driver, I have no idea and likely neither do ALSA devs since the source is not available there. If the Scarlett driver is a standard usb- audio device, then it likely should be exceptionally robust and very similar across operating systems.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct in that I also have a built-in sound card that's on the motherboard, but currently there's no microphone connected to it. I also had my headphones connected directly to the Scarlett.

When Jack was wired up with that pulse module plugin, if I talked into my the mic, pavucontrol showed the input bar jumping around. Does that mean it was operating on the correct mic? When I used OBS' jack client, it also picked up the Scarlett's mic once I wired it through qjackctl.

I know on Windows I was getting pops and cracks until I installed the Scarlett driver and specifically set the buffer to 512. Any other value would produce pops on Windows (even worse with 1024 which is weird).

<comment><USER2> If you look at qjackctl's connection window then the system:playback and system:capture ports should correspond to what jack is directly connected to. If jack is connected directly to your device, then any pops due to xruns should be recorded and displayed in qjackctl.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it was set up so that the PulseAudio JACK Sink was set to the system:playback_1 and 2, and then the PulseAudio JACK Source was set to system:capture_1 and 2.

There were pops but no xruns recorded with Jack.

Then in the OBS case, when I used the specific JACK client (as a secondary test), I wired the system:capture to whatever client came up with OBS. In hindsight, maybe that was a mistake, and I should have instead wired up the JACK sink's front-left/right instead of system capture?

<comment><USER2> It looks like HN's reply limiter has kicked in preventing further replies, so I'd recommend shifting discussion to one of the resources I've already mentioned. Based upon your most recent comment it is still not clear if jack is connected to the desired device or not. I'd recommend connecting a simple waveform viewer e.g. [http://baudline.com/](http://baudline.com/) to system:capture to see what's going on with respect to what jack sees as its input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I tried Windows once as my main dev environment but was forced back to MacOS / Linux.

<comment><USER4> It's weird that the version of Windows that finally added tools that _might_ make it possible, if not pleasant, for me to do real work on it without truly doing all my work in a VM, also went so far into crazy-town that I don't even use it for gaming anymore.

<comment><USER5> After a few minutes in the Group Policy Editor, most problems are solved permanently. Also, use the LTSC version, not the regular one.

<comment><USER6> Where can a regular end user get an LTSC version?

Last time I looked around the conversation quickly dissolved into piracy. Not sure if I was just looking in the wrong places though.

<comment><USER5> You can't, it's for Enterprise users.

You can find a clean ISO and change the KMS server to a server that will always activate your copy of Windows. That way you can be sure there's no malware involved.

<comment><USER6> Oh dear. I'm late to my own party.

I'll look into settings all that up. I wasn't aware you could even take over that part of windows. Do you mean modify the iso before installing?

Most of the not-a-kid-poking-things part of my life has been linux oriented, so I'm not really sure what things are open to modification in windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Try installing Ubuntu. I'm using 2i2 with a AT2030 through pulseaudio, and not having any issues in Audacity right now. My Ubuntu version is 16.04 with 4.4.0-137 kernel. I remember having some crack/pop issues (you could literally see absent points in Audacity) with earlier versions of the distro/kernels, but I think they evaporated after upgrade/reinstall. So it's kinda unreliable/flaky, depends on some kernel config perameter maybe, or config file in the distro.

I forced mine to work in 44100 sampling rate due to an unrelated hardware malfunction that causes loud pops during device initialization and sample rate switching(observable in windows also). In /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

default-sample-rate = 44100

alternate-sample-rate = 44100

Don't know if it affects the recording pops/cracks. Probably not.

Another issue I had that evaporated with updates is that pulseaudio/audacity recording used to work with ginormous latency, like a second or more, maybe caused by the crack/pop issue itself forcing pulseaudio to increase buffer size to absurd sizes or something.

Another bit of sound configuration I found in my "how to reinstall ubuntu guide" I've written for myself:

in /etc/pulse/default.pa add the following before 'load-module module-default- device-restore':

load-module module-remap-source source_name=input1 master=alsa_input.usb- Focusrite_Scarlett_2i2_USB-00.analog-stereo master_channel_map=front-left channel_map=front-left format=s32le rate=96000 remix=no

this line turns 2 scarlet's inputs interpreted as stereo by the os into a a mono source (probably requires customization of the device name)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried recording with ffmpeg (using pulse or even alsa), or even OBS studio?

Those drop outs are exactly what I think is happening here, even though I never looked at the waveform in Audacity, that's exactly what it sounds like. If it happened mid-word, it was like that section of the word was removed from the face of the Earth. The problem is I'm using a very new kernel (4.19) hmm.

I was using 44.1k too by the way (also tried 48k too) and set it exactly how you did in daemon.conf.

Thanks, that is a handy line to have in case I can get all of this to work. Sure beats mixing it back to mono in post-production for every recording. Although isn't that resetting the rate back to 96000 when you want it to be 44100?

<comment><USER7> >Have you tried recording with ffmpeg

Just tried ffmpeg -f pulse -i default output.wav

No issues observed.

>Although isn't that resetting the rate back to 96000 when you want it to be 44100?

Yeah, I just noticed that too. I inherited 96000 since before I resorted to using 44100, so... It just works, too lazy to change it.

As for alsa without pulse, I tried using ardour with jack year or two ago, and no issues either.

arecord --device=default --format=S32_LE -r44100 -c2 -t raw | aplay -r44100 -c2 --format=S32_LE --device=default -

works too.

So it's either software, or something else in your system is affecting it. As someone said in this thread, debugging such an issue could get very arcane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If audio recording is the only thing holding you back, then I'd recommend you get a second PC dedicated for audio recording, running Windows or Mac, and use your main PC for Linux. That way, you'll be happy user and maintain your sanity, instead of complaining of the OS of your choice.

Majority of video streamers (ie Twitch streamers) uses 2 system setup, where one PC is used for games and the second PC is dedicated for video recording in order to reduce the load on the gaming PC. Similarly, for screencast, I'd recommend Elgato CamLink or other Linux compatible HDMI capture device, so you can do recording/capturing on the Windows machine, while working on your Linux workstation.

As for me, I use all three major OS: Mac, Windows, and Linux (Debian). Each OS have their strength and their weakness, so I try to use the right tool for the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply.

I thought most gamers just streamed through OBS on their main machine, since they are always tinkering with various OBS scenes in real time, etc..

It is audio recording holding me back but it's in the context of recording programming tutorials where I would want to record my desktop inside of a Linux environment as a screencast video.

Right now I just do things through WSL but it's not comparable to a native Linux set up, and VMs are even worse (I tried the VM approach for over 5 years and it sucks).

Would you mind going over the work flow for using one of those CamLinks? It's the first time I've heard of that before but it seems like it might be an interesting solution -- or at least something to look into as a last resort option.

I'm not opposed to building a 2nd machine but how can something like this come together to solve my problem?

Let's say I have 2 computers (1 running Windows and 1 running Linux) and I have 2 monitors, and in non-recording mode I would want to leverage both monitors in Linux. Would I need a third monitor to make this work? What does the set up look like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I switched from Mac to Linux. On my Lenovo X1 everything works out of the box (audio is fine, Bluetooth and WiFi are fine, external displays etc). It's not all sunshine and roses but no deal-breakers in two years. I'm super impressed by how far Linux has come.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wavered in and out of using Linux for years, OS X, and roughly speaking have given up, and focus on Windows nowadays.

The main reason I stopped using Linux is that a lot of "small" stuff won't just work, so then I go down a google quest, and fix it in anywhere between 5 minutes, and never. OS X mostly just works, Windows mostly just works.

There are a lot of compromises to privacy, or games, or worse development environments, or worse performance for some hardware, or worse UX, or having to track down byzantine errors. I mostly reached the conclusion that no matter which OS you choose you are going to sacrifice something.

Right now, I like games, I want to be able to play effortlessly. The friction between having to restart from OS X/Linux to windows is too much for me, I like to open Dark Souls, play 15 minutes, die, rage quit, get some work done, open Dark Souls again. That's a hard flow to get working in those operating systems.

The future of Linux GPU VM dedicated pass through looks amazing, and my next computer I intend to at least give a shot of getting that to work, but I suspect that much like the author there will just be either a lot of tiny issues, or one big issue that will end up making me go back to Windows full time.

There is no lesson to be had here, I'm just sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> > That's a hard flow to get working in those operating systems.

That is my exact use case for not dual booting either. Sometimes you want to do something without losing your entire context / environment from a reboot.

With recording it's even more tricky because a dual boot won't work since you need to record the Linux environment and dual booting to break up the recording and editing aspect is no way going to happen. That's where the GPU pass through VM will come into play.

I will try the GPU pass through approach in a few months once this course is done, assuming I can resolve the audio pops on Linux first since I would still be recording in Linux no matter what approach I went with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't know if it's related but I had pops and cracks in my audio when setting up 5.1 surround sound in Linux over S/PDIF. I messed with all the stuff mentioned including setting tsched=0 to no avail. The solution was to also set my channels to 6 in alsamixer, even though it was already set to 6 in pulse config. Another tip I read was to try disabling auto-mute in there, but that didn't work for me.

</comment><comment><USER12> As someone who also uses a Scarlet 2i2 for recording audio in Linux (using Audacity), I can't say that I've run into this problem. The Scarlet "just works" for my usecase.

Of course, that's probably not a point in favor of Linux.

But, by the same token, I didn't precisely have a clear run of it in Windows either. Biggest was the inconsistent ducking and mic level behavior as everything tried to be the master of the audio system. The fact that some pre- processing engines on Windows needed to include "restart engine regularly" was also quite annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you recording your voice?

Did you plug it into a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port?

Are you using Jack or anything else?

Also in general, how finnicky is the red USB cable that connects your Scarlett to your machine? Does it cause a ton of distortion / pops if you move it the slightest?

I wasn't moving mine during recording of course but it just feels like the whole thing is going to come disconnected, like it's hanging by a thread in terms of audio signal.

<comment><USER12> Voice only, yes (Highly amateur podcasting & tutorials)

3.0 USB port.

No additional software other than audacity.

No problems with the USB cable so far. It's a fairly standard cable though, so getting a new one with better shielding shouldn't be too hard if that's a concern.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you touch that cable, you don't hear any distortion coming through the channel? If you have headphones on you'd hear it.

<comment><USER12> I don't. Powered monitors, headphones, neither has a problem (even with the 48v mic power supply enabled).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if the author has tried using a low-latency or RT kernel. Setting up jack/pulseaudio/alsa isn't for the faint of heart but it's great when it all works right.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't. I'm using the stock Debian kernel.

But in the kernel's defense, on a much worse computer in terms of specs, a different USB mic had no pops with an older kernel (whatever ships with xubuntu 16.04).

I also wasn't getting any xruns (according to Jack) at 512/2 which gave something like 45ms of latency which isn't too low (but is totally fine for talking into a mic, as opposed to drums, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cracks and pops without buffer xruns might indicate some interrupt related problem. A long time ago in another galaxy we had a problem causing a very small but very regular data loss over local network communications using protocols with no flow control. Of course we would expect some data loss since we were using the wrong protocols for the job (though on a LAN it's not that common), but its regularity made it worth investigating, and in the end I discovered that an interrupt fired by the video card driver (IIRC) every x time would clog the system for a tiny fraction of a fraction of second during which the CPU would essentially be loaded at 100%. To get to the culprit I had to match to the millisecond timestamps of system interrupts with those of data losses. (I totally miss those days...)

Back to the point: had I played audio instead of transmitting data, I would likely have heard those milliseconds of overloaded CPU in the form of pops and cracks, so it may be worth checking if you have something loading the system in bursts during which it cannot process audio safely.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was keeping htop open during recording and never noticed anything too crazy. CPU was always about 30%-35% max on each of the 4 cores.

Would you still think it's an interrupt issue if there were no pops and cracks on Windows using the same exact hardware in the same USB port?

<comment><USER14> Mine was just an idea. If you're experiencing an extremely short burst that overloads the machine, it could be so short that it disappears when measuring average cpu load which is what most tools do, but it could affect a near realtime buffer write or read (from an audio or network card). If there is any way to plot very short high spikes it should become recognizable, especially if it obeys some regular pattern like a timed irq or the like. In our old case, the hardware were Alpha workstations and Tru64 the OS, we nailed the problem to a driver because installing both Linux and *BSD on the same hardware the problem disappeared, so it can be a software issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me Homebrew made me moved back to MacOS. I love having a linux like system. I love having iTerm2 and flexibility to create bash scripts. Just few features I use and enjoy everyday.</comment>


Error in RSS produced by Hacker news - <AUTHOR>

slash which should be placed after .com in item link address is placed after 'item' <comment> a-priori I just noticed this. The feed is generating links like this: <http://news.ycombinator.comitem/?id=100946>

... when they should read this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=100946>

<comment><USER2> Yeah, you are right, you can solve it in the address bar, but I guess to check for the typo makes more sense ,-) PG ? Anybody there?

<comment><USER3> I'll fix it. Edit: fixed; sorry.

<comment><USER2> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> pg, could you please change the MIME type of the feed to application/rss+xml (it's currently text/html)? Some by-the-book aggregators won't read this feed properly.

[http://feedvalidator.org/docs/warning/UnexpectedContentType....](http://feedvalidator.org/docs/warning/UnexpectedContentType.html)

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER5> lol! Not many people using the RSS, I gather?

<comment><USER6> I use it. Only issue I ever had was that a few weeks ago, all items' descriptions showed up as Undefined or something. But that's fixed now.</comment></comment>


Play Movies Anywhere API – Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/google/moviesanywhere.googleapis.com <comment><AUTHOR> I found this "Google API" which has no documentation anywhere. Anybody know anything about it?</comment>


Fixes for HN - <AUTHOR> http://three.fairbooks.com/re

<comment><USER2> If you want to remove all this information, why not remove also the author of the comment? This way we get very objective comments, where upvotes are merely based on quality of comment. Too many times have I read "Regardless what pg writes he will be upvoted". Of course, this applies to all known users. I think we are going too far with this censorship of upvotes.

I miss to see the upvotes from comments -- I am busy and cannot read the 100+ comments some submitions receive. Upvotes allowed me to see which comments were worth reading. Now I read only the first 5-10 comments that _look_ good and then stop. I wish I could at least see something like: "very upvoted" instead of the upvote count for comments that receive more than 20 upvotes.

Since vote counts have been removed, I don't think I have distributed more that 3 upvotes. Somehow I fear that a comment was already highly upvoted and don't want to over-upvote it, so I just don't upvote.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes the author of the comment is relevant information: if pg says something about VC funding, you know that he has experience in it and also what his biases might be. If someone anonymously says something about VC funding, you have no idea what their experience or biases might be.

Also, it is useful to know whether the person who replied to your comment is the same person who wrote the comment yours was a reply to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I _flag_ stuff unread on the new page based on both the domain and the link text. If the domain no longer appears next to the link, I expect I will be flagging less spam.

Edit: I never said thanks for making it easier to flag spam. So, thank you pg.</comment>


Ask HN: Clojure Web Dev Resources? - <AUTHOR>

Is there an equivalent resource to the Rails Tutorial at railstutorial.org/book for Clojure? Something that gives opinions and guidance on a reasonable way to setup a Clojure web app and handle things like project structure, compiling static assets like sass, templating, and probably most importantly, testing?<p>It seems like the preference among Clojure devs is to just throw in libraries and slowly build up from small pieces, which is great, but I'd love a little wisdom surrounding common functionality and how to get basic boilerplate setup, and pitfalls to avoid. <comment><USER2> I put together Luminus [http://www.luminusweb.net/](http://www.luminusweb.net/) as a beginner resource for common web apps. There's also another recent book on building apps using Luminus [https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/clojure- web...](https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/clojure-web- development-essentials)

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This book is a good starting point: [https://pragprog.com/book/dswdcloj/web- development-with-cloj...](https://pragprog.com/book/dswdcloj/web-development- with-clojure). It's no rails tutorial but I found it very helpful coming from a rails background. It is a good intro into the more popular web libraries available in Clojure and how they are used. It sounds like what you're looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Online video conferencing services for small users? - <AUTHOR>

Do you know of any online services that help you do one-on-one video conferencing, with credit card handling built-in?  I was asked by a medical professional if there was a way to do consultations over video chat. <comment><USER2> Are the users small because they are short or because they are slim? Or are they just small by all accounts?

Anyway, I don't know of any COTS systems for doing telemedicine consultations but there are plenty of open source chatting platforms that could be integrated with PayPal or another merchant account. Just do some google searches.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly the kind of snarky douche bag comment that keeps me away from HN these days. Still, I'll assume you're trying hard to be funny.

I was asking whether there's something already built. Google searches invariably bring up big-enterprise solutions.</comment></comment>