Discovering Dennis Ritchie's Lost Dissertation - <AUTHOR> https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertation/ <comment><USER2> Random Dennis Ritchie story: my high school principal was Dennis' brother, John, and had a "UNIX Magic" poster ([https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg)) hanging in his office.

I asked him what that was about and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, as if annoyed: "oh, just something my brother did".

<comment><USER3> Someone posted a high res scan of this on reddit if anyone else is interested: [https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e3...](https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e30bc3p)

Unfortunately no scan of the other two (feuds and views).

Here someone find a more permanent place for it: [https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgc...](https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgcnkpYqF7eX1jsag)

<comment><USER4> I have a copy of Views! Away from home for a few days but I can post pics of the three posters when I make it home.

<comment><USER5> I would love to see this as well :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I didn't read the thesis itself yet but I feel like some key point must be missing from the article. The "loop programs" described are nearly identical to the "abacus machine" presented in the textbook _Computability and Logic_ (pp. 55-56 3rd ed.) which cites Joachim Lambek who published "How to Program an Infinite Abacus" in 1961 which seems to also be trivially close in structure (not merely equivalent).

Lambek in turn cites Melzak's "An Informal Arithmetical Approach to Computability and Computation" which not identical - it has transfer and arbitrary compare branch instructions - but that seems a compromise for pedagogical purposes as deriving both from the "abacus" seems fairly trivial to me.

<comment><USER7> "How to Program an Infinite Abacus" defines register machines (a.k.a counter machines), and shows that they coincide with general recursive functions. "The complexity of loop programs" defines loop programs, and shows that the coincide with primitive recursive functions. (A key difference is whether loops are bounded or not.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am not surprised about the effort it took to find a copy of Ritchie's dissertation. Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest. But the museum used the best method in this case: talk to people close to people who had a copy at one point. In my experience when all else fails, this strategy is the primary one that ends up working. It doesn't work all the time, and I still am looking for a few "ancient" technical reports despite some sustained effort on my part, but I have been able to find several documents/reports just by asking the right people.

Does anybody else have similar experiences? I'm interested if there are other avenues that somebody could try as well.

<comment><USER9> >Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest

My university library has a dissertation office with a copy of every one of them back to 1931. You may not be able to find them online, but you certainly can if you go in person during business hours. Is that unusual?

<comment> globular-toast Ritchie's dissertation would have been held in such a library if he submitted it. The article states that he did not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So after reading this, is it correct to say that Ritchie basically showed in his thesis the application of the for loop for recursive prime number computation and also its application to computational complexity? AFAIK for loops where already known at the time since they first appeared in ALGOL a little earlier?

<comment><USER11> TLDR; Gödel's incompleteness theorem rests on recursive functions which can be expressed as looping programs, i.e., for() loops. Dennis Ritchie's PHD thesis, which was never accepted by Harvard because he refused to pay for a bound copy required for submission, demonstrated that the complexity of looping programs is determined by the degree of nesting.

Ritchie did not seem to be driven by status seeking but instead by the urge to build things.

<comment><USER12> ...and perhaps a hint of disdain for the 11th hour fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How absolutely incredible that Harvard failed to obtain free publicity by finally awarding Ritchie his PhD.

</comment><comment><USER14> So what would happen if we took up a collection, produced a bound copy, and sent it off to Harvard?

<comment><USER15> People, much closer to dmr, in the past have attempted it.[0] The issue it would seem is that there is no record on file at Harvard that he ever defended his thesis. ACM does however have a Doctoral Dissertation award in his name, the irony.

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2626401.2626421](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2626401.2626421)

<comment><USER14> Thanks, looks like people have done well by him

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words.

Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.

<comment><USER17> When approaching strangers, saying something appreciative in a respectful way is neutral at absolute worst and quite amazing at best.

Case in point:

Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn't care. I was happy that he listened.

Jane McGonigal: retweeted my question while I had 0 followers and followed about 10 people.

A semi-famous Dutch rapper: he was appreciative.

I have many examples with non-famous people too. The rule applies to both. I originally learned it as a dating concept (a decade ago) but quickly decided to compliment anyone that I genuinely wanted to give a compliment.

The reason it can still be quite amazing is simply because strangers don't dare to compliment other people that much. I have only seen it once from another person.

You can test this theory by giving a compliment to someone you think never receives it but deserves one (my go to: cleaners, especially if it's really clean) and to someone who does receive them more often.

My experience: both can still be quite awesome but the cleaners I complimented really went out of their way to be appreciative (not always, just sometimes). One even invited me to his home and I discovered he also was a music producer on the side. We made some music together as I am a hobbyist myself.

I never looked at cleaners the same way again.

<comment><USER18> > Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He > shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn't care. I was happy that he > listened.

I have the same reaction to people thanking me out of nowhere especially when I am deep into my own thoughts and it's awkward to say something after the shrug. The realisation comes latter. So there is a chance he did appreciate your thank you but couldn't reply back properly.

<comment><USER17> Ah, that's also an explanation.

I tend to take the most optimistic interpretation.

<comment> P-NP > So there is a chance he did appreciate your thank you but couldn't reply > back properly.

> I tend to take the most optimistic interpretation.

Yes, always take the most optimistic interpretation compatible with the known facts. Best way to stay happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "he shows that assessing loop programs by their depth of loops is exactly equivalent to Grzegorczyk's hierarchy. The rate of growth of primitive recursive functions is indeed related to their computational complexity, in fact, they are identical."

"I would have loved to collaborate with him, because he seemed like a smart, nice guy who'd be fun to work with, but yeah, you know, he was already doing other things. He was staying up all night playing Spacewar!"

</comment><comment><USER20> > _My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to > be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural > languages better than functional ones._

I wonder if that last bit was as unfashionable a statement when he made it as it would be now.

<comment><USER21> > I _liked_ procedural languages better than functional ones.

(Emphasis, mine). I suspect that he understood functional languages quite well.

He just didn't _like_ them.

I like some aspects of FP, but there are other aspects that I don't like.

My own development style is a ghastly chimera of techniques, technologies and jargon that coagulate into a disgusting bouillabaisse that makes everyone go _" tsk, tsk,"_ but that always seems to work quite well, is of extremely high quality, easy to understand, and results in a great deal of _ship_.

I am... _impure_. All zealots hate me.

<comment><USER22> _> I like some aspects of FP, but there are other aspects that I don't like._

Care to enumerate? Asking because I feel the same: I really enjoy immutability, first class functions, map/filter/reduce, Option<T> and powerful types (I dislike: currying, point-free, monads), but at the same time I feel more at home doing that in imperative-ish languages like C#, JS/TS and Rust where I can have guard _if_ s and the odd mutation here and there. Wondering if anyone else is the same.

<comment><USER23> > I dislike: currying, point-free, monads

Don't worry then, that's fine, you just dislike Haskell.

I personally really like functional programming but can't stand Haskell. The style favoured by the community is optimised to be the most impenetrable possible.

You should try Ocaml. The preferred style favours piping to point-free and uses monads sparingly. Currying is everywhere but copious use of named arguments tends to make things simpler.

<comment><USER22> Ah, funny thing: I worked with Haskell professionally for a while. I even enjoy the laziness.

My biggest gripe with it is not so much the language itself but the culture: it favours bloated and pompous solutions much in the same way Java/Spring does. Monad Lifting, Lenses, Aspects and FactoryFactories occupy the same space in my head.

I guess I just prefer both the simple side of functional and the simple side of imperative.

I definitely have to give OCaml a try.

<comment><USER24> OCaml/Standard ML are both pretty nice because you can still use mutation, and the languages are significantly simpler than Haskell.

My only gripe with them is that there seems to be a culture of having zero type annotations (due to HM), which can make reading other people's code difficult.

<comment><USER23> > the languages are significantly simpler than Haskell

I don't think that's quite true.

Ocaml has plenty of advanced features (the module system, GADT, structural typing in the object system) but the community relationship with them is very different than how the Haskell community uses the language. For the most part, the Ocaml community tends to dislike gratuitous complexity and be non dogmatic (I fondly remember a lens library announcement on which the top comment could be boiled down to "just use mutations").

> My only gripe with them is that there seems to be a culture of having zero > type annotations (due to HM), which can make reading other people's code > difficult.

Interfaces tend to be annotated (mli files) but usually people rely on the tooling to know types inside files. Merlin is a blessing. It is a very fast type-checker which keeps working on incorrect files.

<comment><USER24> Ah, I have more experience with SML than OCaml, I just kinda (ignorantly) lumped them together.

I should put some more time in with OCaml, Merlin sounds nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> globular-toast > He already had a coveted job as a researcher at Bell Labs, and "never really > loved taking care of the details of living."

I love reading things like this. It reminds me that I'm not alone (although, yes, I realise Ritchie is dead). I find it very hard to participate in these kind of trivialities even though many other people seem to value them so much that it mean the difference between a PhD and no PhD. But I'll often kick myself later for not bothering. I wonder if Ritchie did.</comment>


Show HN: Guess the country - <AUTHOR> https://countryquiz.net <comment><USER2> That's brilliant. I love it. Though it would benefit from more different photos. So far I already had countries with just 2 motifs on five different pictures were one of the motifs was just the countries flag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will see what I can do about expanding the scope of the search.</comment></comment>


Yarn Registry is down - <AUTHOR> https://registry.yarnpkg.com/ <comment><USER2> I noticed that too. Maybe it's related to the maintenance NPM is currently doing? [https://status.npmjs.org/](https://status.npmjs.org/)</comment>


The failure of a mathematical approach to Shakespeare's authorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/infecting-the-teller-essay-brian-vickers/ <comment><USER2> Note: This is not about the "anti-stratfordian" conspiracy theories. It is about the well known fact that certain of Shakespeare plays was written in collaboration with other playwrights.

Scholars have discussed at length exactly what scenes are written by who. In recent years computer-based text analysis have been used to discern between different authors based on word frequencies and other quantitative characteristics.

This article posits that quantitative textual analysis is basically pseudo- science. It provides the example that two different quantitative analyses yields different attributions of scenes for Henry VI. So at least one has to be wrong, but possibly the whole approach is flawed.

<comment><USER3> A sort of aside: I'm no expert here, but every time I've run into the whole question of who authored Shakespeare's work the basis seems to be "I don't think this nobody could have read it, and if we assume he didn't all these other ransom theories sort of make sense!".

That is to say ... there's not much there to support much in the way of conculsions at all.

So I guess this makes sense that some weird math also doesn't help.

<comment><USER2> The "anti-Statfordian" theory say that William Shakespeare (who we know existed) didn't actually write any of the plays, but acted as a front for some other author. If this mysterious real author wrote _all_ of the texts attributed to Shakespeare, there is really no way to prove or disprove this through any form of textual analysis.

But as noted, this is not the question the article at hand is concerned about. No legitimate scholars are taking that theory seriously anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do these methods have any history of, say, being able to successfully predict things where we have a known "ground truth"? We have plenty of cases of famous authors writing under pseudonyms for positive examples, as well as having considerable ability to know that certain authorship is unambiguous (e.g. much modern writing may have involved multiple drafts being retained somewhere, or have been done with witnesses, etc). So we can probably safely say that most of the authorship of 20th Century novels is fairly well-known give or take a long-suffering wife or two ("who patiently typed up my genius"); do the same methods here actually work to predict things that we already know?

Or will they, with appropriate levels of massaging, ascribe portions of Dashiell Hammett's oeuvre to Raymond Chandler?

<comment><USER5> for example that j.k. rowling crime novel written under a pseudonym was discovered by just a random astute person who commented somewhere(maybe on the amazon reviews) that it felt like j.k. rowling wrote it.

it would be cool to try this method and see if it could detect anything.

<comment><USER6> That's not quite how it happened. People spotted that Galbraith and Rowling had the same agent and the same editor.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Cormoran_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Cormoran_Strike)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amateur Shakespearean here. I've often wondered why these statistical approaches don't look for stylistic signatures. For instance, several plays are linked by their use of doubles (in Hamlet, this scales from "too, too solid flesh," up to the running joke on the interchangeability of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). Shakespeare also seems to be especially fond of puns on "bear" and "born" \-- the "to be or not to be" monologue has three or four of these. There are also ways in which scenes repeat their designs -- 1.2 of Hamlet is similar in some ways to 3.2 of Julius Caesar, etc.

<comment><USER8> I imagine two things that make simple analysis harder.

1) once an author has a sufficient library, hiring a team to emulate them is easier (Tom Clancy, Hanz Zimmer.)

2) if in a collaboration, a partner could write a skeleton or first draft, and the main author could edit and fill in the cracks. Conversely they could write scattered sentences and have their partner flesh out filler.</comment></comment>


Randall Munroe has been monitoring my dreams - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/557/

<comment><USER2> I think this one is pretty ubiquitous.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this is indicative of low-level PTSD caused by formal schooling. I wonder of a combination of mdma + therapy would help.

<comment><USER4> I never thought of it this way. Playing video games after exams might be helpful then.

[http://post-traumatic-stress-disorder.suite101.com/article.c...](http://post- traumatic-stress- disorder.suite101.com/article.cfm/playing_tetris_may_reduce_ptsd_flashbacks)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you back up your drives? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently going through a meltdown because my Drobo, which is supposed to give users "redundant protection", has corrupted +4TB of data: years of photos, all my music, all docs that go from way back at university to personal projects, raw video files... everything. I just want to know what HN users use to backup their data, drives, etc. I haven't heard good things from Backblaze, Crashplan, etc, so I was wondering if there are other alternatives. Thanks <comment><USER3> I list the stuff that I'd be really distressed to lose (the photos of my child; My Great Novel;).

That stuff gets archived (zero compression) with recovery data; with PAR2 recovery data as well; it then gets copied to multiple USB sticks and microSD cards. These get posted out to various family members (who are asked nicely to keep them somewhere safe) and kept in my firesafe.

Any passwords and serial numbers and etc are printed out, with the name and URL of the software they're for. A copy of that goes in the fire safe. There are copies of the spreadsheet on various drives.

All the other stuff is kruft. I do have multiple copies of my music but that's only because tagging MP3 files is hell.

I'd be interested to hear how the drobo failed.

<comment><USER4> Little tip for the fire safe. YMMV.

Put some cash in the fire safe. If someone breaks into it (thinking there is money) they will probably be less likely to take other things in the safe or destroy those items (I mean a hard drive they might leave - obviously they will take anything of clear value). Assumption also is that the HD is encrypted.

This comes via a practice a long time ago with cash registers. You leave the cash register unlocked and put some cash in it. Thief is presumably happy and doesn't trash the rest of the place.

"Any passwords and serial numbers and etc are printed out, with the name and URL of the software they're for. A copy of that goes in the fire safe. "

Doesn't seem like a good idea to put plain text passwords (is that what you are saying) in a place that someone will look thinking there is something else of value in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Backups are one of our specialties.

First off, if you're in the market for a data recovery on your Drobo, I strongly recommend getting in touch with Gillware Data Recovery: [https://gillware.com/](https://gillware.com/). Their prices are very fair, they have great staff, and they have a system that lets you preview your recovered data before paying anything. We got a new business client entirely because his RAID 1 NAS pooped itself and Gillware was able to recover everything he needed from it.

If you've got a lot of data, online backup services are usually not an option. My usual advice then is to have a completely separate device that automatically pulls data from your primary device and stores backups in an archival format. If you have the time and inclination to do the setup on it, I really recommend BackupPC for this: [http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/](http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/). I've used BackupPC for years for larger-scale backups; it's very reliable, it's not too difficult to get going, it does deduplication and compression and pooling and uses rsync (when possible) to reduce network load, it can easily be configured to send you an email in the event of trouble, and it has a simple web interface you can check into on a regular basis. I've yet to find a commercial shrink-wrapped product that does what BackupPC does as well as BackupPC does it.

The downside of course is that you still wouldn't have offsite backups, so in the event of a fire or other local disaster, you might still be looking at complete data loss. If at all possible, try to pick a few of the most important directories of files, and get those backed up online. I haven't heard so many bad things about Crashplan or Backblaze, so I'm curious what you've heard.

</comment><comment><USER6> For every storage drive I have two backup drives. One of them I store in my home (but not connected to my computer) and one of them is stored encrypted (FileVault full disk encryption) at my friends place.

I use this to backup:

rsync -vaxXES --delete --backup --backup-dir="/Volumes/backup/__rsync/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")/" \--log-file="/Volumes/backup/__rsync/$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S").log" \--exclude="__rsync/" \--exclude=".Trash/" \--exclude=".Trashes/" \--exclude=".Spotlight-V100" \--exclude=".fseventsd/" \--exclude=".DocumentRevisions-V100/" \--exclude=".TemporaryItems/" /Volumes/data/ /Volumes/backup/

Sometimes i delete stuff in the __rsync dir manually.

I've tried Crashplan and Backblaze, but they're crazy slow from Sweden.

</comment><comment><USER7> Local linux machine with three 2T drives (WD Red's), setup in RAID 5 for redundancy against a drive failing. LVM running on top of the RAID 5 drive trio to allow slice-and-dice allocation of the space. The LVM backup partition only consumes 220G.

rsnapshot ([http://www.rsnapshot.org/](http://www.rsnapshot.org/)) from other machines (they are Linux as well) onto the Linux backup server (so now there are two physically separate copies, master machine and backup machine). And rsnapshot provides "point in time" views of the backups.

Periodically rsync the rsnapshot tree to an offsite location with enough space to hold the 220G worth of backup data.

What I don't do, which you imply you did with your Drobo, is have the only copy of anything truly important on the RAID5 array only. If Linux md or LVM corrupts the backup partition I just remake it, and start rsync'ing again (and pull old snapshots from the offsite). If one drive fails in the RAID5 array, I'll replace the drive and rebuild the array, but the data should still be there. If two drives fail in the RAID5 array close on each others heels (so that the whole RAID array goes away) then this is the same as if md or LVM corrupted the data.

"Backup" does not mean having "redundant protection" in one device, it means having plural separate, fully independent, copies such that corruption/loss of one copy is meaningless to the other copies.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think every child should experience a disk failure. After all, it's only a matter of time before each of us has one. Better to get it out of the way when we have little to lose.

People replying will recommend many backup solutions. No matter what you go with, it's important to trust no single party. Your home could burn down. Dropbox/Crashplan/S3/etc could fail. Media in a safe-deposit box could become corrupted over time. (This is common with flash-based storage and CDs.) Pick at least two independent backup solutions.

Also, backups are a lifestyle change. They're something you have to maintain indefinitely. File systems, I/O interfaces, media formats, APIs, and businesses all come and go over time. There's no one thing that is sure to keep your data around for decades.

Finally, most people don't have much data that's actually important. I have maybe 20GB of stuff that matters to me: photos I've taken, documents I've written, and a few videos. In terms of value per byte, documents are the highest, followed by photos, then video. It's much easier to maintain backups when your data set is small. Music, books, and other mass media can be re- bought/downloaded.

<comment><USER9> >There's no one thing that is sure to keep your data around for decades.

Using paper will keep your data around for decades.

<comment><USER8> There are many ways in which paper can be destroyed. My mother has no pictures of her childhood because her home was burned down in a race riot.

And analog media has many disadvantages. Storing, reproducing, transporting, searching, or modifying analog stuff is really hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recently found myself with most of my data - accumulated over a 10-year period - in a single drive, and decided it was time to do something about it. My takeaways:

\- Avoid Backblaze unless you have your external drives connected at all times, files are erased after 30 days if not seen by the app.

\- GDrive is the cheapest, but can't backup external HDDs at all.

\- Arq/Glacier or Tarsnap is probably the safest archival you can get, but can be quite expensive depending on your usage pattern.

\- Crashplan, as Backblaze, focus on 'devices'. They are best suited to people who don't have lots of files outside of their computer. Crashplan has a terrible reputation for losing customer's data.

In the end I went with Bitcasa[1] and am quite happy so far. It works the way I want it to: not necessary to mirror all data locally, can throw files adhoc at it, is accessible anywhere, decent web UI, mobile apps. Price is fair (€8/month for 1TB) and speeds are decent. It's the best I could find, still keeping my HDD backup in a closet just in case...

[1] [http://l.bitcasa.com/XFLTXjG7](http://l.bitcasa.com/XFLTXjG7) (with my referral code)

</comment><comment><USER11> Not very happy with this but I have 2 (1T) hard drives which I mirror via rsync and back up on those.

I have 1 (1T) hard drive at work, to have an off-site backup.

Plan to use Arq for important files to back on Glacier.

I'd change the two hard drive system to a 4 bay RAID setup using Synology etc.

\----

I was thinking of buying Drobo but I guess I was always scared of their "secret sauce" and getting stuck with recovery if anything happened to it.

<comment><USER12> That's similar to what I do. I have a pair of 2TB bare SATA drives that I rotate offsite. I got two different brands to try to minimize the possibilities of them both failing at nearly the same time. I used to use Synctoy on Windows to back up to them but now it's either cp or rsync from my MacBook. I do need to do this more often and I really should upgrade to bigger drives now, but they hold the stuff I'm most worried about losing. What I'm most worried about is if my original source files got corrupted, I don't want to back them up over top of good copies.

I've tried online backup services and was really disappointed by the throughput. I think it took me nearly 5 months to do an initial backup on Crashplan and that didn't even include my photo archive, VMWare images, etc.

I've tried using services like Flickr as photo backup but the retrieval process is brutal. There's no good way to bulk retrieve photos from them.

I do use Dropbox to sort of back up anything I'm currently working on but they don't retain history past 30 days without paying for Packrat. Plus I've soured on them due to privacy concerns.

I do use BitBucket for almost all of my source code and I've been pretty happy with it.

I do use Time Machine on an old 1TB drive for my main system (MacBook Pro) and that's actually been pretty damn good. The handful of times I've needed to recover a file lately, I've been able to get it from Time Machine in a couple minutes with little hassle. I do need to get a newer, bigger drive for that sometime.

<comment><USER11> >> I got two different brands to try to minimize the possibilities of them both failing at nearly the same time.

Wow! I forgot to mention but I do this too! Thank you! My wife has called me paranoid of the highest order and now I can point to this comment and feel better that I am not the only one.

>> I've tried online backup services and was really disappointed by the throughput

Yes. I have been disappointed with all of these services.

>> Flickr as photo backup but the retrieval process is brutal.

Yes. I tried apps like Flickery etc but it is just not worth it.

>> I do use Dropbox

Nice idea. I have some files on it but I only use Dropbox (the free version) for files that I need on-the-go for anywhere-access.

>> I do use BitBucket for almost all of my source code and I've been pretty happy with it.

Same here. Bitbucket for some private random experiments and projects, Github for things that I don't care about.

>> I do use Time Machine on an old 1TB

Actually, Time Machine is the only decent backup utility I have ever found. Ever. The ease of use is just mind-blowing. I remember more than a decade ago, when my only chance was to wipe out the system and reinstall the OS or to keep a partition or separate drive for home/data. And with newer OSX, Time Machine can back up to as many drives as you want, which makes it easy for me to take actual direct backups on multiple drives.

On top of it, privacy is such a big concern. Then, it usually becomes a pain. I tried [https://www.aerofs.com/](https://www.aerofs.com/) too but then left it because it was too buggy. I will have to try it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Servers:

\- Configs and small important files: [http://www.tarsnap.com/](http://www.tarsnap.com/)

Laptop:

\- 2 x TimeMachine

\- Amazon Glacier with Arq (Weekly, just important files)

\- External Disks mirrored to same model with CarbonCopyCloner

</comment><comment><USER14> I live laptop-only, and I buy my disks in triples. I do this even with SSDs because they, despite being solid state, are similarly flawed just like their spinning rust kin. Instead, their exhibited failure modes are less electromechanical and more simply "the universe is doing silly things to my data." (See also: solar flares, etc.)

The other two disks get crammed into USB enclosures, and I use rsync to copy data around in a manner very similar to jwz's [http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html). With USB 3.0, this is very fast.

That keeps me from experiencing a catastrophic data loss scenario, which is step one. It also solves a work continuity problem wherein I would otherwise be left now with the problem restoring from backups. Here, restoration is literally a matter of swapping disks and rebooting.

Do I actually lose data? Well, yeah, but I've put an upper bound on it that is livable: I lose at most a week because the disk in my drawer at work gets swapped out every Friday for the one I keep at home.

Some caveats: I don't use encryption at the level of my OS's VFS layer (yet), and I don't use RAID. I also don't use non-standard configurations like HFS+ with case sensitivity, btrfs, ZFS, etc.

I keep most sensitive data (think private keys) elsewhere. Those are backed up by way of dumping to hardcopy and storing with my tax information. I can OCR the ASCII-armored representations later if I need to, and it makes choosing a fire safe easy since I don't need one that's rated for digital data storage.

Now, this unfortunately doesn't solve the problem of storing historical copies of things, and I'm trying to find a way to accomplish that sanely without having to resort to alien technology like Plan 9's venti and fossil or vendor lock-in à la Time Machine, or rsyncing to dated directories.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a very simple folder structure in my /home/ directory.

      ├── Code
      ├── Dirty
      ├── Downloads
      ├── Media
      │   ├── Books
      │   ├── Music
      │   ├── Pictures
      │   └── Videos
      ├── Projects
      └── Scripts

I try to keep it very tidy because otherwise I would create a mess. "Dirty" and "Downloads" are working like /tmp, except they're getting wiped every 5 days [1]. Everything except "Downloads" and "Dirty" is backed up daily, incrementally and encrypted with s3cmd [2]. Some Inspiration here [3]. Sometimes I delete old stuff manually with s3cmd or from the S3 backend. Dotfiles and bootstrap scripts are stored on Github and Dropbox, so are serious projects. I also keep track of installed packages to be able to restore state on a new machine [4]. I'm not very emotional about restoring my machine. With a fast internet connection it takes me like 20-30 minutes to completely restore a wiped machine.

[1] [http://askubuntu.com/a/20831](http://askubuntu.com/a/20831) [2] [http://s3tools.org/](http://s3tools.org/) [3] [http://www.triatechnology.com/encrypted-incremental- backups-...](http://www.triatechnology.com/encrypted-incremental-backups-to- amazon-glacier-in-linux/) [4] [http://askubuntu.com/a/137991](http://askubuntu.com/a/137991)

</comment><comment><USER16> You haven't heard good things about Crashplan? I have heard of one incident (reported on the web) where someone's data was lost at Crashplan HQ. But no system is infallible. It's generally excellent. It Just Works, it's cheap, fast, unobtrusive, flexible...

My rules whenever anyone asks about backup:

1\. Use backup systems, not file storage. Copying files somewhere is not a backup system. You could delete or corrupt files and never notice. Backup systems keep historic copies of files.

2\. Use at least three backup locations. For example: Local hard drive, machine in a different building, the cloud. CrashPlan lets you do this, for example.

3\. Test your backups regularly. It's boring, tedious and tricky, but it's less painful than losing your photos.

<comment><USER17> Is losing your photos really THAT painful?

The best photos are usually backed up on Facebook/etc. anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> * work and dotfiles are on github

* personal projects are both on github and on tarsnap

* my pictures are on google drive and on tarsnap

* my music goes into google music (even thought now i'm using spotify now)

everything else is either on google drive or in any other kind of cloud service.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been using Degoo for a while. They encrypt all your stuff and spread it around the globe.

You get the first 100GB for free + 50GB when you invite friends.

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

<comment><USER20> Caution : bad ratings on WOT : [https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/degoo.com](https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/degoo.com)

<comment><USER21> Co-founder of Degoo here. I've tried to address the concerns the reviewers at WOT had but unfortunately they refused to change the factually incorrect statements in the reviews. For instance, they claim that we are inactive and only collect e-mails but you can see at our website that we are very much active. You can see our discussion here: [https://www.mywot.com/en/forum/20714-degoo- com](https://www.mywot.com/en/forum/20714-degoo-com)

I'd love to answer any questions or concerns you might have about our service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Locally, I use TimeCapsule on a standalone drive networked over my router. This happens automatically when I am on my home network.

I also duplicate things to Google Drive. This happens automatically when I am on any network.

<comment><USER4> "I use TimeCapsule on a standalone drive networked over my router."

Doesn't protect against a fire. Or someone who swipes the router and/or the data source.

Suggest either an offsite backup or a fireproof hard drive (iosafe for example) to backup the backup. (TC is funky with attached drives or at least that is what I have found when trying to use an attached drive on an airport extreme). (Of course someone can also swipe the fireproof hard drive).

<comment><USER22> I agree that TC is funky with attached drives.

Also, I don't care (much) about old versions of my personal data. If I did, this would be an unacceptable backup solution because fire/theft of my TC could wipe it out, as you mention. But between my TimeCapsule and my Google Drive, it strikes me as unlikely that my laptop, my TC, and my Google Drive will fail me all at the same moment. If so, I would be SOL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It might be worth having a set of n humble USB drives, one of which is in a safety deposit box ( cycle through them ) with a weekly copy of everything on the RAID.

I set n at 2, and substitute a cheap "fire safe" for the safety deposit box ( I know, I know... ) . I don't know that I will build another RAID when this one goes. I have yet to pull anything off it.

But my primary copy of things is all still on my main machine, un-RAIDed. For legacy software reasons I won't bore you with, that's still a Win7 box.

</comment><comment><USER24> Crashplan. Off-site backups. Works great on linux. Saves old versions/deleted files forever. Multiple devices for cheap. Set it and forget it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Amazon Glacier for stuff that can't be redownloaded or reproduced - <USER2> photos and videos, mostly.

Time Machine for documents and projects - those usually live in Dropbox or Github/Bitbucket as well.

I don't bother with backing up OS/configuration, since it takes no more than a day to get a clean OS and applications to a state where I'm feeling at home.

</comment><comment><USER26> I bought a external drive and backup all my computers to that. Better yet if you can store it in a water/fire proof safe.

You could also look at setting up a NAS.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network- attached_storage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage)

I don't' trust any backup source that is not my own.

</comment><comment><USER27> I currently use Backblaze, and backup to S3 using Arq. Most of my work is stored on Dropbox, too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Time Machine to a local Synology Diskstation w/RAID, plus Backblaze. Will also chime in that I have nothing but love for Backblaze -- every time I've needed them (small files only, never a full restore yet), they've worked flawlessly.

</comment><comment><USER29> Carbonite.com

I have 1263776 files or 582GB backed-up for only $60,00

[http://imgur.com/GiSjWkn](http://imgur.com/GiSjWkn)

All servers, laptops and desktops I run occasionally put their files onto my main-desktop disc and everything gets uploaded to carbonite.

<comment> alok-g Per the website FAQs, it seems the $60 plan includes only data from "Users" folder and specific file types. Is there a way to back up other locations, and all file types?

I have all my data in a separate partition, reaching 1.5 TB. With say 2 MBPS upload speed, it seems it would take about three months for the first upload.

Also, did you face any issues with data limits from your ISP for the first upload?

<comment><USER29> It might be because I have a 5 year old subscription and that other rules apply, but I pay the $60,00 and backup everything from .txt, .php, .cpp, many gigs of .avi etc. (I would never get to 500gb otherwise)

No trouble from my ISP. Being from the Netherlands, I obviously have a 100/100 fiber connection. So it really isn't that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I really want to setup something that's easy to use for my parents. Does anyone have any suggestions? Crashplan seems like the easiest choice. Does backing to to glacier with arq require any technical expertise after it's all setup?

<comment><USER13> No, it's all automated and works fine without checking up on it. The only thing you have to do from time to time is updating Arq. You could also enable mail notifications so you'll get notifications if Arq reports any errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What have you heard bad about Backblaze? I backup my two machines there and have nothing but praise for them. It pushes up new files as soon as they are saved and they can post you a hard drive with your files if you need to do a restore.

<comment><USER32> You need to be careful with their excluded file lists. On the past they have changed them and its easy to miss whatever notification they send.

Also, in my experience their throttling sucks. If I get back from traveling with a bunch of data like pictures or video, it crushes my upstream bandwidth and disrupts VoIP.

That said, for the price, it is an excellent service, and their restore mechanism works well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I use Crashplan with two destinations: their cloud and Crashplan instance on my home NAS. This mitigates fire risk and keeps restores fast since I can just restore data from NAS instead of waiting for full restore from their cloud.

</comment><comment><USER34> I want to keep everything local. So I backup my important stuff to a usb drive that is inside a waterproof/fireproof case with a usb connector designed just for such a thing.

</comment><comment><USER35> I keep all important files on Google Drive. Drive is syncing with my NAS, which is pushing a backup off-site to Amazon Glacier daily.

Using TimeMachine on my laptop as well (for convenience).

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady >> "I haven't heard good things from Backblaze"

I've got nothing but praise for Backblaze. Been using them for about 4 years and it's worked flawlessly.

<comment><USER10> Except it doesn't really keep backups for external drives, unless they are connected to your machine at least once every 30 days.

<comment> k-mcgrady Didn't know that as I only use one internal drive, no externals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Time Machine for main backup (everything) Dropbox for documents (also nice to be accesible on my iPhone) Bitbucket (for dotfiles)

</comment><comment><USER32> Easiest: Backblaze Cheapest for most people: Arq Nerdiest: rsync.net</comment>


Why Are Hedge Funds Not Blowing Up All Over the Place? - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/why-are-hedge-funds-not-blowing-up-all-over-the-place/

<comment><USER2> Just wait. I have a few friends at hedge funds that are _very_ worried about their job security. The layoffs have already begun; I think we'll see some major hedge fund blowups within the next quarter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read the note at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER4> A few reasons I could guess,

Lots of hedge funds are commission based so if they lost money, they get nothing. With so much action in the market lately with such large swings, why not take some chances. Worst case you lose more, in which case it will effect you the same as liquidating would. Best case you make money.

Plus I imagine many managers are like gambling addicts. They see a lot of possible good gambles and want to take a shot. All the better with the current risk/reward formula.

</comment><comment><USER5> In theory hedge funds are supposed to make money regardless of the market direction. In practice, they need liquidity to do so, which is why the current crisis should be pretty bad for them.

</comment><comment><USER6> they probably are, they just aren't letting the public know about it. So that they can close quietly without the panic

</comment><comment><USER7> Someone had to be on the other side of the banks' trades.

<comment><USER2> Not anymore. ;-)

(When the counterparty goes bust, they've gotta collect what they're owed in bankruptcy court. Even if they were on the winning end of the trade, there's no guarantee that they'll get cash out of it. And in the meantime, the sudden disappearance of their trading partner means that some of their trades are likely dangerously unhedged.)</comment></comment>


The DevOp - <AUTHOR> https://thedevop.com/ <comment><USER2> >So if I asked to buy your laptop directly out of your hands right now, how much would you demand? $3000? $10,000? $50,000?

i would tell you to get lost.</comment>


iPhones start slowing down after a year of use, but that is way too soon - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2017/12/20/16803190/iphone-slowdown-is-needed-but-also-a-problem <comment><USER2> It's not too soon - there's always a new model out every year! What a coincidence!</comment>


Threat Intelligence – Beyond the Hype - <AUTHOR> https://www.alienvault.com/blogs/security-essentials/threat-intelligence-definitions

<comment><AUTHOR> Learning what's possible for an attacker informs us about what we must defend against. And in information security, sometimes its just smarter to use simple insights (like these) by looking at what's worked in the past.

In this blog post for AlienVault, Data Scientist, Michael Roytman, suggests a new model for thinking about threat intelligence and security data.</comment>


U.S. Stocks Fall as Rate Decision Spurs Global Economy Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/u-s-index-futures-little-changed-as-investors-weigh-fed-policy <comment><AUTHOR> This is really funny to me.

First, the Fed tries to not spook the markets by raising interest rates, deciding instead that the market would do better if interest rates stayed near zero. Then, the market gets spooked by the Fed's decision to not spook them, visualizing the previously noticed yet ignored global economic weakness.

How is it possible to make sane economic policy decisions when the market is perpetually a skittish deer?</comment>


Ask HN: "Please don't use Internet Explorer" message - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am building a web app that does not run on Internet Explorer and I want to put up a sign on my home page to ask users to view via Firefox/Chrome/Safari.
Can any one think of nice, funny messages that convey the message without sounding patronizing?
Here is one for starters:
"This site works best in modern browsers like Firefox, Chrome or Safari - all of which are free. It seems that you are using Internet Explorer, though fine for most purposes, it does not support many advanced features supported by most modern browsers. This application needs these new features and hence we must ask you to have an extra bit of patience and come back from another browser!" <comment><USER2> Be concise and call for an action first, e.g.:

 _Please use a modern browser to view this website. We recommend Firefox, Chrome or Safari. These browsers support some of the advanced features used to build this website._

You need to be friendly and polite, but there is no need for a lot of boilerplate language to sugarcoat it. You could caption it with something like "Internet Explorer 6 is not supported".

That being said, why do you need to exclude older clients from your app? Javascript frameworks tend to make supporting a wider range of clients relatively effortless, by providing fallbacks.

I would only exclude users based on their browsers for backend applications targeted at a small group of tech-savvy users and if building something that degrades well isn't viable within the scope of your project. The latter also depends on what kind of project it is (if its a small hacking project or a demonstration of some HTML5 functionality I totally get not being bothered with supporting IE7).

In my own work I make sure everything works and doesn't look embarrassingly ugly in older browsers, while some minor presentation details (e.g. shadows) are only visible in bleeding edge clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips!

At the moment I am focusing on getting the features right and it gets annoying for me to test every feature in IE (I use a mac) - Maybe I should check out some cross-browser UI testing tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Implying that the individual's browser is not modern might sound offensive. Lots of people aren't allowed to control which browser or which version they use at work.

I would rephrase it as a feature thing to make it more objective. "You appear to be running IE6 which doesn't support X, so you'll miss out on feature Y of this site. To experience Y, please either upgrade your browser or try Chrome/Firefox or Safari" might be a bit more useful to the user.

</comment><comment><USER4> When you say "Internet Explorer", do you really mean "IE6"?

If not, which features does your web app require that IE7/8/9 don't support?

I run both Chrome 10 and IE8 in parallel on my system, and I can't think of any web apps I've used that don't run on IE8.</comment>


The Facebook: Another Product of a Broken System - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/the-facebook-another-prod_b_100662.html <comment><USER2> Constructive criticism: This essay rambles a little bit. There are a bunch of ideas that are hinted at but never really developed. This doesn't especially bother me and it's actually kind of interesting, but I'm also not sure it's the best way to sell the book if that is part of the goal.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have known who Aaron is since like...1999 (I was 13)? I've been checking ThinkComputer once or twice a year since then but there never seemed to be updates on what was going on - it's good to see he is still involved in the tech industry at some level.

Anyway, it was interesting read his perspective on Harvard / higher education (and see a little more commentary on the Facebook issue).

</comment><comment><USER4> More constructive criticism: write longer articles. Like Steve Yegge and PG, your writing is very engaging. I was left with a feeling of "oh, that's it? I wanted more". Intentional or not, it was a good way to sell the book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll show your comment to my editor there... Typically, they like articles to be short because the conventional wisdom is that people reading blogs have a 700-word attention span. (I tend to disagree with this wisdom, and even if it's true, I have little to say to people who can only comprehend 700 words at a time.) I was already pushing it at 1,100 words, and I had absolutely had to cut it down from 1,500.

Fortunately, if you do want something longer, there's always that 156,083-word essay you mentioned...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "My proposed special concentration in the intersection between "technology and its impact on society" could not be classified purely as economics or computer science. Each Dean reacted to my proposal with the same look: how could one even think such unclassifiable thoughts!"

Looks like you went to the wrong school.[1] But on a serious note, did they actually not make a serious attempt to accommodate you? It's not exactly a novel area of study.

[1] <http://sts.stanford.edu/about.html>

<comment><USER4> Also on the topics of "technology and its impact on society", Mark Pesce can be very insightful. His video entitled "Piracy is good" made the rounds here awhile back, and the rest of his work ranges from insightful dangerously- close-to-the-brink-of-sanity, but all in a very fun way.

<http://www.markpesce.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Facebook is Aaron Greenspan's favorite subject.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Huffington Post asked me to write about Facebook. I asked them to write about something else. They want one more related article and then I promise something more interesting!

<comment><USER6> Haha. Good to know I wasn't talking about you behind your back. It's cool, man.</comment></comment></comment>


A miniature accelerator to treat cancer - <AUTHOR> http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/07/miniature-accelerator-treat-cancer

<comment><USER2> Currently work in healthcare, with bedside experience on an oncology/stem cell transplant unit. Many thoughts on this article:

I think this is going to have a big impact on radiotheraphy once it becomes commercially available, and hopefully, the end outcome for patients is that it will allow them to enjoy a higher quality of life for a longer period of time. In general, radiation is not used in the treatment of all types of cancer, and when it is used, it this is a very high level commentary) is generally used to shrink the size of the tumor. Frequently, it is used after other parts of the treatment protocol have stopped working. Having said that, the mechanism of action and features from this accelerator make it seem as though patients will be able to recieve smaller doses of radiation therapy and therefore, will avoid the issues that come with the treatment, allowing that higher quality of life.

I'd be interested to see the biomedical work CERN has done around disrupting the hedgehog pathways. I think that's where we're going to make a lot of progress in developing actual cures for a number of cancers.

One thing I firmly believe, and wish many more people understood, is that cancer, and cancer treatment, all comes down to chemistry. And, as we know, a whole hell of a lot of chemistry, especially biochemistry, is related to those lovely subatomic particles the folks at CERN are the experts on.

Cheers to this group for their new accelerator. Well done.</comment>


Designing Problems are for the Lazy - <AUTHOR> http://zeroinfluence.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/designing-problems-are-for-the-lazy/ <comment><USER2> Wow. How did my post end up on ycombinator.com?</comment>


World's Smallest Political Quiz - <AUTHOR> http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

<comment><USER2> I agreed with almost everything... which puts me squarely in the libertarian category.

<comment><USER3> I'm on the border between libertarian and liberal

<comment><USER4> I was on the line between libertarian and centrists, although the text said I was a Centrists. Interesting questions.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's a great starter project to learn Go? - <AUTHOR> I want to kick the tires with Go, probably to power a React app. I'm pretty familiar with Python/Flask, Elixir/Python and NodeJS. What has been your experience learning Go? Where does it shine? Any hiccups you came across? <comment><USER2> Do voice over IP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any reason for this? Just off the bat, this would probably be a good fit for Elixir/Erlang, given the languages' pedigree.

<comment><USER2> It's a non-trivial problem that would teach you a lot about Go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do people make money from Facebook Apps? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time posing a question, so please be gentle. I searched HN but didn't find anything similar (not recent enough at least).
I have an idea that I think would be quite popular on Facebook (at least among my FB friends). I think I will go ahead and implement it anyway, but was wondering if FB apps really make money.
If there is anyone with experience writing (and, more importantly, successfully monetizing) FB apps, then I'd appreciate sharing their experience.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Yes.

The easiest way to monetize is with banner ads from one of the 40+ authorized Facebook ad networks. <http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/> Believe it or not, people DO click on banner ads, and you should see about a $0.10 eCPM for US and UK traffic. (Traffic outside of those two regions often have less than a penny eCPMs.)

The second-easiest way to monetize is to create a virtual currency that has value to your users, and sell that currency via Facebook Credits. <http://developers.facebook.com/credits/>

I've personally built about a dozen Facebook apps, and have been involved in close to 100. A general rule of thumb is to expect to make $100/month for every 10,000 monthly active users (MAUs). A modest success on Facebook can garner about 100K MAUs which should net you in the low thousands of $USD per month.

If you want to support yourself full-time, you'll need to aim for 1,000,000 MAUs.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Helps greatly. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Zynga are an extreme 'yes' example.

I have experience with some FB apps, mainly just app versions of websites. These were not monetized(by me at least).

<https://developers.facebook.com/> is your friend!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Zynga are the exception rather than the rule. I don't expect my app to go viral like Farmville (but I wouldn't mind if it did!).

I've already been all through FB's dev website, but wanted to get some feedback from real users.

Thanks again for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> do facebook apps make money? yes, some do. how? same way as normal web apps. some charge subscription fees. some use ads. some will be or are using credits to sell things. etc..

<comment><USER5> ...and some get acquired by EA Sports.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: HN post upvotes vs comments - <AUTHOR>

My last two Ask HN posts received more upvotes than comments. I realise the cognitive load / workload to respond to a post is greater than to simply click an 'upvote' button, but I'm wondering does there come a point where the ratio has meaning, i.e. lots of upvotes vs few comments suggests a question that is of interest to many, yet few people know the answer to. This would have more value than a post with few upvotes and many comments. Just thinking aloud here, is there then a metric that would cross over to the business space, where a business problem has a wide impact but few people tryin to solve that problem. <comment><USER2> I think the first is true, lots of upvotes less comments, probably because people are in general interested but not knowledgable enough to answer the question. The second, it might be that people who comment don't agree with the question, and see an upvote as a vote for your question.</comment>


So, I quit my job and built a startup. Here's Why and How. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eval.me/why-i-quit-my-job-to-build-eval-me

<comment><USER2> I love stories like this. It takes a lot of courage to quit your day job and pursue your dreams. This seems like a great idea, I hope it works out!</comment>


Pyramid Final 1.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-devel/browse_thread/thread/2e0c1d669924ea3f?hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats to Ben Bangert, Chris McDonough and the rest of the team responsible for getting this released prior to PyCon.

</comment><comment> old-gregg Congrats! As a long-time user of Pylons I must say these guys rock. I didn't always agree with their design choices for Pylons and Pyramid, but this framework is rock-solid, it is truly production-quality piece of software.

Also it's built for a very specific user/programmer in mind, i.e. someone who's not afraid of popping the hood here and there, who doesn't need a blogging app in 30 minutes but in exchange gets to use the best collection of Python libraries neatly stitched together.

<comment><USER2> I absolutely agree with the pylons love. For any serious app, you have to pop the hood in every web framework, and it's such a relief to find a framework that's actually designed with that in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a complete Python n00b just starting to get interested in the language. Could somebody please explain why I might use this instead of Django for web app development?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/48681/pros-cons-of- django...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/48681/pros-cons-of-django-vs- pylons)

Granted this applies to Pylons, not Pyramid, but, Pyramid is a leap forward, so, the points are still quite valid.

<comment><USER3> Very helpful link, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I must say, the documentation is really nice. Not just in terms of completeness, but also in terms of readability, structure and presentation.

[http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/1.0/index.htm...](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/1.0/index.html)

That alone will make me have a play with Pyramid.

</comment><comment><USER5> How have I never even heard about this before? About six months ago I was looking for a Python Framework for Agile dev (one of my previous clients was nuts about agile & python). Kicking myself for not finding this :( Looks pretty cool after skimming through it; keep up the good work Pyramid dev team!

<comment><USER6> It was still repoze.bfg back then

<comment><USER5> Ah that makes sense. Still didn't find it though, so maybe it's time to switch from Bing back to Google ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just started a bunch of Django projects because Pylons was discontinued and Pyramid was still called alpha in their docs. Oh well, next one will be Pyramid.</comment>


HP Elite Slice - <AUTHOR> http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/elite-slice/overview.html <comment><USER2> This is 2016 [https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/01/hp-elite-slice- modular-p...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/01/hp-elite-slice-modular-pc/) what's the news?

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand they want to make it look clean, but they show no cords at all in most of the pictures. There's also no mention of battery life, so it must be powered.

If they're going to lie about the cords, what else are they lying about? Also $699?? WTF?

<comment><USER4> Defining "lying" as "doesn't have cords in promo images" is really really weird. You don't see too many Dell ads with cords flying down to their towers either.

<comment><USER5> There's a picture of a guy using it (with zero cords) to take a conference call, which goes a bit beyond a flattering studio photo. It allegedly depicts real world use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the concept, but it's missing what's in my opinion the component that would benefit most from modularity: dedicated graphics.

A significant portion of the target market would probably have no need for any more graphics power than what comes with the processor, so not including it in the base module makes a lot of sense. However, for many use cases, discrete graphics is an absolute necessity, so not even offering it as an option in a modular system targeted at the high-end market strikes me as an odd omission (as far as I could tell, the system doesn't even have Thunderbolt 3, so it can't support eGPUs through normal means either).

<comment><USER7> The USB Type C interface should give them external graphics which would be a better alternative than discrete graphics.

<comment><USER6> USB Type C is only the connector specification, and it offers very little guarantees about what protocols are actually supported through the connector. External graphics would require a USB Type C port with support for Thunderbolt 3, which is an entirely separate specification from the USB 3.1 spec that's usually the baseline for such ports, and offers 40 Gbit/s in bandwidth vs USB 3.1 Gen2's 10 Gbit/s (and Gen1, which is more commonly used, is only 5 Gbit/s).

I couldn't find any mentions of Thunderbolt in its specs, so I don't believe external graphics is a possibility here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "HP Elite Slice is like no desktop you've ever seen"

Well, except for the Mac Mini, which it pretty much looks like.

<comment><USER9> Except for the 35W CPU's - so you can get a real quad-core i5/i7... but yeah, I don't see it moving well at this price.

(at least Apple admits up front that they're dual cores, unlike almost every other use of lie5/lie7's...)

<comment><USER10> Yeah it's also macosx maybe you want to write for ios, if you're stuck with windows it's not going to help. Apple might be underpowered but you also don't need to use an entire cpu core just to run constant virus protection.

<comment><USER11> Just anecdotally, my 2013 dual-core i5 (1.3GHz) Macbook Air seems to run smoother and faster than a majority of the "new" PC laptops I deal with. I'm not sure if it's OS X or the hardware, but for a four year old machine I wouldn't trade it for any new PC laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone else notice the vast majority of the photos show it on a desk without a single cord coming out of the back?

<comment><USER13> This really confused me. Even if you power it from your monitor you've got to plug it in. No shame in having one or two cords, so why fake the product shots?

<comment><USER14> They could have at least set up the shots to imply the cords were just hidden behind a table or something.

<comment><USER11> My thought was that one of the modules had a plug on the bottom so you could run the cables through a hole in a wall/desk... but it looks like none of the modules, not even the VESA mount, have anything like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love it that you can customise it to have FreeDOS instead of Windows:

[http://store.hp.com/us/en/ConfigureView?catalogId=10051&lang...](http://store.hp.com/us/en/ConfigureView?catalogId=10051&langId=-1&storeId=10151&urlLangId=&catEntryId=1406154&quantity=1)

Edit: PS, is there a way to get this thing in Australia? Their aussie website is atrocious, can't for the live of me find the customise option for the Slice...

<comment><USER16> What advantage is there to having a FreeDOS PC?

<comment><USER17> It's free, so you can wipe it and install whatever OS you want without paying for a Windows license. And for the manufacturer the benefit is that it's clear that it's barebones, so no support requests for the preinstalled OS.

I don't know why the alternative isn't "ship with empty disk" though. Maybe some weird regulation, or to make it clearer to dealers and customers that it isn't broken, just without an OS?

<comment><USER18> > I don't know why the alternative isn't "ship with empty disk" though

You can't ship a "computer" which doesn't do anything when you turn it on. FreeDOS has just enough basic capability that HP can say "yeah this is a functional computer out of the box" while having so little capability that its installation implies a wink-wink understanding that the customer will install his own OS that he'll take responsibility for.

<comment><USER17> In what sense "can't"? Legal requirement somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a NUC with a USB port on the bottom.

(see: Intel NUC, Gigabyte BRIX, AsRock BeeBox, etc...)

</comment><comment><USER20> HP decided to interrupt my customer experience by asking me about my experience 30 seconds after I opened the page. No thanks.

<comment><USER21> This sort of thing always gets on my nerves. Plenty of sellers do it on Amazon (almost always before the product has even arrived), many apps do it, etc. I always leave a negative review in such cases.

"<company name> sent a nag asking for a review/rating. As the product hasn't arrived yet / just got installed 10 seconds ago, I can only rate what I've seen of it: no product whatsoever. 1 star! If they'd waited a week or two I might actually have a positive opinion about <product name> to write here."

If they ask later on instead (after at least a week of use) I'll instead leave an actual review of the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Protect, detect, and recover from malicious BIOS attacks using HP Sure Start with Dynamic Protection - the industry's first self-healing BIOS that monitors and corrects BIOS corruption in real-time"

In the footnote, it says that it corrects BIOS corruption every 15 minutes. I'd be interested to see how this works and what technology they are using. What happens if my BIOS is corrupted within the 15 minute window and I reboot?

<comment><USER23> This implies that the bios can be corrupted - the bios shouldn't accept unsigned updates (without an in bios flag being switched first), even from a root-level user on the OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> OK, so a 2x more expensive NUC with emphasis on design and HP-specific modularity. I think Intel planned custom lids as well and MSI Cubi has a storage expander, so HP probably took cues from them. I personally like these super mini PCs, for office work you don't need anything else these days.

</comment><comment><USER25> one thousand plus days of Apple not updating the Mac Mini while holding firm to their price and HP reinvents it? The value isn't in the components, it is in the integration and software.

This is the space Apple should have been in long ago but they dropped the ball with the desktop market three years ago and only seem to have moved after being goaded, nigh embarrassed about the state of their offerings.

While this HP is not useful to me I do appreciate what they have done.

</comment><comment><USER26> ASUS gives you barebones much cheaper. Just buy RAM + hard drive and you are good to go.

[https://www.asus.com/us/Mini-PCs/VivoMini- Products/](https://www.asus.com/us/Mini-PCs/VivoMini-Products/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I am really interested in a consumer-clean modular desktop concept. Sometimes I feel like there needs to be something that will save the layman from the tablet virus.

<comment><USER28> What is the "tablet virus", and why does the layman need to be saved from it?

<comment><USER27> The tablet virus is the idea that tablet computers can replace desktops.

I, personally, don't disagree [tablets] can cover a good portion of the layman's usecases; yet it is important to teach (to) and have people realise the strengths of the freedom desktops give them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope Apple updates Mac mini in response. It's over 3 years old now. About time it got kaby lake and USB C treatment.

<comment><USER30> If Apple updated the Mac Mini (I, too, hope they get their act together), it would not be in response to the HP announcement. The two machines are meant for different customer groups, I think.

<comment><USER29> Apple tends to be pretty high end as of late. So they could chuck a decent GPU and a quad core CPU in there, raising the price, of course. I'd buy one. My mini is something like 5 years old at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Meh. The best use of desktop-style computing these days, in my opinion, is if I can easily covert them to a commodity Linux box later. It's the only way to reliably extend the useful life of old hardware other than selling/donating it to someone who can make use of it.

</comment><comment><USER32> If it had a network switch add-on, a really good projector add-on, and really good microphones/speakers, this could be a great meeting room pc. But it just looks like a dumb terminal replacement for corporations. (Though I don't know why you would pick one instead of a cheap business laptop?)

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there any mini desktops with built-in PSU? All these NUC-like things are smaller than Mac Mini but their dirty secret is a big ugly power brick under the table.

</comment><comment><USER34> Linux support?

</comment><comment><USER35> It looks beautiful! I would buy one of these for my parents, keep it out of the way. Taped to the back of the monitor?

<comment><USER36> There is a VESA mount adapter

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are JPEG compression artefacts all over this page. Horrific.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why is this trending? I saw one in the shop just last week, they aren't exactly new.

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks kinda like a NUC

</comment><comment><USER40> Would make for a good Hackintosh, presumably.

</comment><comment><USER41> Not going to buy anything from HP until they boycott and divest from Israeli apartheid military and government contracts.

PS: I'm half-Jewish, atheist.

</comment><comment><USER42> HP thinks its people now?

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks hilariously ugly compared to the now three-year-old Mac mini.

HP just does not seem to be able to get industrial design right.

<comment><USER44> isn't that highly subjective?

<comment><USER43> It is. This design may appeal to people who like cheap routers and 80's gold watches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Powerful PC" \- probably uses Core M, a giveaway being that they don't mention exactly what processor they're using. It's also the reason Intel will soon rebrand Core M to "Core i5", because everyone knew Core M sucked. So their solution is to make people _believe_ it's a more powerful chip. Because feels > reals (marketing 101, I suppose).

<comment><USER46> > "Powerful PC" \- probably uses Core M, a giveaway being that they don't > mention exactly what processor they're using.

They make you go through many clicks to get there, but the "Tech Specs" on the HP site say that it's an i3-6100T (for the Core i3, anyway).</comment></comment>


Surviving public school as a blind girl in 1955 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tutorspree.com/post/53441808738/the-girl-with-bad-eyes <comment><USER2> I'm a totally blind individual who graduated high school in the United States in 2004. I was fortunate that I grew up just as assistive technology was becoming widely available and fairly easy to use. In 1955 a translator would have to spend a lot of time learning to read and write braille. They would then have to read a print book and manually retype it in braille. Given this it's understandable why Braille was not something that was pushed in the public school system. By the time I started school anyone with basic computer literacy could scan in a book, open the file in a translation program and print a braille copy out using a braille embosser. While this technology isn't cheap I was fortunate enough to go to a school that could afford it as well as having parents who advocated for me.

I think some of the issues this person had were caused by having some vision. Because I'm totally blind it's pretty clear that print won't do me any good and major accommodations have to be made. When you have some vision it's difficult for others to understand what you can and can't do, especially if that changes as your vision gets worse.

I have an issue with the only 10% of legally blind people can read braille statistic because it is not made clear what the population of legally blind people consists of. Often times being blind is in addition to severe mental handicaps. If someone can't use the bathroom on their own then learning to read books is low on the list of things that are important. In addition braille may not make sense to elderly people who recently lost their vision. If their fingers are no longer sensitive enough to read braille then should they still count in the statistic? Older people who have lost their vision also have prior experience reading print material. This means that with the prevalence of text to speech software it may not be worth learning braille if they already know how words are spelled and how to construct a sentence.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing your experience. A significant problem with your post that I'm assuming you don't realize because you are blind is that there is only one paragraph. It would be easier to read if you put two carriage returns or line breaks before "I think some of the issues", and another two before "Often times being blind". Currently it seems like a wall of text.

edit: much better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Schools - public schools anyway - seem to stumble the most with accommodating children with disability. No one wants to deal with it. Sometimes budgets and staffing get blamed, but most often it seems to just boil down to people being forced out of their comfort zone and not wanting to deal with the "tards". Happily the societal trend seems to be toward inclusion. Progress is just very slow, with parents (and students) fighting for it every day.

<comment><USER5> In the song "Subdivisions", Rush refers to suburbs -- or was it suburban high schools -- as "the mass production zone". Regardless of what they meant, I think that phrase is apt for public schools in general. Mass production works best when the raw materials and the processes are homogeneous across all units. Needless to say, talking about schools and children this way is dehumanizing. But when we look at it this way, is it any wonder that public schools stumble with accommodating children with disabilities? I have no idea what to do about it; just rambling about a possible reason why the problem exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember when I was learning web development how "Accessibility" was kind of a feature to enhance your product. I wonder if anyone even considers it these days. Seems like the mad rush to push out a barely-working product would leave people with disabilities on the sidelines.

<comment><USER7> While there are a number of things that must be done especially for accessibility purposes, for the large part the web is trying to evolve towards natural accessibility. The best example I can think of is SEO, as we attempt to make our sites readable by the various search engine crawlers we also make them more readable by software for the blind.

<comment><USER5> For content-oriented web sites, you're correct. There are even workarounds for the often-discussed problem of image tags without ALT attributes, so IMO that one isn't a big deal.

Rich web applications are more challenging, since they often invent their own UI widgets (or build on top of toolkits that do this), in addition to or even instead of using standard links and form controls. For these, the W3C has a standard called Accessible Rich Internet Applications ([http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria](http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria)). But in my experience, ARIA is often subject to misinterpretation by the browser, the assistive technology, the application/toolkit developer, or some combination of the three.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, in general rich web applications still have a long way to go in regards to accessibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Nowadays, we have the digital tools to make information available to people with vision loss almost instantaneously."

No, we can't let the Kindle read books aloud with text-to-speech; it'll deprive publishers of audiobook revenue!

<comment><USER9> Works with my Kindle touch. Not sure what you are talking about.

<comment><USER8> Do you remember this escapade? That's what I mean. [http://news.cnet.com/amazon-retreats-on-kindles-text-to- spee...](http://news.cnet.com/amazon-retreats-on-kindles-text-to-speech- issue/) ... [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/arizona-state-settles- ki...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/arizona-state-settles-kindle- lawsuit/3540)

Don't know the latest on it but it was totally a legal battle.

<comment><USER2> Kindle has gotten a lot better. They finally made there iphone app accessible a couple months ago which makes me happy. Now I'm no longer stuck with ibooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't buy the claim that the Web is 80% inaccessible. Does anyone have a citation for that study?

<comment><USER10> It might be from this 2004 study of UK government sites [[http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article- detail/newsarticl...](http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article- detail/newsarticle/website-access-denied-to-disabled-people)]. A 2007 study found 'less than half' but doesn't try and give a specific number [[http://staff.washington.edu/tft/research/international/](http://staff.washington.edu/tft/research/international/)]. That study also refers to a UN snapshot study in 2006 that found <10% of a small group of sites were accessible, and I also found this 2006 analysis of British commercial sites saying that 75% of them had accessability problems [[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Nomensa+claims+75%25+of+UK%27s...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Nomensa+claims+75%25+of+UK%27s+FTSE+100+companies+fail+to+meet+DDA...-a0145071395)]

<comment><USER2> As a blind developer I'd estimate that 90% of sites are accessible. I consider something accessible if I can use it even if it isn't intuitive. I could see how other people with disabilities who aren't as comfortable with assistive technologies would have a harder time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to know more about what it's like for a blind person read "Do You Remember the Color Blue?" by Sally Hobart Alexander.

It's aimed at children, but I found it interesting.</comment>


Twumps: A Small Social Game for a lot of Good. - <AUTHOR>

I'm experimenting with a social game to fund good causes and I could really use some help in understanding how people might want to play it.
Do you know of any other ones?
If you use Twitter, would you play a social game based on it?
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Oh BTW - the beta for the game is at [http://twumps.wizewerx.com](http://twumps.wizewerx.com)</comment>