Microsoft Presenter Gives Up on Edge, Installs Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/10/microsoft-presenter-gives-up-on-edge-installs-chrome/ <comment><USER2> Ugh.. Ive been exactly in his shoes. He's trying to demo an area, and dogfood an unrelated area (browser). I know when Ive done Azure work before, it'll work in Chrome and firefox. But that's about it. Or it could be some goofy problem with the browser, or how MS handles what browser it thinks you're running, or a million other possibilities. Who knows.

But the best way to continue a demo, is just to get the demo done. And frankly, that someone from MS can install and get to work with Chrome/Google, cool. Get it done, then get it right.

Tl;Dr. The hotseat of live demos can suck. Really suck. Don't diss till you do one, and it falls apart. There really is nothing worse than having big yuckity-yucks sitting there, tut-tutting you because the "Thing" you're showing off falls flat. You feel about "." this tall.

<comment><USER3> >The hotseat of live demos can suck. Really suck. Don't diss till you do one, and it falls apart.

Nobody is picking on the presenter himself for what happened; in fact, he "saved the day" by quickly switching to Chrome and continuing the presentation. It is Microsoft that is taking the ridicule for not testing their interfaces on Edge, their own browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's exactly this attitude of just get it done that has reignited Microsoft.

They probably get flack for this, but it shows they're focused more on results.

<comment><USER5> I've talked to some people on the team who works on Edge, and they are a fantastic group of people.

They know they are in an uphill battle, and everyone is writing them off, but they are doing damn good work.

Edge's performance is getting leaps and bounds faster every update, they are doing incredible things for battery life on many devices, they are catching up to google for web API support, and nobody is taking them seriously.

I know nothing about what it's like to work at microsoft, but whatever they are doing with the Edge team is working. They know their product isn't perfect (what is?), and they are just trying their damn hardest to make it better.

<comment><USER6> > nobody is taking them seriously

Because it's 2017 and I'm STILL having to write workarounds for IE.

<comment><USER7> This is absolutely valid criticism. Of course the devteam is "good people", but the issue remains that Edge created yet another browser fork while IE11 is still around and actively used. Also Edge is still behind with several features (like server-sent events).

For those saying Edge is different than IE, is there even an IE team anymore or did they just become the Edge team now? Either way the development strategy is not great.

<comment><USER8> The way Microsoft likes to shuffle project teams, it's a bit of a ship of theseus. It's a very strange philosophical debate if the Edge team is the "same as" the IE10/11 team. The Edge team is definitely not the IE7/8/9 team, that I'm sure of. The Edge team can't possibly be the IE6- team, because that team was entirely disbanded. The IE10/11 team inherited the mistakes of the IE6- team by way of a need for backward compatibility and the backward compatibility plan put together by the IE7/8/9 team. Does that backward compatibility arc define what was the IE team? If so, then the Edge team is definitely not the IE team, having for finality killed the backward compatibility story of IE7/8/9.

<comment><USER7> The point is that the criticism applies regardless of which specific product or people because it is all the "microsoft web browser" group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the presenter's comments, it sounds like a GPO locked down Edge. In that context, it makes sense to immediately install another browser and Chrome is the market leader.

<comment><USER10> If GPO is locking down Edge, but not preventing you from installing another browser, it's a bad GPO...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any estimates on what the economic cost of entry is for developing a competetive browser?

As someone who has no background doing web development, would also like to hear from web devs on what proportion of a project is spent building features vs handling edge cases in browsers (like the one that was hit here in the article).

<comment><USER12> > Any estimates on what the economic cost of entry is for developing a > competetive browser?

I doubt you're gonna get numbers, but I can give you two rough reference points:

1) All popular modern browsers use browser engines that started out their lives in the last millennium:

\- Edge uses EdgeHTML, which was forked from IE's Trident, which was first released in 1997.

\- Firefox uses Gecko, which started development in 1997.

\- Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi use Blink, which was forked from WebKit (which Safari uses), which in turn was forked from KHTML, which started development somewhen around 1998.

So, all of these had their architecture laid out before multi-core CPUs were a thing in desktop PCs and before the web became more than just text with the occasional image thrown in.

As a result, all of them lack severely in parallelism and use of the GPU, and writing a browser engine from scratch would allow you to get these things right and give you ridiculously better performance than all other browser. But no one's done it yet, because of this insanely high cost to redevelop everything.

Which brings us to reference point 2), Mozilla has actually started work on writing a browser engine from scratch in 2013. The project is called Servo and they even find it worthwhile to basically develop their own programming language, Rust, for writing Servo in it.

And well, Servo shows off quite nicely the aforementioned potential in writing a browser engine from scratch, but it also still explodes spectacularly, trying to render out ACID3, which was released in 2008 to try to represent what a good browser should have been capable of back then.

Now, Mozilla is not working on this full-pelt, but it is a big organisation with lots of browser-making know-how. They're also sort of bootstrapping Servo by including production-ready Servo components into Gecko, resulting in the maintenance work being shared.

So, basically I wouldn't expect any new player to enter the market in at least the next ten years.

<comment><USER13> In my understanding, the Servo team has never focused on ACID 3, instead prioritizing features that are actually used by the top X websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm sure that the Azure team built their portal to work with the most popular browser and didn't concern themselves with Edge too much, just like every other web developer.

Anyway, I like how he unchecked the Telemetry feature before installing Chrome so that he didn't have to "help make Google Chrome better".

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me that enterprise software is garbage.

</comment><comment><USER16> Edge... A fine browser, but alt+shift randomly stops working and it is show stopper.

</comment><comment><USER17> This kind of state of mind is what makes me interested in a product. Being an AWS user, I will have a look right away at Azure (now that they have a free tier of sorts)

</comment><comment><USER18> He handled it impressively and was focused on the presentation. Hats off sir.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish I could give up on Edge, but my end users won't let me.

<comment><USER20> > I wish I could give up on Edge

Why?

<comment><USER21> For the same reason it's easier to target just Linux or just Windows or just OS X. The fewer platforms you need to support the less time/work needs to be spent porting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Savage!

</comment><comment><USER23> He was presenting Azure and the browser was enable to parse a XmlHttpRequest. It could be an error on the browser or on the server side application. Because he is on the server side team he blamed the browser.

Rule #1 of pointing fingers: it's always someone else's fault.

<comment><USER24> From the comments on the article, it could also have been a beta version of Edge

<comment><USER25> The presenter said it could be because the work laptops are locked down quite a bit. (GPOs to disallow some browser features is not uncommon in corporations at all.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To be clear, this isn't a product called "Presenter", this is a person who works for Microsoft who switched to Chrome during a presentation. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER27> It's a little embarrassing though. Had they at least chosen Firefox which isn't a major competitor of theirs across multiple markets, it wouldn't be nearly as bad.

<comment><USER28> Showing that your product works flawlessly on the market-leading browser is not "bad" in my opinion.

If he'd tried it in Firefox next I think everyone would have been distracted by the question in their heads of "does it not work on Chrome?".

<comment><USER29> > I think everyone would have been distracted by the question in their heads > of "does it not work on Chrome?".

Or maybe be they would had thought "Wow. Finally someone who does proper cross-browser testing and not just defaulting to Chrome. How refreshing. Maybe there's hope for the web after all?"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Charges dropped because federal servers can't store 2 Terabytes of evidence - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/federal-charges-dropped-against-fugitive-doctor-because-too-184830159.html <comment><USER2> A 2TB hard drive costs $200 [1]. Why can't they just buy one and plug it in somewhere? This is a federal agency, not a small town's local PD.

There should be an investigation into why they can't afford it, because their purchasing processes are either corrupt or utterly incompetent if they're spending budget-breaking amounts for 2TB. Or the lack of space could be a justification, while there were other, real reasons that the case was dropped, maybe political, maybe national security, maybe because the fugitive's friends bribed somebody. In any case, it sounds like there's dirty laundry to be aired.

[1] [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236187)

<comment><USER3> There's probably a whole process for purchasing anything of the sort. First, it has to go through IT, who then has to justify it to their manager, etc., etc. Buying a drive could take months.

And I would imagine that if you're a sysadmin at the DEA, buying a hard drive with your own money from Best Buy and hooking it into their storage system is probably extremely frowned upon.

Furthermore, they may just have decided that it's not worth pursuing. He's not in the country, so chasing him down is difficult and expensive. The manpower could be used on other things. And he is wanted on other charges, too, so it's not like he can just stroll back into the U.S. and drop in for a friendly chat with his local DEA office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just silly. Can you imagine them saying they couldn't prosecute a cocaine kingpin because the evidence took up too much room in storage? "We couldn't prosecute them. Their lab was too big. They were too successful."

This has to either be an excuse for an otherwise weak case, or a severe misunderstanding how rampant prescription drug abuse is.

<comment><USER3> If the cocaine kingpin was out of the country, anyway, and the case had been ongoing for over five years, and you could prosecute him based on other crimes... maybe.

I mean, if your evidence storage room is literally so full that you cannot store any other evidence, do you stubbornly go after the one guy who you're not likely to even bring to a trial, or do you give up and go for the easier target?

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, but in this case, storage is very cheap.

<comment><USER3> I imagine there's a process in place that makes it expensive and difficult. I would imagine that you can't just buy a random hard drive and plug it into the DEA network.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find development positions in other countries.  - <AUTHOR>

I am curious how you find computer science related positions away from home. I am soon to be graduating from university, and have found myself very interested in outsourcing my employment opportunities. The only way that I have found is by checking Universities in the desired location for job fair participants. Do you have better sources or strategies? <comment><USER2> Our niche is in electrical power systems. We're moving to Germany for a few months this European Summer to build some relationships and learn more about how things are run (compared to Australia). This is the procedure we've been following to make contacts before we leave:

\- Find local (Australian) companies with a presence or relationship in Germany \- Take their senior engineers or managers out for coffee (a phone call or email invitation normally does the trick) \- Talk to them about their experiences with Germany and ask who they'd recommend we contact there. \- Send an email to their contact, explain that we'll be in their town on X dates would they like to meet?

In your situation. You've found a job fair participant; what do you do next?

</comment><comment><USER3> You should check out a program called AIESEC, it's an international student exchange program for jobs. I did it right after graduation and worked for a startup real estate company in India for a year, but they have openings in everything from development jobs to consulting all around the world. If you got any questions about it you can shoot me and email and I'll be happy to discuss.</comment>


Show HN: txtpic, a Rust project to generate Unicode text from images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdormit/txtpic <comment><AUTHOR> I jumped on the Rust train this weekend and came up with this little project.</comment>


Show HN: Find journalists, bloggers and webmasters covering your niche - <AUTHOR> https://postbag.co/ <comment><USER3> Some feedback: the signup process is difficult. I signed up, 32-char password, but it doesn't have a special character, so I had to regen. Ok fine, whatever. Then a captcha. At least it's not one of the ones that shows a new picture each time you click so you're endlessly clicking buses or manhole covers for 45 seconds. But I get captcha, whatever.

Ok, so I sign up, and now I have to confirm my email. But...it's not a link I can just click, it's a code. So I switch back to the postbag tab, log in again, and it asks me for the code. I switch to email tab, copy the code, switch back to the postbag tab, put in the code. All a bit obstuse, but ok whatever...I'm done, right?

Nope, now I have to log in _again_ after my account is verified.

That said, this looks really interesting and I'm excited to try it out. Thanks for posting!

<comment><USER4> Agreed, I didn't use a capitalized letter on the password and the sign up failed. The error window appears outside of my viewport so I kept clicking the button and almost bounced.

I would generally do a page refresh on signup/error, that would avoid this as I'd know something happened rather than clicking submit 10 times. But that style of web development is no longer cool, so...

\- I would smooth scroll the user up to where the error box is.

\- A red border around the input that failed.

<comment><USER5> Hi all, I'm one of the makers of Postbag. I just saw this thread. We agree with your comments about a bit convulted signup flow. Users already pointed that out to us and we will fix it next week. Thanks for using Postbag :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did a search on the word dyslexia (my product is heavily used by people with dyslexia), and most of the top results were based on articles that did not use that word at all. They were more likely to be about autism, ADHD, or deafness. In fact, out of the 234 results, the word "dyslexia" only appeared 4 times.

Unless there is something magic going on that I don't understand, this seems like a pretty critical failing. I could do a google news search for "dyslexia" and I would likely get more relevant results (albeit without the authors' email addresses nicely formatted — I'd have to hunt that down on Twitter).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for testing beta version of Postbag. We'll check that particular query to see what went wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aren't services like this one of the reasons that publishers gets dozens of spam emails every day?

E.g. "I read your article [link] and thought this [link] would be a great addition!"

I still get around 100 emails every month to a 6 year old address that I used for publishing purposes.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for checking out Postbag. As we have replied to the other user as well, if you don't want to be included in the Postbag search, you can just email us with a list of sites you want to exclude. Or, alternatively, by disallowing PostbagBot in your site's robots.txt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do I block my sites from appearing on your lists? I'm already spamming a lot with product and movie pitches and last thing I want is even more.

<comment><USER9> We aren't going to let you do that as that would defeat the benefit.

<comment><USER8> So you're going to willingly spam me despite someone else over there saying I can block? Well now we definitely are going to have a problem.

<comment><USER5> This postbag account posting here above is spam. I am the maker and as I said you can just email us with a list of sites you want to exclude. Or, alternatively, by disallowing PostbagBot in your site's robots.txt.

<comment><USER5> Btw dawnerd, do you know how to flag a an account here? I tried and couldn't find it. Someone obviously registered with postbag handle to troll about Postbag as you've seen in the previous comment. I understand your frustration when you read such a comment. Rest assured that we would never refuse to exclude any site ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But I don't wanna sign up. This is competing with web search no? Because that's the UX I have in mind when I'm looking for new content.

</comment><comment><USER6> The buttons at the top are not super obvious, but there are no tooltips to tell you what they are. So I clicked on several and got a sense of what most do, but I didn't want to click the last one (which appears to be log out). Please offer tooltips! (And consider icons that are easier to discern.)

<comment><USER5> Multiple users pointed out the tooltip issue and we completely agree with you. It's something we'll fix next week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried two queries: "audiobook" and "rust programming language".

"audiobook" produced passable results.

"rust programming language" produced 100% garbage: in its 167 Tier1 matches (I didn't look further) not one was in any way related to Rust or even to programming; and only a few were related to languages. From the titles, most matches were probably derived from the word "rust", though not many past the first dozen or so were _about_ rust in any way—it was more commonly "yeah, I can imagine that rust might be mentioned once in that article". The rest I have _no_ idea where they came from, I can't see how any of the keywords would have matched.

</comment><comment><USER12> No pricing for a service that cannot remain free. This never ends well.

<comment><USER5> We didn't publish pricing as we're in beta mode now. But it's no secret the service will be paid, of course. It will be something in the under a hunded per month range.

<comment><USER12> If it's no secret pick a price.

<comment><USER12> [https://postbag.co/pricing/](https://postbag.co/pricing/) is now up with pricing. Freemium model with first paid tier at $99/month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The discovery part might be interesting to compare to something like SparkToro [0].

[0] [https://sparktoro.com/](https://sparktoro.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Man.. From the title I was hoping this would be a way to find people doing long form writing on niche topics.

For the site - Your primary color/white combo used for your CTAs and links doesn't meet WCAG contrast ratios. You are running the risk of hindering users by reducing their ability to read text.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great idea! Would love to see a pricing model implemented as this is something I can see paying for.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. As we replied to the other user as well, we didn't publish pricing as we're in beta mode now. But it's no secret the service will be paid, of course. It will be something in the under a hunded per month range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the concept, and signed up to give it a try. I searched for "running route builder", and after about 15 minutes it just showed "Error". I'm keen to actually give it a try though if this can be corrected!

<comment><USER5> Sorry about that. We've been dealing with a lot of traffic for the last two days and some errors were happening due to high load. We're looking into fixing these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My friend is an Investigative Journalist, I'll share the link with him! Great idea.

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great job with Postbag. However, the signup process can be vastly simplified.

Coming to the lists - it's a good start. I got a few decent leads for my space. What would be great is info on their social handles, blogs, LinkedIn etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've got a "Can not load stored data from the server." message when I click to open the generated list.

my user id: 67a13535-58a9-4d4a-b8bf-3dcd91b46e8f

I couldn't find any support channel in the app itself.

<comment><USER9> Please use email@example.com to get in touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not clear what the icons in the top does? Tooltips or simply buttons with text when the screen is wide enough to support it would be great.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for all the support during Postbag beta launch and all of your suggestions! Interest was a lot greater than expected and we got over 800 users in 48 hours which was amazing. We described our experience at [https://bit.ly/2BgxFC0](https://bit.ly/2BgxFC0)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Your password must contain at least one character out of: ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & [ > ] . * |

</comment><comment><USER22> OK, gave it a try.

1\. Sign-up process has too many pointless hurdles.

If you have restrictions on the password format, mention them upfront rather than revealing them one at a time after each failed attempt. Better yet, just don't enforce any password restriction at all, until they decide to become a paying customer or there's something else on a record worthy of protection.

Error reporting on the sign-up form is badly positioned. As others already pointed out, it's just not visible because it ends up being above the page edge.

Once signed up, the page shows the "log in" link. Click on that, enter email, password, enter - it asks for confirmation, BUT again asks for email address. Ok, retyped that, copied the confirmation code, enter - Yay, confirmed - <USER2> log in afresh. This is as brain-dead flow as it gets. Instead, when trying to log into an unconfirmed account it should just verify the password and ask for a confirmation code. Enter that - get in.

This is however peanuts compared to...

2\. The quality of the results.

Here are first 10 items for a "file backups" query, the News section:

        Kanbox Looks To Become The Internet File System And Storage ...
        Another 74,000 file first-time unemployment claims in Illinois
        Forever 21 officially files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
        Another 108K Marylanders file for unemployment as virus spreads
        Intelsat files for bankruptcy protection
        Model Out of Work? Here's How to File for Unemployment
        Basketball referees, Section V file grievance over work conditions
      * Western Digital Proposes Zonefs File-System For Linux 5.6
        How to delete your Dropbox account in 5 simple steps
        Apple Card Now Supports Exporting Transactions in OFX File Format

7 are _completely_ unrelated, 2 are just keyword match and 1 is roughly in the right area, but still not useful.

The Blog/Web section is similarly way off:

        Coppermine: File Move Tutorial
        How to generate EBCIDC file include header and ...
        It looks like we don't support this file format. How to repair your photo?
        How to Make a File Upload Form in WordPress?
        How To Copy a File to the User's Current Profile using Powershell
        File Folder technique cards Video tutorial
        How to Import the SWMM 5 Report File as a Layer in infoSWMM
        How to Merge Mails to PDF File
        Best Free Online File Storage for Sharing Files on Blogs and Websites
        Monitoring Folders Files With SCOM OpsMgr How To Manage Devices

Not to point out the obvious, but this is not very good at all :-(

On the plus side, the JournoRequests part looks interesting, but I can't readily judge if the results are relevant and actionable. That said, I don't think Pitchbox had this back when we (fairly unsuccessfully) used it few years ago.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll get someone to check what is going on with that particular search query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's a 'webmaster' these days?

</comment><comment><USER24> ohsik, how does PostBag compare to PitchBox, which has been doing literally the exact same thing for a while now?

<comment><USER5> Based on our testing the difference is in quality of matched contacts, number of matched contacts and number of opportunities per search. Also, continuous outreach with monthly web crawls is a feature we're especially proud of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How can I sign up as blogger?

</comment><comment><USER26> How can I delete my account?

<comment><USER5> You can email Postbag support. The email is on the contact page on the website.</comment></comment>


LinkedIn Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://cookiesareforclosers.com/blog/2008/06/linkedin-architecture

<comment><USER2> Every time I get on Linkedin (multiple times a day) the site is crawling. Half the time I get an error that asks me to go back to the homepage.

<comment><USER3> I use linkedin often too but I can't remember having an error message.</comment></comment>


Charles Stross' polemic against steam punk - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/the-hard-edge-of-empire.html

<comment><USER2> I think the accessibility of steampunk is what makes it so popular. Popular like say a fantasy novel of orcs, elves, and fairies.

Charles seems to lump steampunk in with science fiction the way Starwars fans seem to think that Starwars has anything to do with science.

The reality is that there is very little 'steampunk' that actually has anything remotely to do with science. 'Steampunk' like the 'Diamond Age' is not really even about steam, unless you consider 'clouds' steam, and then consider that nanopunk is cloudpunk, and then cloudpunk is somehow steampunk. 'Diamond Age' in contrast to your typical steampunk adventures is very much so about the ubiquity of technology, about the ubiquity of information, and the ubiquity of how connected we are. it actually has nothing to do with the notion of using steam to power a mechanical device, and more looks at how cloud services and nano tech will effect our lives.

I think steampunk really is becoming a more modern place for fairy tales, a place where the modern age can look back and go look how quaint that story of the knight in shining Armour is ( or rather that inventor who used technology to save us ). If you look at steampunk as a modernization of the fairy tale and the fable into something closer to modern day, then you can see why it has so much power.

I mean how many of us can really relate to castles and forests? How many of us can relate to zeppelins and trains?

If you look at steampunk as the modernization of culture it's amazing to watch. I am sure at some point the tales of the primitive hunt were modernized into those of knights and kings.

What will the fairy tales of 200 years from now be about? what realities will we do away with? which ones will we latch onto?</comment>


Edwin Drake - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Drake <comment><USER2> If you haven't seen the documentary on the oil industry "the prize" then it is a must watch. You can watch all of it on youtube. Here is the scene were they talk about drake's significance to the oil industry:

[https://youtu.be/H2hSATHD634?t=409](https://youtu.be/H2hSATHD634?t=409)

</comment><comment><USER3> A true pioneer whose efforts for decades to come, spelled a relief for over- hunted whales.

<comment><USER4> Until the Soviets started whaling

[https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/industrial-whaling-of- the...](https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/industrial-whaling-of-the-20th- century-was-worse-than-we-thought/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Drake's Well Museum:

[https://www.drakewell.org/about-us](https://www.drakewell.org/about-us)

I was there this summer. Well over a 100 years old and some of the original equipment is still running. Sad that our modern equipment has little hope of that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Drake drilled the well to secure a greater supply for the Seneca oil company. The drilling technology was not particularly revolutionary, since water wells and wells to pump salt brine had been previously drilled.

The key technology was fractional distillation of petroleum into an array of useful products, especially kerosene which could be used instead of whale oil for illumination.

How Yale Launched the Oil Economy - [http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2005_11/old_ya...](http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2005_11/old_yale.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> What was the diameter of that first oil pipe? Drake clearly was repurposing a technology that already existed... what was the pipe's original purpose?

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well) only says cast iron. Maybe sewer pipe, Pennsylvania was early using that:

[http://www.sewerhistory.org/photosgraphics/pipes- ancientearl...](http://www.sewerhistory.org/photosgraphics/pipes-ancientearly- types/)

<comment><USER8> >Drake used copper pipe two or three inches in diameter and in sections 12 to 14 feet long. [https://ethw.org/Beginnings_of_the_Oil_and_Gas_Industry](https://ethw.org/Beginnings_of_the_Oil_and_Gas_Industry)

<comment><USER3> I'm not saying he _didn 't_ use copper pipe for the first well, but one could imagine he used cast iron pipe in the first well. _If_ he did, my layman understanding is that copper pipe must be much more less likely to break, than cast iron pipe. (Cast iron is pretty brittle.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arrested Stayzilla CEO Yogendra Vasupal reveals his side of the story - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@4091/thank-you-for-all-the-love-support-ed6335dca38d <comment><USER2> Sigh. An "18 min read" that describes why and how some random guy wound up in jail. Don't people understand the "Five Ws"[1]

Don't make me invest 18 minutes of my time to get the big picture. How about a tl;dr or a CliffsNotes?

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

<comment><USER3> I think the cultural context is missing for you. The article is more an indictment on what it's really like, starting up in a country riddled with corruption and lawlessness at multiple levels. That can be hard to relate to or even arrive at, if you just read this writeup.</comment></comment>


The real cost of TLDs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/judge2020/Actual-Domain-Prices <comment><USER2> Note that this does not necessarily represent the cheapest a TLD can be. Many registries strike deals with registrars to offer initial registrations and sometimes transfers and renewals too, at a much lower cost.</comment>


"We have obtained fully functional JTAG for Intel CSME via USB DCI" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/h0t_max/status/928269320064450560 <comment><USER2> One way to think of ME is, we all woke up one day and discovered we have had high resolution night vision spy cams installed in our bedrooms.

The next realization is there is no way to turn them off or remove them. It's posisble even moving won't help.

And yet we really don't seem to care much. Lesser issues generate national outrage and high volumes of press coverage. Why?

HN may be uniquely positioned to show us the answer. Take a community of people with generally above average interest and/or knowledge in this stuff, and the comments are filled with questions asking what the hell ME even is.

Apparently, ME is the perfect combination of opaque, obtuse, and obscure. It's not rocket science, but complicated enough it's hard to explain well quickly. It's easy to be a highly technical person yet never have the need to cross paths with the subject. There has been some press, some activity, but all of that is simultaneously dampened for the same reasons.

<comment><USER3> > And yet we really don't seem to care much.

I know we're used to "Internet speed" and the tweet happened an entire 24 hours ago, but give it a bit of time before declaring it dead. Wired and Vice need a second to write it up, and see if it hits the mainstream _before_ declaring the issue ignored.

Not saying it _will_ get picked up, though I sure hope it does, but as you point out, it's a bit obscure and takes some explaining.

Still, there are numerous reports that the Facebook app on your phone _listens to every word you say_ to show you ads for things you were talking aboutm but on HN and other web forums, there are always an element of disbelief. We may believe that it must be something else - correlation to web searches from the same IP, but there's never been proof one way or the other. (A Facebook exec's claim doesn't count as proof.)

So there's a section of people that believe they _already have_ high resolution recording devices that we take into to bed. What's one more?

(Typing this, very gratefully, from an ARM Chromebook.)

<comment><USER4> Can you use an ARM Chromebook without it constantly leaking data to Google? I tried to use the C201 without Chrome OS, but with libreboot, and Debian with mainline Linux. I didn't succeed.

<comment><USER5> A little late to the party, but I also have a libreboot C201, and have successfully installed mainline Debian on a USB drive connected to it. I'm going to put up a comprehensive guide + shell scripts in December when I'm on break from school, but until then, check out these links:

[https://github.com/atopuzov/c201/blob/master/debian- install....](https://github.com/atopuzov/c201/blob/master/debian-install.md)

[https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/rockchip/asus- chrom...](https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/rockchip/asus-chromebook- flip-c100p)

The main thing I haven't gotten working yet is the touchpad. For wifi, I'm using an atheros dongle with open firmware.

<comment><USER6> The gallium os guys have everything working perfectly on my asus chromebook.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but gallium doesn't support arm [1]

[1] [https://wiki.galliumos.org/Support/ARM](https://wiki.galliumos.org/Support/ARM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At first it looks nice "oh now we can get rid of it" but it also opens up a very scary near future security-wise.

We've now entered a realm where an attacker could simply plug a device on an usb port of your computer for a few seconds to have it access your cpu's ME through USB JTAG and take over it, allowing him to have full access and control over what you do/read/open/type over the network, without you ever knowing it since you can't see it. And the only way to get rid of it for sure would be to pretty much throw that cpu away and buy a new one.

Or am I being overly paranoid and there is something I haven't considered that makes this scenario impossible ?

EDIT: given the answers I think my main concern wasn't well expressed above. I'm not saying this as in "ME is making it easier to be compromised". That may or may not be true, but that's not my point.

My point is, we all know that once compromised, you can't clean it and need to burn it all and start from scratch: recover from backup (not files on the compromised machine), format everything, reinstall. Due to the nature of the ME, this is not a solution here. The cleanup needs to be done at the hardware level. Unless I misunderstood something, once it happens, your cpu is done for, period. And 'using a hack to cleanup the hack' is still in the realm of cleaning up rather than start from scratch, it's not a solution for the same reason than cleaning up your comprised linux box is not one and you need to start from scratch.

<comment><USER8> The 'evil maid' attack is well known, and states that once someone has physical access to your computer, all bets are off. Anything that has DMA enabled (e.g. Firewire or Thunderbolt) offers an external device direct access to the system RAM that is very difficult to defend against, or they could attach a keylogger or modify your bootloader, basically unleash all manner of havok. USB JTAG is really no different from a security POV.

The concern with the Intel ME is that it has a native network adapter. You can bet efforts are currently underway to discover how to exploit the ME remotely. THAT'S when things get scary.

Your paranoia is not unjustified. Personally, I am nervous that some of my systems have the ME. When attention turned to it about a year ago, i knew it would only be a matter of time before someone broke into it.

<comment><USER9> > The concern with the Intel ME is that it has a native network adapter.

Yep, this is the big deal. After I "discovered" the ME, my first stop on my home network was the switch, to block all that crap. (And I found my storage server, equipped with a Supermicro all-in-one motherboard, helpfully grabbed an IP for the ME to listen on with an 'admin/admin' password.)

I just wish the empire builders at the NSA would care about something other than their own little power center. They knew this would happen - it always does. The NSA is probably the biggest security threat to the U.S. people[1] at this point, because they keep building concentrated, high-value targets and then lose control of them.

[1] Not to be confused with 'U.S. government interests'.

<comment><USER10> Am curious how and what exactly you blocked?! What precautions can be taken to make systems more secure?!

<comment><USER9> As usual, it depends on what exactly you have. Not all chips have the AMT enabled, for instance.

This is a useful document for understanding what exactly you're dealing with and what to do about it:

[https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/thursday/us-17-Evdokimov...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-17/thursday/us-17-Evdokimov- Intel-AMT-Stealth-Breakthrough-wp.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Companies like Intel, who are complicit in helping CIA or any intel agency (government, rogue or otherwise) infiltrate and exploit our systems - need to be held accountable by the market.

Intel ME and the (assumed [0]) partnership with CIA to design and build this system - should be an absolute travesty blow to the integrity of their business long-term. Will you, as lead engineer or sys admin for your mission critical business now continue to choose Intel products to help build your infrastructure?

Unfortunately it seems that our modern market has not yet evolved enough to punish companies involved in such reckless behavior. I suspect the reason is primarily the ease of which governments can mass tax and create fiat currency. Perhaps there is some alternate decentarlized currency system that would limit government's ability to tax, print and award juicy big-brother contracts to these companies.

Anyway, for now at best - and perhaps somewhat encouraging - is the subsequent brain drain of engineers and hackers alike who want nothing to do with faceless corporations like Intel, Google, Facebook, IBM, et all who routinely deceive/exploit and work against the best interest of their own customers.

[0] [https://twitter.com/9th_prestige/status/928740294090285057](https://twitter.com/9th_prestige/status/928740294090285057)

<comment><USER12> > Intel ME and the (assumed [0]) partnership with CIA to design and build this > system

I worked at Intel on ME and the things that came before it until around 2013. I can tell you two things --

1\. No, Intel ME wasn't born out of a desire to spy on people nor was it -- to the best of my knowledge but I honestly believe I would know -- created at the request of the US government (or others). It was an honest attempt at providing a functionality that we believed was useful for sysadmins. If it was something done for the CIA, I believe it would probably have been kept secret instead of marketed.

2\. It was initially going to be much "worse". Early pilots with actual customers -- such as a large british bank -- were going to run a lot more stuff -- think a full JVM -- and have a lot more direct access to the user land.) Security concerns scrapped those ideas pretty early on though.

In retrospect, I personally believe the whole thing was a bad idea and everybody is free to crap on Intel for it. But the thing was never intended as a backdoor or anything like that.

<comment><USER13> Right. ME does make sense as a feature for sysadmins. Except . . . . Well, can you shed light on the following:

1\. Why did your team deem it necessary to deny the end-user the capability to disable this feature?

2\. Why did your team decide to enable ME on ALL consumer grade chips? You could have only enabled it on, say, Xeon, as a value-add - exactly like you do for ECC support. You could have _made more money_ this way. But . . . you didn't.

Without legitimate, sensical answers to the above questions, there is no reason for anyone to believe your team did anything other than design a backdoor for the Feds. Sorry.

<comment><USER14> > Why did your team decide to enable ME on ALL consumer grade chips?

Can you please provide a reference? I've been trying to enable ME forever for my consumer-grade i7 with Intel motherboard for remote management, and I can't seem to be able to.

<comment><USER15> The core of Intel ME is enabled on all chips since 2008. But features like remote management aren't. Intel ME is used for things like DRM (see PASP) or hardware bring-up and power management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain like I have a degree in computer science from a good university, but opted for a career as a software engineer in some relatively high level languages?

<comment><USER17> Intel CPUs have an embedded supervisory CPU called the Management Engine. It can read all of memory, control power states on the main CPU, and generally has super-root privileges on everything. You, an end-user, aren't allowed to program it. The current MEs run a form of Minix. They represent an incredible security and privacy risk, because we don't know what code they run and it is widely believed that the NSA or other intelligence agencies have backdoor access. Remote backdoor access, even: the ME can talk to the network.

A JTAG is a standard minimal serial port used for debugging purposes. You'll find them on nearly all embedded devices - routers, phones, TVs, refrigerator controllers... usually appearing as a set of two or three contact points. Sometimes they connect directly to a debugger.

In this case, it appears that at least some Intel CPUs have a JTAG on the ME that can be routed through the on-CPU USB handler, and thus physical access to the right USB ports can be used to access the ME.

<comment><USER18> Is it known/suspected that AMD have an equivalent?

<comment><USER19> Yes they do: [https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/4ot223/do_amdproc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/4ot223/do_amdprocessors_have_something_like_intel/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked on what became ME at Intel from the mid 2000s through around 2012 ou 2013.

I completely agree that in retrospect, it wasn't the best idea. However, I really want to say that it was never a project for the CIA as some keep saying.

This was a widely-marketed product at the time of its inception. It was the whole point of the Intel vPro line. I've been to a ton of roadshows between 2008 and 2009 where the marketing people demoed the heck out of ME to everybody. It was a feature thought to be THE differentiator from AMD. Of course, later AMD came up with their own equivalent and ME became "a commodity"

So again, we can all argue whether it was a bad idea, but the notion that it was designed by/with the CIA is simply not true to the best of my knowledge, but I really think I'd know, as I've been to way too many design meetings and saw the decisions being made by Intel engineers.

<comment><USER15> I've never bought into the "NSA/CIA made Intel create this" line of reasoning because, as you say, there was a legitimate use for this technology (misguided as its implementation was). Of course, I have no doubt that the NSA/CIA may have added further backdoors, or are withholding vulnerabilities in ME.

However, one thing that I've always felt conflicted about is why this feature is present in _all_ CPUs. Usually if someone wants to use Intel's AMT then they have a giant support contract with specialty hardware, so it seems odd that the core CPU feature necessary is present on all CPUs despite no user actually using outside of enterprise.

Is it because the bring-up, other low-level stuff, and things like PASP (DRM) were implemented on top of ME, and so it was not considered viable to re-do that on chips that didn't have ME (though I was under the impression that very early ME was not used for anything else)? Or was it just a matter of "it's easier to just use what we have for every chip"?

<comment><USER20> I really don't understand why I have to pay out the nose for ECC memory support but I get this surveillance device "for free".

<comment><USER21> Officially, you still need to pay extra to enable the remote management capabilities of ME...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Now that we know for sure people who have worked on or are working on Intel ME actually read and post here, I'd like to take the opportunity to refer those of you to a previous post of mine about it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15120207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15120207)

If you choose to defect and leak all the information you can, you will almost certainly be greatly praised for it by many. Of course there will be negative consequences, but no one ever said that standing firm and adhering to your morals was easy. Maybe if enough employees stood up for what they think is right instead of continuing to silently comply like slaves and let --- or even assist --- companies and governments slowly take away their freedom and privacy, there would be some actual change happening.

<comment><USER23> Andy Glew had a post: [http://blog.andy.glew.ca/2017/05/intel-iamt-bug- strncmptrust...](http://blog.andy.glew.ca/2017/05/intel-iamt-bug- strncmptrusteduntrusteds.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any reason Intel doesn't just offer IME-free CPUs too? There's obviously interest considering the lengths organisations like Google go to to disable it and Intel supposedly already has such offers for governments.

<comment><USER25> > _the lengths organisations like Google go to to disable it_

TIL about this detail. Where can I learn more?

EDIT: So this is now at 0 points. Interesting...

<comment><USER26> A recent talk [0] by Ronald Minnich from Google gives a nice overview of their efforts to replace parts of Intel ME and UEFI with Linux, mostly for security reasons.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This particular submission is a dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15656931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15656931)

This one has a bit more info (although not much as far as details go): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668363)

</comment><comment><USER28> Absolutely fantastic video from a google engineer (and the original author of LinuxBios / Coreboot) on how they replaced the UEFI firmware with Linux to get Dell servers to boot in 20 seconds:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo)

</comment><comment><USER29> 'Intel inside' was clearly not just a marketing slogan but a reference to spy agencies.

</comment><comment><USER30> But ... Perhaps Intel has a _second_ ME installed on the processor. The first one was just a decoy.

<comment><USER31> That would be a hilarious waste of silicon

<comment><USER30> A ME can be as simple as just another thread context, that is shared with the rest of the CPU. Basically, just a bunch of registers, and some simple logic to activate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think many don't realise that DCI is not supposed to be activated on production CPUs.

<comment><USER33> Sure, but this makes it possible to dump the firmware for further analysis. I think that's the big news here. Think we might read about a few new bugs over the coming months. Also it might be possible to flash new firmware (to lock it down).

<comment><USER34> It's a nice thought, but I don't think it'll allow us to flash new firmware. We can already flash firmware on Intel chips, but the firmware has to be signed using Intels keys. The signing verification still happens on the mask rom which is impossible to overwrite.

Maybe this discovery will help us understand more how the verification step works. But I think the best we can hope for is a way of overwriting Intel ME very quickly after it's booted every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you are finding the jargon in that tweet too dense (JTAG? ME?), these articles cover the same with more explanation

[https://thenextweb.com/security/2017/11/09/researchers- find-...](https://thenextweb.com/security/2017/11/09/researchers-find-almost- every-computer-intel-skylake-cpu-can-owned-via-usb/)

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/09/chipzilla_come_clos...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/09/chipzilla_come_closer_closer_listen_dump_ime/)

</comment><comment><USER36> If someone told me that most Intel processors are internally running MINIX I would have laughed but there you go:

[http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/](http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/)

Anyway, how do I know whether my CPU has it and is vulnerable via USB?

</comment><comment><USER37> Here's the presentation slides of the guys who figured it out:

[https://www.troopers.de/downloads/troopers17/TR17_ME11_Stati...](https://www.troopers.de/downloads/troopers17/TR17_ME11_Static.pdf)

<comment><USER36> Love the Minix slide. It's a wonder this news didn't reach Tanenbaum until recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wait, the screenshot shows that they are using ITP/DAL.. I didn't think that was publicly available. Is this true? If so, then what they have done is only something an OEM, with appropriate permission from intel, could do.

<comment><USER39> Some motherboard vendors host downloads of it, whether they're allowed to or not is irrelevant at this stage, it's out in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Here's the research team's talk from last year's 33C3 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JCUrG7ERIE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JCUrG7ERIE)

</comment><comment><USER41> Apparently Intel ME can be killed by setting an undocumented flag discovered by the same group?

[https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/security/researche...](https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/security/researchers- say-now-you-too-can-disable-intel-me-backdoor-thanks-to-the-nsa.html)

Anybody can shed light on this tool and whether it can mitigate the attack mentioned in the tweet?

</comment><comment><USER42> Discussed previously here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15656931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15656931)

</comment><comment><USER43> And the main question - did they found anything NSA-ish in there?

</comment><comment><USER44> This is fantastic news. I expect to see some reliable and easy to apply (usb?) solution to wipe and tame ME.

Greatest news is that it works for latest Intel processors so even if they change protection (they certainly will) we at least have very good processors that can work without spyware. All the previous tests I read about only tackled first few generations of Intel ME, for processors/boards over 8 or 10 years old.

<comment><USER39> The core problem with this is that if you have debug access to the core running ME, you can put it back even if it was wiped - or replace it with anything you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Has anyone used the Intel Management Engine Verification Utility?

[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005974/software/chipset- software.html)

<comment><USER36> I tried it. Didn't find ME on my i5-4690K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone know if Intel ME being compromised and the recent Tanenbaum letter have anything to do with each other? For example if the researchers discovered the use of Minix through this compromise.

The articles referenced in Tanenbaum's blog post don't really reveal the source of the Minix discovery, other than it was due to some recent discovery.

</comment><comment><USER47> You mean finally cracked _again_.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean, it is a first time that researchers get full access to the Intel ME firmware, so now it is became possible to reverse engineer it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Where should I start if I want to dip my toe in this topic? Have a few years of web development experience and a Bsc in software engineering in progress.

<comment><USER25> Go google "intel ME" and wade through the results. Optionally use date filtering to progressively skip back through the years.

Next, download Minix and get a good handle on it. The next step is getting access to the Minix kernel on the ME, and after that, it'll be a case of who has the best apps for the CPU in their CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> would it be possible to use minix os inside the cpus directly as desktop os or rewrite the firmware or is it read only?

</comment><comment><USER50> Ah, I'm so glad and proud of the hacker community now. The nasty and opaque backdoor is now out in the open So the researchers can now find a way to close the hole. I have a feeling the current gen intel processors are going to be in demand amongst the security community and privacy conscious users because the newer ones will definitely have an even shittier backdoor in place of the now bust ME.

</comment><comment><USER51> Ask HN: How would you organize an Intel boycott?

<comment><USER52> Find a manufacturer in Shenzhen who can mass-produce older Intel pre-ME motherboards/CPU die clones and start your own fabrication...

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> You can disable all the phone home stuff by not plugging in the ethernet port it uses, eg. using wireless or an add-on card. Or in some motherboards, the secondary ethernet.

<comment><USER53> Would the downvoter care to state any reasons for disagreeing? The IME only has drivers for a specific ethernet port. They also don't use the secondary ports if equipped, though I imagine that's just a configuration setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> In principle, how is the Intel Management Engine different from the Apple Secure Enclave coprocessor on iOS devices?

<comment><USER55> ME can see everything coming in on your ethernet port, with no accountability to the host OS. It's like a wiretap, ostensibly for remote control commands, but again with no accountability for what it is up to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Thank you so much for your help i really appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER57> Can someone ELI5 this for me?

<comment><USER58> Intel created a product (Similar to Dell's iDRAC) which has a co-processor for system admin type stuff. This product and/or associated modules have security flaws. Those flaws can be potentially used to takeover the machine and allow malware to exist outside of the CPU/RAM/HDD architecture and stay undetected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> On an unrelated note, did anyone hear about any answer from Intel to Prof. Tanenbaum's open letter? It's high time they pulled their heads out of the sand and started explaining the whole issue.

<comment><USER7> Why do you think would they have to answer him anything? He published something, using a license saying you could use it without telling anyone nor giving back changes, and that's exactly what Intel did. And in his letter he acknowledged that.

There was no call nor need for an answer...

<comment><USER25> I agree.

I think this was Minix's first real-world use case (read: ego validation), and Andrew Tanenbaum was just unimpressed he learned about it by proxy.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it a good idea to build a Single Page App with Django? - <AUTHOR> I'm wondering, if it is a good idea to build a single page app (e.g., with ReactJS or Angular 2.0) with Django as backend. What's experience? What stack would you recommend, assuming we are staying in Python backend-wise?. Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you stick to Django, you probably want to look at [http://www.django-rest- framework.org/](http://www.django-rest-framework.org/) for the backend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you rather use anything else? Flask for instance?

<comment><USER2> I feel like that is a matter of personal taste and what your data sources are behind it. Flask makes it easier to do whatever you want, but you also have to do many things by hand, where Django has an included "right" way of doing them.

This recent HN discussion had many opinions and details to read through: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11121355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11121355)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've spent a lot of time working with Django as a backend and AngularJS powering the client. It's definitely not a bad combination.

That said, in my personal projects, I lean towards letting Django handle almost all of the client experience too. There are exceptions for areas that are inherently interactive (e.g. WSYIWYG editor), but the vast majority of my projects involve static content. To me, the complexity and overhead of using a JS library/framework outweighs any benefits the library/framework might offer.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have worked with DRF in the past. It is a very nice framework. However, I came to believe that it is too low-level for new projects. Do you really want to handle at least the following pieces of boilerplate for every API or endpoint?

\- Request parsing

\- Content negotiation

\- Creating/rendering responses

\- Subclassing or decorating custom views and/or viewsets

\- Model mixins, CRUD glue

\- Routing

\- Content-type parsing and rendering

\- Serialization/deserialization

\- Validation

\- Authentication

\- Filtering

\- Pagination

Personally, I found it was harder to get from zero to anything when having to slog through that level of verbosity. I'd rather save brain cycles for harder problems.

It was this experience on the job that led to the design of a better approach with Ramses: [http://ramses.tech](http://ramses.tech). You can also generate docs, tests and client libraries this way. If you like the look of that, I will make you an end-to-end prototype for free to help drive home the concept.

Some other awesome projects along the same lines are [http://postgrest.com/](http://postgrest.com/) and [https://flask- restless.readthedocs.org/en/stable/](https://flask- restless.readthedocs.org/en/stable/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been having success using Django / React together with this: [http://owaislone.org/blog/webpack-plus-reactjs-and- django/](http://owaislone.org/blog/webpack-plus-reactjs-and-django/)

</comment><comment><USER6> You might take a look at _Lightweight Django_ : [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032502.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032502.do)

</comment><comment><USER7> Depending on how complicated your API is, you may not need something as heavy as Django. This is a neat little framework if your backend doesn't need to heavyweight:

[http://falconframework.org/](http://falconframework.org/)

It's pretty unopinionated so you have a lot of control and there are less surprises but a lot of the nice to haves are gone as well.

Whatever you go with I would read this as well as the DRF doesn't generate proper RESTful responses on it's own.

[http://jsonapi.org/](http://jsonapi.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Related question. Is Django still a good choice for web apps? I mean should I choose one of the newer ones or is Django good enough?

<comment><USER9> It seems popular still. Do you want a batteries included python web framework? Can't do much better.

In your case, a SPA is not using a lot of Django stuff. So do you really like the admin pages and the ORM? If so use it. If you don't need admin pages and you hate the Django ORM, maybe look at just using Flask?

\-- Only used Django a few times so not an expert, but above is my gut feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is your app data-driven? If yes, have you considered Ember.js? At my startup, we're using Ember + Ember Data backed by an API built with Django + Django Rest Framework, and we couldn't be happier with the conciseness and elegance of our code.

</comment><comment><USER11> Literally a single page? Static content? No, Django is not what you want.

You want to hand-build and hand-tune that page.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes. I have done this with Django and Angular 1.x. Works really well.</comment>


FROONT 1.8 Released – Responsive Web Design Tool - <AUTHOR> https://froont.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! Founder here. The reason we are building this is simple – web design is far from solved, still. I know there are tools out there that help. Starting from very rigid template-based tools ending with fully customizable frameworks. Our goal is to bring designers and developers closer together. At the end we are speaking the same language of HTML/CSS. Froont aims to communicate the ideas better. Thanks!</comment>


How many people has Macbook? - <AUTHOR> So how many people has Macbook? <comment><USER2> How many people have macbook? You can just estimate that number by checking Apple sales numbers or by estimation from macbook vs pc usage across people

<comment><USER3> maybe the question is, _" How many people on HN have a macbook?"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is babby formed?</comment>


Ask HN: Online CS Degrees - <AUTHOR>

Why is it harder to find an online CS degree program (graduate/undergraduate) than an online degree program in something like graphic design, nursing, criminal justice, etc.? <comment><USER2> One guess is that the online-education route in CS more often just bypasses degrees entirely. If you're not going to go to a meatspace university and attend classes, the online-only alternative in computing is usually to learn a bunch on your own, start participating in projects and building up a portfolio, and then try to get hired on the strength of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. However, what's worrisome is the amount of companies, and startups, hiring based on strong CS degrees from well-known schools over experience, professional or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I suspect it has to do with the type of student that generally looks for online programs and what they're looking for, flexible vocational training. It's not just CS that's rare online - try to find any science program, for example. Science degrees train researchers and scientists, and these people aren't the type that need an online degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> However, I feel that there's a good amount of people who need an online degree because they are working full time to pay for that degree, and require the flexibility to successfully achieve that degree.</comment></comment>


The Lazy and Smarter Web - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/08/the-lazy-and-sm.html <comment><USER2> problem is, this only works for guys like Fred. How many hackers on here have thousands reading your blog, twitter, etc.?

<comment><USER3> Popular blogs have a good page rank, therefore googling will bring better results next time an answered question is asked.

Isn't "Ask HN: .." is the same thing?

<comment><USER3> s/is //</comment></comment></comment>


Eating Spicy Food Linked to a Longer Life - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/spicy-food-linked-to-lower-risk-of-death/ <comment><USER2> OK health and nutrition people….. enough is enough.

For generations you have been giving us little correlations, tidbits of mechanisms. Vitamin X, High Intensity Sleep, Antioxidants, Kale, CR… Hot off the presses… new experiment reintroducing critically endangered carnivorous gut fauna…

There is nothing useful that we can do with this "information." It's just random letters from some book that you are throwing at us one at a time. "We found some Hs! It's the first letter in this chapter about Kano Jigaro and appears a dozen time a page. He had exceptional balance, grip strength and organizational skills. It's important. Pay attention to your Hs."

I demand a _theory_ , preferably something simple and powerful like Darwinism that we can demonstrate by drawing sailboats. An equation would be nice.

Just this week I burned my mouth on a chili pepper. I fainted getting out of my ice bath after a 48 hour CR Fast and I went through the window doing HIIT sprints on an omnidimensional walking desk.

I'm going back to the food pyramid. Gimme some spuds.

<comment><USER3> Remember, risk of death still sits at 100%.

<comment><USER4> Strictly speaking, the human condition only has around a 94% fatality rate at the moment.

(110 billion humans in the history of the planet. Over 7 billion currently alive.)

<comment><USER5> When I see the approximations needed to count the 7 billions humans actually living on earth, I smile at the 110 billions number.

The honest answer would be : we have no actual clue on how many people ever lived on earth, and we can only guesstimate how many are living on it right now.

Census only register people that let themselves be registered. It's probably mildly inaccurate in rich countries and terribly inaccurate in poor or chaotic countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since some comments are trying to explain away the findings, here is a quote from the article about what variables were controlled for and the results:

> After controlling for family medical history, age, education, diabetes, > smoking and many other variables, the researchers found that compared with > eating hot food, mainly chili peppers, less than once a week, having it once > or twice a week resulted in a 10 percent reduced overall risk for death. > Consuming spicy food six to seven times a week reduced the risk by 14 > percent.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that you eat less food when it's particularly spicy? Fasting/caloric intake reduction and better health/longer life have been correlated for a while.

<comment><USER8> No, people that routinely eat extremely spicy food eat as much of it as anything else. It might put off the occasional eater of spicy food, but regular consumption depletes the neurotransmitters that generate the effect. It is an acquired immunity that can quickly escalate the level of spiciness required to perceive it. (You lose that immunity relatively quickly though.) Being able to eat almost arbitrarily spicy food is a trivially acquired ability.

Source: I eat quite a lot of habaneros and thai chilis, mostly because those are the peppers that taste strongly "spicy" to me on a day to day basis. If I eat too much on an ongoing basis, even the habaneros start to lose their spiciness. Most people have a "spiciness" threshold so low that the pepper is barely detectable to me. I was not born this way, peppers have been a regular part of my diet because I like the flavor and that confers a natural immunity to the effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shhh... Don't show it to my mother ! If she sees this, my whole family is going to be on a regimen of hot peppers until she reads something else :)

My mother is the kind who changes the whole family's diet when she reads some sufficiently convincing diet book or study. At one point we ate dissociated food. At another point it was blood type food. At another point it was raw roots or something. I love my mother and she's an excelent cook, and she never _forced_ us to eat according to the books, but she would be very insistent, because there were studies that showed ...

Most of the time the results of those studies were disproved, either by another experiment or by some technical issue with the way the study was conducted.

Just like there were studies that smoking is actually good for you and studies that showed that children who drink sugar soda from an early age are heathier.

The point I'm trying to make is that these studies are not just 'informative', they have real consequences on real families. There are families out there who will start eating hot food just because they've read this study.

I hope they don't torture themselves for nothing.

<comment><USER10> Yes 100% this. This sounds like my mother.

She followed every nutritional fad that appeared on the table. I can remember nothing but horrors for dinner for the best part of 10 years of my life. She was scared of eating things in case it affected mortality in some way. In fact I ended up getting quite ill on occasion, now to what I know was simply malnutrition. This affected my schooling, my physical condition and my mental health at the time. The latter was quite devastating for a bit to be honest.

It wasn't until I got a shit job stacking shelves in a supermarket and moved out that I started eating properly and literally after a month I felt like a different person.

Now the cruel result; she had a heart attack and a stroke a couple of years ago due to what they reckon is 60 years of poor dieting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In an editorial that was also published in thebmj they point out alternative explanations for their results: [http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4141](http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4141)

TL;DR: "As the authors acknowledge, a cause and effect relation cannot be inferred from their work. In this prospective study, Lv and colleagues have shown temporality of association, but we need to evaluate additional criteria to judge the strength of evidence. Their findings should be considered hypothesis generating, not definitive, and will undoubtedly encourage further work."

</comment><comment><USER12> This is why Indian people eat Curry!

Jokes apart on a more serious note the crux of the study is --

"Compared with those who ate spicy foods less than once a week, those who consumed spicy foods 6 or 7 days a week showed a 14% relative risk reduction in total mortality. "

Although this study is very vague, in Asian cultures health benefits of spices and various plant products is well known.

Ginger : Has Cox2 inhibitory function. Acting in a similar way to Aspirin and other NSAIDS. Helps prevent heart attacks

Curcumin : found in turmeric has anti-inflammatory similar to ginger but is poorly absorbed. Hence mad more benefits for the Gut.

Arjuna Terminalis : Bark of the plant is known to have anti-hypertensive benefits.

And the list goes on.

The problem is that in the traditional way these plants are consumed (unprocessed in food and NOT in EXTRACT form) these have very poor Bioavailability.

The only way these so called health benefits would be apparent is if they were part of the diet (you eat them everyday - as noted in the study) or they are consumed in the form of Extract.

Also many of these compounds can not be patented and this deters the pharmaceutical industry to make large investments in the clinical trails and bringing them to the market.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/?term=curcumin](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/?term=curcumin)

[http://time.com/3984504/turmeric-supplements- curcumin/](http://time.com/3984504/turmeric-supplements-curcumin/)

</comment><comment><USER13> A co-author mentions they need more data. This reminded me of the huge study of diet and health outcomes in China by T. Colin Cambell of Cornell in the late 1900's.

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

<comment><USER14> Very interesting study unfortunately the conclusions from the book has been debunked[0] a few times. It's a great example of how hard nutritional research is, even with an incredible big dataset and a bunch of very intelligent PHDs it's still very easy to come to the wrong conclusion.

I can highly recommend "Death by Food Pyramid" though, it's a very honest look into food science and the author is very honest about what we know (not a whole lot for sure but we have some strong indications that some diets seem to produce better results) and what we don't know.

[0] [http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or- fal...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's always the same story. A group of researchers finds a funny correlation in the data. They don't know the cause of the correlation, but they just write an article explaining that. Of course, the article if full of conditionals and sentences like: "this should be investigates further". Then, a journalist finds this paper, eliminates all the conditionals and writes a click-bait article, so his employer can earn money from the announcers. Profit. And I am not talking only about this article in particular, but about all the scientific journalism in general.

<comment><USER16> There's a comic for this -^_^- [http://i.imgur.com/833CgHX.png](http://i.imgur.com/833CgHX.png)

<comment><USER17> And here's the actual source: [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The more spicy food you eat the less crappy food you eat...? That could actually be the explanation (not a variable I saw corrected for in the text at least).

<comment><USER19> It makes sense, also fast food chains don't tend to make spicy food.

<comment><USER20> Not just fast food, but most restaurants in general. For someone who prefers a little kick, it's like the majority of bars serving only virgin cocktails. I made the mistake of asking for my meal to made a little on the spicier side(1) at one of these americanized mexican comfort food places. The waitress looked at me like I was asking her to calculate a double integral.

(1) This is common at Thai restaurants, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Previous with TLDR: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008028)

<comment><USER22> It still makes no sense to me. There are numerous spices. But given that this is a Chinese study, maybe "spicy" means five-spice powder, or maybe just Sichuan pepper. And of course, health claims have also been asserted for several Indian spices. Personally, I'd go for a Goan/Sichuan hybrid :)

Edit: OK, I see "mainly chili peppers". So are chili peppers more commonly used in China than Sichuan pepper?

<comment><USER23> I don't understand; Sichuan pepper (花椒, huajiao) isn't spicy. Wikipedia confirms:

"Sichuan pepper's unique aroma and flavour is not hot or pungent like black, white, or chili peppers. Instead, it has slight lemony overtones and creates a tingly numbness in the mouth (caused by its 3% of hydroxy alpha sanshool) that sets the stage for hot spices."

Chinese cooking uses many different kinds of spicy peppers, however. For instance, heaven-facing peppers (朝天椒, chaotianjiao) are pretty common in Sichuan cooking. Maybe that's what you mean?

<comment><USER22> Thanks. It's heaven-facing peppers that I was thinking of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> China has eight main cuisines related to different areas in China. Some of these cuisines are spicy and some are not.

Obviously a whole lot other things also differ together with the spices in these cuisines. It would be nice if they'd asked if the subjects identified with a specific cuisine/area.

There could also be a wealth relation. The poorer Guandong (Cantonese) kitchen has little less chili than the famously spicy Szechuan kitchen which is from a richer area.

<comment><USER25> That may be true historically, but today's Guangdong, wrapping around Hong Kong, home to Shenzhen and a vast number of exporters, is twice as rich as landlocked Sichuan:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One thing that I don't quite understand -- what is it about spicy food that makes it desirable? Esp. the super hot peppers? I know that I love them, but I can't really say why (after all, I normally try to avoid pain). The only thing I can think of is that part of the brain knows that the pain isn't "real" (that is, it isn't being caused by something that is damaging you), yet another part is releasing endorphins to counteract the pain, causing a mild euphoria. But I haven't really found much information to back up this theory.

I do know that at times when I get a spell of mild depression, munching on some hot peppers seems to pull me out of it.

<comment><USER27> I think the endorphin theory is a pretty common explanation, but I think for me and for many others it's largely about flavour. I enjoy the flavour of chili peppers, and I also enjoy how spiciness brings out other flavours in food and makes it richer and more interesting.

<comment><USER28> >I also enjoy how spiciness brings out other flavours in food and makes it richer and more interesting

What? I do like spicy food occasionally, but my main gripe with "very" spicy food is not how painful it is, but how the spiciness overwhelms all other flavors and it's the only thing you can taste. Like you might as well be eating chili paste because you can't taste anything else anyway.

<comment> saiya-jin well, you are simply having too much chilli in the food. good curry for example isn't one that burns your mouth (if you eat it regularly), but rather enrich all flavors present, including many other herbs and spices. if you don't feel anything else but burn, your cook ain't that good :)

<comment><USER28> Maybe, I had just observed that others seem really to enjoy the overwhelming burning sensation and drew conclusions that something must wrong with me if I want to taste something more than chili in my food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The spicier the food, the slower/less you eat?

<comment><USER30> The spicier the food, the more water you drink (maybe).

There's also the link to certain spices (like chili peppers) that are highly anti-inflammatory.

Personally, the more spicy food I eat, the more I have dessert.

<comment><USER31> "The spicier the food, the more water you drink (maybe)."

Negative. Water actually amplifies the sensation. The sugar in the desert counters the sensation, as does milk. If I go awhile without eating "11" hot, when I return I have to follow it with milk or sugar(or both=Thai Tea or Cafe Sua Da). Otherwise, the subsequent burning sensation can be quite unpleasant. I always go to "11" when I feel a cold or flu coming on to combat the contagion, it works 9 times out of 10. YMMV.

<comment><USER30> If I go too hot or if I'm making a really hot hot sauce, I'll go for citrus. The acid counters down the oils and help faster. In the sauce, it balances things. Same for pineapple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Spicy" things tend to have anti-microbial properties. That could certainly trigger a beneficial intestinal flora change--especially in places without a good refrigerated handling chain.

Spicy food also has a tendency to clear sinuses. I believe a couple of studies have shown that clearing sinuses occasionally (but not too often) is beneficial.

<comment><USER33> I've heard that the pain response that the spices trigger somehow activates your immune system or something like that, though as you eat more spicy food you build up a tolerance so I'm not sure how that factors in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Did they control for being Asian?

<comment><USER35> Good point. Loads of people die early over here in Bangladesh, and we eat some of the spiciest foods in the world.

<comment><USER36> That's not the point. The point would be that be that people who eat more spicy food live a little bit longer. It does not mean you don't die from other causes - obviously level of life is a large predictor for life expectancy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> ...maybe. I saw another article about this yesterday, in which they stated that there were other variables in play that could have impacted the results, including a greater of variety of spices in spicier food. Capsaicin is a possible cause of the results, but not definitive

</comment><comment><USER38> I love spicy food so this is great news. But lately I've been wondering about the potential effect of spicy food on gut bacteria. Anyone who's had a painful bowl movement after eating some high Scoville level hot sauce knows what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER39> I don't know about the impact on gut bacteria, but I can tell you that I very rarely suffer "spicy" bowl movements now that I take fiber supplements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Correlation vs causation. Is it possible that people who eat the peppers also eat lots of vegetables as opposed to starchy carbs? Definitely. Is it possible people who, say, exercise more are for some reason more inclined to eat spicy foods.

They can control for any number of things, but this isn't science, it's a correlation and anyone who has taken an intro to statistics class shouldn't be fooled by a pseudoscience blog post. Really surprised to see this on the front page of a community which prides itself on its scientific knowledge.

<comment><USER41> No, you are not correct, and you're engaging in a classic middlebrow dismissal.

This is a scientific research paper published in the BMJ, and a well- documented, controlled cohort study. It's pretty much the opposite of pseudoscience. The blog post is perfectly restrained and does not claim that eating spicy food will increase lifespan, instead reporting (accurately) that the two factors appear to be linked.

Did you even bother reading either?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd love to have spicy food more often – but 2-4 days after a spicy dish, I can usually smell the pepper/byproducts coming out of my skin as a particular, somewhat unpleasant body odor. The odor can remain detectable even immediately after a shower. Red curry/chili-peppers seem the worst trigger. Only time (and _maybe_ a good sweat) eventually clear it.

Does anyone know the chemical mechanisms causing this, and whether any other foods, combined with or after the spicy meal, could help more-quickly neutralize this lagged skin odor?

<comment><USER43> As with garlic sulfur compounds, the odor is due to substances your body can't metabolize, so it excretes them - most noticeably through your skin.

<comment><USER42> I figured roughly that. But is there anything I can do to enable any metabolism of these compounds, or otherwise neutralize them? (Can some people metabolize them better? Would the right skin microbiome help? Etc...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Take this with the same perspective as how the article treats correlation/causation, but I'll share an interesting anecdote. I have several family members in their 90's that love to put cayenne pepper in/on almost anything. One even puts it in orange juice if you can believe that. I tried it _once_... That fellow started smoking when he was in WWII and hasn't stopped. The less-eccentric/vegan/non-smoker members of the family seem to make it to late 70's.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well, if that is true, then why is German statistically the country with the highest average age in the world (on par with Japan), even though their food is quite bland?

<comment><USER46> Germany is nowhere near the top (#19 with 9 other countries) although there's also not much lacking either

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

<comment><USER45> I don't think you understand what average resp. median age means. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age)

Japan and Germany are the ones with highest median age.

<comment><USER46> I must have misunderstood your original comment because "the highest average age" has clearly nothing to do with life expectancy.

Then again, why do you cite the average or median age if the original article is about life expectancy?

My corrected response to your original comment would be: Because the birth rates are so low that the lack of children "raises" the median age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Spicy food is healthy only for certain people, whose genes/environment predispose them to certain dis-eases. Ancient medical systems such as Ayurveda (translated from sanskrit: The truth of life) and Traditional Chinese Medicine (sharing knowledge with ayurveda over past 5000 years as they are in same east asian region) say a food can either be medicine or poison depending on who is ingesting it.

</comment><comment><USER48> My n=1 case for spicy foods.

I have a secondary systemic inflammation to due a genetic condition that make my mitochondria to malfunction. Usual symptoms include a profound fatigue after working-out and muscle weakness, specially in the extra-ocular muscles.

I have been always centered around supplements to improve the energy output (ATP) of my mitochondria (Coq10, ALCAR, idebedone ... you name it). While this made a big difference in my everyday energy levels, I always felt that this systemic fatigue couldn't come only from a energy deficit, as I was able to workout with pretty good intensity and decent weights (I can squat 1.5 my body weight).

The first hint came a couple of months ago when a friend of mine went to the doctor because he was also profoundly fatigued and the doctor told him that he had some kind of auto-immune disease that was causing a systemic inflammation and this systemic inflammation was likely the main cause for the fatigue.

The second hint came right here from HN [1]. So, I just added turmeric extract to my daily regimen 10 days ago and the results have been really impressive so far. I can recover much easier from my workouts and my general energy level has also improved a lot, specially during the mornings. It is too soon to tell, but after so many years trying so many supplements I have developed a anti-placebo and anti-bullshit sense for all these things, and this one is working for real.

Now, I am not meaning that spicy food will make you live longer, but it seems clear that they have some potent active substances that "do" something in our bodies.

I am now trying to add some spicy foods to my meals. The first one has been a very simple curry rice with black pepper (to improve absorption) to eat it post-workout.

Some relevant references:

Curcumin database [2]

Good general info about turmeric [3]

Mitochondria as a target in the therapeutic properties of curcumin [4]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960441)

[2] [http://www.crdb.in/](http://www.crdb.in/)

[3] [http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=78](http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=78)

[4] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25243820](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25243820)

<comment><USER49> I'll add, if anyone would like to try something similar, but has trouble tolerating spicy foods, there's more than one way get your pepper fix. One is to make your own cayenne pepper (or equivalent) gel caps (capsule supplies can be ordered online and are +/\- cheap, or do a cayenne pepper shot that doesn't burn your mouth. Just load up a spoonful, flip it to the back of your throat, then chug some water. Just be sure to not inhale between those steps :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > As the study, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, was observational, > conclusions could not be drawn about cause and effect but the team of > international authors, led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical > Sciences, suggested that more research could lead to dietary advice being > updated. Experts warned that the study did not provide evidence to "prompt a > change in diet".

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think there's any truth to this. Because here in Andhra (India) people only eat spicy food and I see most people don't live longer than 70-80yrs. To quantify the spiciness: Most Indians from other states just run away from Andhra cuisine

<comment><USER52> With 65 being the average life expectancy in India (vs. 76 in the USA), maybe 80 isn't all that bad? Drop those same Andrha folks in a cleaner, less stressful spot on the globe and maybe they'd live 90-100s?

<comment><USER51> I don't have any stats to support my 70-80yrs lifetime claim. It's just my observation. And, I didn't think about how it compares with our national average. Looks like a bit better

<comment><USER53> I have andhra blood. My outer family eats medium spicy stuff. we eat lot of vegetables(we're vegetarians). Average life span about 75 years. There are parts of Andhra Pradesh where they eat too much spicy food. The life span in such areas is less than 65 years. I'm assuming that the article is not referring to this spice level. They're probably suggesting to the average Indian spice levels (which is higher compared to the rest of the world -- especially European and American).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think it's pretty common to eat milder foods when you are ill. I know I do. If that is universally true, and all else being equal, you could probably simplify this headline down to "getting sick less linked to a longer life."

<comment><USER55> Reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon (wish I could find it now) where the discussion was on how a survey showed that heathy people exercise more. Wally commented that's because sick people are too sick to exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I don't understand why these studies never seem to control for height.

<comment><USER57> Are you saying short people who ate spicy food lived longer than everyone else?

<comment><USER56> There is a common link in all these longevity studies, whether it be women, mexican americans, people who eat spicy food, etc, and that is height, which has been shown to correlate negatively with longevity (not withstanding malnutrition).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> As much I read about this particular study, in the group of the more spicy eaters, there where plenty of rural people and in the other group more urban people. So, this sounds to me, that there are different factors inside the study which are interconnected and the "evidence" could also be linked to some different factors, for example more healthy lifestyle of rural people (particular in China: I assume healthier air). In the article, I read, they even suspected, that more tea consume of the spicy group could also cause the positive effect.

So, every study should be taken with a grain of salt, particularly when the exact circumstances are not told.

<comment><USER36> > So, every study should be taken with a grain of salt, particularly when the > exact circumstances are not told.

For once this article makes it very clear there is no clear rationale for correlation at this point. It's certainly not your usual clickbait article.

<comment><USER58> > After controlling for family medical history, age, education, diabetes, > smoking and many other variables

Did not convince me.

And as I stated, I read a different (German) source, where definitively other possible correlations where named -- when one group contains clearly more rural people as the other, the whole statement that "no clear rationale" can be found, is questionable in my opinion, even when it is not political correct in some countries, that urban people are living less healthy lives.

This has nothing to do with click-bait or not. It is just very questionable to me, that the study is methodical clean.

<comment><USER36> > that urban people are living less healthy lives

Actually people in urban centers live clearly longer than in the country side. So I'm not sure what you are talking about.

<comment><USER58> In my country, it is quite different. And I will not speculate further about a country, I don't know. I just wanted to say, that even when the authors of the study do not know the other variables and interconnections, there might be some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> First thing that came to my mind when I read this was how the ancient Egyptians used spices in their mummification process [1]. I guess history repeats itself once again.

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1030_digmumm...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1030_digmummies_2.html)

</comment><comment><USER60> If this is true, Indians are gonna kick ass.

</comment><comment><USER61> Without explanation of reasons it looks more like coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER62> except if you have GERD.

<comment><USER63> True. That makes everything hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> In related news, ice cream consumption causes drownings.

Spurious Correlation is a good source of these: [http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

</comment><comment><USER65> "rapid adoption of new drugs has substantial benefits in the form of increased life expectancy, higher productivity and lower non-drug health care expenditures" \- Do more drugs!</comment>


How to bootstrap your way to launching a satellite - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/02/24/how-a-san-francisco-company-bootstrapped-its-way-to-launching-a-satellite/

<comment><USER2> If you want to speed up the process of building your own satellite look at an open source code satellite [1] from [http://www.satellogic.com/](http://www.satellogic.com/) two satellites were launched with it.

[1] [https://github.com/satellogic/canopus](https://github.com/satellogic/canopus)</comment>


Blissymbols, an Ideographic Writing System - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols <comment><USER2> What a delight to see this here! Charles Bliss's book, _Semantography: Blissymbolics_ was absolutely mind-blowing when I first discovered in the 80's while browsing the 000 section of the library (where the computer stuff is). It was hand-typed and self-published because he couldn't find anyone to publish it.

Bliss's work has been adopted by international signmakers and icon designers around the world, but his purpose was much greater than that. He believed that, through clear and unambiguous writing, we could change how people think. A phrase such as "we support our troops" would, in Bliss, contain a built-in contradiction. In Bliss, that phrase contains a symbol that means "holding up" and one that means "falling down." There are hundreds of other examples in the book, which I highly recommend.

You can find and order rare books like this (or any other books US libraries) to be delivered to you free by your local library. Ask about Interlibrary Loan and use the WorldCat website ([http://worldcat.org](http://worldcat.org)) to find them.

<comment><USER3> _He believed that, through clear and unambiguous writing, we could change how people think. A phrase such as "we support our troops" would, in Bliss, contain a built-in contradiction._

These symbols are very interesting but I'm not sure that we should be choosing writing systems based on the presence of comforting oxymorons. That doesn't seem like a valid form of reasoning at all.

I mean, I hate to bring up Orwell because it's so cliche, but that's _really_ Orwellian.

 _"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."_

<comment><USER2> I definitely see your point. Since Bliss didn't really take off, we don't have to worry about it becoming Newspeak, lol!

This is a good place to point out that the symbols were not meant to replace spoken languages; there is no verbal component to Bliss. It's more like a Tower of Babel idea, that misunderstandings between people and obvious falsehoods might be more easily spotted and corrected.

Check out the book if you get a chance. He can explain it much better than I did! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That brings back memories! One of my jobs as a teenager was to help a teacher at a school for disabled children with Bliss training software for an Epson HX-20 handheld computer.</comment>