By becoming a cook, you can leave processed foods behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/weekinreview/02bittman.html?hp <comment><USER3> I frequently read this kind of articles on the web, and every time I'm amazed by it. Preparing food yourself is the rule in my corner of the world (the Netherlands) - going out for dinner an exception. And up until a few years ago you'd be hard pressed to find a public place that actually served breakfast.

Of course, not every Dutchmen is a great cook (to say the least ;-) but I think you'd have a hard time to find a Dutch adult who doesn't have the means or is not able to prepare (much) more elaborate meals than discussed in this article. And probably this holds true for most of Europe as well. Maybe even for the rest of the world except the US?

Having said that though, I feel that the situation is slowly changing in recent years - primarily for the wealthier part of the population, but still. Kind of makes me sad if I see products in the supermarket which are 'ready made' and 4 times as expensive as the individual ingredients, while knowing that making the same dish from scratch would hardly take longer than preparing the 'ready made' variant and be healthier and cheaper to boot.

<comment><USER4> "Having said that though, I feel that the situation is slowly changing in recent years"

You have to be careful when comparing the US to the rest of the world, because the US is the one breaking the ground of new levels of relatively-well- distributed wealth. (Put aside the question of how well for a moment, please.) For instance, it turns out that the US did not have uniquely bad dietary habits around flour and sugar, it's just that the US was the first to discover people really like to eat that crap and could afford the infrastructure to deploy it; now the bad diets and the consequences are spreading like wildfire as the requisite level of wealth is spreading. (dhughes says Canada is there too, certainly they have that level of wealth too.)

Correspondingly, it is hard to know whether the rest of the world cooks their own meals and don't eat out much because of some sort of intrinsic betterness or culture, or because they simply can't afford it yet. Once people can afford it in more places they may be more inclined to eat out. And if they do, they'll start losing the ability to cook overall. Culture may induce some lag but there's no particularly compelling reason to think that more countries won't follow along.

<comment><USER5> _You have to be careful when comparing the US to the rest of the world, because the US is the one breaking the ground of new levels of relatively- well-distributed wealth._

Not so much, see here: [http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/mint-map-global- wealth-distr...](http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/mint-map-global-wealth- distribution/)

Most of the "western" countries are ahead of the US for distributing wealth amongst the population.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's the wrong stat to use. The US has had a healthy middle industrial-age middle class for longer than anyone else, and even if it is ailing today (which is debatable and subject to rapid change with notice in either direction), my points still stand. It also has a higher average income level than most if not all, along with a higher median and a generally larger "social wealth", even if, again, we may be letting some of that slip.

A well-distributed wealth of $15K a year will not show you how that country will necessarily behave when it has a spotty-but-$42K-average wealth.

I suggested strongly that the point not be missed, I guess I should have just cut straight to spelling it out even if it would have broken the flow. You point is not relevant to my point at all.

<comment><USER6> His point is relevant, I think. But it does not make your point invalid. The us can be considered exceptionally wealthy due to it's per capita gpa, consumption, size, and stored wealth in terms of infrastructure, resources, education, and stability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We don't cook because our parents didn't. Prepackaged convenience foods have always been something of a status item. This whole "return to cooking" is something of an amusing rebellion to me, since it was something of a stigma in my childhood. If your parents had money, your lunch was filled with tasty items sealed in plastic from a factory.

I used to bake bread in my dorm kitchen. My floormates thought it astounding. This is how I learned that nobody's parents had taught them how to cook. As an only child of a single parent, the responsibility for the evening meal fell to me (as well as my own meals throughout the day). Eventually I set upon the family collection of cookbooks and was allowed to make pretty much anything. Even a recipe from a Campbell's Soup cookbook for oatmeal cookies containing a can of tomato soup (as disgusting as it sounds).

Perhaps it's worth noting that my kids generally prefer prepackaged foods over our cooking. So maybe it's a cyclical thing, in some subset of each generation. But I'm hoping that teaching them to cook will change that.

<comment><USER8> The last thing you said is what I came in here to write. Everything in the NYTimes article is correct (about how easy it is to cook those 3 basic meals etc), but it misses one thing: there is no way that someone goes from eating burgers and prepackaged foods to salads and lentils instantly, and it's not because it's difficult or time consuming to cook (it's not really for most things).

Restaurant food has a major convenience factor, but the NYTimes article completely disregards that it also just plain tastes better than a salad to most people.

As someone who hates healthy food, lives in NYC where I can literally order delivery off the internet, and is trying to cook a lot more, you can't force two things on people at once: healthy eating AND cooking. I'm beginning to really like cooking, but only because I'm making things that aren't super healthy. My mother is a librarian and highly encourages her kids to read comics because to her they are a) totally valid reading material and b) are sometimes a gateway drug to much more reading. It's the same with cooking: teach someone to cook a butter burger and fry up some potatoes first (they'll still probably be knocking a few hundred calories off a restaurant version of the same meal anyway) and get them hooked on it. Maybe they'll transition to healthier stuff, worst case you at least have them eating SLIGHTLY healthier, and far closer to the source.

TLDR: Make a man a salad and he will order delivery for a night, teach a man to make salad and he will order deliver for a lifetime.

<comment><USER9> In the same vein.. if you want a delicious salad, try making this: an over- easy egg served on top of chunks of crispy bacon over baby spinach greens, with a dressing of a mixture of a decent balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

<comment><USER10> Quick 'sort of ceaser salad'

Half a teaspoon of dijon mustard (the dark stuff, not the yellow squeezy hotdog stuff)

Half teaspoon of mayonaise

Teaspoon of olive oil

Teaspoon of lemon juice

Shake and pour on lettuce

<comment><USER11> Gah! What? No! Gah! What? Gah!

You have olive oil, lemon juice, and dijon. All you need is an egg yolk and you have _Caesar salad_ , not "sort of ceaser salad [made with mayo]".

1 egg yolk, 2 tbs lemon juice (or, just half a lemon's juice), spoon of dijon, dash worcestershire (if you have it handy), crushed garlic clove (if you have it handy). Salt, pepper. Mix mix mix mix. 1/3 cup olive oil, poured slowly while mix mix mix mix mix. CAESAR SALAD.

Every time you put mayo in a Caesar, God staple-guns a kitten to a sheet of rotted plywood by the ears. I have this on very good authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An year ago I could hardly cook anything except omelet - badly. During the last year I've learned a bunch of recipes - enough to feel confident in the kitchen. Looking back, I think the factors that made it easiest to me to develop the habit of cooking were:

\- A decent kitchen. I've tried cooking before but the lack of kitchen appliances was just demotivating.

\- A need to save some money. Bringing food with me to classes was supposed to be cheaper.

\- A bet with a friend of mine on who can make 6-pack abs first. I wanted to eat healthy and tasty at the same time, so I had to control the food.

<comment><USER13> Which kitchen appliances did you miss? The one thing I miss when cooking at other people's places is a sharp knife. It is really irritating (and dangerous) to cook with a blunt knife.

Did you win the bet? ;)

<comment><USER12> I guess I just wasn't comfortable cooking in a dorm kitchen and there were multiple appliances that I was missing.

But, yes, Jules, a _big_ sharp knife is definitely necessary.

We didn't compare, nor we set a wager, but I got my 6packs and learned to control my weight, which I count as a win.

<comment><USER13> Ah, yes, student dorms usually lack all kinds of material. I have a big knife but I can't use it well so I always use a small knife (this one [http://www.edenwebshops.co.uk/en/pt/-robert-herder-paring- kn...](http://www.edenwebshops.co.uk/en/pt/-robert-herder-paring-knife.htm)). Why do you prefer a big knife? Is it worth becoming proficient using one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I eat lots of supermarket 'ready meals'. There seems to be an assumption that this is worse for my health that if I prepared and cooked the ingredients myself. Can someone point me to some concrete scientific evidence that that is true, or at least some convincing theories on why it might be true? (Ready meals are _really_ convenient - if I'm going to motivate myself to give them up, I need some concrete evidence that they really are bad for me)

<comment><USER15> Pre-made meals aren't intrinsically bad for you; it's the preservatives and other questionable ingredients (and quantity of) that the manufacturers may add that is detrimental to your health.

<comment><USER16> I believe the parent post is referring to the "Meals For Two" that some grocery stores are offering these days. In my area, two chains--Market Street and Central Market, for reference--have hot food restaurants/delis in the store. They use the same stock that is sold in the store and prepare lunch and dinner servings prior to the store opening and then throughout the day. Those are then packaged in containers, placed into a paper bag, stapled closed and put into a refrigerated display case.

Functionally, these are no different from preparing food at home. They are naturally more expensive than cooking the food yourself, but I can't tell a big difference. There are even services around here now that prepare, freeze, and deliver fresh-cooked meals from a nearby commercial kitchen on a weekly basis.

<comment><USER17> If you think that stuff doesn't taste like total crap, you are kidding yourself. In the last two years my wife and I moved from Portland (where you can get healthy tasty restaurant food) to the Bay Area (where you can't) and so we started cooking at home all the time.

Anything that isn't a home cooked meal tastes like industrial crap to me (even most restaurants). Once you have tasted sauteed greens, rice and home-roasted chicken, all those prepared foods you thought were normal will reveal themselves to you as suddenly not even worth the category "food".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Growing up, I only knew how to cook spaghetti and chocolate chip cookies. I figured everything else was in the realm of gourmets, and then I went to work for Google, and I never really needed to cook.

But lately I got interested in cooking again and discovered that its surprisingly easy to cook delicious meals. Here are my staples: \- Beef & veggie stir-fry ([http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/beef-recipes/beef-and- veg...](http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/beef-recipes/beef-and-vegetable- stir-fry) \- substitute "cauliflower rice" for noodles for lower carbs) \- Pan-fried salmon w/asparagus or green beans (cooked in butter, garlic, and salt)

I wish someone had shown me the joys of a frying pan and sea salt before. It's brilliant. I feel so gourmet now. ;)

<comment><USER19> As a side note, the website is Jamie Oliver, a major player in convincing people on eating healthy. If you haven't seen his TED Talk, I would encourage you to: <http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html>. He also starred in a reality-esque (not sure of the proper term, don't watch TV) TV-show called Food Revolution, attempting to bring healthy food to elementary schools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I grew up with a pretty strong culinary tradition (Sicilian-American), and it was only when I left home around 17/18 that I realized how privileged I was to have a grown up with a father and grandfather that were extraordinary cooks. My grandfather was master baker at Gonnella for decades, a genius in many ways, and my father is easily following in his footsteps.

My family was not rich, but I would not have traded their cooking skills to have grown up eating in the most expensive restaurants.

It was not unusual growing up to have homemade bread around.

[http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak- snc4/hs887.snc4/72084...](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak- snc4/hs887.snc4/72084_1507521417181_1508676473_31100003_2373676_n.jpg) (From my dad's fb)

My father bakes pastries as a hobby, at one point, he made three large bins full of different types of cookies because work was slow and he needed to keep busy.

[http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak- snc1/hs124.snc1/5331_...](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak- snc1/hs124.snc1/5331_1078752418224_1508676473_30208370_1023986_n.jpg)

While my grandfather was more traditionally Sicilian in his style, my father is more Chicago. His deep dish pizza will knock your socks off, and sausage and peppers with fresh baked Italian bread is the stuff of champions.

[http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak- snc1/v1976/129/117/510...](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak- snc1/v1976/129/117/510304405/n510304405_1060548_3762.jpg) (Arancini, Octopus salad, Pasta salad, and Caponata)

I always took it for granted. When I moved out, I missed it. As I got older, I praised it. When my grandfather died, and I realized that I had spent a solid week talking about food, even the Priest talked about it, I realized that I need to get serious about doing it. When my father passes, it's up to me and my brothers to keep things going. Without it, all I have is the name.

So I'm a big advocate of building and rebuilding a culinary culture. It's easy for me, because mine never disappeared, but I understand it's more difficult for others whose families immigrated earlier, or whose cultures were purposely stamped out, to build that. And I think, for most people it's about enjoying cooking, and understanding the ingredients, for me, a culinary culture can't just be about assembly. It's about everything from philosophy to ideology, sex and love, family, emotion and science. And so much a person's personality and memory is wrapped up in how and what they cook. This Christmas, the first Christmas without my grandfather, my father made a traditional Christmas dinner, and it was heaven. One of the dishes was called Scacciata, a salty bread with tuma cheese that's just incredible. It was wonderful, but it was uniquely my father's creation, and I realized that I would never have it exactly the way my grandfather made it ever again.

I love America, but to be completely honest, the only thing I've ever considered emigrating over is the food culture. I get so envious of other countries that if I ever I do decide to leave (doubtful), that will be the reason.

This was long and somewhat meandering, but I'll leave you with this final scene from The Big Night, one of my favorite movies:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oerP7FRMWa8>

<comment><USER11> Big Night: also a great startup movie.

I might take issue with the (implied) assertion that Chicago lacks a food culture, or that the average citizen of (say) Rome is necessarily steeped in one.

<comment><USER20> Chicago has a restaurant culture, a particularly fantastic one (in my opinion the best in the U.S.), but I don't know if I consider that the same as a food culture. While there are some pretty good open markets, it's nothing like you'd get in Rome or Paris, and the idea of taking a three hours for lunch would get you laughed out of the workplace.

<comment><USER11> We also have the Green Market and a smattering of farmer's markets, Paulina Meat Market, next week we'll have Rob & Allie's Butcher & Larder for traceably farm-to-table meat, sometime next year we'll have Paul Kahan's butcher project, and we have Fox & Obel for stuff like duck legs and hanger steaks. Lots of great bakeries, too. And that's before you get into the Mexican and Asian groceries.

I'm watching Big Night again tonight thanks to you. Thanks!

<comment><USER20> I mean, I don't mean to disparage Chicago, I love this city (and hell yeah to Paulina Meat Market, that place is one of my favorites). I just don't think generally that Chicago has the kind of culinary culture that European cities do, and most of it comes from it's recent immigrants, although it's streets ahead of anywhere in the U.S., no doubt.

BTW, I've been trying to find an actual Timpano recipe for years, but as far as I can tell, it's either a creation for the movie, or it's such an obscure regional food that it's hard to find any authentic recipes, although there are plenty of really good approximations.

<comment><USER11> "Streets ahead"? :)

Try: Google [timpano casserole -"big night"]; first result is a credible book reference with a recipe.

We need to figure out a way to do some kind of startup supper club in Chicago.

<comment><USER20> _We need to figure out a way to do some kind of startup supper club in Chicago._

I'm down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Why I Don't Cook at Home" from _The Oatmeal_ :

<http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cook_home>

(I myself do cook, but I also go out when I need a break from my own cooking.)

<comment><USER11> "I don't cook because I don't decide what to eat until I am so hungry that a Chinese take-out leaflet is appealing, and when I tried to make bison casserole with an empty fridge instead of ordering Chinese, it didn't work out for me". Got it, Oatmeal.

Sorry, did I kill the frog?

<comment><USER22> That summary looks about right to me. Though there is probably some value in pointing out that a lot of people who try to get into cooking really don't know where to start and end up looking in exactly the wrong place, e.g. a recipe dependent on a large number of specialty items (I'm certainly not going to start my brother on something like that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _a stir-fry, a chopped salad, and the basic combination of rice and lentils, all of which are easy enough to learn in one lesson_

Well, fried eggs with bacon or whatever else you want them with are quite easy to learn and quick to cook.

Also, I've learned to cook steaks recently, it's actually super easy - <USER2> heat the pan, cook 1 side for two minutes, turn over and cook the other side for two minutes!

<comment><USER11> Or get a cheap-o RC880 rice cooker and a $120 Auber PID controller and some ziploc bags, and you can make absolutely foolproof steaks, pork chops, chicken breasts, duck legs, rabbit, beaver tail, and what-have-you just by pushing a couple buttons.

It blows my mind that more hackers don't cook sous-vide.

<comment><USER24> I saw a sous-vide being advertised for about $300 from Costco; so surely more people are becoming aware of it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it appalling that there are adults who are unable to prepare food for themselves.

I'm a college student. I cook every day by choice, not for financial reasons (though it is less expensive). For me, cooking has manifold appeal. Through cooking it is possible to:

* Cook meals that taste better than those that come from a restaurant or out of a box. This takes quality ingredients and some skill. Those just getting started with cooking may not make anything that rivals food from a fine restaurant, but with practice it's possible. I can adjust recipes to my own tastes, or invent my own recipes by combining ingredients in ways that I think will work well. Recipes are simply lists of instructions that consistently yield good food, and are not unlike programs. The ingredients are the parameters, and recipe steps are functions. Execute the program correctly, and quality food will be returned. Functions are modular, and learned techniques can be adapted to new foods. It's about "understanding" ingredients and styles of cooking. Think of a cookbook as lessons on culinary design patterns.

* Eat healty fare. By cooking, I can prepare meals with balanced levels of nutrients. For me, that means hitting the major food groups, with reduced levels of refined carbohydrates and salt. Unlike packaged food, what I cook for myself has low levels of preservatives, no synthetic flavors, and no artificial colorants. Once you start to cook for yourself, food from chain restaurants and prepackaged food begin to taste like cardboard. I also have anaphylactic allergy to certain foods, so for me it is also a way to ensure that meals are safe.

* Save time. Cooking can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, depending on the meal. I can prepare food in bulk, and either eat for the week or freeze food for the future. I regularly have homemade chicken stock on hand and frozen in the freezer. It has less salt and more flavor than store bought stock, and costs nearly nothing to produce.

* Relax and enjoy myself. I have other hobbies, but I cook for leisure. For me, spending an hour or two to prepare food is better sitting in front of a video game or television. I can move around a kitchen, experience a variety of smells, sights, and sounds--without leaving the house. It gives me great pleasure to cook with others, and to share good food with friends. Unlike alcohol or other staples of revelry, food is life-sustaining--we have to eat.

* Be a responsible consumer. Sustainability has become a buzzword these days, but cooking is one surefire way to reduce our environmental impact. Food I prepare myself does not depend on a factory system for production, packaging, or marketing. Where I live, in Rochester, NY, we are fortunate to have a fantastic farmer's market. I go to the market each Saturday and buy enough food for a week for less than the cost of a single meal at a mid-range independent restaurant. I don't usually go with specific recipes in mind. I typically buy vegetables that are in season, or those that look particularly fresh. I can talk to the men and women who grow the food. In an economy dominated by corporations, monetary voting is one of the most important actions we can take. I cast my ballot for local food. It supports the regional economy, and local food does not need to be trucked in. Local food it is allowed to truly ripen, and it does not lose nutrients on cross-country journeys.

* Experience aspects of other cultures. I have roommates of European, Hispanic, Russian, and Indian heritage, and we each approach food differently. The cabinets in my house are stocked with all kinds of spices, for different kinds of traditional meals. I've experienced new flavors, and truly learned which ones I enjoy. I've come to revelations that some recipes from my German grandmother may, just maybe, taste better with a little dhal or mole.

I consider myself fortunate to have parents who, while modest cooks, instilled in me the importance of knowing how to cook. Cooking is traditionally something passed down within families. By forgetting to cook, we lose that part of our heritage.

\---

Cooking is a perfect hacker activity, in my opinion. It is systematic, affords many of the same challenges as a chemical experiment, and has countless variations.

When I cook, I think about how salt, temperature, pressure, and humidity can each help me in the kitchen. Knowing about vapor pressure, osmotic balance, chemistry, and biology can only contribute toward good meals.

I enjoy knowing what happens when I deglaze a pan with wine, sear meat, use a pressure cooker, and I enjoy when I sneak a vacuum pump into the kitchen to help with marinades or sauce reduction.

\---

So you want to cook, you say? What gear do you need? I'm sure others here would be able to offer better advice, but I'd suggest a heavy sauce pan (I prefer cast iron or stainless steel, though I use a non-stick pan for omlets), an 8-10" chef knife (with something to sharpen it, like a sharpening steel or an upside-down ceramic coffee mug), a large stock pot (with cover), a large cutting board, wooden spatulas, a whisk, a roasting pan, mixing bowls, measuring spoons and cups (and/or a scale), tongs, and a strainer. There are countless other implements, but the aforementioned will get you 80% there. A thermometer can be handy if you're cautious or curious.

</comment><comment><USER26> I began eating red beans and rice (plus peppers, onions, and garlic, never ever gets old) a year ago as a staple and the improvement in my health has been noticeable. I have put on 25 pounds of 90% muscle and have stabilized near my ideal "fighting weight" again.

<comment><USER27> It made me smile to see this note at the bottom of pg's essay on ramen- profitability:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The author leaves out one advantage of not eating out so much, cost.

It is difficult to spend more on ingredients for a home cooked meal than a nice restaurant meal would cost, and not hard to spend a lot less.

The downside is time, but the upside of is a fun cooking hobby.

<comment><USER11> It is definitely not harder to spend more cooking at home than eating out. You just have to geek out, just a little bit, and not shop at supermarkets.

Note also that if you eat meat but won't eat Tyson chicken or Swift pork, your meal cost is automatically higher than most midrange restaurant meals --- but then again, those restaurants are probably serving you wholesale chicken & pork from the same crappy sources.

<comment><USER28> If you consider a "nice restaurant meal" to cost $25 or more, I assert it is hard to spend $25 on ingredients for one home cooked meal.

It is fairly easy to spend more than a "dollar menu fast food meal".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd rather build one than become one.

[http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/10/21/tum-rosie-and- pr...](http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/10/21/tum-rosie-and-pr2-james- make-pancakes-together)</comment>


Ask HN: An enviornment based crypto currency - <AUTHOR> I have been dabbling with this idea of a crypto currency which takes into account the enviornment into factor,So it will be more like the value of the crypto currency increases if there is an increase in the quality of the enviornment,For starters i am thinking of the enviornment conditions of the place they have been produced.<p>The long term idea for it is to aid in evatever we can do to protect the enviornment for as long as possible. This Idea is still in its nascent stage,What do you people think? What can be done? <comment><USER2> SolarCoin is a cryptocurrency that rewards people for generating solar energy. I think that's a pretty neat idea.</comment>


Ask HN: Do we have the cloud infrastructure to handle a mass quarantine? - <AUTHOR> The cloud is built on the premise that loads are significantly uncorrelated but in an emergency, all correlations go to one. Everyone is going to be clamoring for the same finite set of cloud resources and we're going to hit hard limits very quickly as the ability for the overall cloud to scale up in capacity is very limited.
In your job, are you taking any steps right now to disaster plan for if you face significant restrictions on availability of cloud resources and simultaneously huge increases in demand?
Do we have any lessons from China on how they handled their quarantine from an internet infrastructure perspective so we can share best practices and make sure we're ready? <comment><USER2> The flip side is that many kinds of business activity will drop. For instance, airlines will be consuming less computing resources. Some elite universities will be doing remote education, but in the end they will be doing less education.

Cloud providers also let out quite a lot of capacity at low prices on the spot market. I have trained neural networks at deep discounts and if capacity becomes tight for systems that are guaranteed to run, those low prices will go away.

I don't know about others, but AWS has support centers in many different places, if the epidemic hits different places at different times, they will always have support staff somewhere who are OK.

If anything is going to break it is going to be the access networks of residential service providers. We haven't seen "middle mile" underinvestment to be as much of a problem as it used to be, but if daytime load increases dramatically, you will see some internet providers get laggy for teleconferencing, ssh, ...

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw this coming and avoided moving my infrastructure to the Cloud in the first place. It sounds insensitive, but "I told you so" sounds very satisfying. I mean nobody with 100% Cloud infra is really going to be surprised when some major world event destroys their data, right?

Of course we haven't hit those limits yet and I'm sure the major players involved have failover/load balancing capabilities that we haven't even scratched the surface of yet. I honestly believe that this is not the Cloud- ending event that the world is destined for one day.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fortunately, at my workplace the only reliance on cloud services we have is that we use O365. If that went down, it would be very inconvenient but not disastrous. The biggest problem would be email, of course, but we could switch to our backup email system within a day or so.</comment>


Question about when startups should talk to a lawyer? - <AUTHOR>

I am working with a startup and was wondering if I could draw upon the HN wisdom. At what stage do you recommend getting a lawyer and setting up your business entity? <comment> Mark-Avvo As an ex-deal lawyer and the founder of www.avvo.com (where lawyers will answer your legal questions for free btw), I urge you to have a seasoned venture lawyer at your side from the outset. Most firms will forego fees until your first round of financing, so there is really no downside. The real downside is trying to play lawyer and failing to adequately protect yourself and your company.

Mark Britton Founder + CEO, Avvo

</comment><comment><USER2> While everyone does it at different times, it only helps to get it done early. Cooley, Wilson Sonsini and a number of the other big firms offer services for free, pre-funding. Or just use the free&standardized docs that you find online.

Also figure out the equity split among your team early, even before legal docs. Always a shame to see a team fall apart because of poor communication</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a Hacker News equivalent for research papers? - <AUTHOR> The title sums it up. Basically, I'd like to know if there's a similar community or format to see the latest most popular research papers, published in free and open access?
Obviously we get a lot of these here already. But I'd be looking at something with a wider reach and encompassing more fields. Or separate communities for each field, as otherwise there'd be a skew in the favor of the biggest communities (as we get here for some languages for instance... but I digress).
I know HN is not always necessarily about "latest" or "current" content either, but you get the idea.
(Tricks to extract most popular articles from HN, Google Scholar or others are also welcome, of course ;))
Update: title fix, didn't know the etiquette. <comment><USER2> This is a great question. Sorry in advance I don't know of one. But it is something I think about often. I tend to read math and economics research papers (have PhD in the latter too if it matters) and have published.

I think there are 3 issues here:

1) there is so much research coming out. Even working paper releases. Its hard to keep up with that volume of work. How to control that flow of work?

2) Research has become very niche. So there are research papers that only 5 people can understand and only 2 of those people even care about. This specificity "problem" is a reality of the sciences but it makes HN type voting system a challenge. An upvoting system is OK for news articles and technical papers that had a wide audience in mind, but for many research papers it can skew the results people see to particular types of "easy" research which are not always very good or rigorous or current.

3) This is the big one I think: We really need a go-to site for anonymous comments on research papers in academia and from other experts working in industry. HN is a great example of the power of such an "anonymous experts option" which I think overall works well here. Sure there are the occasional "troll" comments or the "I googled this topic I never of 5 minutes ago then commented" type comments but in general quality anonymous comments do rise to the top very often on here and I learn more from comments than articles in many cases. I think with research papers, while people are not afraid to attack or be polemical per se, but they do hold back on a lot more they want to say if not anonymous. It's very easy to be a critic in public, but offering an alternative solutions or idea in public can cause problems career-wise and for other reasons.

P.S. As for tricks, I think the usual google advanced search tricks and other boolean gimmicks work quite well (date ranges, "-" to exclude shit, wildcards).

<comment><USER3> I am currently working on point 3. Don't have any experience in community building, but really excited at the topic and scope of the project.

I have been thinking about the relative merits of anonymous posting vs identity-tagged. On the one hand are the suggestions you make that people may be hesitant to critique or applaud ideas because of political backlash. This would favor an anonymous system. On the other hand, I want to know what certain figures think. There is weight behind what a member of the National Academy thinks, and if they are weighing in, then I am going to pay more attention to those statements than some anonymous poster's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.arxiv-sanity.com](http://www.arxiv-sanity.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.bibsonomy.org/](https://www.bibsonomy.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Depending on your interests you might like: [https://www.reddit.com/r/REMath/](https://www.reddit.com/r/REMath/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Academia.edu is a company that is trying to take the lead in this space. I wouldn't call HN-like, but it is at least a place that aims for academic discourse.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, there is and you're using it. The HN community and/or moderators choose not to upvote.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reddit.com/r/science ?

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be a good example of a similar community I guess, ~but my other requirement was focus on research papers, not discussions.~

Worth digging into though, thanks.

Update: Actually is apparently focused on papers. Thanks!

I want something more like "most popular papers across any field" ("science", while broad, seems already somewhat focused).

It's just always fun to discover stuff that may be unrelated to what you do or know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm working on wikipaper.org</comment>


Novell acquired by Attachmate Corporation - <AUTHOR> http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-agrees-to-be-acquired-by-attachmate-corporation <comment><USER2> I find this to be the most interesting part:

"Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash"

<comment><USER3> I wonder if it includes the UNIX copyrights.

Novell's waiver got a whole load of SCO's claims rejected. Hands up: who wants to see that particular can of worms reopened?

<comment><USER4> Well, those were claims that Linux copied from original UNIX code. Since that was rejected and new code added to Linux is most definitely _not_ from a 30-year-old codebase, I would imagine Linux is safe.

<comment><USER5> Not only that, but by distributing the code, Novell effectively, under the terms of the GPLv2, granted usage and redistribution rights to all receivers of that code (me, you, Red Hat...), regardless of whatever patents they could violate.

I love the way GPL renders toothless some threats.

And the claims Linux code was a copy of Unix were completely refuted, IIRC.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure that a lot of people would disagree with your view that the GPL grants an automatic patent license. It doesn't. At least GPL v2 doesn't. It was always assumed that there was an implicit grant, but as far as I know, this has never been tested in court. And I'm pretty sure that Oracle doesn't think that this is the case, since this is how they make money on Java.

Also, I'm not sure if the copyright question was ever full ruled upon, since SCO never had standing to sue over something that they didn't own. I didn't follow all of the SCO rulings, but since they didn't own any UNIX copyrights, that argument could have just been moot.

<comment><USER5> "6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), _the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions_. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."

It's quite an unambiguous grant. Not only patents, but of whatever other instrument that could be used to remove the right to redistribute verbatim or modified versions in accordance to the rest of the license.

It was never tested on court. This can be a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Novell has been going nowhere for the past few years. It looks like now it's finally arrived._ \--One of my colleagues

</comment><comment><USER7> Novell Netware was once the king of enterprise networks. It's a great case study of how a technology leader went from invincible to invisible in under a decade.

</comment><comment><USER8> To me, what is really interesting about this deal is how it all came about. Elliott Associates forced Novell to put themselves up for sale after Elliott offered to buy the entire company. They're a really interesting hedge fund because they get involved in these extremely esoteric areas of the market where they have little competition -- for example, a few years back they were buying up defaulted sovereign debt and suing countries to force them into paying up.

With this deal, not only is Novell getting sold to Attachmate, but Elliott is also an equity investor in Attachmate, so they can benefit from the upside.

Now that markets are becoming more and more volatile, these kinds of transactions where you force an event are going to be in demand in order to keep returns up.

<comment><USER9> _They're a really interesting hedge fund because they get involved in these extremely esoteric areas of the market where they have little competition -- for example, a few years back they were buying up defaulted sovereign debt and suing countries to force them into paying up._

They're a vulture fund, which are considered to be highly unethical when they profiteer from third world debt, and are banned in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a long strange ride it has been for both companies. I remember back early in my career supporting Attachmate 3270 mainframe cards - clearing print queues in Netware 3 print consoles, and marveling at the release of an object registry in Netware 4's NDS.

</comment><comment><USER11> Miguel is usually around here. What does this mean for Mono?

<comment><USER12> We will continue working on Mono :-)

Let me take this opportunity to remind everyone that MonoDevelop 2.4.1 just came out, and that you can get a 20% discount on MonoTouch this week by using the "BLACK-FRIDAY" discount code.

:-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "the leader in intelligent workload management"

What does that mean?

<comment><USER14> As a rule, American companies will present themselves as the 'leader in X', whatever the actual state of affairs in 'X'.

<comment><USER15> Or, if they are an honest company, they will define X to be so narrow as to only include one company.

<comment><USER16> Wongle Inc., the leading provider of fine Wongle Inc. products!

<comment><USER17> I wonder who are the non-leading providers of Wongle product? Oh that's right, some pirate/clone knockoffs based in Asia. ;)

<comment><USER18> Wongle Inc. doesn't make Wongles anymore, they exclusively specialize in Wongle IP brokering. Wongle Inc. products now consist entirely of Wongle related patent licenses ...

<comment><USER17> ok who are we kidding... are we talking about HP here or IBM? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wonder if Attachmate is keeping Mono, or if it makes part of the assets being sold off to CPTN Holdings LLC (whatever it is they do).

<comment><USER20> CPTN Holdings is "a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation". So, Microsoft.

<comment><USER19> Well, it does seem Microsoft was involved in buying some of the IP: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/whats-microsofts-role- in...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/whats-microsofts-role-in-the- novell-attachmate-deal/8041)

But notice they don't say what that IP was, so it's not clear if it was Mono- related or not yet. Not sure what MS would do with any Mono-related IP or if they'd really care about it (except for killing it, of course, and I wouldn't think that is their intention).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope Novell has transferred all IP pertinent to Linux to the OIN [0] before the sale.

[0] <http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/>

<comment><USER5> Not needed. The GPLv2 has an implicit grant to use patents, so, anything Novell did with that IP that touches any GPL'ed code it distributed puts that code and its derivations in a more or less safe position.

It's not as watertight as GPLv3 or Apache, but it may be enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So..

How come when Oracle bought Sun the DoJ and EU looked into the anti-trust issues around Oracle owning MySQL (which _obviously_ was never going to be an anti-trust issue while there are other SQL databases out there) and yet there is no noise about it when Microsoft gets some kind of IP rights to _Unix_?!?

Obviously it isn't clear exactly what MS got, but this could conceivably impact every single commercial and open source operating system in existance except for IBM's midrange & mainframe OS's.

(Ok, realistically I'm sure Apple & IBM & Oracle have iron clad licences for OSX and AIX and Solaris, but surely the point is that Microsoft - a convicted monopolist - shouldn't be allowed further market power in the operating sytem market)

</comment><comment><USER23> Novell owns Unix copyrights. Anyone remember SCO vs Novell?

Regards

<comment><USER24> Yep, Microsoft (probably) just bought Unix.

Somehow, there's something poetic about that...

<comment><USER25> I suppose it's too much to hope that Windows 8 will be a *nix...

<comment><USER26> If one trusts the slides that leaked about Win 8 then no. Plus Windows already has a decent kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does this mean that Miguel de Icaza becomes a Microsoft employee (via CPTN Holdings) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. People are not Intellectual Property.

<comment><USER28> Give it time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bloomberg is reporting that Novell is "the maker of _Linux_ operating-system software ...." (sic; emphasis added). See [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-22/novell-will-be- acqu...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-22/novell-will-be-acquired-by- attachmate-for-2-2-billion-or-6-10-a-share.html).

(It's repeated further down in the story.)

<comment><USER30> Novell owns SuSE. That's probably the biggest thing they have going right now, so yes, they are the maker of _a_ Linux operating system.</comment></comment>


How Bad Will It Get for American Express? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/ <comment><USER2> I've been an AMEX user since 2002. I have a MasterCard also, and use it where AMEX is not accepted. However, I prefer using AMEX because:

1\. It has a rock solid dispute system. I've disputed charges where the merchant didn't deliver on promise and AMEX took really good care of it. Same thing with a Visa card didn't go very well. You can do everything off the AMEX website and over email. With others, you have to call them and deal with lousy customer support.

2\. They have a really good website and overall user experience. Its a pleasure to go to the website to see the charges, or to get a well laid out annual spending report. Their mobile app is also the best as compared to others.

3\. They have stellar customer service. I rarely need to call them, but when I do, the wait times are in seconds.

4\. They support mobile payments - Its the first one to be on Samsung Pay and I happen to have a Note 5.

FWIW, I just have the "American Express Blue Cashback" card, which no annual fees.

<comment><USER3> > Same thing with a Visa card didn't go very well

I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, but unlike Amex, Visa does not issue credit cards, and relies on banks ("Issuing Banks") to deal with disputes. So if you had a bad experience with your Visa card, you should consider switching to a different issuer, vs. just assuming that all banks that issue Visa cards will act the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For something as fungible as credit card transactions, it's hard to understand how a "brand" could be truly valuable. (Or is the grocery store cashier secretly really impressed when I produce my Amex Blue?)

<comment><USER5> I've live in New York and I've literally never been to a single bar or grocery store that accepts American Express.

Anyone know why this is?

<comment><USER6> Amex charges higher fees per-transaction. Because they're a charge card, they make their money off the transaction fees, and not off the interest rates a card accrues. Conversely, this means they have to charge more on the front-end to maintain profitability.

<comment><USER7> Yep - great to see them in trouble. Most small businesses hate them as they take from their bottom line.

IIRC amex also tried to stop retailers letting customers know just how much they charge per transaction and wouldn't let shops offer different prices to counter-balance Amex greed.

Overall they sound thoroughly nasty and I cheer their demise.

ps whenever I can I use cash at an independent business so they keep the 2-3% instead of some big bank.

<comment><USER8> >Overall they sound thoroughly nasty and I cheer their demise.

They're wonderful as a consumer, and I would be quite sad if they were to go anywhere. I've had multiple large companies try to screw me over, and I went to Amex and they went to bat for me and took care of the issue.

I have 100% confidence that I will be taken care of for all purchases related to my Amex card, which I cannot say even for my other "prestige" cards such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is typical modern Bloomberg reporting - telling a misleading, emotion driven story from anecdotal data and rumors.

"The Amex people, most of whom had MBAs, sometimes found it amusing to deal with Costco veterans who spoke about starting out stocking warehouse shelves. Less endearing was the habit Costco executives had of referring to Amex as a "vendor." That made the Amex people seethe. After all, they represented one of America's oldest corporations. But they smiled and said nothing, and the corporate marriage endured for 16 years."

Seriously?

<comment><USER10> While I don't entirely agree, this article put me off a little.

The first three paragraphs didn't make sense to me and seemed like you said, anecdotal/rumor.

Same with the part about Chenault at the Museum of Natural History event with Sheryl Sandberg and how "yet his dark slacks were creased, and his shoes gleamed as if they'd just been polished." Reads as if the author has something personal in this. What was he supposed to show up in?

<comment><USER11> I got the impression the author was trying to reinforce the image of Amex being a stodgy Wall Street company that is increasingly out of touch with technology and culture.

<comment><USER12> I think they were more trying to demonstrate their elitism, which is kind of the brand that Amex has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was really bummed when I found out that the Costco Amex card was getting cancelled, as I was thinking about getting one.

But having read the article: good. I'm glad Costco did not hesitate to tell them to take a hike when they found a better deal.

<comment><USER14> The Costco Amex vanishing seems like no big deal. However, Costco refusing to take Amex for payment at all introduces far more inconvenience.

<comment><USER15> Not really. Before AMEX, Costco had an exclusive deal with Discover. That's the definition of inconvenience. This new deal will result in a Costco branded Visa but Costco will be accepting ANY Visa card. For the vast majority of consumers this is much more convenient.

FWIW, AMEX has been doing the hard sell trying to get me to switch to a new card. So far, I haven't seen any offers worth my time. It's a shame really. I've been a cardholder for 15 years and even worked for them for a few years. Personally, I see no reason to continue the "relationship".

<comment><USER16> Yeah, when we moved back to the states, I signed up with Costco. Only I couldn't pay for it with any of the cards that I had. So I also had to sign up for their Amex card. Quite a bit of paperwork and hassle...

<comment><USER17> There's always cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure. You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future."

</comment><comment><USER19> Not a fan of elitism, however one good effect AMEX has on people who use their charge cards is to make them be more responsible with their spending habits. Credit cards make their money by charging interest on revolving credit, which steers people toward being less responsible with their spending.

Ironically, I think the people who would stand to benefit the most from a charge card, those just getting started i.e. in college, probably don't qualify for a charge-only AMEX, whereas the credit card companies aggressively pray on them.

<comment><USER20> Most of Amex's non-corporate business now is regular ole credit cards.

<comment><USER21> Do you have a citation for that?

Most mid-to-high-end Amex cards (which generate the majority of revenue) are still charge cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my view, AMEX will not survive, unless it innovates by creating new 'types and ways' of credit card usage. Eg offering multiple currency balances, digital currencies, using a card for non-payment functions, integrating with phones for security/etc.

Their network is small and getting smaller, and I think soon corporations will just stop issuing AMEX to its employees for corp expenses (this were AMEX is still strong (guessing)) -- as there are enough attractive business-friendly alternatives are out there.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone else go into a Costco and then try to pay only to be hit with the Amex deal, and say no thanks? I wouldn't mind having a Costco membership, but the Amex thing really rubbed the wrong way, so I never bothered to get a membership.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been an AMEX user since 2005. I love their customer service, and I like that my card is travel ready. I do not have to call up some place to tell them I am traveling over seas. That is a huge benefit for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> Amex has been offering pretty sweet signing bonus for new cards. I think I have raked in enough points for two first class international flight tickets.

</comment><comment><USER26> Chenault's strategy of pursuing the New Jersey EBT card program was when things really started to go downhill.

</comment><comment><USER27> Article references Costco getting bummed that their customers could use VISA in plenty of places and that's correct. However, I'm an AMEX cardholder and I've yet to run into a place who doesn't accept AMEX.

However, Costco is right AMEX is just a vendor and if they can find cheaper or better vendor with benefits then more power to them.

<comment><USER28> Really? I only have an AMEX card and unless it's a chain store it's almost never accepted. I often get lectures from small business owners about the higher rates charged by AMEX and why they can't accept it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> i'd be more impressed if they hadn't done the half-assed chip-and-sig thing and actually supported pins.

</comment><comment><USER30> Goddamn this was brutal

</comment><comment><USER31> Is AMEX really struggling... ?

I really had no idea. That's really disappointing, how could that be?

<comment><USER32> They offer a strictly inferior, more expensive product in an industry that has been effectively commoditized.

<comment><USER33> Their service for cardholders is strictly superior to any other card issuer.

<comment><USER31> That is the correct answer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Haskell Lover's Plea - <AUTHOR> https://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4132/haskell-poem.html <comment><USER2> That's from a course that was given in 2004. UNSW has been teaching haskell for much longer, in those days everybody doing CS had to learn haskell.

Still a dearth of useful programs written in haskell in 2016. I've never seen a Haskell lover attempt an explanation that wasn't pure booster-ism. Why are there so few useful Haskell programs? Haskell has had time and access to programming talent and come up with very little. Maybe it's just around the corner hanging out with the year of the linux desktop?

<comment><USER3> > Why are there so few useful Haskell programs?

How do you know how many useful Haskell programs there are? Did you count them all? How many have I written?

<comment><USER2> I estimated. Pick say the debian reository, and count them there. Pick all of the programs written in Haskell where somebody as pointed you to them and said "this is cool and solves a problem you might have" where that proglem is something more than writing a haskell program.

I'm not omniscient, funnily enough. But hey, let's ask. How many programs have you written in haskell that you've published and have more than say 10,000 users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought the link was going to be Is Anything Being Done to Remedy the Soul Crushing Compile Times of GHC.

[https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_b...](https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_being_done_to_remedy_the_soul/)</comment>


Apple Fights U.S. Government Intervention in iPhone Copyright Case - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/05/04/apple-fights-us-government-intervention-in-iphone-copyright-case/#20623ae4681a <comment><AUTHOR> 'In the latest of the case's twists, the DOJ has asked that Apple's request for deposition of Corellium cofounder Chris Wade be delayed, but hasn't openly stated why. The government says it wants to know what evidence Apple is planning on presenting before its lawyers question Wade.

'The evidence has not yet been revealed, though in its court filing Friday, Apple counsel wrote that it "includes photographs Apple obtained" that "reveal highly sensitive information about sources and methods related to Apple's internal investigation." Apple said it was happy to hand the evidence to the government, but wanted assurances about its confidentiality, which it claimed the government had not provided.'

The case is Apple Inc. v. Corellium LLC, 19-81160, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (West Palm Beach).

[https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/29583744/Apple_Inc_...](https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/29583744/Apple_Inc_v_Corellium,_LLC)</comment>


2013: A Year of Open Source at Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/604847252884576/2013-a-year-of-open-source-at-facebook/ <comment><AUTHOR> I help with open source @ Facebook and wrote this article. AMA.

<comment><USER2> Hey there! I have lot of experience programming but not a lot of CS theory and low level engineering behind it. I find things like HHVM to be really inspiring, and I'd love to one day contribute to such a project. My question is-- how can I cross over from a script kiddie on steroids to a software engineer? Is there any hope if I'm not doctorate track? I'd appreciate any open resources you provide. Thank you for your great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> It takes all sorts! and the best way to prove your chops is to just jump. You can fork HHVM and start by picking up a few of the easier issues and working through them. Our engineers on that project are really friendly and helpful. What can I say... dive in! What is the worst that can happen?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did not know about React. It looks to be like the solution I need for one of my personal projects. In your experience, how does a React code base evolve as it grows? I've bumped into other libraries and frameworks that look simple at first, but then evolve into a big mess.

I ventured into the careers area of the site. The computer vision engineering position caught my attention. Do you mind talking about what the position entails? The description is rather vague.

<comment><USER4> Same here, I like the look and sound of React and was not aware of it previously. The funky XML-like syntax seems appealing, but then, I thought that about Scala too and that didn't turn out super well for me.

<comment><USER5> Several good comments/links here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936951)

<comment><USER3> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Say what you will about Facebook and some of their privacy concerns, but they definitely are full of true engineers.

<comment><USER7> Likely the source of the loose attitude on privacy.

<comment><USER8> For example, every software developer at Facebook has root access to all production servers and databases.

<comment><USER6> Source? Do you work there, or know someone who does?

<comment><USER9> Even interns had this access.

<comment><USER6> I've been given root access to a handful of internal servers as an intern at some companies in the past, but never database servers or production, customer-facing servers. That seems rather ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> It's just part of the engineering culture there. There's a lot of transparency and they try to keep everything as open as they can internally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could you guys open source the graph processing architecture, besides giraph, like unicorn or the technology behind the graph search, huh? come on, its christmas! :)

<comment><USER11> Don't forget MyNSA, the software the NSA uses to connect to MySQL databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Missing from the list is Phabricator ([http://phabricator.org/](http://phabricator.org/)). We've started using it recently and found it to be fantastic.

<comment><USER13> I remember looking at Phabricator for project management stuff, but felt that as a single freelance developer I wouldn't get enough out of it that would replace GitLab... What do you think? I'm going to have a play with it tomorrow to see what it's like.

<comment><USER14> I suppose if you wish to review your own code outside of opening files or through version control alone, it might be useful. That's its ultimate purpose (and facilitating code review in a collaborative way). I think it's a bit overkill for individual development though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Eh, what the heck, it's the holiday season. Good job, Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Engineers at Facebook must be in an interesting position. Working on interesting technical problems behind the controversial social network offering the only way they can make world a better place is by contributing their products to the open source community.

<comment><USER17> I agree.

Facebook is a company with an awful product, but great byproducts like all the open source projects listed here.

<comment><USER9> What's your reasoning for why FB is an awful product? I'm curious.

<comment><USER16> Ad proliferated news feed, selective update selection, photo resizing. The list can go on and on. Guys in FB have too much Koolaid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When will they announce their usage of hg at Facebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in the blog post that we are active contributors to the project... :)

<comment><USER18> I know, but they don't mention what exactly they are using hg for. Someone (from IRC) said they were using this for some "secret" thing :)

From IRC I know someone has said git didn't scale very well for Facebook.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Employees Reveal the Things They Hate About Working at the Company - <AUTHOR> http://financialfuse.com/secret-confessions-google-employees/ <comment><USER2> Sure sounds like most big corporations. Should be interesting to see what, if any, difference the Alphabet restructuring makes.</comment>


N=?NP, Physics, Feynman, and Quantum Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SczraSQE3MY

<comment><USER2> Scott Aaronson is a very good talker, anything else by him in the same vein?</comment>


A Company That Got Rid of Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3035927/agendas/inside-the-company-that-got-rid-of-email <comment><USER2> This can be done without eliminating email altogether. Disable notifications in your email program, and have it poll only manually.

This lets you respond to email at your own pace. For me, working through my email once in the morning and once after lunch seems to be a good pace. My coworkers quickly adapted, and will use an instant message or phone call if something really needs immediate attention.

This might not be as easy for non-programmers, but for me it helps me get more done since I can focus easier, which is ultimately what will keep my boss happy. In more tricky environments, you may be able to configure filters so that important emails _do_ send notifications.

Hopefully in the future we can all have a digital assistant that watches our email for us and detects the level of urgency automatically.

<comment><USER3> It's still a crutch that's supremely ineffective as a structure for doing what needs to be done.

People keep telling me, "communication problems are impossible to solve, you can just never get people to communicate perfectly. You need to accept that communication problems will always exist."

I don't buy it.

When a system is ineffective at solving a structural problem, it's because the system is not fit for the problem at hand.

A giant bucket where all of our notifications, important communications, unimportant communications, and entirely irrelevant communications are dumped is simply an ineffective structure over which to build an effective process.

I wholeheartedly agree with skipping the e-mail. Use a better system, get a better process, and don't allow people to fall back on the ancient and wildly unproductive crutch.

<comment><USER4> Could you name a feature you think that email is lacking that you believe another system provides?

Ed: Perhaps I was being glib, but my point is that the person made a nonsense comment. I doubt anyone downvoting me can name something that email doesn't have a relatively straightforward way to implement (with perhaps the exception of IM, and only because of delay times). It's simply silly to think that /any/ system is going to let you deal with a large volume of messages a day without having to filter and configure preferences, but I've legitimately not found a replacement for email in terms of relying moderate sized chunks of information to individuals or groups.

<comment><USER5> The biggest thing for me is when I send an email to someone with a 'task' I find it's out of my head and passed over. The problem is follow-up. I sometimes remember the task that I'd set and find that its not been done as the other party has forgotten it. Its this that's the biggest thing for me

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Look at their working environment. They have eight employees with laptops sitting around a table. They had a total of twenty employees when they started this. They're so tiny they don't need internal e-mail.

<comment><USER7> I've worked like that and it's brutal. Maybe cubes aren't so bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Email is pull already, every email client can be configured to only pull manually. I never had blinking icons or anything and never understood the supposedly big problem with email communication. On the contrary I like it because it is a asynchronous way of communicating. I answer emails when I have the time to do so, not when someone calls and takes my attention.

<comment><USER9> I've moved to more of "pull" approach recently, and it seems to work pretty well too. (I used to use on Gmail interface, but now I'm mostly on Gnus -- whenever I have moment to check my E-mail, I simply hit 'g' key to check to see anything new.)

I still have notifications sent to my phone (which also comes to my Android Wear watch) but since I've configured the notification to let me know messages meeting certain criteria, it's much better than "push" driven E-mails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > It's essentially a list of projects that every single individual and team is > working on. Each task shows what needs to get done, what has already been > completed, and how many hours it should take. It also shows what everyone is > working on at a given time. If someone needs something, he just creates a > new project.

It sounds like they made another bug tracker.

</comment><comment><USER11> The secret of addressing email volume problems is to ignore it. I received 15,000 and sent 9,500 emails in 2009, when I declared no more. Now, I get about 7,000 and send about 1,000. I read <40% and keep <3% more than 90 days. Nothing lives in my mailbox more than 48 hours.

The funny thing is, people now apologize all of the time for bothering me. You need to train most folks to respect your time. The ones I need to hear from are on my iOS VIP list (~a dozen people, give or take, about a third VIP, a third team members, a third external peeps) and I respond immediately if necessary.

<comment><USER12> Do you just leave it all in the inbox and respond to what's near the top, or do you archive it?

<comment><USER11> I typically zip through a few times a day and delete/act/save quickly. I try to err towards delete. I started with a GTD process and tweaked it to work for me. I have a script move everything older than 48 hours old into another folder, and the server-wide policy purges it in 90 days unless I slap another retention policy on it.

In the past, a lot of my email was "transactional" stuff that required constant attention. I felt guilty for not checking it every few minutes, and doing so was really stressful as a huge chunk of most days is in meetings or calls due to the nature of what I do. (This also make me a hard person to reach, as I don't work more than 50 hours a week unless there is a crisis)

Now that stuff is pushed to more appropriate venues, like our daily standup meeting.

<comment><USER12> >In the past, a lot of my email was "transactional" stuff that required constant attention. I felt guilty for not checking it every few minutes, and doing so was really stressful as a huge chunk of most days is in meetings or calls due to the nature of what I do. (This also make me a hard person to reach, as I don't work more than 50 hours a week unless there is a crisis)

I think this may be my actual problem. I started a website that now has customer support that goes to my inbox. I'm looking into delegating it.

They're not emails I can ignore, and they take time. Apart from that, email volume isn't too bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> basically this force ppl to only check for things at specific times instead of having to instantly interrupt work.

its more of a social issue than a technological one. some people will have proper notifications setup and even when they get them, will not go check what this is about immediately (maybe 3 or 4h later they will). It requires a lot of self control or a certain mind set tho so I can see why you' technologically enforce that behavior.

Note that you have to suppress twitter, fb, sms, etc as well for this to work best.. thus.. thus there's still room for changing our habits when setting up notifications and responding to them.

personally i made myself a rule that no notification is important enough for my direct attention. so i kept notifications via my phone vibrating only for direct calls (because people dont like voicemail and dont call a lot anyway) and for special msgs that due to the work i do need immediate attention (security incidents).

everything else, even if they're "urgent" to someone, i wont get notified and wont check. i check twice a day instead, "manually" and this includes everything: mail, twitter, etc. If its that important they'll call me. else they can generally in fact wait a few hours - turns out im better at deciding whats important to my own time than they are (obvious, i know).

I strongly encourage people who havent tried to do that, to give it a go for a couple of weeks. Note that this includes _everything_. Your personal SMS, tweets, what not as well. And that includes weekends and off hours too. Otherwise this wont work.

I feel a lot more free since I started doing that a few years back and I get a lot more done in fact - while I feel like I work less. win/win.

</comment><comment><USER14> _Cristian Rennella is really good at email. He responds to my messages within minutes,_

All that effort to move to a new communication and set a culture that says it doesn't have to be constantly checked, and he still didn't learn that the problem with email is the idea the they have to be acted upon immediately?

<comment><USER15> That was a nice critical reading on your side. For me the article basically points out that they used email for some kind of project planning and of course there are better way to do this. For urgent stuff something like internal IM and for other stuff email isn't that bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is basically a smaller version of what wordpress uses internally as profiled by fast co here: [http://www.fastcolabs.com/3035463/how-matts- machine-works](http://www.fastcolabs.com/3035463/how-matts-machine-works)

To those getting defensive about still using email: I guess it just depends on how your company is organized and what it's doing: I work in a University and there is no way we could get rid of email even internally, maybe we could do away with email in our one office, but there is already very little email here: it accounts for maybe 5% of my entire inbox on a daily basis. The rest of coming from other offices and org's in the school.

Basically, any slightly complex org will have a lot of trouble getting rid of email: but that's okay.

</comment><comment><USER17> Of course they don't need email, they can all see each other! Try working in a company where projects routinely span a handful of countries.

Most email isn't personal anyway, it's often machine generated by the various tools we use, reports of bugs changing status, servers coming online, servers going offline, jobs finishing etc etc.

email is actually there for a reason, it's just just there to interrupt you. At work you are expected to maintain contact with those you work with and email is one of the ways we achieve this across time zones and geographic boundaries.

</comment><comment><USER18> Keep in mind -- their company on linkedin is <10 people. FC quotes 34~.

This is not a huge/ultra-growing company C-level/VP-level executive getting 300 emails a day.

</comment><comment><USER19> Admirable case study. Seriously, this takes a lot of courage and discipline to pull off. Kudos to the management team!

However I'm really beginning to doubt the legitimacy of the claim that Email is the root of the productivity drain. People complain to me about SMS and phone calls the same way they do about email. I highly doubt the solution is to shun the medium/tech. The best way is to simply _tweak_ the people who use them :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Having the team to focus on their work w/o email distractions is a dream of productivity. Having a custom tool is key to getting this kind of thing to work. Airtable([https://airtable.com/invite/ijciBkzn](https://airtable.com/invite/ijciBkzn)) we posted yesterday on Show HN was built to get that set up easily.

<comment><USER21> Or they could, you know, just shut off the email client until they are ready to focus on email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Engineers by training, Rennella and his co-founder built a custom project management platform that works a bit like a trimmed down version of the communication tool Asana.

Slightly OT, but does anyone know of a tool like Asana or Trello that also works offline?

I love Trello, but am going to be working offline for part of the day and need something I can keep using.

<comment><USER22> I've looked for an offline/native osx Trello application for ages, I don't think there is anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would take a slightly different approach and ban all email after ~7pm each day and entirely on weekends. Obviously there need to be exceptions for people that monitor mission critical systems, but otherwise there is absolutely nothing productive in the long run with people pushing their work time all night.

</comment><comment><USER24> This was also done at ATOS by their CEO Thierry Breton. Although I don't know the impact of it.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16055310](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16055310)

</comment><comment><USER25> That's interesting, so it's like "passive" email or a notice board in a small town; instead of being interrupted by an email notification, you can see what needs to be done by checking out the board.

</comment><comment><USER26> we build and use [http://flock.co](http://flock.co) (chat for teams) and it has almost killed email for us. most communication and requests have started getting routed on chat.

it is not clear if a 1-on-1 interaction increases efficiency substantially on chat as opposed to email but in groups (emails with multiple stakeholders) it is significantly more effective

</comment><comment><USER27> I would use IRC instead, but I guess depending on the company they might not be as familiar with using it.</comment>


Ask HN: Vitamin D in a Household Product - <AUTHOR> We all know about iodized salt, vitamins in wheat, fluoridated water. What can we put Vitamin D into, that will neither risk overdose nor leave anyone out?<p>The only product I can think of is, toilet paper. Folks all use approximately the same amount. But that would work only if Vitamin D was effective if topically applied. Is that the case? <comment><USER2> None of them. Vitamin D is fat soluble and it's possible build up toxic levels of it. At the same time many studies suggest that humans need much higher doses than typically recommended, and some studies suggest that spaced hyperdosing is a much more effective way of recovering from a defficiency than a frequent small dose.

So adding a small dose to any product will have close to no effect on anyone with a deficiency while adding a dose that's meaningful to address people's deficiencies will push other people to toxic levels.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fortified milk and similar products usually include vitamin D.

</comment><comment><USER4> Actually, women tend to use more paper. Not only do they use more, but they use it on a mucus membrane (think that's the right word).

</comment><comment><USER5> If only there was a way to bottle sunshine. Then we could hide in our homes and have our bodies safety convert cholesterol to vitamin d.

</comment><comment><USER6> Canola oil, this one [1] is sold in Sweden

[1] [https://www.zeta.nu/produkter/rapsolja-d- vitaminberikad/](https://www.zeta.nu/produkter/rapsolja-d-vitaminberikad/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's also used as a strong rat poison so overdose risk is a serious concern.

Best thing would be blood testing (it can be done cheaply with a fingerprick) to see if the persons actually need supplementation...

</comment><comment><USER8> I have read somewhere eggs are a good source of vitamin D. Also mushrooms dried in sun can have sufficient levels of vitamin D.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sunlight

<comment><USER10> Move to Finland, Sweden, or some other dark place and you'll find that Vitamin D supplements are common for winter-times.</comment></comment>


A Response to Olive Garden from AllOfGarden - <AUTHOR> http://allofgarden.com/article/2017/an-unfortunate-misunderstanding <comment><USER2> A while back I wrote an Olive Garden dish name generator. [http://jordanzimmerman.com/olivegarden.html](http://jordanzimmerman.com/olivegarden.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Hidden text"

Are you not allowed to write HTML comments about Olive Garden? That's an oddly specific request from them.

<comment><USER4> This also refers to text with "display: none" and "opacity: 0", which used to be (still is?) a way to trick search engines into ranking your site higher.

<comment><USER5> Search engines have ignored hidden text for years; there is no positive impact to your rankings by hiding text on your pages. That's not to say it's not indexed, but it doesn't help you (could harm you if it looks fishy, though)</comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Google Employee Claims Wrongful Firing for Criticizing James Damore's Memo - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ex-google-employee-claims-wrongful-firing-for-criticizing-james-damores-memo/ <comment><USER3> It appears his "criticism" was name calling and attempts to shut down rational discussion. Sounds like grounds for dismissal to me.

<comment><USER4> @mesozoic: 'It appears his "criticism" was name calling and attempts to shut down rational discussion. Sounds like grounds for dismissal to me'

What are your sources for the above? Meanwhile we can read the original memo and make up our own minds:

[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles- Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)

<comment><USER5> 'mesozoic is referring to Tim Chevalier, the subject of the article, not James Damore.

<comment><USER3> Yes I was referring to Tim the subject of this article

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How many Googlers have to get fired before people learn to just not talk about this whole thing? Don't they have, like... work to do instead?

<comment><USER7> "This whole thing" is how Google attracts, recruits, and retains the best people. For a company like Google, doing a good job at that is part of their identity and mythos (other companies look to Google's hiring approaches and "people ops" model). For anyone whose job includes interviewing, managing, or reviewing, "this whole thing" _is_ part of their work. They could just follow what the industry standard is, yes, but they wouldn't be Google if they did that.

Think about it this way—you can certainly have a functioning company where people are just good at whatever programming languages exist. But you can't have a Google (or an Apple or Mozilla or Microsoft) if you don't have at least some people with opinions on how to _develop_ programming languages, and talking / listening / reading / writing publicly about PL theory, and questioning the assumptions underlying all the common industry-standard languages, is part of their job.

<comment><USER6> I'm confused. By "this whole thing" I mean "the James Damore nonsense" and "political nonsense in general". It is super hecka easy to just not talk about politics at work. For decades, people went to work and didn't talk about religion, sex, politics, etc. Work is for work, and as a millennial, I am deeply concerned that my cohort does not understand that.

<comment><USER7> Do you think the Damore memo was about politics or religion or sex? It seems to me like the Damore memo was specifically about the underlying facts behind Google's hiring strategy, which is extremely work-related. (In the course of this memo he happened to veer into things the NLRB ruled were decent reasons to fire someone, but I think writing a memo about the hiring process, by itself, was perfectly legitimate.)

I mean, certainly you can interpret hiring strategy as a type of politics, but "companies should exist in the first place" is also a type of politics. What's your definition of political nonsense?

I agree that it's easy not to talk about the politics underlying your hiring strategy at work. But it's also equally easy to just not talk about your hiring strategy at all - which is a thing lots of companies do, but not a thing that a company like Google could do and remain Google.

<comment><USER8> What is your point, because it is actually hard to get..?

<comment><USER7> The Damore memo was not a problem for daring to talk about gender and race and hiring. Google both wants and needs its employees to talk about that.

The Damore memo was a problem for the underlying assumptions about gender and race it used in trying to make its (vague) point.

An analogy I've made previously on this site is that it's like a memo about which tech stack to use. Saying "Why can't engineers learn not to talk about tech stack and just use what they're told to use" is misguided - it might work at some companies, but it won't work at Google, and moreover, Google specifically wants you to talk about such things. The Damore memo, however, responded by saying "Let's do a long study on whether Classic ASP on NT 4.0 is the right approach, let's try rewriting some core components in Classic ASP and moving some services to NT 4.0 and see if things get better," and making questionable citations to papers (which do exist, and aren't inherently non- credible) about projects developed in Classic ASP. An engineer who seriously advocates that position _and_ wants the rest of the company to spend time evaluating that position is in the wrong, and is wasting the company's time. Saying that their mistake is daring to speak about programming languages - <USER2> saying that other employees who say "Actually, no, your technology suggestions are obviously wrong" in response are equally mistaken - is misunderstanding the mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> By the way, so-called 'diversity' should also protect right-wing conservative views, not only left-wing supposedly-liberal views; otherwise it's a crap. It should protect _everyone_ 's freedom as long as those views respect the law.</comment>


The State of Rust 0.9 - <AUTHOR> http://cmr.github.io/blog/2014/01/12/the-state-of-rust-0-dot-9/

<comment><USER2> I've been working on a NES emulator in rust and so far I really like the language.

Other than managing lifetimes, which can be difficult, the only thing that really bugs me is the lack of safe type promotion. for example, if I have:

fn add(a: u8) -> u16 { a + 7 }

the compiler should not complain that the expression is of type u8 and not u16 - it is safe to widen the type!

Other minor nits:

\- it would be nice if enums were scoped. I think putting names in the outer namespace repeats a poor design in C. Enums should look like MyEnum.MyValue. I know the ADT nature of rust enums might throw a wrench in this

\- I really dislike the word "mut". it looks like mutt to me. I don't really know how to fix this, though. Perhaps reuse the @ sigil once it goes away?

\- Once macros are mature, it would be nice not to require them to be suffixed with !. I'm a lisp guy at heart in this respect... macros should be full power and macro use should feel just like that feature was built into the language

\- JSON style literals for hash maps would be nice

\- Ternary operator pls

Other than those small complaints, I have to say that rust has been a joy!

<comment><USER3>
        fn add(a: u8) -> u16 {
                let u15 t: a+7
        }

I admit it looks more wordy, but I think this is a good thing. It might be nice to allow it but issue a warning about widening types.

As for the others, I kinda disagree. Enums allow for some nice syntax with match. Compare:

        match error_option {
             Ok(Some(a)) => {},
             Ok(None(a)) => {},
             Err=> {}
        }

with

        match error_option {
             Error.Ok(Option.Some(a)) => {},
             Error.Ok(Option.None(a)) => {},
             Error.Err=> {}
        }

See? It would get tedious fast with match pattern.

I had never had problems with mut. The syntax is clear and unambiguous. It's fine as is really. I actually like knowing which pointers are mutable, by keyword instead of typing arcane stuff like _@~ptr_ , _@ &ptr_. Seeing how @ was a sigil for pointers this would make most people do a double somersault in fear of the GC pointer returning.

I like macros with ! It tells you magic happens here beware. Not having those you'd have serious problem understanding where errors are once macro expands :?

Ternary operator? Wth? You can just use if as a superio ternary (endless chaining) operator.

        let ter_demo = if a.is_none() then 3 else 2;

<comment><AUTHOR> Your ternary demo needs to be written thus for it to work:

        let ter_demo = if a.is_none() { 3 } else { 2 };

You can also often use pattern matching:

        let ter_demo = match a { None => 3, _ => 2 };

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I wrote the example out of my head, so no surprises there. Thanks, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Classic Unix Horror Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.lug.wsu.edu/node/414

<comment><USER2> I did something similar once, but realized pretty quickly I had been in the wrong directory when I hit return after "rm -rf *" \- I cannot remember why I realized so quickly, it's been over 20 years, but it seems to me I had multiple terminal sessions going (probably via screen) and freaky stuff was happening in one.

If I remember correctly, I was in /dev when I meant to be in a sub-directory I'd created for testing purposes. Some of the freaky stuff included losing command echo, e.g., since my TTY no longer existed.

Fortunately, since my work involved backups, modems, and a few other things, I had a pretty good grasp of major and minor numbers and was able to recreate my TTY using mknod. After that, panic dropped considerably and I could at least poke around and figure out exactly how borked the system was.

Another time, a colleague and I spent hours trying to restore from tape to a filesystem we were pretty sure was corrupted. We tried every trick we knew - and learned a few more along the way - but eventually, at least in part because we were stressed out and sleep deprived, we had something along the lines of the following conversation:

"The FS is borked, right?"

"Right."

"We're confident the backups are good, right?"

"Right." (We'd built the backup system, it was in use on hundreds of servers across the company, we'd never had a failed recovery....)

"So let's reboot into single user, newfs the disk, restore from tape, and boot back into multiuser."

"Uh..."

"I mean, we cannot possibly make things worse, right? This machine is thrashing."

"Yeah...."

"So?"

"OK."

It worked. When we returned to our senses, we realized we were lucky it had, realized we were deluding ourselves (we could have made things worse), and realized that if it hadn't of worked, we would have been fired in all likelihood: We'd made a decision way above our pay grade, as it were, with no management knowledge at all.

The next day, as far as they were concerned, we'd spent hours slaving after midnight to save a build machine and we kept the design group working. We just smiled, awkwardly.

Oi.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nowadays you could sync and then force a shutdown (hard), then mount your drive on another machine. A hard thing to do in the days of vaxes.

<comment><USER4> On the first machine I used Unix on, a PDP 11/45, we had the root file system on an RK05[1], which was a removable media disk - all of 2.5 MB! So if you fried the root file system, you could just pop it out and replace it with a backup disk pack.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RK05](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RK05)</comment></comment>


Jodrell Bank Observatory founder Sir Bernard Lovell dies - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19164236

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps the story of the Soviets trying to kill him can now be told: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5362829/Sir- Bernard...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5362829/Sir-Bernard- Lovell-claims-Russians-tried-to-kill-him-with-radiation.html)</comment>


Proftpd critical security leak hasn't been fixed on Ubuntu since May - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/proftpd-dfsg/+bug/1470259

<comment><AUTHOR> Which illustrates the risk of running "universe" packages.</comment>


Spammers crack Gmail Captcha - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/25/gmail_captcha_crack/

<comment><USER2> If you read through to the WebSense posting it appears that the bot 'outsources' the CAPTCHA images to humans (who speak Russian).

<comment><USER3> I read the captcha on GMail is the safest around and it is impossible to break. One that does it would really put the captcha test to dust.</comment></comment>


Parasites and pathogens may explain national IQ differences - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16479286

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a very strong case for public health in the developing world, beyond merely helping direct beneficiaries, it makes the country more economically productive and thus able to support itself.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an App Builder that doesn't Suck? - <AUTHOR>

I surveyed a bunch of them, AppMakr, Genwi, but all they seem good for was creating just "one" kind of app, that's a simple RSS feed-reader. Is there something better out there, like Weebly is for Websites ? Or there is no demand for an appbuilder ? <comment><USER2> You can build apps with Visual C# or Delphi or many other RADs with relatively very little coding.

IE a basic wordpad - type text editor with some rich text editing would consist of:

\- dropping a RichText control on a form (an empty window), and giving it a name ('editor') \- dropping buttons on the form, graphically placing them, and selecting captions, etc. \- Setting onClick events for the buttons, and placing code to the effect of ('editor.selection.font.style = 'bold';)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can code, you can use things like Titanium to port your web work into native applications.</comment>